Fifteen-year-old Courtney Marlow didn't exactly think it through. She thought the offer to have her life broadcast on national television was the perfect solution to her family's financial troubles. She was wrong. Mackenzie Dahl, the show's producer, promised to show Australia a real tenager. Courtney was going to be a positive role model, someone on television without a boob job and an eating disorder. Soon, everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame via a little bit of Courtney - especially her conniving friend Katie, and her stepmother, Lola. And Courtney is just beginning to realise that 'ordinary' does not translate to 'entertaining'...

Fifteen-year-old Courtney Marlow didn't exactly think it through. She thought the offer to have her life broadcast on national television was a "sorry" from some Higher Being for a life of unfortunate events. She was wrong. Mackenzie Dahl, the show's producer, promised to show Australia a real teenager. Courtney was going to be a positive role model, someone on television without a boob job and an eating disorder. But as events in her life are deviously manipulated to create drama, Courtney begins to realise that "ordinary" does not translate to "entertaining". Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame via a little bit of Courtney - especially her conniving friend Katie, and her stepmother, Lola. But Courtney is not the pliant teenager everyone seems to think she is... A funny, edgy, completely compelling novel of our times.

The tragic mulatta was a stock figure in nineteenth-century American literature, an attractive mixed-race woman who became a casualty of the color line. The tragic muse was an equally familiar figure in Victorian British culture, an exotic and alluring Jewish actress whose profession placed her alongside the “fallen woman.” In Transatlantic Spectacles of Race, Kimberly Manganelli argues that the tragic mulatta and tragic muse, who have heretofore been read separately, must be understood as two sides of the same phenomenon. In both cases, the eroticized and racialized female body is put on public display, as a highly enticing commodity in the nineteenth-century marketplace. Tracing these figures through American, British, and French literature and culture, Manganelli constructs a host of surprising literary genealogies, from Zelica to Daniel Deronda, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Lady Audley’s Secret. Bringing together an impressive array of cultural texts that includes novels, melodramas, travel narratives, diaries, and illustrations, Transatlantic Spectacles of Race reveals the value of transcending literary, national, and racial boundaries.

Ivola Hoffman was once a vibrant, bubbly and charming twenty-four-year-old woman who now found life to be mundane and routine. Coming home from work one afternoon, she experiences a phenomenon that flings her world into darkness. Her friends abandon her, her dreams turn to nightmares and her touch turns deadly. What is she? Why is an evil entity after her? And why does the name Lola resonate in her mind?Far away from home and people that love her, Ivy tries hopelessly to stay alive in a strange world that has suddenly turned against her.

Praised as “Australia’s answer to Maeve Binchy, a modern-day Jane Austen” (The Sun Herald, Australia), Monica McInerney, internationally bestselling author of The Alphabet Sisters, returns with a poignant novel of love, loss, and the enduring strength of family ties. Nestled in a picturesque corner of southern Australia, the Valley View Motel has been run by the Quinlans for years—and nobody adores the place more than Lola, the family’s lovable and mischievous Irish-born matriarch. So when she insists that her relatives spend their Christmas elsewhere, the close-knit bunch can’t help but be a bit curious. Lola has always had a knack for clever schemes; after all, she once slyly reunited her three feuding granddaughters, whom she nicknamed the Alphabet Sisters. And with the holiday season fast approaching, Lola decides it’s time to stir up some extra excitement. Plotting in secret and online, Lola thinks it would be fun to invite a select group of strangers to stay at the motel for Christmas. Will these guests become friends, ignite sparks, fall in love? As she counts down the days until their arrival, Lola’s own family dramas threaten to upend her best-laid plans. Yet amid moments of humor, heartache, and unexpected twists of fate, Lola finds that she’s the one who’s in for the biggest surprise of all. “[Monica] McInerney’s assured writing sparkles. . . . When you reach the end, [Lola’s Secret] will leave you feeling like you’ve been given a huge, warm hug.”—Hello! magazine “A delicate treat . . . a lovely, gentle story of a family, a Christmas, love and different kinds of adventure.”—The Courier-Mail (Australia) “Exploring universal family issues of loss, rivalry, aging and grief, [Lola’s Secret] is a warm, witty and moving novel.”—Woman’s Day (Australia) Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.