AustLit

'Chasing each other down Avenel Way,
the Kelly Gang kids just wanted to play.

'Young Ned Kelly and his mates get up to all sorts of mischief. But when Ned’s friend is found drowning in the creek, will Ned be able to save him?

'The Kelly Gang Kids is a story about friendship, fun and bravery.' (Publication summary)

'After 50,000 years in a chemically induced sleep, Sarah and her fellow R.E.Generation volunteers awake to find a world devoid of human life. Climate change has wiped all mammalian life from the planet surface, and pine trees and giant mushrooms have taken over.

'Can they stave off bitter infighting and a hostile earth to build a strong settlement in this strange new world? They are humanity’s last chance of survival, but in the ongoing battle between humankind and the Earth, who wins?

'‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

'R.E.Generation presents a near future where humanity is succumbing to the ravages of a changing climate and a reproductive blight, and a distant future where a few volunteers struggle to survive on a reborn earth. Can they remember the lessons of the past and create a better society capable of repopulating the earth, or will human greed, selfishness and conflict bring the whole experiment down. R.E.Generation explores one possible future where the climate crisis has almost won. But Sarah and her friends have other ideas.' (Publication summary)

'Twelve-year-old twins Hugo and Kitty have an ultra-rare condition called heterochromia, which bestows them with different coloured eyes: one hazel, the other blue. On holiday in rural Australia, the twins befriend their solitary neighbour, Lucas, who has developed a powerful solar device he calls the Helios Book.

'Lucas promises it will revolutionise global energy use. In a desperate attempt to escape those who would steal the Helios Book, the twins follow a fairy wren down a wombat burrow and into the mysterious world of Taara, a land plagued by a terrifying earthquake-like phenomenon called the Blurrings, and home to those who would take a nefarious interest in the twins’ heterochromia.

'The Helios Book is the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland for the Age of Extinction.' (Publication summary)

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'Billy loves Harmony Day. He loves the colours, the clothes and especially the food. This year Tayta is making kaak, a Lebanese treat, for Billy to share with his class but he can't share the recipe because Tayta bakes with a secret ingredient.

'Tayta's Secret Ingredient is a heart-warming intergenerational story about everyday life in multicultural Australia, where a curious boy takes centre stage alongside his beloved baking grandmother.' (Publication summary)

'A pregnant woman takes the ferry to the UK.

'A fractious intimate relationship develops between an Irish woman, an English man, and her girlfriend.

'Two ungendered characters contest the same female body.

'A deserted wife takes a lover but remains unsatisfied.

'Lauren Foley's debut collection of dramatic short stories, Polluted Sex, is fearless in its depiction of women's bodies and sexuality, offering an unflinching window into Irish girl and womanhood.' (Publication summary)

'Take a monstrous journey through the Middle Ages to discover creatures both familiar and unfamiliar.

'Explore the hazards of medieval life at the claws, paws and fangs of dragons, wyverns, cockatrices, lamias, manticores, ghouls and many other monsters!'(Publication summary)

'Neglected by society, a group of caravanning 60-somethings encounter a place where time stops. A baby swims in a witch’s cauldron. A statue of Jesus grows fat off fish and chips. An ancient Egyptian God swims through the sewers under a suburban street and a desperate family harvests the fingers they find growing in their soil after their final food supplies wither.

'Strangely Enough is a celebration of the far-reaching possibilities of short fiction from some of Australia’s most creatively ambitious minds. Surreal and haunting, funny and gripping, these intensely strange tales encompass what it means to grieve, love, wonder, fear and change, each ultimately offering something entirely unexpected and strangely, deeply human.' (Publication summary)

'Willow jumps on the Ferris Wheel and is intrigued to see a boy surrounded by moths.

'As they travel high above the fairground he tells her the reason why the moths love him so much: he was raised by moths.

'Wonderfully fantastical and thought-provoking with stunning illustrations, Raised by Moths is quite unlike anything you've read before.' (Publication summary)

'In a remote village, bordered by woods and an endless winter, Saatcha lives in the attic of her ailing father's blacksmithery.

'As her father's health fades and he is no longer able to work, Saatcha takes it upon herself to keep the forge running.

'But when a pair of thieves appear in the dead of night, Saatcha's duty to her father is torn from her. Forced to leave her home behind, the bounds of magic that once held Saatcha begin to slip away.

'Papa is gone.

'Magic is real.

'And her kidnappers are much more than simple thieves.

'As Saatcha's world is irrevocably altered, she must rely on her new friends to find the truth of her past - and what it might mean for the future of the kingdom.' (Publication summary)

'The chimera of the city are on the hunt.

'After years of being individually slaughtered, they have come together to make war on Pandora and her people.

'In the conclusion to The Burning Days, the sins of the past will be revealed and all hope for the future will be under attack.' (Publication summary) 

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'Set in the 90s, a fifteen-year old unnamed Greek boy is completely confused about what is going on as he tries to fend off what we now know as anxiety, panic attacks and depression while surrounded by his Greek family, friends and girls he might or might not have a crush on.

' I don’t get this.

'I’m fifteen! And in Year 10!

'I don’t have anything to worry about.

'I should be thinking about the way Samantha keeps looking at me, nursing that crush she’s had for me since primary school. Or about Gabriella, who’s so cool and seems interested. Or the Boland Fellowship, an award given out for academic excellence that everybody thinks I could win.

'Or maybe I should think about my best friend Ash, the way he’s sullen about his arguing parents sometimes, or how he bounces from one girlfriend to the next, or Riley, who’s becoming a bigger and bigger troublemaker, although we don’t know why.

'This is high school.

'Isn’t it?

'But when I wake up one night, terrified, it starts a journey of trying to find out what’s wrong. I can’t go to Mum and Dad. They wouldn’t understand. So it’s strange doctors, and scurrying around like everything’s okay, while everything’s coming apart.

'I don’t get this.

'But I’m gonna try work it out.' (Publication summary)

'In the scorching summer of 2033, Gilbert Black is accused of being a firebug, just like his mother was thirteen years previously. That night a fire starts on his family’s farm. A fire with a tunnel in the centre of it. And that’s when things start to get really weird.

'Pulled repeatedly back and forth through time, Gil finds himself at all the big Australian bushfires from the last two centuries. He searches across the years, determined to unlock the secret to his family’s legacy.

'Gil can’t change the past, but can he learn from it in time to return home and save his family from the biggest inferno ever known?' (Publication summary) 

'Mizuto is a young boy living an ordinary life in Japan until one day, something extraordinary happens.

'Following a deadly tsunami, Mizuto’s father is missing.

'Could a mysterious telephone connected only to the wind help him find his father?

'Based on real events, Mizuto and the Wind is a story about the forces of nature, grief, family, and the importance of hope.'

'Don't go out onto the lake. Wyann trees search the shallows to spear passing prey with their roots. Giant water-ants hunt anything that moves on the water-skin. Sala's village survives hidden behind a wall of poisonous ivy, because everyone agrees: don't go out onto the lake.

'But when her village refuses to listen to sense, and continues squeezing beautiful pond-bred 'keeiling' fish to death for their precious saliva oils, Sala has no choice. She will risk it all to prove herself one last time, else leave everything behind for the dark shaded swamps beneath the towering hillfarms of Palude.

'At least that's the plan before a strange comet crosses the night sky, throwing her and her pet pointer into a race through wyann-infested swampland to unearth long-hidden truths and stir rivalries into a terrifying conflict set to change the world of Palude forever. Sala must do whatever it takes to face the truth of who she is: to save her village, to save her family, to save herself.

'If only they had listened.'(Publication summary)

'Every morning early, when no-one’s about, Satin slips out of the forest and walks along the sleepy sunrise streets, looking for blue...

'He’s collected all kinds of blues, from all kinds of places. He’s making something beautiful, with all those blues. But something’s missing, and he doesn’t know what it is. And then, one day, he comes to a street he’s never been in before. And what he finds there will change his lonely life forever. 

'A beautiful, haunting fable by award-winning writer Sophie Masson and acclaimed illustrator Lorena Carrington.' (Publication summary)