Too Flash

"Bring problems to us before they get too big to handle" the Principal advises Zo when she arrives at her new city school. But good advice isn't much help to Zo. Her mum's still a workaholic, and her best friend's still a thousand miles away back home.

Fifteen year old Missy comes from a tough family that doesn't take crap from anyone, and it shows. She's all muscles and attitude like a cattle dog on the warpath.

Zo's more laid back. Having money makes for a bigger comfort zone, even if you are Fat and black. A showdown can't be far away when Zo and Missy's worlds collide. It isn't a racial issue - or is it?

At school, out clubbing, or stomping the bush on Kulcha Kamp, the girls are on edgy ground. In the darkness of night, each of them finds a special magic all their own.

Hard Yards

Roo Glover has two highly desirably talents - he can fight, and he can run like the clappers. But when a suspicious death in custody fractures the King family, can Roo - the white orphan taken in off the street - handle the heat? Maybe if his girlfriend Leena wasn't pregnant then Roo's dreams of running in the Olympics could really take off...but Leena is, and Roo's world is about to come apart fast.

Killing Darcy

Angry young Koori Darcy Mango is on parole, and looking for his mob in Northern New South Wales. Befriending the Menzies family wasn't at all what he had in mind, but then neither was the old house hidden in the bush near Desperation Creek. Why does the camera from the house take pictures of the past? It's Darcy's fate to find out.

Steam Pigs

"I haven't got a 'boyfriend', Mum."
"Fine way to be carrying on then, out all Sat'dy night with a strange fella..."
"Muuum."
"Don't you marm me, my girl. When I was your age I wasn't out running around with any stray bloke with a flash car and the gift of the gab."
And when I'm your age, thought Sue maliciously, I won't be ringing up my kids to scab money and make their lives a misery into the bargain.

Sue Wilson, young and Aboriginal, escapes her "too-large, too-poor family in a too-small" north Queensland town for Logan City's frontier sprawl. Entering "the mythic world of Work" she discovers that the view from behind the bar is less than glamorous, but pays the rent. When she meets Roger the good times begin to roll until she finds herself starring in a feature with medium level violence.

Melissa Lucashenko's first novel makes no apologies. With direct and gutsy language, her characters live their lives in the shadows cast by indifferent affluence.