What do you wear to Paris? Ami and I discussed it for hours but I still couldn’t think of anything suitable. Ami said a trench coat with nothing underneath but your best underwear. That was only if some boy was meeting you at the airport, I said. Eighteen-year-old Lisette has just arrived in Paris (France!) […]

Star lives with her mum and her mum’s old university friend, Charlie, who has broken up with his wife. Star doesn’t always like Charlie – and she certainly doesn’t like his two kids, Talia and Gabe. So when Star’s mum, Nell, begins to fall in love with Charlie and he moves in properly, Star isn’t […]

A classically heartwarming story that perfectly captures the everyday life of children. Ruby’s mum is having a baby, but why does she need one of those when she’s already got a Ruby? To make matters worse, her best friend Sarah has just found another, BETTER friend. It seems like everyone is abandoning her. But when […]

A classically heartwarming Catherine Bateson story, reissued with a stunning new cover For Magenta McPhee, life is good. It would be almost perfect if she could sort out her dad, who quite possibly needs saving – from himself. Desperate times call for desperate measures, even if those measures involve identity fraud on a dating site, […]

When grief strikes, you need an ally. For Mimi, that ally is Ableth, the wildly disobedient blue slave. He comes, he goes, he says and does whatever he likes, but he’s always there when Mimi needs him most, offering his own brand of crooked wisdom. Ableth says, “You need to learn to look under the […]

Ben is worried about his Sydney cousin coming to stay. When they stayed Weston and his family they had visited everywhere from the zoo to the harbour bridge and more. Ben is worried that Weston will discover that he was exaggerating the wonderful things about Melbourne. But despite his misgivings, Weston arrives. He’s keen to […]

His Name in Fire is told from three points of view Molly a circus worker employed to engage bored and disaffected local youth – to put on a circus performance; Matthew a teenager and son of TJ the local blues man. Matthew is in love with Emma the snakeman s daughter. Emma is new to […]

Bee can’t understand what her father sees in Jazzi. Ever since Bee’s mom died, she, her dad, and her two guinea pigs, Fifi and Lulu, have been getting along just fine. Now Bee is supposed to welcome Jazzi, with her bangled skirts and her rock-hard scones and her new way of looking at everything. Imagine […]

Millie begins high school in a new town. For the first time she can remember, her mother has a proper job teaching art. Millie has a crush on a boy called Rowan, an enemy called Tayla and three good friends-Sarah, Helen and Rachel. Weird but lovable Millie discovers her passion for the environment, photography and […]

Catherine Bateson’s new poetry collection has at its centre three lively sequences that address the hard graft of spiritual negotiation. Imagined for present, past and future times, each of them tracks the slow and the sudden dissolution of love – yet love stories they are. Her characters are distinctly and originally conceived, with a habitual […]

“Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at a time when history is being made – but that doesn’t mean anything by itself. Anyone can be in that place and turn their back on it. You have to be prepared to act.” Lulianne is an Airdancer of the cirque d’Espoir. With her […]

Rain May and her mum escape their old inner-city life for a dream house in the country. But there are more than a few surprises in store – like discovering a platypus or the fun of fridge poetry and phenomenally bright eleven-year-old, Captain Daniel, who lives next door. Together these unlikely friends adventure where no […]

And bigger than all of that, I knew that sometimes you had to do the impossible like eat oysters or go shopping even when you could hardly breathe because that is what people did when they truly loved one another and it had nothing to do with freckles or anklebones or lipstick.” Dave is dying. […]

I throw the dice – four or over I stay, one to three I pack up. Six dots stare back, telling me I’ve nothing left to lose. John stays with the dice but not all choices can be left to fate. Merri makes a loaded decision. Nick takes his heart in his hands and gets […]

Merri, John, Leigh and Nick are positioned like four points of a gameboard. Gentle John is Dungeon Master and a craftsman of wood, but he can master the manipulative and ambitious Leigh? His sister Merri is seduced by the glamour of the stage, but her attention turns to Nick and his email haikus…This energetic verse […]

At the heart of this collection is the powerful sequence “Notes from Ward Seven West”. It opens with the haunting meditation “This Is the Poem”, winner of the prestigious John Shaw Neilson Award. In poems about women and their lives as daughters, lovers, wives and mothers, Bateson plays with different voices adeptly and compassionately. Longer […]