Cirrus@Austlit

'Uglies is set in a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny. You might think this is a good thing, but it’s not. Especially if you’re one of the Smokies, a bunch of radical teens who’ve decided they want to keep their own faces. (How anti-social of them.)'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"I remember when we lay together for the first time and I closed my eyes and felt the crackle of her dark hair between my fingers. She was all warmth and sparking light. When I was with her, my skin sighed that the centre of the world was precisely here."

'Anna is afraid she must be unlovable - until she meets Flynn. Together, the girls swim, eat banana cake, laugh and love. Some days Flynn is unreachable; other days she's at Anna's door - but when Anna discovers Flynn's secret, she wonders if she knows her at all.

'A beautifully crafted novel by award-winning author Joanne Horniman that explores the tension between the tender moments that pull people together and the secrets that push them apart.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Harry Hodby lives in a sleepy town on the bend of a sluggish river in Australia. Harry spends most of his time swimming in Pearce Swamp, eating watermelon with his brother and dad, escaping schoolyard bullies, being in love with the secretary, and racing through butterflies in Cowpers Paddock. But life in this small river town isn't always easy. Harry's mother died when he was seven, and his friend Linda was swept away in a flood. Harry yearns to leave town even though he knows that people who get away never come back. His father has told him how to get out of town, but there's a mystery that he needs to solve before he can go...'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Front Street ed.)

'One of the country's finest young cellists, 16 year-old Hugh Twycross has a very bright future. A future that has been mapped out by his parents, his teachers, by everybody, it seems, except Hugh Twycross.

'Hugh has a secret, though: he loves cars and he loves car racing. When his newly discovered grandfather, Poppy, asks him to go on a road trip to Uluru in his 1970 Holden HT Monaro, Hugh decides, for once in his life, to do the unexpected.

'As they embark on a journey into the vast and fierce landscape of the Australian interior, Hugh discovers that Poppy has a secret that will unravel both their lives and take them in a direction they never expected.'

'When Fan was little she dreamed of magical countries in the far away blue hills. As she grew up she dreamed of love, and the boys came after her one by one by one.

'Clementine thought her cousin Fan's house in the country had a special smell: of sun and dust and kerosene and the wild honey they ate for breakfast on their toast. But then there were the feelings: the anger that smelled like iron and the disappointment that smelled like mud. Fan was strong and beautiful and Clementine thought she'd always be like that.

'But Fan was seeking something, and neither she nor Clementine knew exactly what... With sharp poetic prose, insight and compassion, Judith Clarke tells a moving and beautiful story as she traces the lives of two young women, separated by circumstance, but linked forever by blood and friendship.' (Publisher's blurb)