Millie Bird is a seven-year-old girl who always wears red Wellington boots to match her red, curly hair. But one day, Millie’s mum leaves her alone beneath the Ginormous Women’s underwear rack in a department store, and doesn’t come back.
Agatha Pantha is an eighty-two-year-old woman who hasn’t left her home since her husband died. Instead, she fills the silence by yelling at passers-by, watching loud static on TV, and maintaining a strict daily schedule. Until the day Agatha spies a little girl across the street.
Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven years old and once typed love letters with his fingers on to his wife’s skin. He sits in a nursing home, knowing that somehow he must find a way for life to begin again. In a moment of clarity and joy, he escapes.
Together, Millie, Agatha and Karl set out to find Millie’s mum. Along the way, they will discover that the young can be wise, that old age is not the same as death, and that breaking the rules once in a while might just be the key to a happy life.
Fans of the Rosie Project will love this quirky, feel – good book and fall in love with Millie, Agatha and Karl.
Library Call Number: F DAVI
World War One – A History in 100 Stories by Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James
We have become accustomed to the ANZAC stories of courage, mateship, endurance and sacrifice and this narrative has bolstered the idea of the brave and stoic Aussie soldier.
But 100 years after the war, there is a need for other, less celebrated stories, the stories often hidden by families, by soldiers themselves and stories that don’t fit into the nation building propaganda.
World War One: A History in 100 Stories remembers not just the men and women who lost their lives during the battles of WWI, but those who returned home damaged: the gassed, the crippled, the insane – all those irreparably harmed by war.
Drawn from a unique collection of sources, including repatriation files, these heartbreaking and deeply personal stories reveal a broken and suffering generation – gentle men driven to violence, mothers sent insane with grief, the hopelessness of rehabilitation and the quiet, pervasive sadness of loss. They also retrieve a fragile kind of courage from the pain and devastation of a conflict that changed the world.
This is an unflinching and remarkable social history. It is an act of remembering in the face of forgetting. Telling the truth about war requires its own kind of courage.
Library Call Number: 940.3 SCA
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez
Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued.
If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman.
Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.
Award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women. In making the case for change, this powerful and provocative book will make you see the world anew.
Library Call Number: 305.42 CRI
Ten Feet Tall and Not Quite Bulletproof by Cameron Hardiman
Cameron Hardiman lived a life most young boys could only dream of. Every morning he put on a navy blue police flight suit, grabbed his flight helmet, and prepared to work on the police helicopter. He could be called to anything during a shift – to search for a missing child, to pull an injured driver from a wrecked car, or a dangerous sea rescue.
He saw his fair share of trauma and dealt with it like most coppers would: he quickly put each dangerous job out of his mind as soon as it was over. But one particular rescue job in Bass Strait brought about a reckoning – and Cameron was never the same again.
This is the brilliantly told, white-knuckle story of one cop learning every lesson the hard way – and coming to find out that being not quite bulletproof doesn’t mean that you’re not a good cop.
Library Call Number BIO 363.209 HAR
When The Ground Is Hard by Malia Nunn
In this stunning and heartrending YA tale set in a Swaziland boarding school, two girls of different castes bond over a shared copy of Jane Eyre.
Adele Joubert loves being one of the popular girls at Keziah Christian Academy. She knows the upcoming semester at school is going to be great with her best friend Delia at her side. Then Delia dumps her for a new girl with more money, and Adele is forced to share a room with Lottie, the school pariah, who doesn’t pray and defies teachers’ orders.
But as they share a copy of Jane Eyre, Lottie’s gruff exterior and honesty grow on Adele, and Lottie learns to be a little sweeter. Together, they take on bullies and protect each other from the vindictive and prejudiced teachers. Then a boy goes missing on campus and Adele and Lottie must rely on each other to solve the mystery and maybe learn the true meaning of friendship.
