Right Book, Right Time, page 2
Cat’s Mountain ALLAN BAILLIE
YA AUSTRALIA 2006
Cat could hear skittering round her and she realised she had never been on the mountain at night. She shivered. She had tramped around Mud Hut in the sun, rain, sleet, even snow, but never at night.
Allan Baillie cranks up the pace and tension of one of his best adventure stories yet.
Before Gramp died, he renamed Mount Foster ‘Cat Mountain’ because Cat (Catherine) was so at home in the remote bush eyrie. Now Cat has come to visit Gran, who also loves the mountain and refuses to leave. But where is Gran? There has been a huge storm. Has she had an accident? Is she lost? The storm has knocked out the phone connection so there is no way to call for help.
Cat has been terrorised at school by Brena and ‘The Pack’, so it takes her some time to shake off the conviction that she is useless. In fact, Cat is determined, practical and courageous. And she needs every bit of grit and wit once she finds the dead pilot in the crashed plane; the dying man Gran is trying to save; and the crazy, damaged gun-toting woman who is involved with him. Cat and Gran are caught up in a crime that has gone very wrong. Cat must ‘read’ the clues and act very, very carefully to avoid more disasters.
The Dark Ground GILLIAN CROSS
Y/YA UK 2004
High in the clouds, something slammed into Robert’s sleeping brain and he woke suddenly, in a rush of adrenalin. His mind was churning with images of falling, of tumbling out of the sky in a roar of broken, burning metal. He smelt the scorching and felt the rush of air against his helpless skin as he fell . . .
‘In a rush of adrenalin’ is how you will read this story and its sequels. When we first meet Robert in some kind of jungle he is naked, lost, hungry and terrified. Neither he nor we have any idea what has happened to him or where he is. Is he the sole survivor of a plane crash? Is there anyone or anything else nearby? Why does everything seem so huge? He bravely sets about finding food and shelter. Soon he discovers that a girl is trying to help him, and he follows her to a cave where a group of others live a strange subsistence existence. They accept Robert but refuse to discuss their situation or to help him work out what happened. Their entire focus is on avoiding predators (there are some scary encounters with these) and on gathering and hoarding food. We are reminded of the lives of tiny creatures foraging to ensure survival through winter.
Without ever slackening the pace, Cross leads us to an understanding of Robert’s situation. Step-by-step we follow Robert’s dangerous and arduous quest to reach his family, but his troubles do not end there. They continue through the second book, THE BLACK ROOM (2005), the story of a girl locked in a pit by her parents, and eventually to the final book, THE NIGHTMARE GAME (2006). Gillian Cross never seems to run out of ideas that keep readers eagerly turning the pages.
Hunters and Warriors JUSTIN D’ATH
YA AUSTRALIA 2001
‘I mean, it just kind of came out that it was the four of us. The fabju-lous foursome. Nobody actually said anything about you – at least, not . . .’ Jarrod suddenly stopped walking. He turned to Bass. ‘Did you actually
kill any?’
‘Me? Of course I did.’
‘Except for that one at the start?’
‘There were two at the start,’ Bass reminded him.
‘One, two, who gives a shit? You were kidding around, right? That Luke
Skywalker stunt!’ Jarrod laughed. ‘No one could say that was deliberate.’
‘I . . .’ Bass began. ‘Not like us guys,’ Jarrod came back over the top of him. ‘We got right into
it. It was fucking carnage! Guys!’ Jarrod yelled.
A departure for an author best known for his wildly imaginative, humorous and adventurous books for younger readers. Based on a true story, Hunters and Warriors is a tough, uncompromising account of a school camp in Australia’s beautiful coastal north that goes horribly wrong.
When we learn about horrific massacres during wars we may assume these are the result of wartime conditions and pressures. However, here, in idyllic surroundings and aware of environmental issues four teenage boys rapidly lose control and descend into hysterical group-barbarism as they massacre a whole colony of noddy birds.
D’Ath builds his story carefully and deliberately. He shows the pressure on the boys, especially the more gentle outsider, Bass, to belong and to conform to male expectations to perform in certain macho ways and assume the role of hunters – and of killers.
A confronting, important book that, due to its challenging subject matter and its realistic language, may not have had the commercial success it deserves.
Missing Abby LEE WEATHERLY
YA UK 2004
When I had spotted Abby at the town centre bus stop that afternoon, my first thought had been, Oh, no! Hide!
She was looking even stranger than usual, dressed in black combat trousers and a black T-shirt with a screaming skull on it. Dozens of slithery silver chains hung around her neck, like metallic snake-skin. She stood leaning against the bus shelter, reading a paperback with a dragon on the cover. Even from where I was standing I could see that her nails were long and pointy, painted black.
Abby goes missing. As police enquiries deepen, Emma, Abby’s former best friend, realises she was the last person to see Abby before she disappeared. Reluctantly, Emma had boarded a bus with Abby. They had had an uneasy conversation and parted awkwardly. Gradually Emma uncovers the story of Abby’s passion for a ‘Goth’ persona and for Dungeons & Dragons–inspired roleplaying. This is painful territory for Emma to re-enter as she and Abby used to be teased and even seriously bullied for their ‘uncool’ pursuits and their fantasy creations. Now Emma finds that Abby was also willing to enter dangerous real worlds and take big risks.
Weatherly unreels a tight, page-turning tale, where nothing turns out as you might expect, and the startling ending, in the scary, half-lit bowels of an industrial plant, packs a punch.
The Road of the Dead KEVIN BROOKS
YA/A UK 2006
When the Dead Man got Rachel I was sitting in the back of a wrecked Mercedes wondering if the rain was going to stop. I didn’t want it to stop.
I was just wondering.
It was late, almost midnight.
A hard-edged, violent, spooky book in which Ruben follows his brother, Cole, in a quest to find the killer of their sister Rachel. Ruben’s aim is to limit Cole’s likely excesses. Cole has blank eyes and a capacity for violence. Ruben has the ability to see inside people; to ‘be’ with them when they are elsewhere. Usually he is only this way with Cole, sometimes with his mother, and only now, after she is dead, with nineteen-year-old Rachel. ‘One moment she was with me . . . and then the moment suddenly cracked and I was with her, walking a storm ravaged lane in the middle of a desolate moor.’
Cole is determined to ‘bring Rachel home’. Rachel had gone to stay with a friend who lives with her shadowy husband outside a village. The village men – silent, thuggish, threatening – all seem to be a part of some conspiracy. A shady property development is behind much of the menace and unbridled violence. Everyone is being stood over or has something to hide. Is there a link to the boys’ father, a gypsy in prison for murder? Is this why beautiful Jess and the other gypsies are camped nearby?
Brooks creates a very scary set of characters, but also describes landscape brilliantly to build tension.
Brooks’s next book, BEING (2007), is touted as his breakthrough title. It is a fast-paced science fiction crime thriller, but is not as tight or convincing as The Road of the Dead. Being has earned Brooks a nomination in the adult section of the Edgar Awards (a US prize organised by the Mystery Writers of America in memory of Edgar Allan Poe).
Smokescreen BERNARD ASHLEY
YA UK 2006
The soaking wet female running barefoot at her was more like a girl than a woman, and not much older than she was – but Chinese or Vietnamese. And in trouble. The girl grabbed at Ellie, pleading, ‘Help me! You will help me? Please?’
‘You fallen in?’ Ellie asked, ’You want some dry clothes?’
‘Hide! Hide me!’ The girl turned, shivering, frightened, peering back through the tunnel. ‘Bad people!’
Ellie is a ‘pub kid’ who has spent most of her life living, and helping out, in her parents’ pub. Since Ellie’s mother’s death in a tragic accident, life has been tough for Ellie and her father, Chris Searle. Now Chris has inherited another pub by a canal and despite Ellie’s reluctance to move Chris expects things to improve. He plans to refurbish the pub and start a cosy Italian restaurant. Ellie is befriended at school by the smart, sassy, black girl, Flo, and soon Flo’s mother is helping out at the pub. But is Ellie ready for a new woman in her father’s life? And why do the locals who run the seemingly innocuous Friday music evenings at the pub object more and more ferociously to any changes?
Bernard Ashley pulls a number of threads tighter and tighter to weave a gripping story. Gradually it becomes clear that there is a complex scam in progress, crossing many borders and even continents. Only then do we understand why the young Asian girl who Ellie found was so terrified and desperate, and why the canal location is so important. Can Ellie and her father win out or will the ‘bad people’ triumph?
more from bernard ashley
EXCITING ADVENTURES FROM
bernard ashley
Bernard Ashley’s lively, easy-to-read stories for teenagers deserve to be better known in Australia. The UK BookBox website says of Ashley, ‘He likes to tell stories that are full of excitement and drama, but which also show how a child copes with a crisis point in his or her life.’« www.channel4.com/learning /microsites/B/ bookbox/home.htm »
The biography of Ashley on the ACHUKA website« www.achuka.co.uk » tells us that his first novel, published in 1974, ‘was followed during the 70s and 80s with successive novels which gained him the reputation as a ‘gritty’ writer in sympathy with the underdog. Strong characters and plots made Ashley’s work the perfect vehicle for television and there have been several TV adaptations.’
Ashley has written more than two-dozen books, won numerous awards and twice been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has also written graphic novels, particularly the exciting Graphix series (which includes RESPECT, RAPID and ROLLER MADONNAS); picture books; works for younger readers and several other popular series. The latest series for teenagers is about intrepid investigative journalist Ben Maddox, who works in exotic locations. Meet Ben in TEN DAYS TO ZERO (2005), DOWN TO THE WIRE (2006) and FLASHPOINT (to be released in 2007). Several of Ashley’s books also have a cross-cultural strand, picking up on contemporary themes.
TIGER WITHOUT TEETH (1998) is described as a ‘thrilling story of survival, discovery and two sorts of love’. Philip Pullman wrote about this book, ‘Bernard Ashley’s great gift is to turn what seems to be low-key realism into something much stronger . . .’
LITTLE SOLDIER (1999) is about Kaninda, who is forced by circumstances to become a boy soldier in East Africa. But when he makes it to London he is drawn into equally ferocious urban tribal wars. Read it alongside Peter Dickinson’s AK, also about boy soldiers in Africa, and the tough urban books of Bali Rai (see page 150).
FREEDOM FLIGHT (2003) is about Tom, who is dyslexic. He considers himself pretty worthless, but he’s great with boats and maps, and when he rescues an immigrant girl he shows he can be clever and quick witted. But who is he really?
TORRENT (2004) is a highly illustrated adventure set in the French Alps.
Thunder Road TED DAWE
YA NEW ZEALAND 2003
For me it was an engine begging for mercy (there is no mercy), the steep rising pitch of the turbo, the screaming tyres and the curtain of white smoke hanging behind me: all the stuff that spells street racing.
Country lad Trace, nineteen, hooks up with Devon, who wheels and deals with dangerous characters in increasingly dangerous goods. Then the big guys on the scene start showing who is really in charge, and Trace realises Devon is in big trouble and may even lose his girl.
A tough, no-punches-pulled kind of tale that rockets along as fast as the cars that scream and jostle (literally) along Thunder Road, ‘where the street racers go to test their machines – and their nerve’.
Tokyo GRAHAM MARKS
YA UK 2006
Adam felt totally spaced. It was now something like 2.35 am . . . he was . . . being given the third degree by his parents . . . It also didn’t help that he hadn’t quite got his head round the fact that Charlie had disappeared.
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, we’re told. Yet it would be hard to resist Tokyo, with the title, the author’s name, the words ‘All alone in the big city’ and some manga-style circular images scrolling down the red and black, Japanese-inspired front cover. The back is enticing too. It needs to be read horizontally. Design is all!
Between the covers is a racy, undemanding mystery with cute chapter headings that poke fun at ‘Japanese English’: ‘I may be passed if you are speednuts and fooding space’ and ‘Have a nice day penguin duck’.
Charlie (Charlotte) and her best friend, Alice, are travelling. When Alice calls home in the middle of the night to say Charlie has disappeared, everyone is distraught. The police and the embassy are quickly on the case, but Adam and his parents do not think enough is being done. So Adam finds a way to fly to Tokyo to search for his sister. All he has is the name of the seedy bar where the girls were working as ‘hostesses’. When he eventually locates this, he finds Alice and her boyfriend, Steve, have also vanished, and no one wants to talk. Adam hasn’t considered how he’ll manage alone in a city of 27 million people, unable to speak Japanese. But he’s determined and will try anything, even if he is reckless and clueless. He has some classic hard-boiled detective style adventures with the gorgeous, sexy, available Aiko (too bad about Adam’s girlfriend, Suzy, back home), and scarier ones with some pretty tough types. Nothing turns out as you might expect in this breezy story. Read also Marks’s ZOO, described as a ‘breathless thriller’.
Tomorrow When the War Began JOHN MARSDEN
YA/A AUSTRALIA 1993
There was a moment’s silence. No one knew what to say.
‘There’s just no explanation that fits all this,’ Robyn said.
‘It’s like UFO stuff,’ Kevin said. ‘Like aliens have taken them away.’ Then seeing the expression on my face, he quickly added, ‘I’m not trying to make a joke of it, Ellie. I know something bad’s happened. I just can’t figure out what it could possibly be.’
As with the Harry Potter books, a great deal has been said about the hugely popular Tomorrow series of seven books. Readers, many of whom had never finished a book before, could hardly bear to wait for the next one. At the time of writing, the two millionth sale of a book from this series had just been announced. This first book has been translated and widely sold in Germany, Spain, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, France, Korea, Japan, China and South Africa.
Clearly, the books have universal appeal and this stems partly from the action-driven nature of the stories. The main appeal to young readers, however, is the intimate and at times visceral involvement with a group of ordinary teenagers who, despite the terrible situations and dangers they encounter, take charge of their own lives. The intensity and complexity of their evolving relationships are also deeply engaging. It is, of course, Marsden’s control of language and understanding of how teenagers function that achieves this empathy.
The seven friends come back from a camping trip in a remote bush hideaway called Hell to find all the local people are missing: they have been rounded up and placed in camps. Australia has been invaded. The intrepid teenagers fight fire with fire as they try to outwit the enemy and reclaim the country. The invaders are of Asian origin and appearance but we never find out who ‘the enemy’ is.
Marsden has won more awards internationally than at home, in countries such as Germany and Austria. Many European countries have Youth Choice Awards, so young people get a direct say in selecting their favourites. In Sweden, where a panel of teenagers selected this book as the one most teenagers were likely to read, a couple of hundred thousand copies were printed and given away free to encourage reading. The seven Tomorrow books were followed by three ELLIE CHRONICLES featuring Ellie, the key character from the first series. Despite the end of the war, the enemy is still out there, so more tension and action ensues.
more action, more adventure
KEEP TURNING THE PAGES
matthew reilly
Matthew Reilly is the author of the international blockbusters CONTEST (1996), ICE STATION (1998), TEMPLE (1999), AREA 7 (2001), SCARECROW (2003) and SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS (2005). He is a young man on a mission and is an inspiring example of what youthful determination can achieve. He wrote his first thriller, Contest, at nineteen, while in his first year of a law degree. After the book had been rejected by most major publishers, he decided to self-publish 1000 copies, which he successfully hawked around Sydney bookshops. He made sure that the book looked glossy, professional and like other blockbusters. His dream run began in 1997 when Pan Macmillan’s commissioning editor for mass market fiction saw a copy of Contest in a central Sydney chain bookstore. After reading the book and being duly impressed, she contacted Reilly, who was already well into Ice Station, and offered him a two-book contract. Reilly was off!
