Showing results by narrator "Rebecca Macauley" in All Categories

How Penny Pollard learns to stop hating babies and (certain) boys is revealed in this hilarious and startling collection of letters.

Mimi laid the box on the bench and opened it carefully. Inside were rows and rows of coloured pastels that shimmered in the light. She rolled them under her fingertips and her imagination began to fill with amazing pictures. When Mimi is given a box of magical pastels, she discovers that she can draw the Garden of Empress Cassia - a drawing so beautiful and real that people are transported inside it. But the pastels are ancient, mysterious, and powerful, and in the wrong hands can be very dangerous....

Miss Lily's fabulous pink feather boa is the most wonderful thing the Last Potoroo has ever seen. When Miss Lily dances the tango, the Last Potoroo can't take her eyes off it. And when she wraps it around herself, she feels, for the first time in her life, that she can do anything and everything! Something so fabulous just has to be magic. With an original music score, this audiobook will captivate and delight youngsters.

1919, far northern Queensland. Fleeing from England and a violent marriage, Eva Willoughby arrives at her childhood friend’s home, a cattle station near the eerie and mysterious Black Mountain, the site of several unexplained disappearances. Although the war is over there is unease, and tensions are rising … Not long after Eva finds employment as an assistant to Detective Sergeant Jack Shaw at the Ross Constabulary, her friend Sylvia disappears. Shaken, Eva suspects that Sylvia’s disappearance is connected to the mysterious death of a troubled young soldier.

When the ever-enthusiastic and high-spirited Penny Pollard accompanies her friend Alistair and his mum (a long-suffering chaperone) on a tour of the United Kingdom, the results are hilariously unpredictable. Penny proves herself to be a very busy and unusual tourist.

Nicholas Nosh is the littlest pirate in the world. His family won't let him go to sea and he's bored. "I'll show them," he says.

Minding a luxurious house seemed like fun to the Teen Power gang at first. But now Nick is feeling more and more uncomfortable. Suddenly the house seems like a prison, or a tomb. Is it the sealed windows and doors? Or the aquarium fish swimming in endless circles? Or maybe it's just that a fortune in emeralds was stolen from the house, ruining its owner, and disappearing without a trace.

Deep in the bush, where the trees grow tall, Finn discovers an old deserted shack. Inside is shivery cold, with green fungus on the walls. When a dog growls and a gravelly voice snarls, Finn's hair stands up like bristles on a brush. An old man and his dog are glowing in the darkness. Jack Henry lived in the shack 100 years ago and was friends with all the wild creatures. When Finn is with the old ghost, he can feel what the birds are singing and what the animals are feeling.

Here is a gripping, chilling, beautifully observed tale of what a teenage girl will do to keep her friends, by one of Australia's finest writers. Growing up during the 1980s in the safe complacency of the Australian suburbs, Plum Coyle should be happy. But on the cusp of her 14th birthday - and on the fringe of her peer group - she lives in terror of the disapproval of her cruel and fickle girlfriends and, most of all, she hates her awkward, changing body with a passion.

Rose wants to be alone but instead she's on a road trip of discovery with her mother. This is a warm, generous novel big on family dynamics and a rich portrait of a feisty young girl facing up to love, loss and life's big issues.

When a fire is deliberately lit in the city of Quentaris, Nisha Fairsight and her minstrel friend Tal investigate and soon uncover a plot threatening its inhabitants. Adding to the city's woes is the threat of invasion from the vicious, insect-like Zolka, who are making it even more dangerous than usual to pass through the rift caves. Nisha must discover her fire-magic heritage and her place in Quentaris. Will she be able to save the city and her friends?

Merlin wakes to a world that is utterly changed. She has no memory aside from a name whispered to her by one of the strange voices in her mind and the knowledge that she is being hunted. She is determined to learn what happened to her and to her world, but the way forward is full of pitfalls, and she is swept up by the renegade Scatterlings and drawn into their rebellion against the all-powerful Citizen Gods.

Barry may be the son of the most successful wombat couple in Wombat District, but that doesn't impress Portia-Louise. She has eyes only for Lenny the Returned Wombat. At Pottery class, at Dance class, it's just the same. But as Wombat District prepares for its annual fesitval, Barry, with the help of the willing but unreliable emus and the ingenious pelicans, is going to find a way to be noticed.

A powerful, heartbreaking and informative search for answers, to what can be done to prevent those—often young men suffering from intense psychological pain—who have the strength to go against all survival instincts, and actually kill themselves. It examines relevant research, philosophy, literature, first-hand accounts by bereaved parents (including that of the author), and in-depth interviews.

It's Saturday morning. Auskick starts soon. But there's something wrong with Brendan's fish.

Eleven-year-old Bella has a terrible guilty secret: something she did three years ago, when her English relatives were visiting. Now, in the last week in December, they were returning to Australia and Bella fears the worst: that they are coming to confront her; that they suspected her all along.

"Help," shouted Chris. "Please. Somebody help." The silent green head had power over him. The cabbage patch curse was too strong. 'Zip.' Down came his fly. "Don't look. Don't look," shouted Chris. "Don't look. Don't look," shouted Ms. Henderson. But it was too late. Chris let fly. Splash, splash, sploosh. It could only happen in a Paul Jennings story, and it does.

From a talented emerging writer comes a brave, honest, unforgettable memoir about mental illness, which breaks the silence and shatters the taboos to give hope to all those struggling to find their way through. One day Sophie Hardcastle realised the joy she’d always known had disappeared. She was constantly tired, with no energy, no motivation and no sense of enjoyment for surfing, friends, conversations, movies, parties, family - for anything. Her hours became empty.

It's December 1900, and Berylda Jones is heading home to Bathurst for Christmas. Tragically, 'home' is where she and her beloved sister Greta live in terror, under the control of their sadistic Uncle Alec. But Berylda has a plan, borne out of desperation, to free herself and Greta from Alec for good - if she can only find the courage to execute it.

Miss Isobel Clara Macleod, youngest of the seven children of Major Sir Angus Hutton Macleod, Surveyor-General of the colony of New South Wales, had the singular misfortune to know that at seven o'clock that morning her father was going to die. September, 1851. Sydney, city of secrets and gossip. Seventeen-year-old Isobel Macleod is determined to save her father because she loves him. But when she dares to trespass in a forbidden male world, she will be plunged into social disgrace.