Contemporary

One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah’s mother tells him three things: don’t use drugs, don’t use weapons, don’t steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn’t there. Ten-year-old Enaiatollah is left alone in Pakistan to fend for himself.

Peter is thrilled to be going to Greenland where his father studies climate change. But on the ice cap, Peter is troubled by a series of visions that both frighten and entice him. What is the strange red entwined circle he sees in the ice? Where is his dog trying to lead him?

Thea has never seen the sun. Her people, suspected of witchcraft and driven almost to extinction, have retreated to a secret world they've built deep within an arctic glacier. As Thea dreams of a way back to the surface, Peter's search for answers takes him to her hidden world.

Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend in class rebel Lucas. At home her father puts a brave face on things but cries in secret in the bathroom, while her mother rarely speaks and hardly ever leaves the house. To escape this desolate world, Lou goes often to Gare d’Austerlitz to see the big emotions in the smiles and tears of arrival and departure. But there she also sees the homeless, meets a girl called No, only a few years older than herself, and decides to make homelessness the topic of her class presentation.

'How about we toss a coin? Heads, it's west and a lift. Tails, it's still west, but no lift.'
James is heading into the country on his first teacher-training round when a mysterious girl asks him for a ride. Sophie has him all worked out: 'You live with your parents and they bought you this car, and a very nice car it is too...' At first James can't see past her wild hair and attitude, but then Sophie trusts him with a secret she's been keeping too long.

Mim knows what she wants, and where she wants to go — anywhere but home, stuck in the suburbs with her mother who won't get off the couch, and two brothers in prison. She's set herself rules to live by, but she's starting to break them.

 Now Mim has to retrieve a lost package for her mother.

Does this make her a drug runner?

Why is a monster dog called Gargoyle hidden in the back shed?

And Jordan, the boy she sent Valentines to for years, why is he now suddenly a creep?

How come there's a huge gap between her and her best friend, Tahnee?

‘If she’d waited less than two weeks, she’d be June who died in June. But I guess my sister didn’t consider that.’

Harper Scott’s older sister has always been the perfect one — so when June takes her own life a week before her high school graduation, sixteen-year-old Harper is devastated. Everyone’s sorry, but no one can explain why.

Sixteen year old Noah is a troublemaker. His father is a hotshot barrister.

This is not a good combination.

When Noah gets caught mucking up at school, his dad sends him to work at his aunt's law firm during the holidays to "learn responsibility" and "fix his attitude".

There he meets Jacinta - the cute intern who knows her way around a photocopier, and Casey - the wicked witch of the firm.

Sugar boy gave me the name Bird, otherwise I'm James Burdell. I live with my dad who has a big tattoo that says Live to Ride. He is so strong he can lift up a car, but he can't tell me what he's thinking. Maybe he's thinking about my mother who shot through. Sugar Boy is my best friend. We hang around down at the river, in the bush tunnel, or beside the railway tracks riding our bikes fast enough to beat the train. There's only two of us, but we're the whole team. I don't know what would happen if I didn't have Sugar Boy . . .

"This dog is not like other dogs. She is more like a friend than a dog. A friendly shadow that does not want to leave us. You never lose your shadow".

Never have Aman and his mother needed a friend than when a springer spaniel appears in the mouth of their Afghan cave. Nursed back to health by Aman, the dog becomes a constant companion, a shadow, and that's what Aman decides to call her.