Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War II. Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children. And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family's consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children. What readers are saying about THE THROWAWAY CHILDREN: 'I haven't felt so immersed in a book in a very long time and have recommended to just about everyone' 'Heart wrenching' 'A truly powerful book'

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR Thrown Away Child is a memoir covering Louise Allen’s abusive childhood in a foster home, how she survived - using her love of art as a sanctuary - and how she hopes to right old wrongs now by fostering children herself and campaigning for the improvement of foster care services. It is a compelling and inspirational story. This book gives a voice to the many children who grew up unhappily in care.

A Canadian teenager travels to China to explore her ancestry and search for her birth mother in a dramatic and moving YA novel. Throwaway Daughter tells the story of Grace Dong-mei Parker, whose biggest concern is how to distill her adoption from China into the neat blanks of her personal history assignment. Aside from the unwelcome reminders of difference, Grace loves passing for the typical Canadian teen — until the day she witnesses the Tiananmen massacre on the news. Horrified, she sets out to explore her Chinese ancestry, only to discover that she was one of the thousands of infant girls abandoned in China since the introduction of the one-child policy, strictly enforced by the Communist government. But Grace was one of the lucky ones, adopted as a baby by a loving Canadian couple. With the encouragement of her adoptive parents, she studies Chinese and travels back to China in search of her birth mother. She manages to locate the village where she was born, but at first no one is willing to help her. However, Grace never gives up and, finally, she is reunited with her birth mother, discovering through this emotional bond the truth of what happened to her almost twenty years before.

Tommy was not loved by his owner who forgot to feed him, didn't play with him, left him alone a lot and then threw him away in the trash. When a city worker found him, he took him to an animal shelter where they made Tommy strong and happy. Soon he was adopted by a loving family.

My memories of Grace never added up to how she really was. She was always impossible to pin down, dancing just out of my reach, exactly as she did when she was alive. Nora was a girl of twelve when the war broke out and she was forced to join the train-loads of evacuees leaving London's East End for rural Kent. Her surrogate family, the Rivers, are unlike anyone she has met before and she soon comes to love her new life with them, and in particular with twelve-year-old Grace. Over the next few years, as the dogfights rage ever more fiercely over head and it becomes clear that the Rivers marriage contains deep and irreparable cracks, Nora and Grace grow as close as sisters - though, to Nora's confusion, even this is not quite as close as she would like ...What happened next is a secret that will gnaw away at Nora for the rest of her life - a secret that she can only begin to tell when she is certain that she is approaching the end.

A timely edge-of-your-seat thriller from a debut writer to watch. Caroline is only three months from her great escape — leaving behind her rigid prep school and the parents who think they can convert her to being straight — when her best friend, Madison, goes missing. There’s no question that Caroline will get involved in the investigation. After all, she has her own reasons for not trusting the police, and she owes Madison big time. But Caroline uncovers a wider mystery as she follows the clues, with other missing girls and no one on the case. Why isn’t anyone looking for these girls? And what’s the connection between them and Madison? Could it be . . . Caroline herself?

Argues that the largely negative portrayal of fathers in mass media is both inaccurate and harmful, and offer proposals for change.

An unputdownable drama from the bestselling author of The Girl With No Name. Wynsdown, 1949. In the small Somerset village of Wynsdown, Charlotte Shepherd is happily married and now feels settled in her adopted home after arriving from Germany on the Kindertransport as a child during the war. Meanwhile, the squire's fighter pilot son, Felix, has returned to the village with a fiancée in tow. Daphne is beautiful, charming... and harbouring secrets. After meeting during the war, Felix knows some of Daphne's past, but she has worked hard to conceal one that could unravel her carefully built life. For Charlotte, too, a dangerous past is coming back in the shape of fellow refugee, bad boy Harry Black. Forever bound by their childhoods, Charlotte will always care for him, but Harry's return disrupts the village quiet and it's not long before gossip spreads. The war may have ended, but for these girls, trouble is only just beginning. What readers are saying about The Married Girls: 'Thoroughly enjoyed this book' 'Three words: wonderful, captivating and enthralling' 'I am so pleased I found this author' 'Diney Costeloe at her best.

How one woman turned her life upside down to help those who needed it most - half a world away. Every orphan comes with a story. Every journalist has a story that stays with them. And everyone has the power to make a difference. From rural Queensland to rural China, China Baby Love is the story of moving mountains, one shovel at a time. Former foreign correspondent and host of ABC TV's ‘One Plus One', Jane Hutcheon introduces us to Linda Shum, a not-so-ordinary grandmother and widow from Gympie whose compassion for China's forgotten children inspired her to create an unlikely empire. The story of COAT (Chinese Orphans Assistance Team) and Linda's quest to help orphans, many with multiple disabilities, reveals the hidden human aftermath of the One-Child Policy. A tentative visit to an orphanage in a small Chinese city turned into many over a period of twenty years. Linda's curiosity transformed into sheer determination to battle superstition, bureaucracy and a constant lack of funds, to found foster homes and a special needs school that has transformed hundreds of lives, including her own. What Jane intended as a five-minute ‘human interest' segment in a news broadcast inspired an unexpected friendship and the writing of a book that would take Jane back to China. Through the story of Linda Shum's life and work, Jane gets to the heart of some painful truths behind modern Chinese families living in a one-party state.

The gavel drops. With this judgement, another young man is forever branded "guilty." Whether truly a monster or just a victim of a broken system, he will spend the coming days, weeks, and months undergoing institutional rehabilitation. Join an altruistic educator as he ventures behind the wall in an endeavor to transform the lives of youth others have simply thrown away.