Alphareader - Danielle Binks

In a neo-Gothic mansion in a city at the end of the world, Ellie finds there's room enough for art, family, forgiveness and love. A coming-of-age story about embracing the things that scare us from the author of ‘The Year the Maps Changed.’

How do you ruin someone's childhood? You let them make-believe that they are a monster. But sooner or later, the mask must come off...

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it's too late. But forgiveness feels like playing make-believe, and memories are like ghosts.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and last comes to understand her family's legacy - and her own part in it.

A story of love, loss, family and film - a stirring, insightful novel about letting go of anger and learning to forgive without forgetting. And about embracing the things that scare us, in order to be braver.

Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink

'The Year of Wonders' by Geraldine Brooks 

More super sweet work by Gyo Fujikawa

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I howl. I howl at the roof like a hotted-up bomb doing donuts, full of screeches. I howl like an air-raid siren, my arms stretched out wide. Howls are like songs. They can’t be summoned; they just happen. They come from a place that I barely understand. And then something else climbs to the surface, something black and jagged, something from the deep. Imagine all your worst feelings surfacing. Imagine coughing up razor blades. Imagine not being able to stop the pain from coming out, and not knowing when it’s going to end.

'This is Shyness' by Leanne Hall 

He said nothing. Very sarcastically.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

There ain't no sin. There ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

'Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck