Dancing in the Dark

Author	Kate McCaffrey
ISBN	1921064579

When Avalon moves to the city her life is turned upside down. Starting at a new high school, she finds herself at the centre of a brutal cyber-bullying campaign. She is inundated with obscene text messages, and subject to increasingly vicious web site postings, as things spiral out of control.

Miserable...

Author	Kirsty Eagar
ISBN	0143011464

He looked to the sky, praying for rain, a downpour, some sign from the heavens that he should refuse the abomination contained in that flask. But all he saw was the bloated white face of the moon smiling down on him …

And the sky around it was cold and clear and black …

They made their...

Author	Steven Herrick
ISBN	1864719648

A funny, refreshing look at the most awkward time in any young boy’s life from school, girls, and parties to parents, friends, and the dreaded “sex talk”.

Darcy Walker is a normal 16-year-old boy but he can handle that. He can even cope with parents, deal with parties, and soldier through...

Author	Alyssa Brugman
ISBN	0440238323

There are those who are popular.
There are those who are outcasts.
And there are those who must choose between the two.

Megan Tuw has always been popular. As a leader of her high school’s most cliquish group, she’s among the anointed girls who think nothing of ridiculing those who...

Author	Rebecca Sparrow
ISBN	0375845704

Seventeen-year-old Rachel Hill is the girl most likely to succeed. And the girl most likely to have everything under control . . . that is, until her dad invites Nick McGowan, the cutest boy at school, to live with them. Rachel worries that this could only be a recipe for disaster, but her best friend Zoe...

Author	Laura Buzo
ISBN	1741759986

'What do you want, Hol?' Abby looks into my eyes.

'I ... I want to know that I'm using my powers for good and -'

'You want to make a dead man proud.'

'Whoa!'

'You want to put bandages over severed arteries that really need to be sewn shut. You want the moral high ground.'

Holly...

Author	Maureen McCarthy
ISBN	0143000314

So how did you meet him? I hear you asking.
Was it love at first sight? Was he a fellow teacher? Did you meet in a pub?

This might be hard to believe, but the first time I looked into your father's eyes, he was holding a gun to my head.

But first, let me explain . . .

Everything is...

Author	Chrissie Keighery
ISBN	1921759321

I'm always trying to figure out what's really going on. Always having to fill in the gaps, but never getting all the details. It's like trying to do a jigsaw when I don't even know what the picture is, and I'm missing one of the vital middle pieces.

How do you know if your friends are talking about...

Author

Dorian Cirrone

I hadn't really thought of my breasts as "problem breasts." It made them sound like children who wouldn't behave. No bra was going to keep these babies a secret. And those tips for the full-figured girl in the magazines? Please. Even NASA couldn't design a tank suit to camouflage my proportions.

Kayla...

Author

Pip Harry

It's the most elite school sporting event in the country. Nine rowers, 2000 gruelling metres and one chance for glory in the ultimate team sport. Sit forward ... ROW.

Tall, gifted and the offspring of Olympians, superstar siblings Leni and Cristian Popescu are set to row Harley Grammar to victory...

Author

Sue Lawson

3.5 stars.

This was...yeah. It's an important book. But I think ultimately it focuses too much on the wrong thing. Because on the one hand, this is a young adult book about racism towards Indigenous Australians in the 1960s, which is EXCELLENT because it's a problem that's often overlooked...

Author	Jane Harrison
ISBN	1922142808

For Kirrali, life in 1985 was pretty chill. Sure, she was an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family, but she was cool with that. She knew where she was headed - to a law degree - even if she didn't know 'who she was'. But when Kirrali moves to the city to start university, a whole lot of life-changing events...

Author	Ann M. Martin
ISBN	0590418386

Slam books are of course the 80s/90s version of the burn book made famous in Tina Fey's "Mean Girls". A book put together my adolescent teenage girls with a lot of hormones and aggression and a need to bitch about their peers. I read this book in grade eight and still remember it 13 years later because I skipped...

Author	Simmone Howell
ISBN	1582348359

Seventeen-year-old Gem loves movies, her feminist mom, and Dodgy, her coworker in a video store (at least she thinks she loves Dodgy). When a school trip inspires Gem to make an underground film, her best friends Lo and Mira are quick to join the project, taking on the roles of producer and star. The film...

Author	Sarah Ayoub
ISBN	0732296846

I hate being invisible.

I hate that I still can′t fight my own battles.

I hate that I can′t keep up with the demands of high school.

Sophie Kazzi is in Year 12 at an all-Lebanese, all-Catholic school where she is invisible, uncool and bored out of her brain. While she′s...

Author	Gabrielle Williams
ISBN	0143566849

But there I go, getting ahead of myself. Skipping straight to the part where I was front-page news and they were calling me Dorothy, instead of starting at the beginning...

When Dodie's parents go missing just as final year exams are about to start, she convinces herself they're fine. But when...

Author	Veronique Launier
ISBN	0738730742

Aude Vanier is a sixteen-year-old rock star with a problem--stone monsters keep attacking her. And when they do, she finds herself chanting in a language she doesn't understand. Guillaume de Rouen has been stuck as a gargoyle on a church for the last seventy years, until Aude's chanting releases him...

Author

Megan Sparks

When Annie moves from London to a small town in the midwest, she struggles to fit in. She gets off to a bad start when she makes an enemy of her school's queen bee, Kelsey. But she discovers a new passion, the exciting sport of roller derby, and makes friends with the cool and quirky girls on her team, the Liberty...

Author	Sue Bursztynski
ISBN	1864718250

Break the curse or howl forever.

Etienne, son of a lord in the kingdom of Armorique, goes to train as a knight with Geraint of Lucanne. Geraint is brave and kind, a good teacher and master - but he has a secret that he has kept from his family. He is bisclavret, a born werewolf. When Geraint is betrayed,...

Author	Randa Abdel-Fattah
ISBN	0330426184

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...

Author	Carol M. Tanzman
ISBN	0373210620

The biggest story of my life could be how it ends

It’s my turn to run a Campus News crew, and I’ve put together a team that can break stories wide open. And Washington Irving High has a truly great one to cover, if only we can find a lead.

A secret society has formed in our school. It announced...

Author	Barry Jonsberg
ISBN	1742373852

The boy sat in the branches of the fifth tree on the left, his scuffed boots dangling. Leah turned her eyes up. His face was heavily freckled, his eyes large, brown and almond-shaped. His hair stuck out at wild angles. 'Hello,' she said.

Sixteen-year-old Carly is interviewing Leah Cartwright...

Author	Nicole Hayes
ISBN	1742758606

An unputdownable novel for anyone who's ever loved or lost, drawn a line between then and now, or kept a secret that wouldn't stay hidden . . .

Today I am free. No guilt for who's missing, what's been left behind. My face aches from smiling in the wind and my voice rasps from all the screaming, and...

Author

Amra Pajalic

Shortlisted for the 2009 Melbourne Prize, Best Writing Award. Fifteen-year-old Sabiha has a lot to deal with: her mother's mental health issues, her interfering aunt, her mother's new boyfriend, her live-in grandfather and his chess buddy, not to mention her arrogant cousin Adnan. They all want...

Author	Julie Gittus
ISBN	0734410298

In the beginning it seems so simple. A poem in the mail. A weekend invitation to the coast. But when Sun says yes to a midnight walk, her life becomes suddenly complicated. Saltwater Moons tells the story of Sun Langley during her final months of Year Twelve. There's the intensity of her first relationship,...