National Network for Equitable Library Service

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.

Amy has only ever known what life is like in the Clearing, with her brothers and sisters--until a newcomer, a younger girl named Freya, joins the "family" and offers a glimpse of the outside world. When news breaks of a missing girl--a child the same age as Freya's son, Billy--Amy and Freya's stories intertwine, and the secrets of the past will crawl inexorably into the present.

It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father phoning from Sydney. Thirty years ago, the Greens' next-door neighbor Mandy disappeared. Isla's father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he's under suspicion of murder. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible?

‘[An] unconventional journey…brilliantly documented.’ Courier Mail

A fiercely funny, queer romantic comedy about two girls who can't stand each other, but join forces in a grand feminist plan to expose harassment and inequality at their elite private school. Harriet Price is the perfect student: smart, dutiful, over-achieving. Will Everhart is a troublemaker who's never met an injustice she didn't fight.

From debut author Nina Kenwood comes a tender and funny audiobook about first love and its confusions, and all of the awkwardness of teen romance. When her parents announce their impending divorce, Natalie can't understand why no one is fighting, or at least mildly upset. Then Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, hook up, leaving her feeling slightly miffed and decidedly awkward. She'd always imagined she would end up with Zach one day—in the version of her life that played out like a TV show, with just the right amount of banter, pining, and meaningful looks.

Perfect for fans of The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street and Waiting for Normal, this charming middle grade mystery is full of heart, humor, and more than a few surprises. Eleven-turning-twelve-year-old Cassie is an expert Peacock Detective. Her sharp eye for details is why the Hudsons from across the street call her every time their pet peacocks wander away.

Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife, but as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less.

Winner of Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison. Composed entirely by text message, this work represents the harrowing experience of stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.

Children of a Faraway War tells the story of Wendy and Robbie, two Australian-born sisters, now in their seventies, and their life-changing quest to learn the truth about their father who died in England in World War II while serving in Bomber Command. Because of their mother's reticence and their reluctance to probe her grief, they grow up knowing very little about the man who could have been a father to them. Separated by half a world, Robbie in Australia, Wendy in Canada, they plan a trip to England as a kind of homage to this missing dad.