Cirrus@Austlit

'Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance!

'Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady's companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago.

'What she didn't expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who's also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can't help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal.

'Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they've both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for--without ending up dead in the water themselves.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Kipp Kindle and his two friends, Tobias Treachery and Cymphany Chan, are back defending their weird and wonderful town, Huggabie Falls. Something indescribable is making everyone worry that life might be more exciting if they lived in the neighbouring town of Near Huggabie Falls.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'KIPP Kindle, Tobias Treachery and Cymphany Chan live in Huggabie Falls, the weirdest town on Earth, so weirdness is pretty normal for them. But when unbelievably scary things start to happen, even Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany have trouble believing what’s going on. Why is everyone running away from their worst fears and where did those fears suddenly appear from? How can a dinosaur that doesn’t even exist be about to chomp Cymphany in two? And is the evil Felonious Dark reformed like he says he is, or is he the one behind the unbelievably scary happenings?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Kipp Kindle always knew his family wasn’t like other families. They were weird, in fact they were probably the weirdest family on Earth. It was just as well they lived in the town of Huggabie Falls, because Huggabie Falls was the weirdest place on Earth.

'Winner of the 2017 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing

'KIPP Kindle and his friends Tobias Treachery and Cymphany Camelot live in Huggabie Falls, the weirdest town on Earth. Weird things happen all the time—that’s normal. But when an extremely weird thing happens Kipp and his friends embark on an action-packed, hilarious adventure to find out what is making everything turn normal, and to return the weirdness to Huggabie Falls.

'With evil villain Felonious Dark and fierce mathematics teacher Mrs Turgen to contend with—not to mention killer vampire bats, vegetarian piranhas and a Portuguese-speaking lab rat called Ralph—Kipp Tobias and Cymphany have quite a task ahead of them. And to make things worse, Cymphany has been turned into a baby hippopotamus.

'The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls is the first book in a trilogy of sublimely ridiculous laugh-out-loud stories for middle-grade readers.' (Publication summary)

'Nine-year old Adam is orphaned when his father is buried during an Australian desert sandstorm. A childhood of roaming the outback with his father's drilling partner instills in him a fierce determination to have a place of his own. In this fast-paced, gripping saga, the reader follows the hard-working Adam and his mates, Jimmy, the practical Aboriginal, and Josef, the impetuous young German immigrant, from the opal mines to the desert. They feint with death in mine disasters, at the hands of Mailey, the revenge-seeking law officer, and in the ravages of flash floods.' (Source: Goodreads website)