http://www.penguin.com.au/

Can’t believe it’s nearly Christmas – again – and here we are thinking about shopping lists, roast turkey recipes and best of all, holidays. Finally, no deadlines, emails or racing across peak hour traffic to soccer practice. Time instead to kick off our shoes, to stop, reflect, unwind, watch a sunset and enjoy some fabulous holiday reading.

Armchair travel, many will agree, is a splendid substitute for the backseat cries of ‘how much further?” and airport queues. Instead, visit the wildly beautiful northern NSW, captured in all its languid, tropical beauty in Belinda Jeffery’s Country Cookbook and enjoy gorgeous recipes, lovely

descriptions of country life and lush wildlife photography. If la dolce vita is more your style, then take a foodie’s tour of Italy from Venezia to Napoli with Toby Puttock’s Cook Like An Italian and be inspired by such beautiful summer desserts as vanilla panna cotta with caramelised quince. Or let Karen Martini take the pain out of entertaining with her cookbook, Feasting, a collection of new recipes organised into 20 menus such as Long Lunch and Special Occasion Dinner. If cooking’s not your thing but eating well is, Jamie Oliver puts an entire three course meal on the table in no time with Jamie’s Thirty Minute Meals. In Your Place Or Mine, Masterchef Australia judges

George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan devise 86 delicious recipes based on 43 favourite ingredients and give simple family favourites a restaurant ‘renovation.’ If your own relatives get too much, you can always move into a stately old home in country Victoria and enjoy the ups and downs of someone else’s family in Monica McInerney’s wonderfully entertaining and touching At Home With The Templetons. For escape into a big, juicy read, there’s Bryce Courtenay’s tale of mystery and seduction set in the fabulously over the top world of advertising, Fortune Cookie. Family is again central in two new wickedly funny novels: She’s been making us laugh for 30 years, now

What a year it’s been. So much drama and change, with Julia Gillard becoming Prime Minister, the Icelandic volcano creating chaos, Prince William’s engagement, Australia’s fantastic performance at the Commonwealth Games, the arrival of the iPad and the unexpected ‘departure’ of a Rafter to the horror of fans of the popular TV show.

Dawn French entertains us with her book, Just A Tiny Bit Marvellous, a darkly comic tale of a long suffering mother and her two teenage children, one stroppy, the other plain weird. Maggie Alderson’s romantic comedy Shall We Dance? is set in the world of gorgeous vintage fashion and is about a difficult teenage girl and her mother who falls in love with a man 20 years her junior (grrr…is that a cougar I hear?). For baby boomers who remember the great music and everything else that went on in the days of Sunbury, they can re-visit those halcyon times with Keep Rockin,’ a fantastic tribute to the one and only Billy Thorpe – Thorpie - full of amazing photos, memorabilia and dozens of interviews with people like Mick Fleetwood and Olivia Newton-John. Like the man himself, Paul Kelly’s memoir, How To Make Gravy, is truly special - insightful, funny, honest, compassionate and intelligent. Cloak and dagger intrigue meets elegant prose in John le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor. Speaking of elegance and wit, no-one does it better

than the adorable Stephen Fry so it’s no surprise that his latest memoir, The Fry Chronicles, is intriguing, hilarious and utterly compelling. Clive Cussler’s Crescent Dawn: A Dirk Pitt Novel is full of derring-do adventure at sea with more explosions than a family Christmas lunch. Internationally acclaimed Tom Clancy has the good guys hunting the world’s most dangerous terrorist in his latest blockbuster, Dead or Alive. For sports fans who love their cricket, Standing My Ground, by champion cricketer Matthew Hayden, is as bold and powerful as the man himself and head and shoulders above the average sports book. Boys who normally won’t read are guaranteed to adore The Ugly Truth: Diary of a Wimpy Kid in which our gangly anti-hero, Greg Heffley, grapples with boy-girl parties. The legendary Graeme Base takes us on a wonderful sea voyage with incredible images and imaginative storytelling in The Legend of the Golden Snail. For everyone (like the whole world), who has been hanging out for Last Sacrifice,

the heart-stopping, thrilling finale to the bestselling Vampire Academy series, it’s the ultimate Christmas present. Fashionistas who are already mad about the sharp and funny Michi Girl on-line, won’t want to miss Like I Give a Frock: Fashion forecasts and Meaningless Advice. Pet lovers – and anyone needing a cheer-up at Christmas - will adore The A-Z of Unfortunate Dogs, Adam Elliot’s whimsical ode to not so perfect canines in drawings and rhyming couplets. Woof! Woof!

From everyone at Penguin, we wish you a very Happy Christmas filled with great reading.

FORTUNE COOKIE

NEW FROM

Simon Koo is an ambitious Australian-born Chinese who goes to Singapore in the mid-sixties to work for Samuel Oswald Wing, an advertising agency. But the Wing brothers, who run the agency, are not what they seem. There is soon trouble when Simon falls in love with the forbidden Mercy B. Lord, the illegitimate daughter of a Japanese officer and a Chinese mother who abandoned her on the doorstep of a Catholic orphanage.

I do hope you enjoy Fortune Cookie – a love story set against the wretched trade in drugs and human misery operating during the Vietnam War.

NEW FROM

A heart-stopping thriller set in the world of advertising

Watch the trailer

Watch the interview with Bryce

And now he brings his greatest story of all, a terrific summer page-turner filled with breathtaking suspense, extraordinary imagination, desperate men and dangerous acts. Popular hero Dirk Pitt goes on a mission to solve an ancient mystery and locate a lost ‘manifest’ that might change the history of the world as we know it. clivecussler.com.au

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neWSleTTeR HeRe

Monica McInerney, Australia’s most popular female novelist, talks about her life, her writing and her latest, bestselling novel, At Home With The Templetons, a wonderfully entertaining and touching story about family, first love and friendship, set in a stately old country home:

What inspired At Home With The Templetons?I grew up in the Claire Valley in SA and there was a beautiful historic mansion that stood out in the valley. I was fascinated by that house and always wondered what really went on behind the scenes.

Who inspired Gracie, the youngest and most endearing of the Templeton children?

I’m spoiled as I have a lot of gorgeous young nieces and

Gracie is a composite of all of them. I think there’s just something gorgeous about enthusiastic, earnest, young kids.

Why did you feature two contrasting families, the Templetons with their seven children and their neighbour, Nina, a single mother with one son?I wanted a smaller, very different family watching the big, rambling, slightly bohemian Templetons from afar and then to slowly bring the families together and have them collide, with good and bad consequences.

Sibling rivalry and loyalty plays a part?I come from a family of seven brothers and sisters and although I never write about actual events within my own family, I use the emotions, the loyalties, the shifting landscape and alliances. It’s never static in a family. You never know what’s going to happen. I love that dynamic.

Q&A with

Watch the interview with Monica

How do you ever get a word in when you’re one of seven?You pick your moments – when the others are out (laughing). You learn to be very quick. I speak very quickly and I know that’s from growing up in a big family because you don’t have much air time.

Jealousy and envy are powerful influences in your book?Nobody ever knows what’s going on in another family or marriage, yet we all have illusions about what it’s like for somebody else. In my book both families think the other one has a slightly better life than they do. But the reader can see that they’re as troubled and as happy as one another. There is no perfect life.

Do you ever feel jealous?People feel jealous of the Templetons living in a large house and I know what that feels like because I live most of the year in Dublin in a tiny house. I see people with great big families and that would have been fun to have. But I also know that you can’t always have the life you think will be perfect. It’s about finding some sort of peace in your life with what you’ve got and without being Pollyanna about it, being grateful for what you have.

Your book also explores grief and its impact?Grief comes to every family. When it happens it sends out shock waves and I wrote about that very personally in The Alphabet Sisters, a couple of years after my father died. I was shocked by the impact of his death and how it changed the solar system of our family - we’ve never really quite put ourselves back in the same way.

At Home With The Templetons is also a great love story?It is and not just a love story between two characters. It’s also about the many other forms of great love - motherhood, marriage and the shadow side of love, not just the joy it can bring but the sadness and the mistakes you can make because of love.

Your book is set in lots of locations?It begins in Castlemaine in the Victorian goldfields and moves to London, Melbourne, Italy, France, Edinburgh, Liverpool and two towns in the US. I spend a lot of time travelling on book tours and I like to travel for pleasure. I use every place I’ve been to. That makes it authentic for me.

You live most of the year in Dublin with your Irish husband, yet your books still feel very Australian?I think being on the other side of the world makes it easier because I miss it. So my memories are very vivid.

What do you miss most about Australia?My family. That crisp, early summer morning and the warble of magpies.

What food do you miss?Pasties with sauce, out of a paper bag.

What kind of books do you enjoy reading?Anything and everything. The whole point of reading is to get a glimpse into another’s mind or another life and the more doorways, the richer your life, I think.

Your three best tips for aspiring writers?1. Read widely. Not just to learn about technique but to work out what strikes chords with you because whatever you respond to as a reader will be the one that will be most true to you as a writer.

2. Write whenever you can. It’s a craft, you have to practise it. And don’t be put off if it’s not working. It doesn’t work straight away for anybody – no book arrives full formed. But the more you write, the more material you’ve got to play with.

3. Don’t give up. Stick at it and take it seriously because if you don’t, nobody else will either.

This latest romantic comedy from Australia’s favourite female novelist is the perfect beach read. As light as a summer breeze yet full of insightful observations about family, marriage

and friendship, it boasts a great cast of characters and an addictive plot that explores the crazy highs and lows of romantic love, betrayal, jealousy, sibling rivalry and the magic of childhood. It’s a great summer read, funny, sad and very real.

For over thirty years, Dawn French has been making people laugh in shows such as The Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders. Now, with her trademark wit and astute talent for observation, Dawn’s written this dark, comic novel about a modern family. Guaranteed fun for anyone who’s ever dreaded a milestone birthday, had to deal with teenage children and shared a home with that weird group we call ‘relations.’

A funny, unconventional love story. When a clairvoyant tells Gretel Killeen she only has days to live, the former Big Brother host looks back on the most important things in her life. Along with her strange childhood, there’s Jimmy and their warts and all friendship which is perhaps far more honest than any marriage. A spicy blend of fiction and fact produces some very revealing glimpses of the private life of a public woman.

Marriage, celebrity culture

and the bittersweet bonds of

family take centre stage in

this warm, funny novel that

sparkles with wit and wisdom.

Sabrina Falks is the golden girl; a beautiful, successful actress

who is engaged to the too-good-to-be-true Edward. Her life is

glamorous and seemingly perfect – apart from her recurring

desire to run away.

Her younger sister, Mimi, is funny and bright but also

hopelessly lost, with no career prospects, no money, no love

life and a string of disastrous mistakes in her past.

Estranged since a fight over their dark family history,

Sabrina and Mimi enter into a reluctant alliance when

Sabrina hires Mimi to be her bridesmaid. The sisters then

do battle with intrusive paparazzi, out-of-control dress

designers and, increasingly, each other.

Every now and then a book comes along that has everyone at Penguin talking. This year it’s been Hans Fallada’s stunning novel, Alone In Berlin, “a book that slowly ensnares you, at once gripping, profound, and un-put-downable,” said author Richard Flanagan.Alone In Berlin is the story of a German couple who after the death of their son at the front begin leaving postcards around Berlin criticising Hitler’s regime. A chilling portrayal of extreme fear under dictatorship, it is written with “a journalistic clarity and thriller writer’s pace” (The Times), the tension becoming almost unbearable as a cat and mouse game develops between the couple and a Gestapo inspector who is determined to catch them.

More than a vivid and remarkable snapshot of history and a gripping drama, this is a book that makes you take a good, long, hard look at yourself and ask: What would you have done? Would you have had the courage to rebel when it may cost you your life or that of your loved ones? And do small acts of rebellion in the face of overwhelming evil, really count?

Alone In Berlin sold over 100,000 copies in Europe within three months of it being translated into English and is being made into a major motion picture.

Don’t miss it.

London’s Queen of Vintage fashion, meets a man on the eve of her dreaded 49th birthday. He’s kind, sensitive and he’s divinely handsome. Unfortunately he’s barely half her age and Loulou’s not sure about going ‘cougar.’ Loulou’s 21 year old daughter, prickly, impossible Theo, won’t get a job, won’t move out and hasn’t said a civil word in years. She too is on the verge of a spectacularly unsuitable affair.

Watch the interview with Maggie Alderson

This bumper Tenth Anniversary edition brings together much-loved stories from the previous four books by some of the biggest names in women’s

fiction – Marian Keyes, Candace Bushnell, Cathy Kelly and Maggie Alderson among many others. Grab a cup of tea and reserve a place on the couch this summer to enjoy the comedy, romance, adventure and drama of some of the best short fiction on offer.

Acompanion volume to Michi’s first fabulous book, Like I Give A Frock, this gorgeous, funny, at times outrageous

encyclopaedia to Michi’s world of fashion is the perfect gift for girls of all ages. It contains a glossary of the fashion world from Michi’s always unique and often irreverent point of view and brings a sense of joy, sophistication, surprise and subversion to all things fashion.

In Australia shacks have an almost hallowed role in our lives, either as a place to unwind on holiday or as a workshop and retreat. Photographer Simon

Griffiths travelled everywhere in search of examples, from the falling down, rusted tin shack to the artfully designed and smartly minimalist. This loving photographic salute to a treasured icon comes with portraits of the shack dwellers, an interesting mix of artists, environmentalists, fisherman, homebuilders and socialites.

These delightful drawings of dogs and charming rhyming

couplets from Adam Elliott, famed filmmaker, animator and winner of an Academy Award for Harvie Crumpet are guaranteed to make everyone smile, especially those in need of cheering up at Christmas. From Audrey whose tail is too long to Zak who’s hopeless at tricks, this collection of unfortunate dogs proves you don’t need to be perfect to be loved – a relief to us all.

43 ingredients 86 recipes and 2 of australia’s best loved chefs!Inspiring, instructive and loads of fun, this cookbook from Masterchef Australia judges, George Calombaris & Gary Mehigan, is the perfect Christmas present for the aspiring cook in your life. Discover their favourite ingredients – from saffron to salmon – and the art of pulling together unforgettable dishes. Learn great techniques from two consummate professionals and enjoy the simple pleasures of family favourites given a restaurant renovation, such as George’s famous chocolate mousse.

Watch the interview with George and Garry

An exquisitely beautiful cookbook transports you to a simpler time when neighbours left boxes of surplus vegetables on the doorstep and people

stopped for a cup of tea and homemade cake. Part journal, part cookbook with superb photographs of food and the wildly beautiful northern NSW, this ode

to Belinda’s country life and the bountiful local produce that inspires her in the kitchen, will have you dreaming of your own sea-change.

Feel flustered about entertaining over the festive season? Karen Martini removes all the stress with 130 new recipes organised into 20 menus for different occasions. Karen shows how to match starters with mains, mains with sides and how to choose the perfect dessert to finish the meal. From the long lunch to the comfort roast, this is about great food that is so easy to prepare you’ll be able to enjoy yourself for a change.

Watch the interview with Karen Martini

Tobie Puttock’s love affair with Italian food began when he lived in Italy as a young chef. Recently he returned to Italy and renewed his passion, revisiting old favourite restaurants and discovering new places. Tobie’s 100 recipes, some of them classics with new twists and a rich array of travel and food photography, is your passport to enjoying authentic Italian food without packing a suitcase or joining an airport queue.

Go on pilgrimage with Dee Nolan through southern France and northern Spain and discover a foodie’s paradise. With stunning photography by Earl Carter, this joyful kaleidoscope of history, sublime cooking, recipes, breath-taking vistas and magnificent wines takes you back to the heart of things to explore why we should care about what we eat, how our food is produced and why we need to go walking to escape our busy modern lives.

Watch the interview with Toby Puttock

From the Masterchef Australia finalist famous for combining his passion for meat with his love of beer, a stunningly original collection of recipes and one of the most beautiful cookbooks of the season. Chris’s roast duck and rich osso buco recipes are stand-outs and of course there’s his signature Beeramisu that had the judges in raptures, along with some other great, booze-laden desserts.

Acclaimed chef Damien Pignolet shows us the endless possibilities of the salad. Here are entrée salads to stimulate the appetite, side salads to refresh the palate, and warm salads that serve as a meal in their own right. Learn how to perfect classic salads, such as niçoise, and how to marry a range of tastes and textures to create a chicken salad with asparagus, peaches and a pistachio nut vinaigrette, and a sweet salad of strawberry, orange and red wine.

Damien’s first book, French, captured the essence of classic French cooking in Australia. With its rich photography and detailed notes on produce, composition and presentation, Salades is set to educate, inspire and delight the dedicated home cook.

Love eating well but don’t like spending hours in the kitchen especially when it’s holiday time? The popular UK chef shows how to cook a complete, mouth-watering meal in no time. Jamie gives you the menu and breaks the recipes down into simple steps and shows how by being organised, working fast and using his shortcuts and clever tricks, you can serve fabulous 3-course meals in just 30 minutes…easy-peasy!

Watch the interview with Chris Badenoch

Paul Kelly’s critically acclaimed memoir, How To Make Gravy is now available as an iPhone and iPad App through iTunes. More than just an app, this is a reading experience.

The How To Make Gravy app brings to life the words, music and magic of one of Australia’s best loved singer-songwriters. Mirroring the unique structure of his memoir, this app will not only let you read the unabridged

ebook of How To Make Gravy, it will also consult your iPod library, so you can listen to any versions of his songs you might already have.

The first six songs referred to in the book are included to get you started. The app also contains a very personal video introduction by the iconic entertainer and six audio extracts.

The app adds to the already rich publishing program surrounding Paul Kelly’s extraordinary memoir. As well

as the hardback version of How To Make Gravy, there is the special edition slipcase package which contains the memoir along with the companion A-Z recordings box set. This includes eight CDs of new live recordings of songs that form the book’s chapters and a 64-page booklet of colour photographs.

Playful and honest, insightful and intimate, How To Make Gravy is a irresistible reflection on the big and little things in life by a wonderful entertainer and born storyteller.

Make someone’s Christmas with this extraordinary memoir of much loved Australian and born storyteller, Paul Kelly.

A superstar with zero pretensions who is inspired by everything from cricket to love, Paul opens up to share some of his private, off-stage thoughts and moments. Like his music, Paul’s acclaimed memoir is insightful, funny, honest, compassionate, intelligent, playful, warm and thought provoking. An irresistible reflection on the big and little things in life, it is destined to become a classic.

Download the apps

Download the apps

Watch the interview with Paul Kelly

The intriguing, hilarious and compelling story of the wonderful Stephen Fry as he began to take his first tentative steps in the worlds of television, journalism, radio, theatre and film. Fry arrived at Cambridge University, in his own words, a convicted fraudster, thief, liar, fantasist and failed suicide. Instead university life offered him love, romance, the chance to perform on stage and friends like Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie.

If the words ‘Thorpie’ and ‘Sunbury’ unleashes a flood of nostalgia, then this tribute to legendary rocker

Billy Thorpe will bring great joy this Christmas. There are a minefield of wonderful memories to be found among the revealing interviews, hundreds of fascinating photos, memorabilia and moving recollections from Lynn, Billy’s widow. From his meteoric rise with the Aztecs to his hard rockin’ Sunbury days to Billy the loving father and husband, it’s all here.

THE ENTERTAINING AND REVEALINGAUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN

AUSTRALIAN CRICKET LEGEND

Watch the television commercial for Standing My Ground

thenailbiting endThe Heart-STOPPING f I NALe of the phenomenally popular series delivers the answer to one of fiction’s biggest cliff-hangers when Rose chooses between the equally gorgeous Adrian and Dimitri. There’s murder, smoldering love, jealousy, sacrifice and danger with Rose on trial for her life - and with Lissa first in line for the throne, will their friendship ever be the same again?

One thing is certain - Last Sacrifice will be HUGE this Christmas.

Check out the Vampire Academy website

Check out the Vampire Academy forum

He still doesn’t have to shave too often

His first decent drawing was of a turtle at the age of 3 (Jeff, not the turtle)

He plays the piano “very, very poorly.”

Jeff’s brother Scott wrote one of the songs in the movie, Diary of A Wimpy Kid

He plays volleyball twice a week

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10about Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Things You Don’t Know

His favourite computer games are the Mario Kart series6

He plays volleyball twice a week

His favourite computer games are the Mario Kart series

His favourite sandwich is peanut butter and jelly (eeeuw)

His favourite song is Brownville Girl by Bob Dylan

He has two brothers and a sisterAt one stage he studied to become a federal law enforcement officer

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In Jeff Kinney’s latest book, The Ugly Truth, our hero, Greg Heffley, discovers the pressure of boy-girl parties… This book is guaranteed to be one of the most popular gifts under the Christmas tree. Kids love Greg Heffley, the spotty character who is constantly getting into trouble with parents and teachers. He’s always been in a hurry to grow up, but now that Greg’s dealing with boy-girl parties, increased responsibilities and awkward changes, all without his best friend, Rowley at his side, he’s not so sure.

Watch the Wimpy Kid television trailor

Graeme Base, award winning creator of the bestselling Animalia, takes readers on a stunning magical journey

through a land of vivid imagination featuring a bush that grows butterflies, a crab as big as an island and a boatload

of earwig pirates. This entrancing tale of young Wilbur and his cat with its hidden puzzle, adventures and vivid illustrations can be enjoyed on many levels and will

bring joy to the whole family this Christmas.

Check out the interview with Graeme Base

A wonderful picture book by Mem Fox, acclaimed author of some of Australia’s best loved books including Possum Magic, the best selling picture book ever. The little ones will adore her latest, a mad parade of goats with a rollicking, rhyming text that they’ll be able to memorise as they hone their numeracy skills. Reminiscent of Where is the Green Sheep? And expected to be every bit as popular.

Gentle text and exquisite illustrations evoke the magic of childhood, when every experience is new and the days are full of adventure. Each spread is devoted to a different month as we are taken on a journey through the Australian seasons and this girl’s loves and family traditions. This charming story about change and growth will make great Christmas reading for children and be a delightful trip down memory lane for their parents.

A winning picture book by world-renowned author Mem Fox, with colourful illustrations by Jan Thomas.

This brilliant rhyming text will have children smiling, clapping and counting the ever increasing goats!

How many goats do you see?

The Shelley Beach Writer’s Group is an irresistible novel - perfect

summer holiday reading. Funny, touching, wise – and completely

addictive - it’s about escaping, re-inventing yourself and the magical

healing properties of a walk along a gorgeous beach under a big blue sky with

a dog that understands every word you say. Gina Laurel, a 50-something

corporate high flier, whose life comes crashing down with the end of her

marriage and bankruptcy, takes up the offer of a job as house /dog sitter in

Shelley Beach. But as you’ll see in this extract, just a few days into Gina’s arrival there, life at Shelley Beach

is full of the unexpected.

Coming in January 2011

Thursday 2 July I don’t know what woke me – the Dog howling, the storm or the steady stream of water pouring on my face. I brought the Dog inside and we watched the rain escaping from the ceiling onto my bed.

I grabbed some blankets from Adrian’s hall cupboard and made a bed on the couch in the living room. The Dog and I watched the spectacular storm from Adrian’s front windows. Eventually we fell asleep.

We were woken by hammering on the front door. Clutching a blanket around me, I hobbled to the door to answer it. Three charac ters were standing on Adrian’s verandah. I stared at a woman dressed in corporate clothes, holding a small child. An older child was stand ing beside her. The woman juggled the small child on her hip while she nudged the older child forward. This was a perilous thing to do as the child was clutching a casserole.

‘I’m Joan Waters, Sam and Terri’s mother. We live next door. I apologise for not coming over to say hello to you yesterday. Sam’ – she indicated the small child – ‘had a fever. Adrian said you’d be happy to keep an eye on Terri until she goes to school this morning.’

Bloody hell, Adrian. Was this in my contract? ‘And Adrian usually picks Terri up after school every

Thursday,’ the corporate female rattled on. ‘I’m sorry to put this on you. I’ve a 9 o’clock client and I had trouble arranging alternative childcare. Adrian said he was sure you’d help out.’

The older child came alive. ‘Didn’t Adrian tell you about me? I’m Terri. T–E–double R–I. He said I had to show you how to use the computer.’

In Adrian’s endless stream of instructions I vaguely remembered him mentioning a Terry. Terry with a Y? An adult Terry?

‘Adrian lets me stay here every Thursday morning until I go to school. Then he picks me up after school; we come back here and Adrian cooks me dinner. When Mum comes home and settles Sam she rings Adrian, and he hands me over,’ the older child finished. I stared at the small child straddled on the woman’s hip. ‘Sam doesn’t stay here. He goes to Grandma’s.’

‘Right.’ ‘Can I come in? Mum’s running late.’ Bloody hell, Adrian! ‘Yes.’ Joan looked relieved and handed me a card with a

business address and a handwritten telephone number. ‘This is where you can contact me if anything happens to Terri, and this number here is my mother’s phone number. She cares for Sam during the day. I’ve contacted the school, so they know to expect you. Can you go to the office? Do

you mind? You have to sign Terri in when you drop her off, and sign her out when you pick her up.’

I nodded. The older child followed her mother to the car. I watched Joan as she kissed her daughter goodbye, strapped the tod dler into his car seat and drove off.

What kind of mother leaves her child with a madwoman who talks to a dog? Wrong call, Gina. Adrian had already told her that her child would be safe with me. Of course he had.

‘Can I put the casserole in the fridge?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Adrian usually makes dinner but Mum thought you

mightn’t be ready to cook yet.’ I clutched the blanket around me. ‘Right.’ The competent child ignored me and set about making

coffee. She was obviously familiar with Adrian’s kitchen. ‘Do you like “real” coffee?’

‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Adrian says the other stuff is crap.’ ‘Right.’ ‘Have you fed Hugo?’ ‘The Dog? No. Not yet.’ A condemning look. ‘Hugo likes to be fed at the same

time every morning – 6.30.’ Bloody hell! I clutched the mug of ‘real’ coffee handed

to me and watched the child feed the Dog. ‘If you hurry and get dressed, you can walk Hugo and

me to school. It only takes fifteen minutes. Mum’s a bit paranoid. She likes to know I’m safe at school. You’ll have to go to the office first because you’re not a regular parent.’

‘Right!’ ‘Can you do that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Cool. You’d better hurry. It’s getting late.’

Bloody hell! I needed a Bossy Child in my life like a hole in my head, but I dressed on cue, ran a comb through my hair and put the Dog on his leash.

At the school gate, this alarmingly independent child took the Dog’s leash. ‘You have to sign me in at the office. I’ll wait with Hugo.’ After due signing, I collected the Dog from Bossy Child.

‘I’d think about an emergency meal for tonight if I were you. Mum’s tuna casseroles are frequently feral. Sometimes they’re brilliant, other times she just misses. If she misses we give them to Hugo.’

‘Right!’ ‘See you after school. Adrian and Hugo always pick me

up at 3.30.’ I nodded, feeling shell-shocked. The Dog and I walked

home along Beach Road.

Extract from The Shelly Beach Writers’ Group

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Across1. Old English poem (7)3. Dickensian tale (4,5)5. Lord Henry regretted a meeting with ...... .... (6,4)7. Erotic stories, Delta of ..... (5)10. One who scores drugs (5)12. These outlaw bikers are no Angels (5)13. Useful for lessons in office politics (3,2,3)14. How many Easy Pieces? (3)15. You can't see this man (9)17. Steinbeck classic (7,3)21. Amount of time to travel the world (6,4)22. What kind of Wizard is he? (9)

23. Humbert's perversion (6)24. A backpacker's blues, The ..... (5)25. Adulterous Doctor's wife, Emma ...... (6)26. The mood of the prince (5)27. ...... History, a Vermont campus murder (6)28. Roald Dahl travels (4)

Down2. Gothic horror (12)3. A Beat poem (4)4. 1970s share house drama (6,4)5. Johnathon Harker's journals (7)

6. First book in this WW1 trilogy (12)8. Robert Downey Jr recently portrayed him on film, ........ Holmes (8)9. A book for music nerds (4,8)11. It inspired a Kate Bush song (9,7)14. To give up (9)16. Sartre's existential work (6)18. Found in Singapore (7)19. Elizabeth Jolley's novel, The ... (4)20. First language, ...... Tongue (6)

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Across1. Old English poem (7)3. Dickensian tale (4,5)5. Lord Henry regretted a meeting with ...... .... (6,4)7. Erotic stories, Delta of ..... (5)10. One who scores drugs (5)12. These outlaw bikers are no Angels (5)13. Useful for lessons in office politics (3,2,3)14. How many Easy Pieces? (3)15. You can't see this man (9)17. Steinbeck classic (7,3)21. Amount of time to travel the world (6,4)22. What kind of Wizard is he? (9)

23. Humbert's perversion (6)24. A backpacker's blues, The ..... (5)25. Adulterous Doctor's wife, Emma ...... (6)26. The mood of the prince (5)27. ...... History, a Vermont campus murder (6)28. Roald Dahl travels (4)

Down2. Gothic horror (12)3. A Beat poem (4)4. 1970s share house drama (6,4)5. Johnathon Harker's journals (7)

6. First book in this WW1 trilogy (12)8. Robert Downey Jr recently portrayed him on film, ........ Holmes (8)9. A book for music nerds (4,8)11. It inspired a Kate Bush song (9,7)14. To give up (9)16. Sartre's existential work (6)18. Found in Singapore (7)19. Elizabeth Jolley's novel, The ... (4)20. First language, ...... Tongue (6)

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