Whilst Emilia’s mother worked sweeping the square in front of the president’s palace in Bucharest, Emilia spent her childhood days drawing in the dust and mud, when she should have been helping out. Emilia’s talent for drawing is what made her different. Gypsies did not go to school. Gypsies did not draw.

After a bout of persecution against gypsies in Bucharest, Emilia ...

Paper Faces is a powerful book, evocative of the peacetime in the aftermath of World War II. There are shortages of money, new clothes, food rationing, and no proper home for Dot and her mother, Gloria - just a series of drab, dingy lodgings. Dot is taken to the 'country' to stay with Mrs. Hallidaye, who is from a different social class altogether. Her ordered ...

Flora is convalescing in her English boarding school, suffering from ‘nervous exhaustion’ following her University entrance exams. She is bored and to pass the time she starts to write down the story of a time when she was much younger and living in the tropical paradise of Jesselton in North Borneo.

Gradually, memories of this time come back and we are transported with ...

Although the setting for this novel is Los Angeles, the teenage experience it deals with is universal and totally transferable to readers here in Britain, and gains immediacy by its pacy, present tense narration.

Outwardly Margaux seems to have a lot going for her; looks, intelligence, boys, car, super-generous dad, mum who never interferes. Inwardly though, she's a mess, there's ...

Fourteen-year-old Prue has been home educated all her life. She knows she and her sister Grace are different to most teenagers, but any attempt to be ‘normal’ are met with fury and outrage by their father. When he suffers a stroke, Prue discovers what it’s like to have freedom.

With their father in hospital, the girls are sent to the local comp for the first time. W ...

Family breakdown, fond memories, the moment you discover your mother is not the person you thought she was; are all themes developed in this collection. These short stories evoke a range of emotions but specifically prompt reflection on your own mother/daughter relationships. The stories exploring the tension existing between teenage girls and their mums during the struggle for greater independ ...

Last Chance is Patrick Cave's second novel, and it asks its readers in the course of a gripping story, some remarkably serious and ethical questions, which undoubtedly will become increasingly complex in the future. On a personal level, fifteen year old Jules feels that he can cope without anyone discovering his father's appearance; his half-sisters are well b ...

After a lifetime of moving from town to town whenever her free-spirited mother feels like a change, Nina longs to settle down and have friends like a other teens. When they arrive in a small city in Vermont, she thinks this could be the place - but her mother Joyce is less convinced. The more Nina tries to become a part of the community, the harder her mother works to keep her apart from neighb ...

Young or old, everyone in Jen's life has a story to tell, a story of heartache and uncertainty. Love can't always stay. Jen's first encounters leave her fractured, reckless, no longer Jen, but Jinx.

A most unusual book. If one were to recount the events of Australian author Margaret Wild's novel Jinx as a chronology, it might well resemble the storyboard for ...

Synopsis: Where is she? Jade Henderson is missing, taken from her cot in the night. Stella Parfitt watches the police investigation unfold and begins to ask her own questions. Where was her mother that night? The woods hold a dark secret...

Review: Stella is not sure sometimes whether she or her mother is the adult. When her mother arrives home drunk, late and soaked from a ...