Recommended Reading List
Year 11
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou describes her coming
of age as a precocious but insecure
black girl in the American South
during the 1930s and subsequently in
California during the 1940s.
Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled
with disappointment, frustration,
tragedy and finally hard-won
independence.
Burke’s Soldier
Alan Attwood
Melbourne, 1871: John King is dying far
from the deserts he traversed with the
legendary Burke and Wills. Ten years on
from that fateful expedition, King is
finally ready to tell his story. The young
Irishman had already endured the horrors
of the Indian Mutiny when he signed on
with the erratic Burke to explore a land
he knew little about. As one of the
advance group who pushed on to the
Gulf of Carpentaria - only to be
abandoned later by the rest of their party - King was with Wills
as he penned his final letter and at Burke's side when he died.
Then he was alone, the sole survivor, though barely alive when
rescued by Alfred Howitt. But Howitt is a man who cannot let
things be and now he seems more inquisitor than saviour. He
wants to know what King knows before it's too late . . .
Cat’s Eyes
Margaret Atwood
Set in Canada: Mid 20th C – WWII – late 1980s.
Painter Elaine Risley vividly reflects on her childhood
and teenage years. Her strongest memories are of
Cordelia, who was the leader of a trio of girls who
were both very cruel and very kind to young Elaine, in
ways that tint Elaine's perceptions of relationships and
her world—not to mention her art—into the character's
middle years.
Regeneration
The Eye In The Door
The Ghost Road
Pat Barker
Regeneration is the first of three novels in the
Regeneration Trilogy of novels on the First World War.
The novel is based on the real-life experiences of British
army officers being treated for shell shock during World
War I.
Eli’s Wings
Elizabeth Best
'I was faced with two choices, and two choices only - life or
death.'
The young Elizabeth Best was full of talent, potential and, most
of all, life. At fifteen, the future looked bright. But then the
fairytale ended. Unable to cope with a series of life-changing
events, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital suffering a
devastating case of anorexia nervosa. Faced with the prospect
of death within days, Elizabeth realised that the answers she'd
been searching for could only be found within. Embarking on a
courageous journey of self-discovery, she fought to uncover
'Eli' - the person she'd always dreamed she could be - and in the
process, discovered the key to her ultimate freedom.
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination had its
origins in a newspaper clipping that
Bester found about a shipwrecked WW
II sailor on a raft, who had drifted
unrescued in the Pacific for days
because passing ships thought he was a
lure to bring them within torpedo range
of a hidden submarine. From this germ
grew the story of Gully Foyle, seeking
revenge for his abandonment and
causing havoc all about him: a science
fiction re-telling of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte
Cristo with teleportation added to the mix.
Love Cuts
Ian Bone
Love Cuts is about four close friends who've
left school. It's about the way they love: as
friends, as a mother, as daughters, as sisters,
as boys, as mates, as girls and as lovers. It's
about how love can cut you up or make you
feel like you're walking on air. It's about
how hard the real stuff of love is, the
forgiveness, the commitment, the staying
around when it feels so bad.
Hotel Du Lac
Anita Brookner
Romantic novelist Edith Hope is
staying in a hotel on the shores of
Lake Geneva, where her friends
have advised her to retreat following
an unfortunate incident. In this
period of hiatus from her everyday
world, Edith begins for the first time
to reflect on her own life with real
insight and honesty and when she is
offered the chance to make a radical
change in her situation, she responds
decisively and with a new
knowledge of herself.
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
Like 1984, this is a book in which an
entire social order is implied through
language. And what language! To hint at
the vile universe of the 15-year-old
delinquent Alex and his murderous
buddies, Burgess created "nadsat," a rich
futuristic patois. "Sinny" for "cinema."
"Viddy" for "see," "horrorshow" for
"good"—from the Russian, khorosho,
which gives you some idea of which
political system has prevailed. The
words locate him in a world of corrupted
values, violence and boundless infantile
indulgence. (His drug is "milk plus.") When Alex is
apprehended by the authorities and subjected to psychological
conditioning to make him nauseated at any impulse towards
violence, Burgess's book becomes a meditation on whether a
world in which evil can be freely chosen might still be
preferable to one in which goodness is compelled.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Truman Capote
Portrays the life of Holly Golightly, a
young woman transplanted to
Manhattan, with an unknown past. She
is trying to find her place in the world
when she meets an unnamed,
unemployed writer. The novella is set in
Manhattan's Upper East Side during the
final years of World War II. It follows
the young writer's affections for the
strange but charming Holly, his
neighbor.
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a
Multiple Murder and Its
Consequences, by American author
Truman Capote, details the 1959
murders of Herbert Clutter, a wealthy
farmer from Holcomb, Kansas; his
wife, Bonnie; his 16-year-old daughter,
Nancy; and his 15-year-old son,
Kenyon, and the aftermath. Capote said
that he had created a new type of book,
the non-fiction novel, by applying
traditional literary conventions to
crime reporting. Critics have debated
the degree to which Capote fabricated
certain events in his book.
The Gallipoli Story
Patrick Carylon
The men were huddled in lifeboats.
Some prayed that their legs would
work. Some smiled to show they
weren't scared. They peered into the
darkness ahead and saw nothing.
Then, the dark shape of a man standing
on a hill. A shout from the shore. A
single shot rang out and a bullet hissed
overhead. The Gallipoli campaign had
begun
The Gallipoli Story takes young people
on an unforgettable and tough journey
deep into the heartland of war. Patrick Carlyon digs past the
myths to explore the lives and choices of the men - soldiers,
politicians and generals alike - who found themselves caught
up in a battle fought far from home.
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
With The Big Sleep, Chandler
inaugurated a series of novels in which
the central character and narrator is
Philip Marlowe, a private investigator
working in Los Angeles. Marlowe is the
moral centre of all of Chandler's novels;
it is through his perceptions and
comments that judgments about the
other characters are formed. Marlowe is
the epitome of the tough but sensitive
private eye, maintaining the requisite
balance of cynicism and idealism in
order to cope with his world.
Farewell My Lovely
Raymond Chandler
In this noir classic, detective Philip Marlowe wrestles with the full
spectrum of Southern California criminality. Initially recruited to
help recover stolen jewels, at various times he confronts fake
mediums, professional gamblers, crooked cops, straight but stupid
cops, fraudulent psychiatric hospitals, blackmailers, con men,
gigolos and (of course) beautiful and deadly women.
Off The Rails: From Moscow to Beijing by
Bike
Tim Cope and Chris Hatherley
This is the true story of two twenty-year-old
Australians who travelled for fourteen months
on recumbent bicycles from Russia, across
Siberia and Mongolia, to Beijing. It is as much
a story about perseverance, passion and belief
as it is about the people and remarkable
landscapes of Siberia and Mongolia. Tim Cope
and Chris Hatherly are fearless adventurers,
willing and able to open themselves up to
everything from the voice of the steppe to the Russian villagers
and the nomads of the Gobi desert. From this, they draw an often
funny, moving and inspirational tale of living out a dream.
Mao’s Last Dancer
Li Cunxin
In a small, desperately poor village in north-east
China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety
old school desk, interested more in the birds
outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and
the grand words it contains. But that day, some
strange men come to his school - Madame Mao's
cultural delegates. They are looking for young
peasants to mould into faithful guards of
Chairman Mao's great vision for China.
This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the
thinnest thread of a chance, changed the course of a small boy's
life in ways that are beyond description. One day he would dance
with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world. One day
he would be a friend to a president and first lady, movie stars and
the most influential people in America. One day he would become
a star: Mao's last dancer and the darling of the West.
Village By The Sea
Anita Desai
With their mother ill and their father permanently drunk, Hari and
Lila have to earn the money to keep house and look after their two
young sisters. In desperation, Hari runs away to Bombay to find
work and Lila is left to cope alone. All along the novel, the
characters have to face difficulties such as traveling, where to sleep
and how to earn money even if it is just enough to survive. The
novel focuses on issues such as poverty, industrialisation,
dysfunctional families and not forgetting the love that binds the
family.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve
stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective and
illustrated by Sidney Paget. They were originally published in the
Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892. The book was
published on October 14, 1892 by George Newnes Ltd and on
October 15 in an U.S. edition by Harper. The initial combined
print run was 14,500 copies. The title character was named after
famous American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Grace
Robert Drewe
Some relevant facts about Grace Malloy.
Apart from being named after a 100 000year-old skeleton, she was twenty-nine and
for much of the past three years she'd been
hiding from an erotomaniac. Physically
and emotionally besieged, Grace attempts
to claw back from her personal territory by
abandoning her inner-city life as a film
reviewer and fleeing to the remoteness of the Kimberley where existence and territory have altogether wider
implications. Lying low, working in a wildlife park, she
slowly reclaims her sanity. Her only links to the outside
world are her father and her stalker.
Intricately plotted, breathlessly paced, Grace reflects on the
countless varieties of love and the nature of fear. At once
intimate and grand in scale, this disquieting and
provocatively witty novel reveals the full vigour of an
artistic vision in turn poetic and cinematic.
The Shark Net
Robert Drewe
Non-Fiction Narrative
Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his
family from Melbourne to Perth, the
world's most isolated city - and proud of
it. This sun-baked coast was innocently
proud, too, of its tranquillity and
friendliness.
Then a man he knew murdered a boy he
also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and
hacking his victims and running them down with cars - an
innocent Perth was changed forever. In the middle-class
suburbs which were the killer's main stalking grounds, the
mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant
local myth.
The Shark Net is a vibrant and haunting memoir that reaches
beyond the dark recesses of murder and chaos to encompass
their ordinary suburban backdrop.
Making Laws For Clouds
Nick Earls
This could be the best summer of
Kane's life . . .
This summer is different because
there's a new girl in town. It's
different because she's Tanika
Bell - occasional bus driver,
regular optimist and, it turns out,
woman of the world.
But expecting life to play by the
rules is like making laws for
clouds. Kane's whole family has
never worked by the rules. His
dad ran off years ago, his
mother's still chafing and drinking, and she's really bad on her
bad days. Summer sets in, hot and humid, and Kane works the
road verges. But he's got lofty ambitions, he's got Tanika on his
mind and he's going to make this summer count, whatever it
takes. Once again Nick Earls is poignant, sharp, very funny and
sometimes achingly sad. Making Laws for Clouds gives us the
good times, shows us the bad, and - just like Kane - looks to
making something hopeful for the future.
Walk in My Shoes
Alwyn Evans
After a perilous and terrifying escape
from war-torn Afghanistan, Gulnessa and
her family find themselves in Australia, a
place they know nothing about. They are
exhausted and traumatised, but so full of
hope. At last, somewhere safe to call
home.
But their struggle isn't over yet. They are
confined in a detention centre for asylum
seekers, and forced to prove their refugee
status. As days drag into weeks and
months, Gulnessa is determined to stay strong. She must keep
her family together, and fight for her friend Abdul - with whom
she has secretly fallen in love. She cannot give up hope for a
second chance at life and the opportunity to build a future in a
new land. This is both a personal story of survival in adversity
and a political statement on the Australian governments’
detainment of refugees, as well as a cry for compassion.
Bruises: Boys Don’t Cry
Archimede Fusillo
Falco Petrone and his classmates of 11
Blue are taken out of their comfort zone in
the Australian bush for school camp. Here
they are challenged by their teachers and
camp counsellors to think laterally and
bond as a group. The boys of bunkhouse
five, however, are fractured and fatally
flawed, as they turn on each other and
attempt to survive not only the challenges
set by the camp, but the constant
undermining and threat of physical
violence posed by the ominous Ape. In
Bruises: Boys Don't Cry, Archimede Fusillo presents
characters who are grappling with their masculinity on two
levels. Firstly they are on the cusp of manhood at a time when
we as a society are reinventing our notion of what it is to be a
man. Secondly his characters are the sons of migrants, and
attempt to make sense of the world through inherited values
that don't gel with the contemporary schoolyard.
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Lord of the Flies is a thoughtprovoking novel authored by William
Golding in 1954. The book describes
in detail the horrific exploits of a
band of young children who make a
striking transition from civilized to
barbaric. Lord of the Flies commands
a pessimistic outlook that seems to
show that man is inherently tied to
society, and without it, we would
likely return to savagery.
Summer of My German Soldier
Bette Greene
Summer of My German Soldier is told first person by a twelveyear-old Jewish girl named Patty Bergen living in Jenkensville,
Arkansas during World War II. The action focuses on the escaped
German Prisoner of War she befriends and protects, as well as her
relationship with her abusive father and uncaring mother. The
sequel, Morning is a Long Time Coming, was published in 1978.
Travels With My Aunt
Graham Greene
In this wickedly funny book, poor stick-in-the-mud Henry Pulling
gets talked into accompanying his reprobate Aunt Augusta on a
questionable journey. The unlikely duo find themselves, in the
course of the novel, in Brighton, aboard the Orient Express, on a
boat from Buenos Aires to Asuncion -- and beyond.
Surrender
Sonya Hartnett
As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief
twenty years that have been clouded by frustration
and humiliation. A small town and distant parents
ensure that he is never allowed to forget the horrific
mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends
- his dog Surrender and the unruly wild boy
Finnigan, with whom he made a boyhood pact.
When a series of arson attacks grips the town, Gabriel realises
how unpredictable and dangerous Finnigan is. Events begin to
spiral out of control, and it becomes clear that only the most
extreme of measures will rid Gabriel of Finnigan for good.
Of A Boy
Sonya Hartnett
The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with
his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is
Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog;
he's afraid of quicksand and self-combustion.
Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is
much he cannot understand. He does not, for
instance, know why three neighbourhood children might set
out to buy ice-cream and never come back home . . .
A Farewell To Arms
Ernest Hemingway
The novel, a love story, draws heavily on Hemingway's
experiences as a young soldier in Italy. It tells the story of
Lieutenant Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver
serving in the Italian army during World War I. Henry falls in
love with the British nurse Catherine Barkley. After he is
wounded at the front by a trench mortar shell, she tends to him in
the hospital during his recuperation, and their relationship
develops. A Farewell to Arms is an excellent example of the
simple, terse prose style that made Hemingway famous.
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
A protest novel underscored with dark humour,
Catch-22 satirizes the horrors of war and the
power of modern society, especially bureaucratic
institutions, to destroy the human spirit. Captain
Yossarian is an American bombardier stationed
off the Italian coast during the final months of
World War II. Paranoid and odd, Yossarian
believes that everyone around him is trying to kill
him. All Yossarian wants is to complete his tour
of duty and be sent home. However, because the
glory-seeking Colonel Cathcart continually raises the number of
required missions, the men of the "fighting 256th squadron" must
keep right on fighting. With a growing hatred of flying, Yossarian
pleads with Doc Daneeka to ground him on the basis of insanity.
Doc Daneeka replies that Yossarian's appeal is useless because,
according to army regulation Catch-22, insane men who ask to be
grounded prove themselves sane through a concern for personal
safety. Truly crazy people are those who readily agree to fly more
missions. The only way to be grounded is to ask for it. Yet this act
demonstrates sanity and thus demands further flying. Crazy or
not, Yossarian is stuck.
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill
Eel Marsh house stands alone, surveying the windswept salt
marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Once, Mrs Alice Drablow
lived here as a recluse. Now, Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor with
a London firm, is summoned to attend her funeral, unaware of the
tragic and terrible secrets which lie behind the house's shuttered
windows. It is not until he glimpses a young woman with a
wasted face, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a sense of
profound unease begins to creep over him and take hold, a feeling
deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk about the woman
in black or what happens whenever she is seen.
Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby was first
published in 1992. It is autobiographical,
telling the story of the author's relationship
with football and with Arsenal Football Club
in particular. It consists of a large number of
short essays, each focused on a single match
between 1968 and 1992. As well as
recounting Arsenal's highs and lows, Hornby
relates them to his own tumultuous personal
life, musing both on his worship of Arsenal
heroes such as Liam Brady and the fate of
infamous failures such as Gus Caesar.
Carry Me Down
M.J. Hyland
John Egan lives with his mother, father and grandmother in rural
Ireland. The Guinness Book of Records is his favourite book and
he wants to visit Niagara Falls with his mother. But, more than
anything, John is determined to become a world-famous lie
detector, almost at any cost.
Carry Me Down develops into a painstaking exploration of the
psychological repercussions of John's unhappy situation. Carry
Me Down gradually develops into an anatomy of deceit, a
systematic study of the many hypocrisies that taint human
behaviour. It exposes the variety of motivations that exist for
telling lies: not only to be cruel or devious, but also to protect
ourselves and others.
How The Light Gets In
M.J. Hyland
M.J. Hyland's How the Light Gets In is
the story of Lou Connors, a supersmart 16-year-old from the slums of
Sydney who wins a scholarship to
partake in a year-long student
exchange program to the United States.
She's thrilled at the opportunity to get
away from her scummy home and even
scummier relatives, predicting she'll
thrive in this new environment, able to
build and create a persona closer to
what she believes is her authentic self.
Her plan fails, though, when she discovers that even on the other
side of the world in a loving household with all of life's necessities
at her fingertips, she's still not satisfied. Is her host-family, the
Hardings, cultivating her outlandish behaviour by giving her
everything she needs, including a second chance (or two) at
redemption, or is Lou Connors simply incapable of being loved?
Jackson’s Track
Carolyn Landon and Daryl Tonkin
In 1936, Daryl Tonkin and his brother, Harry,
leave home in search of adventure. They find
themselves in West Gippsland, Victoria, and
set up a timber mill at Jackson's Track - a
dreamtime place, a place that was paradise. A
bushman dedicated to his work, Daryl
discovers happiness there, and unexpectedly
falls in love. But Daryl is white and Euphie is
black, and neither of them is prepared for the
conflict their forbidden love ignites. Set in the heart of the
Australian bush, this spellbinding memoir recaptures a
community and a way of life now vanished from sight. It tells
of one man's courage and determination to pursue what he
knows is right. An unforgettable true story of joy, of tragedy
and of hope that has won the hearts of Australians.
Bye Beautiful
Julia Lawrinson
Bye Beautiful is the story of secrets and
heartbreak, of families and changing
times. Set in Western Australia in the
1960s, the protagonist, Sandy feels like a
complete outsider in the hot wheat belt
town where her policeman father has
just been transferred. Then she meets
Billy, the part-Aboriginal mechanic's
apprentice and town heart-throb. Sandy's feelings for him are
overwhelming her, but she is about to find out that, her
greatest rival is her own sister, the alluring, confident
Marianne.
To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 novel by
Harper Lee, which won the Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction in 1961. Lee's only novel, a
coming-of-age story, is told from the point
of view of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the
young daughter of Atticus Finch, a lawyer
in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional small
town in the Deep South of the United
States. She is accompanied by her brother
Jem
and their
Martha Quest
Doris Lessing
Martha Quest is essentially the story of a rebel. When we first
meet her, she is a girl of fifteen living on an impoverished
African farm with her parents; a girl of passionate vitality, avid
for experience and for self-knowledge, bitterly resentful of the
conventional narrowness of her home life. From this background
she breaks away to take a job as a typist in the local capital and
here, in the world of the big city, she begins to encounter the real
life she is so eager to experience and understand. As a picture of
colonial life Martha Quest fascinates by the depth and realism of
its insight; but always at its centre is the figure of Martha, a
character in the grand manner, conceived in sympathetic
understanding but drawn with an unerring objectivity.
White Fang
Jack London
White Fang is the story of a wild dog's journey toward becoming
civilized in the Canadian territory of Yukon during the Klondike
Gold Rush, at the end of the 19th Century. White Fang is a
companion novel (and a thematic mirror) to London's best-known
work, The Call of the Wild, which concerns a kidnapped civilized
dog turning into a wild wolf.
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
Jack London's classic 1903 story of Buck, a courageous
dog fighting for survival in the Alaskan wilderness, is
widely considered to be his masterpiece. Sometimes
wrongly considered simply a children's novel, this epic
vividly evokes the harsh and frozen Yukon during the
Gold Rush. As Buck is ripped from his pampered
surroundings and shipped to Alaska to be a sled dog, his
primitive, wolf like nature begins to emerge. Savage struggles and
timeless bonds between man, dog, and wilderness are played to their
heartrending extremes, as Buck undertakes a mystic journey that
transforms him into the legendary "Ghost Dog" of the Klondike.
The Life Of Pi
Yann Martel
Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper,
he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of animal
behaviour, a fervent love of stories and practices not
only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and
Islam. Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing
adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores
the redemptive power of storytelling and the
transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one
character puts it, to make you believe in God.
Boys of Blood and Bone
David Metzenthen
Boys of Blood and Bone won the 2003 Best Young
Adult Book in the Queensland Premier's Literary
Awards. Boys of Blood and Bone alternates between
the contemporary story of Henry Lyon, in the summer
before he starts his first year of Law at university, and
the war time experiences of Andy Lansell, Australian
digger killed in the Somme in 1918. Andy and Henry's stories meet
when Henry's car breaks down in the small country town of
Strattford on his way to a sail boarding weekend with his mates —
and his disgruntled girlfriend Marcelle. While stuck in Strattford,
Andy gets to know Trot and his girlfriend Janine and centenarian
Cecelia Hainsworth, never-married fiancée of the long-dead Andy.
Henry is given Andy's diary to read and finds himself fascinated by
the tragic story of this young man of his own age from another
time, another world.
Chain of Hearts
Maureen McCarthy
At seventeen, Sophie is a mess. Her
best friend is dead and her boyfriend
has gone. She's dropped out of
school, sleeps through the day, eats
all night and refuses to see anyone.
Her family has had enough. But
Sophie is about to embark on the
strangest journey of her life. It will
take her back into her family's past,
back to the origins of the bitter rift
between her mother and her Aunt Fran, to her Uncle Jimmy
and the Vietnam War, and finally to the girl in the painting and
the story haunting all their lives.
Underground
Andrew McGahan
Underground is the novel that at least
half the country has been waiting for.
Think ahead five or so years from
now, to an Australia transformed by
the never-ending war on terror.
Canberra has been wiped out in a
nuclear attack. There is a permanent
state of emergency. Security
checkpoints, citizenship tests, identity
cards and detention without trial have
all become the norm. Suspect
minorities have been locked away
into ghettos. And worse no one wants
to play cricket with us anymore. Enter Leo James burnt-out
property developer and black-sheep twin brother of the all
powerful Bernard James, Prime Minister of Australia. In an
event all too typical of the times, Leo finds himself abducted by
terrorists. But this won't be your average kidnapping. Instead,
vast and secret forces are at work here, and Leo and his captors
are about to embark on a journey into the underworld of a nation
gone mad. Like some bastard child of Dr Strangelove and
George Orwell, Underground is both an adrenalin-pumped
thriller and a gleefully barbed satire that takes a chainsaw to
political neo-correctness and Australia's new ultra-nationalism.
Blistering and blackly comic, this book goes straight to the heart
of the country's future and it isn't pretty.
Mad Arm of the Y
David McRobbie
This is a sometimes dark teenage story
- a tale of the consequences of moral
choices. Life can be seen as a long
straight road that splits into a Y. Some
people go up the good arm: the boring
goody-goody road - they work hard
and create families for themselves.
Some choose the other - exciting and
dead iffy - mad arm. But for others,
fate takes them there. It's Queensland
and the height of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, when Teresa
O’Brennan, a young woman and daughter of a prominent
government politician, conceives of a shocking plan involving
Brian Worthington, a young, naive British sailor. He does not
realise that he is walking straight into a trap, a trap that will
change his life. Though they grew up on opposite sides of the
world, their worlds were about to collide. After their
encounter, Brian’s life unravels before his eyes. Teresa has to
keep a secret from her family and most importantly, her
daughter. A gripping finale occurs which will satisfy any
reader.
The December Boys
Michael Noonan
They are known as the "December boys"
because all of them - Chocker (who tells the
story), Fido, Spark, Misty and Maps - are
thought to have been born in that month. And
one December in the late 1930s they leave their
Catholic orphanage in the dusty outback to
spend the Christmas holidays at the seaside
settlement of Captain’s Folly, staying with the
eccentric Mr and Mrs McAnsh, who are partial
to pumpkin wine. Wearing bathing costumes
made from four-bags dyed black, the boys meet
the ocean for the first time and are soon racing
through the sand hills to plunge in the surf. But it is Teresa, the
young wife of Fearless Foley, former stunt rider on the Wall of
Death, who becomes the focus of those holidays, setting off
intense ribaldry and competition between the boys which leads
to a totally unexpected ending. The December Boys is a classic
tale of an unforgettable summer beside the Pacific Ocean. First
published in 1963, it was commended in the Miles Franklin
Award.
Doppleganger
Michael Parker
The setting is contemporary Sydney.
Andrew Davies, a teenage boy in
upper high school, lives with his
mother, a police officer. His father
now lives with his new wife and
family in Brisbane. Andrew is a good
cricketer and average student with a
number of mates at the Catholic
school he attends. Andrew works at
an all-night petrol station to save
enough money to go on the school
cricket tour to New Zealand. He has been feeling ill,
experiencing headaches and dizzy spells, but puts it down to
tiredness and stress. A frightening hold-up by a sinister
character in a balaclava changes Andrew's life. After this
event, Andrew begins to slip into an alternative universe; a
dystopian world of murder and danger. He meets a number of
people who have their doppelgängers, or doubles, in this other
universe. These new friends frighten him as their actions are
having an impact on his other existence. Before too long the
death of one person in the dystopian universe leads to their
doppelgänger's death in the real world. Andrew needs to find
a way to stop events becoming mass murder and to save
himself from spiralling into this frightening place.
Maybe Tomorrow
Boori Pryor and Meme McDonald
In a conversational style, Boori
explains the forces that have moulded
his life including traditional Aboriginal
beliefs. Much of his message is
conveyed through anecdotes relating
stories of his meetings and interactions
with teenagers throughout Australia.
With Meme McDonald, Boori leads
you from the Aboriginal fringe camps
of his birth to the catwalk, basketball
court, DJ console and more. This is the story of his life, his
pain, his joy and his hopes.
A Town Like Alice
Nevil Shute
Jean Paget has survived World War II as a prisoner of the
Japanese in Malaya. After the war she comes into an
inheritance that enables her to return to Malaya to repay the
villagers who helped her to survive. But her return visit
changes her life again when she discovers an Australian
soldier she thought had died has survived. She goes to
Australia in search of him and of the town he described to
her. Jean sets out to apply the same determination that helped
her to survive the war, to turning the community into "a town
like Alice". She finds both her soldier and romance.
The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner
Alan Sillitoe
The story of a Borstal boy who deliberately “throws” a cross
-country race he was expected to win, as a snub to the authorities who simply wanted to reflect in the glory such a
win would bring to their institution.
The Complete Maus
Art Spiegelman
Acclaimed as 'the most affective
and successful narrative ever
done about the Holocaust ' (Wall
Street Journal) and 'the first
masterpiece in comic book
history' (New Yorker), Maus is
the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a
Jewish survivor of Hitler's
Europe, and his son, a cartoonist,
coming to terms with his father's
story. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival,
they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy
visits. An astonishing retelling of the twentieth-century's
grisliest news, Maus studies the bloody paw-prints of
history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Don’t Eat This Book
Morgan Spurlock
A tongue-in-cheek - and burger in hand - look
at the legal, financial and physical costs of our
hunger for fast food, by the funniest and most
incisive new voice since Michael Moore. Can
a man live on fast food alone? Morgan
Spurlock tried. For 30 days he ate nothing but
three square' meals a day from McDonald's as
part of an investigation into the effects of fast
food on our health. Don't Eat This Book gives
the full background story to the experiment that so
captivated audiences around the world in the documentary
Super Size Me and explores in further depth the connections
between the rise of fast food and obesity.
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Drifters in search of work, George and his
simple-minded friend Lennie, have nothing
in the world except each other and a dream
- a dream that one day they will have some
land of their own. Eventually they find
work on a ranch in California's Salinas
Valley, but their hopes are doomed as
Lennie, struggling against extreme cruelty,
misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy,
becomes a victim of his own strength.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Mildred Taylor
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1976
novel written by Mildred D. Taylor. It tells
the story of a land-owning African American
family living in a rural area of Mississippi
during the 1930s and how they subsequently
cope with mounting white oppression and
racism in order to keep their land. While
many of the events and themes are adult-like
in nature, the book is told in the first person
narrative, with the events being viewed
through the eyes and ears of Cassie Logan, a fourth-grade girl.
Cassie, at this young age, discovers the dangers of racism.
Let The Circle be Unbroken is the sequel to Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry.
I For Isobel
Amy Witting
Born into a world without welcome, Isobel observes it as warily as an alien trying to pass for
a native. Her collection of imaginary friends
includes the Virgin Mary and Sherlock Holmes.
Later she meets Byron, W. H. Auden and T. S.
Eliot. Isobel is not as much at ease with the
flesh-and-blood people she meets, and least of
all with herself, until a lucky encounter and a
little detective work reveal her identity and her
true situation in life.
I for Isobel, a modern-day Australian classic, was followed by
Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop, winner of the Age Book of
the Year Award.