Lili Wilkinson

When a dead body is discovered at the Museum, Beatrice May Ross is determined to use her sleuthing skills to solve the case.

Bee is in her element working in the taxidermy department at the Museum of Natural History, but her summer job turns out to be full of surprises:

A dead body in the Red Rotunda. A mysterious Museum benefactor. A large stuffed tiger in the Catacombs. A handsome boy with a fascination for unusual animal mating habits.

And a pocketful of glass eyes.

Can Bee sift through the clues to discover whether her mentor really committed suicide… or is there a murderer in their midst?

The pink jumper was practically glowing in my grey bedroom. It was like a tiny bit of Dorothy’s Oz in boring old black-and-white Kansas. Pink was for girls.

Ava Simpson is trying on a whole new image. Stripping the black dye from her hair, she heads off to the Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, leaving her uber-cool girlfriend, Chloe, behind.

Ava is quickly taken under the wing of perky, popular Alexis who insists that: a) she’s a perfect match for handsome Ethan; and b) she absolutely must audition for the school musical.

But while she’s busy trying to fit in — with Chloe, with Alexis and her Pastel friends, even with the misfits in the stage crew — Ava fails to notice that her shiny reinvented life is far more fragile than she imagined.

A boy has come to Machery.
I think maybe he is an angel.

Stefan has convinced Gabriel that only children will be able to liberate the Holy Land from the Infidel. Together they raise an army and make the arduous journey over the Alps to the Mediterranean — Stefan’s promise that the ocean will part before them urging them on.

But the power of Stefan’s promises dim as they suffer misadventures again and again. Gabriel must face his doubts and the questions that plague him.

Who is Stefan? Is he really a holy prophet? Or has he doomed them all? And can they survive on faith alone?

Sometimes I wish I could just grow down and go back to primary school. Everything was easy then. School was fun, I was the Grade 6 Spelling Champion, and my best friend and I thought boys were disgusting.

When I wake up on the first day of Year 10, I realise how much has changed. School is hard. My best friend is boy-crazy. I have never kissed a boy. And no one gives a rat’s fundament about spelling.

Midge is mortified — she’s never kissed a boy. So she invents an imaginary boyfriend, faking emails and IM transcripts, even a MySpace page. Ben is the perfect boyfriend — until one day he turns up at Midge’s school.

A collection of interesting short stories and other stuff from some surprising and intelligent people.

“Life is too short for a long story”
— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Including stuff from Carole Wilkinson, Andy Griffiths, Michael Gerard Bauer, Karen Tayleur, Tessa Duder, Scot Gardner, Penni Russon, alicia sometimes, Michael Pryor, Julia Lawrinson, Bill Condon and Simmone Howell.

All royalties to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Edited by me.

The turnkey pushed Hannah into the cell, and clanged the door shut behind her. Hannah’s eyes stung and she felt a heavy churning in her belly. The smell of urine, vomit, sweat and rotting flesh was overpowering, and she broke out in a hot, prickly sweat, despite the icy night.

1814, London Town. Hannah Cheshire — wealthy and spoiled — has fallen from grace. Punishment: transportation to the colony of New South Wales.

We stamp our feet and clap our hands and yell and laugh and jump up and down. The witch will die. She climbs the scaffold, and turns to face us.

I stop yelling. I stop clapping and stamping.

I am turned to stone.

She looks just like me

Joan of Arc left home when she was 15. At 16, she led the French army to victory. At 19 she was burned at the stake. Angel or witch? Saint or heretic? Who was Joan of Arc?