CBCA Book of The Year Notables - Older Readers

t's a hot summer, and life's going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It's almost Christmas, school's out, and he's hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson's Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from ...

Sixteen-year-old dock boy Will is on the run, pursued by the men who killed his mother. Then an old servant tells him of his destiny to fight beside the Stewards, who have sworn to protect humanity if the Dark King ever returns. Will is thrust into a world of magic, where he starts training for a...

When sixteen-year-old Yin Mitchell is abducted, the news reverberates through the whole Year Ten class at Balmoral Ladies College. As the hours tick by, the girls know the chance of Yin being found alive is becoming smaller and smaller. Everyone is affected by Yin’s disappearance even scholarship...

Rosa was never really trying to hurt anyone, no matter what they said in court. But she's ended up in juvenile jail anyway, living her life through books and wondering why her best mate Asheeka disappeared. A page-turning novel about a complicated friendship; a road trip through NSW in a stolen c...

A queer romance set in Brisbane. Henry Hamlet doesn't know what he wants after school ends. It's his last semester of year twelve and all he's sure of is his uncanny ability to make situations awkward. Luckily, he can always hide behind his enigmatic best friend, Len. They've been friends since f...

Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, thei...

Isaac is running from his old life when he steps off the bus in a small town. He doesn't plan on sticking around and has nowhere to stay, but a local café owner's kindness offers him a chance to change his story. Then Isaac meets Sophie and learns he's not the only one wanting to repaint his life.

It's Karnawał season in the snow-cloaked Kingdom of Lechija, and from now until midnight when the church bells ring an end to Devil's Tuesday time will be marked with wintry balls and glittery disguises, cavalcades of nightly torch-lit "kuligi" sleigh-parties. Unbeknownst to the oblivious merryma...

Here at Zalindov, the only person you can trust is yourself. Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer. When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill ...

Scarlett was gifted with beauty. But beauty can be taken in a day, in a single moment, by one car fire. Now permanently disfigured, Scarlett has become a smudge in her perfect world. She can see only one acceptable solution: to escape the modern world for Matilda Mountain, which is desolate, isol...