Indra publishing

Catherine Hoffmann’s 60s-style hip young adult novel, Paradise – One Shot  has been launched as an ebook, available from Amazon.

Just what is Lou’s problem? She acts so cool, belligerently cool – but it’s not for real. Under her hip speak bravado, Lou hides a massive insecurity which keeps her on the outside, never really one of the group. She shared her dreams with her only close friend, Aurora; but Aurora died just after school finished … or did she?

Working as an assistant in a municipal library, Lou is just whiling away her life until the beautiful Mark walks in; he’s young, perhaps much too young, but he’s beautiful – strong, athletic, and definitely interested in her.

How does that relationship go? And will Lou succeed in her one shot at the paradise she yearns for?

From Amazon Kindle at $(US)2.99 or the equivalent price through Amazon’s national websites.

Dessi’s Romance by Goldie Alexander

Ebook available from Amazon Kindle $(US)3.99

‘What is the best way to punish a so-called “close friend”?’

Emma and Dessi have been best friends forever, as have their mothers. Nothing comes between them until ‘schoolies week’ when ‘love’ hits Dessi for the first time – then disaster! All the problems and worries of the end of Year 12 are here: jobs (Emma works in ‘the supermarket-from-hell’), results, tertiary applications and ‘schoolies week’ at Surfers. But alas, poor Dessi has also just acquired a badly broken ankle.

This is a teen romance told in two alternating voices. Emma is the artistic one, and she’s sure her folio from Year 12 Art will get her into a course she’ll love – or she hopes so. She spends quite a bit of time throughout the story sketching her environs, or thinking how she could mix a particular colour she encounters (especially, it must be said, among her friends’ faces, who are going right over the top with alcohol and drugs, in celebrating schoolies week.)

Dessi is the literary one. She writes flawless poetry. This is one of the strengths of the book – unlike many stories in which a young person is a poet of some renown, but the poetry is very weak – here the short simple free verse poems are a delight.

Love is a leach, a bloodsucking vampire

whose sole aim is to turn you into a babbling idiot

with sightless eyes, deaf ears, and helpless limbs.

The story is a powerful picture of people at the end of their school years and the beginning of their lives in romance, work and tertiary study. It is gripping reading, as the relationships get more and more complicated, and we yearn for their resolution.

Virginia Lowe

Goldie Alexander adds to her already large collection of books for young adults with the new ebook, Dessi’s Romance. Emma asks her best friend, Dessi, to visit her boyfriend, Abdul, while she’s away at Schoolies’ Week in Surfers. Maybe not the best move, but staying home in Melbourne turned out okay for Dessi. And Emma wasn’t really lonely in Surfers!   Dessi’s Romance is now available on Amazon’s Kindle.