AustLit

'Maddie Lee is in year six. Her best and oldest friend Katy is busy with school duties and music and scholarship plans, and Maddie feels lost and lonely. Then a new girl starts at school. Maddie wants more than anything to become friends with her. And she does. But Samara’s friendship comes at a high price, with consequences Maddie could never have imagined.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Is she - was she with Johnno?' said Erica.

'It doesn't work like that,' Trish said. 'Not like boyfriend and girlfriend stuff, as I've been trying to tell you. It's more - fluid.'

'Erica is restless for a life outside her office job, her boring boyfriend and her mother's tiny house in down-and-out Glebe.

'In the 1950s, Sydney is quickly building a reputation for sinfulness, and some of the most attractively sinful people are to be found in a group known as the Push. They meet regularly to discuss their wicked ideas at the Royal George, and Erica is drawn into the captivating crowd.' (Publication summary)

'She thought of Billy, and how he would never say 'Bye, beautiful' to someone like her, that likely no one would ever say anything like that to her in her life, and how she could not do anything to change any of it.

'Sandy does not know if she would fit in anywhere, but she feels like a complete outsider in this hot wheatbelt town where her policeman father has just been transferred...

 'Set in Western Australia in the 1960s, this is a story of secrets and heartbreak, of families and changing times, by rising star Julia Lawrinson.' (Publication summary)