Better Reading

By the bestselling author of The War Nurses, this is an unforgettable new novel set in the WA goldrush era inspired by real characters and a shocking true crime.

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The high-stakes of The Hunger Games. The rich magical setting of Caraval. The ensemble cast of Six of Crows. Power, revenge and sisterhood combine in this heart-pounding YA fantasy debut, set in a magical circus in Belle Époque Paris. Trapeze artist Falan Sunkara is a performer in Paris’s famous magical circus, le Cirque des Ombres. Le Cirque is ruled by Jean-Pierre, ringmast...

What’s the book about?

1851, London

Six months have passed since the grand opening of the Great Exhibition — and Albertine and her family couldn’t be happier.

But the season of good fortune ends abruptly when a Royal Jewel goes missing and Albertine’s friend, dearest Blot, is accused of its theft. Determined to prove Blot’s innocence, Pap...

What’s the book about?

Forget what you know about Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen with a fantastic hairstyle. That’s only part of the story. Before she was a ruler, Cleopatra was a girl with a fierce ambition: to become pharaoh.

When twelve-year-old Cleopatra and her father, Pharaoh Ptolemy XII, flee to ancient Rome in 59 BCE after Cleopatra’s sis...

Jimny Adams should have died that day.

She whistled on her way to the river, making up the tune as she was mostly immune to music. She could take it or leave it. What she did take was five one-dollar coins from her father’s coin box. Since it was padlocked, she’d manoeuvred them through the slot with a butter knife.