Place Like This

A special reissue of a bestselling Australian classic from award-winning author Steven Herrick.Jack and Annabel have been dating for two years. With high school over they’re about to start university – until Jack decides to chuck it all in.I think you and Annabel should get out of hereas fast as possible. Have a year doing anythingyou want. My going-away present is enough moneyto buy a car – a cheap old one, okay? You’ll have towork somewhere to buy the petrol, and to keep going.But go.No destination in mind, Jack and Annabel leave town and discover themselves in a place they never knew existed.An inspiring verse novel about the pursuit of dreams and the realities of life, A Place Like This was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers and New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Award Sheaffer Pen Prize for Young Adult Fiction.‘A story as crisp and fresh as an apple, as sweet and sharp as life itself.’ - Australian Book Review

An illustrated tour of the landscapes of Mississippi that have inspired the state’s many lauded writers, from Faulkner and Welty to Morris and Ward.

Once you've won a car on a game show, been an actor, owned a phone sex company, been infected with HIV, slept with a movie icon and developed a drug addiction, you've pretty much done the Hollywood thing. In this true, first-person account of the 1980's, Los Angeles transforms an all-American boy from an actor in commercials plugging fast food to a gay phone line worker pushing fast sex. King experiences firsthand nearly every gay social milestone of an astonishing decade-drug use, the phone sex trade, the onset of AIDS, Rock Hudson, assisted suicide, anonymous encounters, the early development of AIDS organizations and activism, Magic Johnson's announcement-and shares his experiences with disarming humor and startling candor. AIDS eventually converts King's plunge into sex and drugs to an increasing awareness of mortality-and a renewed search for meaning.

Once you've won a car on a game show, been an actor, owned a phone sex company, been infected with HIV, slept with a movie icon and developed a drug addiction, you've pretty much done the Hollywood thing. In this true, first-person account of the 1980's, Los Angeles transforms an all-American boy from an actor in commercials plugging fast food to a gay phone line worker pushing fast sex. King experiences firsthand nearly every gay social milestone of an astonishing decade-drug use, the phone sex trade, the onset of AIDS, Rock Hudson, assisted suicide, anonymous encounters, the early development of AIDS organizations and activism, Magic Johnson's announcement-and shares his experiences with disarming humor and startling candor. AIDS eventually converts King's plunge into sex and drugs to an increasing awareness of mortality-and a renewed search for meaning.

A perilous journey full of love, deception and delusion. Set in the dramatic and raw landscapes of the Basque Pyrenees, Biafra and French West Africa, the story follows the plight of Jacques Freeman, a lonely brooding bachelor lamenting his days in the south of France after losing his home and family to a violent African revolution. Six powerful characters, three women and three men, interplay in this gritty and exhilarating novel. This will be a book for the decade. A true and gritty adventure, but with so much real humanity and emotion bursting out of every page." - Elizabeth Dalkeith. "Ben writes as if you are watching a good film" - Dennis Madden, Director of Photography. "A fantastic adventure - I loved every gritty moment" - Tessa McGregor, wildlife presenter and journalist. "This book actually got by heart rate up more than current action movies ! Truly gripping and immersive like I was actually there" - Pete Turnbull, Personal Trainer "I lost myself in this book. The intensity and 'edge of seat action' actually made me gasp out loud more than once. I definitely got some funny looks on the tube! My heart broke and my head was totally engrossed. What more can you ask for? I've recommended this to my friends and they've all agreed- exceptional read. I've just started reading it for the 2nd time and it is still getting my heart racing. Best book I've read in a long time." Samantha Kennedy - English Teacher.

After her brilliant run on Broadway and surviving the harsh concrete jungle of New York City, seventeen-year-old Hollywood "It Girl" Kaitlin Burke is back in LA starring in a sitcom with her former-nemesis-now-BFF, Sky. The show is a huge success! In fact, maybe a little too huge, Kaitlin realizes, after a bad run-in with aggressive paparazzi that puts her boyfriend Austin in danger. Once again, she wishes that she could have a normal life. But what Kaitlin doesn't realize is that her Hollywood life has had a positive influence on just about everyone she loves, and it takes a minor car accident and a nasty concussion to truly grasp how lucky she is. In Jen Calonita's sixth and final Secrets of My Hollywood Life novel, Kaitlin learns at last about the price of fame, the unending upside of friendship, and that there really is no place like home - even if it's Tinseltown.

Rural Benton Lake is sanctuary to Katrice Ware and Lee Oliver. However, more than one chance meeting with the sexy widower is turning Katrice's well-organized and solitary haven upside down. Intrigued by her beauty and sense of independence, Lee is equally baffled by Katrice's aloofness. As their attraction grows deeper they're forced to reconcile their pasts if there is to be any hope for a future together, especially as they wonder if home is really where the heart is.

Liza Barclay, aged 10, shot her mother while trying to protect her from her violent stepfather, ex-FBI agent Charley Foster. Despite her stepfather's claim that it was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed with Foster and tabloids compared Liza to the infamous murderess, Lizzie Borden, pointing even to the similarity in name. Growing up with adoptive parents who tried to erase every trace of her past, her name is changed to Celia. Always, though, the fear hung over her and the family - that someday, her vengeful stepfather would reappear to harm her. Aged 25, a successful interior designer, she marries a childless sixty-year old widower and they have a son. Before their marriage, she had confided her earlier life to her husband. Two years on, on his deathbed, he tells her that he would want her to re-marry, but makes her swear never to reveal her past to anyone, so that their son would not carry the burden of this family tragedy - a promise that plunges her into a new cycle of violence. Three years later, happily re-married, Celia is shocked when her second husband presents her with a gift -- the house where she killed her mother. When the real estate agent who has made the sale recognises her and, soon after, is murdrered, Celia is accused of the crime. Once again, she is home -- the place where she is stamped as a murderess.

Far from the coastal centers of culture and politics, Kansas stands at the very center of American stereotypes about red states. In the American imagination, it is a place LGBT people leave. No Place Like Home is about why they stay. The book tells the epic story of how a few disorganized and politically naïve Kansans, realizing they were unfairly under attack, rolled up their sleeves, went looking for fights, and ended up making friends in one of the country’s most hostile states. The LGBT civil rights movement’s history in California and in big cities such as New York and Washington, DC, has been well documented. But what is it like for LGBT activists in a place like Kansas, where they face much stiffer headwinds? How do they win hearts and minds in the shadow of the Westboro Baptist Church (“Christian” motto: “God Hates Fags”)? Traveling the state in search of answers—from city to suburb to farm—journalist C. J. Janovy encounters LGBT activists who have fought, in ways big and small, for the acceptance and respect of their neighbors, their communities, and their government. Her book tells the story of these twenty-first-century citizen activists—the issues that unite them, the actions they take, and the personal and larger consequences of their efforts, however successful they might be. With its close-up view of the lives and work behind LGBT activism in Kansas, No Place Like Home fills a prairie-sized gap in the narrative of civil rights in America. The book also looks forward, as an inspiring guide for progressives concerned about the future of any vilified minority in an increasingly polarized nation.