Kirsty's Story


Book Description

In 1998 Kirsty was enjoying weekly swimming lessons; and she had also joined the same dance school as her brother (Christopher). Chris had been having dance lessons for a few years and Kirsty wanted to dance on a stage like her brother and was looking forward to her next stage show. Ten years on and Kirsty can no longer dance or swim as well as she could when she was eight years old. She had to give it all up due to being in so much pain. She depends on elbow crutches and use's a power scooter when out shopping and needs help with some of her everyday needs. Kirsty's story tells how and why her life changed due to the problems caused by Neurofibromatosis and Scoliosis. And how she's managed to overcome any obstacles put in her way. When Kirsty was 11 weeks old she was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis (NF1), which caused no problems until she was eight years old when she was also diagnosed with scoliosis. She now lives a very different, but full life, where she is surrounded by her family and a large group of friends, some of whom have made a contribution to this book with their own thoughts. Kirsty's story is a remarkable one. Physically she remains weakened by her condition but her personality and character remains undamaged.




Careless


Book Description




Raw Blue


Book Description

Award-winning novelby Kirsty Eagar, author of Saltwater Vampires and Night Beach. Raw Blue was awardedthe 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction prize. Readersof Tim Winton's Breathwill be drawn to Raw Blue, an achingly beautiful young adult novel set in Sydney's northern beaches.Winner of the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, it is a haunting storyabout finding your passion in life. Carly has dropped out of uni to spend her days surfing and her nights working as a cook in a Manly cafe. Surfing is the one thing she loves doing ... and the only thing that helps her stop thinking about what happened two years ago. Then she meets Ryan and Carly has to decide.Will shelet the past bury her? Orcan shelet go of her anger and shame, and find the courage to be happy? Check out Kirsty Eagar'swebsite at www.kirstyeagar.com,and read herblogto find out about her thoughts on books, writing, music, surfing, and finding inspiration, or visit betweenthelines.com.au -the destination for Young Adult books. Praise for Raw Blue: 'Kirsty Eagar's fearless Raw Blue, a story of regeneration set on Sydney's northern beaches, is much more than just a promising debut: this one delivers.' Australian Book Review Best Books of 2009: Critics' Choices 'Kirsty Eagar's first novel explores dark territory with skill and sensitivity.' The Age 'An emotionally rich and powerful first novel.' Canberra Times 'If you only read one book this year ... it should be Kirsty Eagar's Raw Blue one of those kept-me-up-all-night novels that stays in your bones and sings in your ears long after you've finished it. It wouldn't be out of place next to Tim Winton's Breath, except this is the ocean as healer, not as an object to be conquered, or the site of self-destruction, of risk. The images crackle, the lines are full of the poetry of observation, the story is searing, gutting, beautiful. This should be compulsory reading for all teenagers especially boys.' julialawrinson.livejournal.com 'This is a psychologically intense novel that involves even non-surfing readers in the release Carly feels when conquering the waves we empathise with her in the long battle between desire and fear on the path to self-acceptance.' Magpies 'I read this book feverishly, desperate for a happy ending, and afterwards found it difficult to get Carly and the men who ride into her life out of my mind.' Newcastle Herald '[a] very moving book It's dark subject matter, but Eagar makes it uplifting.' Sunday Territorian 'A memorable first book by a writer who gives an honest approach to what young adults face growing up and growing wiser.' Woman's Day Read of the Week




Caroline's Bikini


Book Description

'Alright' I said, 'I'll try...' This is how Emily Stuart opens her intricate tale of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline's Bikini: a swirling cocktail of infatuation, obsession, and imagination.The moment that Emily's friend Evan Gordonstone - a successful middle-aged financier - meets Caroline Beresford - a glamorous former horsewoman, and now housewife, hostess, and landlady - there is a 'PING!' At least, that's how Evan describes it to Emily when he persuades her to record his story: the story of falling into unrequited love, which is as old as Western literature itself. Thus begins a hypnotic series of conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West London's bars, fuelled in intensity by endless G&Ts and Q&As. From the depths of mid-winter to July's hot swelter, Emily's narration of Evan's passion for Caroline will take him to the brink of his own destruction.Written in a voice so playful, so charismatic, and so thoughtfully aware of the responsibilities of fiction it can only be by Kirsty Gunn, Caroline's Bikini is a swooning portrait of courtly love - in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!




The Life and Time of Lonny Quicke


Book Description

Lonny is a lifeling. He has the power to heal any living creature and bring it back from the dead. But he pays a price for this gift - by lengthening the creature's life, he shortens his own. So Lonny has to be careful, has to stay hidden in the forest. Because if people knew what he could do, Lonny would be left with no life at all... A brilliant novel from the author of The Middler about family, secrets and a terrible power.




The Middler


Book Description

Beyond the mysterious boundary of eleven-year-old Maggie’s town, the Quiet War rages and the dirty, dangerous wanderers roam--a gripping debut for fans of The Giver, Pax, and Orphan Island “The Middler held one marvelous surprise after another every time I turned a page, leading to a most unexpected ending! Readers are going to love this book!” —Jennifer A. Nielsen, New York Times–bestselling author of The False Prince and A Night Divided Maggie lives in orderly Fennis Wick, protected from the outside world by a boundary. Her brother Jed is an eldest, revered and special, a hero who will soon go off to fight in the war. But Maggie’s just a middle child, a middler, often invisible and ignored, even by her own family. When she chances upon a wanderer girl in hiding, she decides she wants to be a hero like her brother and sets out to capture the intruder. But once Maggie peeks past the hedges of the boundary for the first time, suddenly everything she’s ever known about her isolated town gets turned on its head. . . In her debut novel for young readers, Kirsty Applebaum crafts a gripping story of resistance, forbidden friendship, loyalty, and betrayal. "I thought I'd almost reached my fill of dystopian novels, but Kirsty Applebaum has rebooted the genre. The plot pulls you along . . . [and] there is a touch of Harper Lee's Scout [in Maggie]." —The Times




Nothing Left to Lose


Book Description

With Ashton at her side, Anna begins to feel more like her old self again. Together, they're rebuilding her life and attempting to heal old wounds. The more time they spend together, the closer they become, but unfortunately this only serves to complicate matters further. The undercover pretence of being boyfriend and girlfriend slowly ceases to be a game as both find themselves increasingly blurring the lines between the act and the reality.With her father now President-Elect, Anna and Ashton are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain some semblance of privacy. With the world's press obsessing over the future First Daughter, Ashton's job of protecting her has just become a whole lot harder.All the while the trial grows ever closer, looming over them both, taunting them, reminding them that it isn't over yet. After all, Carter Thomas will stop at nothing to be reunited with his 'Princess'.




Kids Who Did: Real kids who ruled, rebelled, survived and thrived


Book Description

When the future looks dark, courageous kids bring light and hope into the world. Forty true stories celebrate kids who have protested, prayed, rebelled, saved lives, earned a fortune, lost everything, become world-famous, or fought to survive war and oppression. Fearless kids, feral kids, Olympic champions, human-rights crusaders, climate-change warriors, princes and prisoners, workers and whiz-kids - they all show the true courage of kids. From the distant past to the present moment, kids have made their mark on history; and now they're set to change the world.




The French Gift


Book Description

From Kirsty Manning, author of The Song of the Jade Lily, comes a gripping World War II set historical novel about murder, secrets, and survival. A forgotten manuscript that threatens to unravel the past… Fresne Prison, 1940: A former maid at a luxury villa on the Riviera, Margot Bisset finds herself in a prison cell with writer and French Resistance fighter Joséphine Murant. Together, they are transferred to a work camp in Germany for four years, where the secrets they share will bind them for generations to come. Paris, around about now: Evie Black lives in Paris with her teenage son, Hugo, above her botanical bookshop, La Maison Rustique. Life would be so sweet if only Evie were not mourning the great love of her life. When a letter arrives regarding the legacy of her husband’s great-aunt, Joséphine Murant, Evie clutches at an opportunity to spend one last magical summer with her son. They travel together to Joséphine’s house, now theirs, on the Côte d’Azur. Here, Evie unravels the official story of this famous novelist, and the truth of a murder a lifetime ago. Along the way, she will discover the little-known true story of the women who were enslaved by German forces in WWII. Bringing together the present and the past, The French Gift is a tender and heartbreaking story of female friendship, sacrifice and loss, and the promise of new love.




The Undercurrents


Book Description

Humane, thought provoking, and moving, this hybrid literary portrait of a place makes the case for radical close readings: of ourselves, our cities, and our histories. The Undercurrents is a dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism told from a precise vantage point: a stately nineteenth-century house on Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, a site at the center of great historical changes, but also smaller domestic ones. The view from this house offers a ringside seat onto the city’s theater of action. The building has stood on the banks of the canal since 1869, its feet in the West but looking East, right into the heart of a metropolis in the making, on a terrain inscribed indelibly with trauma. When her marriage breaks down, Kirsty Bell—a British-American art critic, adrift in her midforties—becomes fixated on the history of her building and of her adoptive city. Taking the view from her apartment window as her starting point, she turns to the lives of the house’s various inhabitants, to accounts penned by Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Gabriele Tergit, and to the female protagonists in the works of Theodor Fontane, Irmgard Keun, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A new cultural topography of Berlin emerges, one which taps into energetic undercurrents to recover untold or forgotten stories beneath the city’s familiar narratives.