Alison Ashley. She was the most beautiful, graceful, elegant thing you ever saw in your life . . . And from the first day I hated her.Every so often, there comes a story so brilliant and lively and moving that it cannot be left in the past. Rediscover the magic of our country's most memorable children's books in the Penguin Australia Children's Classics series of stories too precious to leave behind.

'There was one kid, Alison Ashley, and becuase no one was sitting next to me, Miss Belmont put Alison Ashley there. And from the first day I hated her.' Alison Ashley is sheer perfection in every department. She has everything: intelligence, good looks, a wealthy family and perfect manners and Erica hates her for it! Erica plans to topple Alison at the school play performed annually by the sixth grade. However, everything does not go quite as planned...

It's the summer holidays and 11-year-old loner, Seymour, lodged with a fussy guardian in an inner-city suburb, is bored and unhappy in his confined world. By chance he meets Angie - beautiful, charismatic Angie. He is bewitched, and his world is opened as she takes him on unexpected holiday outings and shopping sprees. Angie, however, is not what she seems. Angie is using drugs...

Penny Pollard's Letters features her many letters written to her parents, friends and not so good friends. She writes about her many adventures while away on holidays. She learns to stop hating babies (namely her new sister) in this hilarious and startling collection of letters.

A High-Stakes Simulation Adventure Leaves Grayson Thibodeaux the Prime Suspect. . .for MurderDeep in the gritty underbelly of New Orleans, psychologist Grayson Thibodeaux loses everything when his wife leaves him to climb her company’s corporate ladder. He buries himself in his job of creating mind-bending adventure games for businesses as team-building explorations. When his ex-wife’s company hires Grayson’s to create an elaborate game, he doesn’t see how things can get worse. Unt...

Two recovery specialists.One murder.A hunt for the Dutchman's Lost Gold Mine becomes a race of survival.Former Army MP Landry Parker fell into the recovery specialist role quite by accident—to help her ailing father. Now that she’s on her own, she is determined to prove herself and honor her family legacy.After being shot in the line of duty, former police officer Nickolai Baptiste became a recovery specialist, and he’s good at his job—maybe even the best....

The unforgettable true story of one Jewish orphan’s survival against impossible odds, and her lifelong quest for family, safety and a sense of belonging.Elida Friedman was never supposed to have been born. In the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania, Nazi law forbade Jewish women from giving birth. Yet despite the danger they faced, Dr. Jonah Friedman and his wife Tzila, choose to bring a daughter into the world – a little girl they name Elida, meaning non-birth in Hebrew.To ensure he...

The eighteenth century was a golden age of adaptation: classical epics were adapted to contemporaneous mock-epics, life writing to novels, novels to plays, and unauthorized sequels abounded. In our own time, cultural products of the long eighteenth century continue to be widely adapted. Early novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, the founding documents of the United States, Jane Austen's novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein-all of these have been adapted so often that they ...

It was strange how staring at things could alter their appearance. Miranda thought it was weird how she could transmute quite ordinary things into images. It was no good. What with Grandma looking after the family, little Jimmy to care for, her sister's baby bellowing in the middle of the night - not to mention Yvette's creep of a boyfriend Dave - it was no wonder Miranda had started to see things. Trouble is, it soon starts to get a bit out of hand, and it's about time they all discovered...

Penny Pollard hates old people, Annette Smurton (who has her own horse) wearing dresses, and doing homework. On a school excursion she meets someone just as rebellious as herself - Mrs Edith Bettany - (nearly) 81-years-old and a new friend for Penny. This is Penny's diary.

Political games can be deadly…Elise Carmichael is a court sign language interpreter who reads lips all the time. As a widow with a young son who is deaf, lip reading is simply second nature, until the day she reads the lips of someone on the phone discussing an attempt to be made on a senator’s life—a senator who just happens to be her mother-in-law. Before she can decide what she needs to do, she receives the information that her son is rushed to the ER and she must leave. Then sh...

Erica Yurken knew she was destined for great things. Never in any doubt about her own genius, she felt superior to everyone at notorious Barringa East . . . That is, until Alison Ashley turned up.