AustLit

'Paul Kennedy's Funkytown is the vivid true story of a year in the life of a teenager leaping into manhood.

'It is 1993: a serial killer is loose on the streets of Frankston, Victoria. The community is paralysed by fear and a state's police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year.

'The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys - blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression - take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path.

'Told with poignancy, humour and evoking the brilliant, dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family, and outer suburbia.' (Publication summary)

'"My ancestors were the first people to walk on this land. Those other girls were always going to come up against my ancestors. Who's going to stop me?"

The torch. The swift suit. There she is. Good on ya, Cathy! Butterflies. The back straight. Freeman cool. The bend. Cathy lifting. The home straight. Flying now. Go Cathy. "What a legend, what a champion."

Twenty years later. More tears. Goosebumps, still.'

(Source : ABC)

'When it comes to racing, the name most Australians associate with the racetrack is Waterhouse. This is their compelling story.

HIGH STAKES tracks the story of the Waterhouse dynasty - from the early years of the colony to Bill Waterhouse's introduction to the bookmaking world as a sixteen-year-old, working as a 'penciller' (writing betting tickets) for his father in the late thirties. From that moment his future was clear. He went on to make money both on and off the track - and created headlines during the notorious Fine Cotton affair in the eighties.' (Hachette Australia)

'Chrissie and Anthony Foster were like any other young family, raising their three daughters in suburban Melbourne with what they hoped were the right values. Chrissie could not have known that the stranger-danger she feared actually lurked in the presbytery attached to the girls' Catholic primary school. Father Kevin O'Donnell, a long-term paedophile, lived and worked there.

'Two of their young daughters became victims of O'Donnell. And once the truth was revealed, the Fosters began a battle to find out how this could have happened. The Church offered silence, lies, denials and threats. Meanwhile, their daughters tried to piece together their fractured lives.

'This is the chilling true story that made national and international headlines. Chrissie Foster's heartbreaking account of her family's suffering, and their determination to stand up for themselves against the might of the Catholic Church, is testament to the strength of a mother's love, and the resilience of the human spirit.' (From the publisher's website.)