matt and emmy were only teenagers when they discovered they were expecting a baby. but they decided they would love her and worry about the other problems later. but emmy can't seem to cope and before mahalia is six months old she leaves them and goes to stay with her godmother in sydney. matt is...
Seventeen-year-old Kate writes all of her dreams and thoughts in a set of three secret notebooks. In each of these journals, she records her daily life, from caring for her baby niece and making friends to dealing with the loss of parents and yearning for the future. Through reading, writing, and...
‘Don’t patronise me!’ I shouted at Morgan, on one of the occasions when I couldn’t avoid visiting my father – it was his birthday, and I did not feel like celebrating with him. I stormed from the house and found myself in a park an hour later, crying my eyes out, my head against the rough bark of...
People who become enthralled by the world of books, as I am, are often thought to have dull lives, but I feel that my own life is made of the stuff of myth. Or anyway, I intend to make it so. Some say that books are an escape from real life. But the beauty of books is that they are crammed with r...
‘Oh, I never talk about what happened in the past. I'm only interested in what's happening now,’ she said. They sat in the sunroom off the kitchen, Em in her favourite floral armchair, Emma in a low-slung cane chair painted bright orange, though the paint was cracked and peeling away. She could s...
But one day a woman went past with a baby strapped to her front in a sling. The baby, whose head was still wobbly, used its arms to push back against its mother’s chest; it looked up into her face and smiled. Her baby used to do just that. She was just about that age when Emily went away. Mahalia...