Golden 

by Jade Timms

I play around with the colours for a few minutes, mixing them with the white. The colours I end up with aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. I don’t know why I like pastel colours so much. My life would be easier if I could get into dark colours, but what can I say? My heart is made of pastel confetti. 

Golden is a story about friends and friendship and art and beauty—and the power of letting yourself be loved…When you work in the juice bar of your small coastal town. When your twin brother is the fun one with all the friends. When something happened a year ago that you can’t talk about, but everything makes you remember it. When it might have been all your fault. When going to the beach, to that beach, takes all the air out of your lungs. When you’re training for the town’s annual Mud Run that you’re not even sure you want to enter. 

When you’re drawn to colours and pencils and paint, but you’re not an artist. When the new guy in town, the one who makes you feel you’re charged with electricity, seems to want to hang out with you. When it comes time to let your friends back in.

A World Worth Saving

by Kyle Lukoff

After coming out as trans, fourteen-year-old A is forced to attend weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters meetings, where he uncovers the terrifying truth that the group is run by a demon feeding on their pain and is part of a larger, darker force preying on the world's vulnerable. 

You Belong to Me

by Hayley Krischer

Full to the brim with romance, class exploration, and friendship clashes comes a new YA psychological thriller exploring the dark secrets of the wellness and beauty world. 

Perfect for fans of Nine Perfect Strangers and Jessica Goodman novels.

 What if living your most authentic life leaves you dead? Frances Bean was always content living life on the perimeter. Until she is paired up for a class project with rich and popular Julia, daughter of famous wellness guru Deena Patterson. 

The "magic" skincare products, healing sound baths, and extravagant parties of Deena’s company DEEP never really interested Frances before, who wears the badge of goth outcast and bookworm proudly. But face time with the girl she has been crushing on for years is starting to give her a new outlook. 

When Frances gets an exclusive invite to Femme, the young ambassadors of DEEP program, she is blown away by the beauty and luxury of Julia’s world and Femme's focus on empowering girls to be their most true selves surprisingly strikes a chord. Before long Frances finds herself invested in Femme, a whirlwind romance with Julia, and a future that feels hopeful. 

But when an infamous DEEP party takes a dark turn, Frances wonders if the allure of being a part of Julia’s life was actually just a deadly distraction… 

Lady's Knight

by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

 A blacksmith's daughter with a secret. A lady with a plan. We're in for one unforgettable knight… Gwen has spent the past several years manning the blacksmith's in place of her father, an open secret in the village in which she lives. A much more covert secret, however, is that she knows not only how to craft but also how to wield a sword, and an incognito stunt at the local jousting tournament manages to catch the eye of the wily Lady Isobelle. Isobelle has secret dreams too, but she's been promised in marriage to the winner of the whole stupid tournament, which means an end to any freedom or choices for her. Desperate to avoid this fate, when she connects the newcomer knight to the female smithy she saw earlier that day, she begins to hatch a scheme… Petty knights. Backstabbing noblemen. A prison breakout. Cheesecake on a stick. One particularly large and angry dragon. Will our ladies survive the night? And can our knight save the day?. 

Into the mouth of the wolf

by Erin Gough

 Iris lives on the run with her mother, Rohan. They’re travelling to escape the earthquakes, though of course that’s impossible. And they’re being followed. One day, Rohan insists Iris repeat the phrase in bocca al lupo: into the mouth of the wolf. The next day, Rohan's vanished, leaving no clues about where she’s gone besides a contact in an unknown town. Entirely alone and fearing the worst, Iris reaches out to a stranger for help.  

Also by Erin Gough

• Amelia Westlake

• The Flywheel

I'm not really here 

by Gary Lonesborough

Footsteps approach behind me. I turn and see an Aboriginal boy arriving at the doorway. He's tall, taller than me. He's got curly hair. His body is fit. His chest is chiselled and bare and he's wearing only football shorts.

 When 17-year-old Jonah arrives in a new town – Patience – with his dad and younger brothers, it feels like a foreign place. A new town means he needs to make new friends - which isn't always easy. Especially when he's wrestling with his body image, and his memories of his mother.

 When he joins the local footy team so he can spend more time with his new crush, Harley, he feels like he's moving closer to something good. But even though he knows what he wants, it doesn't mean he's ready.

 I'm Not Really Here is a novel about navigating family and friendships, and finding a way through grief towards love. 

Also by Gary Lonesborough

• The boy from the Mish

• We didn't think it through

A good kind of trouble

by Brooke Blurton

It's funny how your life changes. I used to worry about playing footy and whether my first kiss would be with a boy or a girl. 

I used to worry about having enough time after school and putting my little cousins to bed to go for a run with my best friend, Loz, and whether she'd ever look at me the way she looks at my brother, Poss. 

But a new girl came to school and there's something about her ... I suddenly got the courage to stand up to our history teacher about teaching our true history with books written by blackfellas. And somehow she did too! 

At first we were on top of the world - and we might even have a chance to change it just a little bit. 

But now I'm banned from footy and I wonder ... is it all going to be worth it?.