Spirit Singer

Amarynth is a spirit singer, gifted–or cursed, as she sometimes thinks–with the ability to lead the spirits of the dead from the Lower World through the Between World to the Gate of the Upper World and the Light that lies beyond it.

While she is still an apprentice her grandfather and tutor dies, slain by a mysterious creature in the Between World that is blocking access to the Upper World’s Gate. Without a spirit singer her village cannot survive, so Amarynth embarks on a hazardous quest to find out what the creature is, how it can be defeated, and how she can become a full-fledged spirit singer — a quest that takes her not only from her tiny seacoast home to the soaring mountains of the south, but across the even more rugged terrain of her own soul.

Amphibian

Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog’s food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he’s top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn’t know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can’t live together — after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it’s not like one of them just packs his bags and leaves the country.

To make it to-infinity worse, he’s worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn’t everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth’s mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White’s tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it’s the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.

Around the World in Stilettos

Twenty Three year old Sophie Farrier has everything a girl could want; the perfect job, the perfect flat and the perfect set of friends. As a travel writer, Sophie gets to fly around the world, meet new people, see new places and most importantly buy more shoes! When she is home her life speeds past in a blur of boozy nights, girly lunches and maxing her cards in her favourite shops. There are only two problems in her otherwise blissful life; dealing with the curse of being the clumsiest person alive, and the man she is obsessively in love with, Dan Shorely, already has a perfect girlfriend. The one aspect of Sophie s life that is not perfect and never has been is her love life. After years of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, are things about to change? Will she ever find and catch her perfect man? Or will the dream of a happy ending and the dream man always be that… just a dream?

Migration Songs

Joan is on the brink. Cough drop addict, school bus driver, mixed race daughter of a Maoist English father and a Chinese-Canadian mother, Joan struggles for meaning after a friend’s death reveals a secret life. Migration Songs is a lost letter from your past, an intimate experience full of humour and grace.

Reversing over Liberace

Life, love and unlikely legacies.

Willow runs into Luke, the unrequited lust-of-her-life, ten years on and this time around he’s interested –– she’s lost twenty pounds and found fashion. But her best friends are suspicious that it’s too good to be true. What is Luke *really * after, Willow or her anticipated inheritance?

Her brother’s new friend Cal is gorgeous and…well… *gay.* Then reveals himself to be more than a mild, unassuming computer geek and she is no longer sure exactly *who* is telling the truth or who to trust.

Is anyone in her life what they seem to be?

Add to the romantic confusion, twelve pairs of rubber boots, two elderly spaniels, a pregnant sister and a disgruntled goat and you get a funny, touching story of a woman in search of revenge getting what she needs, rather than what she thinks she wants.

The Railway Children

In this classic children’s book by E. Nesbit, three children are suddenly uprooted from their happy suburban life to move to the country with their mother. Their new house, “Three Chimneys”, is near a railway line, and Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis (Phil), find amusement in watching the trains and waving to the passengers. They become friendly with Albert Perks, the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. The children get involved in all kinds of good deeds, while their mother is busy writing children books.

Original cover image by informatique