Archives par étiquette : Text Publishing

SELFIE d’Allayne L. Webster

An exploration of the complexities of teen friendships and the difficulties of navigating social media in a captivating novel for younger YA readers.

SELFIE
by Allayne L. Webster
Text Publishing, April 2023

Dene Walker picked me to be her best friend. She had the whole of Tonsley High’s year eight to choose from—and she chose me. Me!

Tully can’t believe her luck. Dene is famous. Everyone loves her. She has thousands of followers online and hundreds of sponsorship deals. Being best friends with Dene Walker is a dream come true.

Before long, Tully is hardly aware of the existence of her long-time bestie, Kira, as she shapes herself into a person worthy of Dene’s attention. And she’s not prepared for the heartache and confusion when Dene’s friendship is not all she imagined it to be.

SELFIE is an engaging and very real exploration of social media and the trickiness of separating what’s real from the glossiness of the online world. It’s a tender story about friendship and staying true to yourself.

Allayne L. Webster grew up in rural South Australia and now lives in Adelaide. Her books include the CBCA notable novel Paper Planes, A Cardboard Palace, Our Little Secret, The Centre of My Everything, That Thing I Did and Sensitive, which has been selected for the 2023 IBBY catalogue.

THE BURROW de Melanie Cheng

THE BURROW tells an unforgettable story about grief and hope. With her characteristic compassion and eye for detail, Melanie Cheng reveals the lives of others—even of a small rabbit.

THE BURROW
by Melanie Cheng
Text Publishing, September 2024

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated inner-city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change.

When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy’s mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets.

Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy?

Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Room for a Stranger, her highly acclaimed first novel, was published in 2019.

TO THE RIVER de Vikki Wakefield

A compulsively readable, character-driven psychological thriller about two determined women who, over the course of three suspenseful weeks, take the law into their own hands to reveal the truth about a shocking crime. Vikki Wakefield’s compelling story is about class, corruption, and big-picture values of love, loyalty and the vindication of truth and justice. And a very brave dog called Blue.

TO THE RIVER
by Vikki Wakefield
Text Publishing (Australia), February 2024

How long can you hide the truth?

The Kelly family has always been trouble. When a fire in a remote caravan community kills nine people, including 17-year-old Sabine Kelly’s mother and sister, Sabine confesses to the murders. Shortly after, she escapes custody and disappears.

Journalist Rachel Weidermann has long suspected Sabine made her way back to the river. Now, twelve years after the ‘Caravan Murders’, and having recently been made redundant from her marriage, motherhood and career, she has the time and the tenacity to corner a fugitive and land the story of the year.

Rachel’s ambition lights the fuse leading to a brutal chain of events, and the web Sabine weaves will force Rachel to question everything she believes. Vikki Wakefield’s compelling psychological thriller is about class, corruption, love, loyalty, and the vindication of truth and justice. And a brave dog called Blue.

Vikki Wakefield writes fiction for adults and young adults. Her novels have been shortlisted for numerous awards. After You Were Gone, a psychological thriller, was her first novel for adults and was published in 2022 to much acclaim. TO THE RIVER is her second psychological thriller for adults. Vikki lives in Adelaide, South Australia.

 

THE GOODBYE YEAR d’Emily Gale

THE GOODBYE YEAR explores all the trickiness and confusion of the end of primary school and a new stage of life that looms with all its uncertainties and possibilities.

THE GOODBYE YEAR
by Emily Gale
Text Publishing, September 2022

It’s the start of 2020 and Harper is filled with anticipation about being in the final year of Riverlark Primary. She wants a leadership role, the comfort of her friendship group, and to fly under the radar of Riverlark’s mean-boy.

But one by one things go wrong. When Harper’s best friends are made school captains they are consumed by their roles, while her own role—library captain—is considered second-rate. Then something major throws life off course: her parents take overseas jobs as nurses in a war zone. Harper moves in with Lolly, a grandmother she barely knows—and Lolly’s five pets, vast collection of old trinkets and very different expectations.

And then strange things start to happen: Harper wakes in the night in odd places; an old army badge seems to have a mind of its own; and on a visit to the school library she’s convinced she’s seen a ghost.

Who is haunting her? Can she get through the anxiety of the pandemic without her mum and dad? And will Harper find a way to be happy with her goodbye year?

Emily Gale’s books include The Other Side of Summer and its companion novel I Am Out with Lanterns, the Eliza Boom Diaries, Steal My Sunshine and Girl, Aloud, as well as her recent middlegrade collaboration with friend and fellow author Nova Weetman, Elsewhere Girls, and the upcoming Outlaw Girls.

VOYAGERS de Lauren Fuge

Journeying through remote landscapes across the Earth and beyond, VOYAGERS seeks to understand how human exploration has driven us into the Anthropocene.

VOYAGERS:
Our Journey into the Anthropocene
by Lauren Fuge
Text Publishing (Australia), August 2024

At night, as I stargazed from my tiny tent, I’d hear the primal whalesong roll up along the ocean floor and onto the beach where I lay. The ethereal melodies seeped through my shivering skin, like a relic of an ancient time. I felt as if I was eavesdropping across millennia, the sound stirring some faint genetic memory deep inside me.
Come home.
Since the beginning of human history, we have been wanderers. Modern humans left Africa by 150,000 years ago, heading first to Asia and Europe, then Australia, the Americas, and finally—in an incredible feat of innovation and imagination—across the Pacific. Our explorations yielded great rewards: land and resources, food and knowledge. In every landscape we have explored, we have become a force of change. Humans are the dominant influence on the environment. And our surging population and insatiable industrial metabolism are outgunning the planet’s own forces: the sea is sucking at our doorsteps; the forests fall too quickly for us to hear. Still, we seek new seas to fish, new oil deposits to drill, new land to develop. A compelling blend of natural history, science and memoir, journeying from the dramatic fjords of British Columbia to the ancient geology of outback Australia to the shifting coastlines of Norway, VOYAGERS asks: What drives our urge to explore? How has it influenced our relationship with the planet? And, in the face of imminent environmental collapse, can we find in our voyaging history the tools to reimagine our future?

Lauren Fuge is an award-winning science writer. She has been a science journalist for Cosmos magazine and was awarded the 2022 UNSW Bragg Prize for Science Writing; her writing features regularly in the Best Australian Science Writing anthology. She is undertaking a PhD exploring creative forms of climate communication.