Discovery HSC English: Boy Meets Girl

Brick Lane tells the story of a Bangladeshi family living in London, with Nazneen, the wife and mother, as the protagonist. Her life journey and the relationships she has with her family and community reveal much about culture clash and inner desires.

Two young people are forced to make a stand in this thought-provoking look at racism and prejudice in an alternate society.
Sephy is a Cross -- a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought -- a "colourless" member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood, but that's as far as it can go. In their world, Noughts and Crosses simply don't mix. Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum -- a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger. Can they possibly find a way to be together?

This is a funny story of one boy's navigation through the treacherous waters of adolescence. Will he make it? Or will he sink under the weight of his Professor-of-Jokes mother's illness, a girl called Killer, his neurotic siblings, and a very big fear of the sea?

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit.

Joe is boring. He lives in a comfortable London suburb. He does all right in school, but shows no real promise. He plays in a band, but is less than passionate about music. Then he meets Candy. She is 16, beautiful, addicted to heroin, and a prostitute. She's also the only girl ever to look at him twice. He convinces himself that he loves her, and tries to get her off smack and the streets. Her enormous, terrifying pimp is very unhappy with Joe, and tries to murder him and everyone he loves.

Coop is cooking up another sure-misfire scheme (big surprise), and this time the comedy plays out from Sean's point of view. What's the new master plan? Making a cheapo horror movie guaranteed to make Coop, Sean, and Matt filthy rich! It's a terrible idea, and Sean knows it. But he actually is desperate for cash -- and for a way to wipe that big fat L off his girlfriend-less forehead. But when he agrees to write a script about the attack of zombie-vampire humanzees, he has no idea just how powerful a chick magnet this movie will be. Suddenly Sean is juggling not one but three interested ladies. Will any of them wind up as Sean's true leading lady? Will Sean stop being a doormat and finally start calling the shots?

Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back? The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback.

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Sebastian Pringle is 17, overweight and self-conscious. He chooses an Outward Bound trip to Bird Island to be near the lovely Natasha, but things go terribly wrong as he is caught up with some rowdy mates in a horrific massacre of the sea birds that inhabit the island.

When Ty witnesses the knife murder of another boy he identifies some very dangerous people and the police put him and his mother into hiding in a witness protection scheme.

Thunder Road - you find it in any city after dark. It's where street racers go to test their machines and their nerve. Trace has grown out of small town ways. In the big city he hooks up with Devon, a guy with the golden touch, who introduces Trace to burn-offs, big-city style. When Trace falls for a girl even Devon says is out of his league, loyalties are stretched. Then Devon hits on a scheme for hauling in cash. Soon he and Trace find out who really controls Thunder Road. As trouble closes in, everyone is heading for burnout - fast.

Australian teenager Dan Bancroft had a choice to make: go to Geneva with his parents for a year, or move into a house with his bass-playing aunt Jacq and her friend Naomi. He chose Jacq's place, and his life will never be the same. This action-packed and laugh-out-loud-funny novel navigates Dan's chaotic world of calculus, roommates, birds, and love.

Life. This could be the best summer of Kane's life. This summer is different because there's a new girl in town. It's different because she's Tanika Bell - occasional bus driver, regular optimist and, it turns out, woman of the world. But expecting life to play by the rules is like making laws for clouds. Kane's whole family has never worked by the rules. His dad ran off years ago, his mother's still chafing and drinking, and she's really bad on her bad days. Summer sets in, hot and humid, and Kane works the road verges. But he's got lofty ambitions, he's got Tanika on his mind and he's going to make this summer count, whatever it takes.

Bianca is starting school at Evernight Academy a prestigious boarding school deep in the countryside and from the first day she can't wait to escape. Her parents who are teachers there are sure she'll be happy but Bianca has a feeling there's something seriously wrong with the place. Something evil lurking in the shadowy woods at the edge of the school grounds ... As she settles in Bianca's sense of unease grows. Her classmates are impossibly perfect her teachers are slightly sinister and the new boy Lucas continues to send out mixed signals. Is he attracted to her or not? Meanwhile another classmate Balthazar is definitely interested ... and he's totally gorgeous! Things come to a horrifying climax on the night of the Autumn Ball where Bianca makes a shocking discovery about herself and her feelings for Lucas that will affect their lives forever.

Colin Singleton believes he is a washed-up child prodigy. A graduating valedictorian with a talent for creating anagrams, he fears he'll never do anything to classify him as a genius. To make matters worse, he has just been dumped by his most recent girlfriend (all of them have been named Katherine), and he's inconsolable. What better time for a road trip! He and his buddy Hassan load up the gray Olds (Satan's Hearse) and leave Chicago. They make it as far as Gutshot, Tennessee, where they stop to tour the gravesite of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and meet a girl who isn't named Katherine. It's this girl, Lindsey, who helps Colin work on a mathematical theorem to predict the duration of romantic relationships.

Miles Halter′s whole life has been one big non-event, until he meets Alaska Young.
Gorgeous, clever and undoubtedly screwed-up, Alaska draws Miles into her reckless world and irrevocably steals his heart. For Miles, nothing can ever be the same again.

Quentin Jacobsen - Q to his friends - is eighteen and has always loved the edgy Margo Roth Spiegelman. As children‚ they'd discovered a dead body together. Now at high school‚ Q's nerdy while Margo is uber-cool.
One night‚ Q is basking in the predictable boringness of his life when Margo‚ dressed as a ninja‚ persuades him to partake in several hours of mayhem. Then she vanishes. While her family shrugs off this latest disappearance‚ Q follows Margo's string of elaborate clues - including a poem about death.
Q's friends‚ Radar‚ Ben and Lacey‚ help with the search‚ and a post turns up on a website: Margo will be in a certain location for the next 24 hours only. The race is on!
After an epic drive through the night‚ they catch up with Margo‚ and Q learns first-hand that the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are.

Two unlikely friends are drawn into a dramatic series of events through their mutual mistrust of their new English teacher. From the moment Miss Payne (The Hound of the Baskervilles, The English Teacher from Hell, Pitbull!) walks into their classroom, Calma and Kiffo know she will have to go. After doing a bit of, late-night sleuthing, they decide whe is certainly a drug dealer. But the more they work to prove Miss Payne is crooked, the more evidence they find of her innocence. And then everything falls apart.

Joe Brickman is looking forward to his year as captain of the Lawndale High soccer team - and to a blooming relationship with his neighbour Kristine. But when the social structure of the school begins to crumble, Joe finds himself on the wrong side of the new order. Violence has always been part of school life - especially at Lawndale. It goes back generations. But as the brutal, tribal rules that govern the school are exposed, Joe has to find the courage to break free..

A romantic comedy about a movie geek and the dream girl he refuses to fall in love with. Sam Kinnison is a geek, and he's totally fine with that. He has his horror movies, his nerdy friends, World of Warcraft, and until Princess Leia turns up in his bedroom, worry about girls he won't. Then Camilla Carter arrives on the scene. She's beautiful, friendly and completely irrelevant to his plan. Sam is determined to ignore her, except that Camilla has a plan of her own, and he seems to be a part of it! Sam believes that everything he needs to know he can learn from the movies. But perhaps he's been watching the wrong ones.

Micah Wilkins is a liar. But when her boyfriend Zach, dies under brutal circumstances, the shock might be enough to set her straight. Or maybe not. Was Micah dating Zach? Did they kiss? Did she see him the night she died? Where does the truth actually lie?

What happens when a 15-year-old comic book geek meets the girl of his nightmares?

Josephine Alibrandi is 17, and in her final year of school. Dealing with her mum and the ways of her Nonna are daunting enough as she prepares for her exams. But Josie is about to discover real life gets in the way of her carefully-made plans. She suddenly has to deal with having her father around for the first time in her life, falling in love and uncovering her family's secret background. Despite all the turmoil, this is the year Josie discovers that emancipation doesn't mean escaping from your past. Sometimes you need to face up to who you are in order to set yourself free.

Thomas Mackee wants oblivion. Wants to forget parents who leave and friends he used to care about and a string of one-night stands, and favourite uncles being blown to smithereens on their way to work on the other side of the world. But when his flatmates turn him out of the house, Tom moves in with his single, pregnant aunt, Georgie. And starts working at the Union pub with his former friends. And winds up living with his grieving father again. And remembers how he abandoned Tara Finke two years ago, after his uncle's death. And in a year when everything's broken, Tom realises that his family and friends need him to help put the pieces back together as much as he needs them.

So far, Marc E. Jarvis has lost a white football boot, a school tie and a best friend. But there's more in store for him when he completes Work Experience at a local car yard - where his world is truly rocked, shocked and shaken. Then Marc meets Electra. And nothing will ever be the same again . . . A story of true friends, crazed coaches, shooting stars, and loves lost and found.

Xavier is in his final year at school, and all his energies are focussed on becoming a member of the first XV. However, the outside world intrudes on even the most dedicated of players and Xavier becomes infatuated with a girl from the local high school.

Dean Mason is a boy with many secrets. On the run from the law, he gets a job as a rouseabout on a sheep farm, the first of a number of local jobs. Dean bunks down in the shearers' quarters, where he finds a series of letters, the first ones written during the Second World War, left by an old guy, Clive, who used to live there and has recently died. Dean eventually discovers that Clive had only pretended to go to war, lifting sections from a pal's letters in order to persuade his girlfriend and family that he was really fighting for his country.

When Nick heads west with his best mate Robbie, he expects to make some money and have some fun. He doesn't expect to fall for Jude or her rockabilly songs; he doesn't expect her to bite so hard; and he certainly doesn't expect to have his secret desires exposed by the strange people in the orthopedics ward. It's not easy being adrift. There are signs that you misread, or don't even see coming.

Joe King is in year twelve. He is the younger brother of two overachieving siblings, has no idea of what he is going to do with his life and he has just discovered that the girl he is love with is going out with his best friend.

Matt Donaghy has always been a big mouth. But it's never got him into trouble - until one day when two detectives escort him out of class for questioning. The charge? Matt has been accused of threatening to blow up Rocky River High School.

How do you come back from the point of no return? Seth McCoy was the last person to see his best friend, Isaac, alive, and the first to find him dead. It was just another night, just another party, just another time when Isaac drank too much and passed out on the lawn. Only this time, Isaac didn't wake up. Convinced that his own actions led to his friend's death, Seth is torn between turning his life around . . . or losing himself completely. Then he meets Rosetta: so beautiful and so different from everything and everyone he's ever known. But Rosetta has secrets of her own, and Seth soon realizes he isn't the only one who needs saving .

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. Then a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire—a sixteen-page, scientifically researched document—to find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver.

Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of " Stargirl, Stargirl." She captures Leo Borlock's heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal.

Holly has been struck by lightening 21 times. Heck just wants to be a diesel mechanic like his hero, Johnny Paton. When they first meet in sand-blown Marowack, they hate each other. But, over time, a peculiar kind of love grows between the two outcasts. Another madcap love story from author of 'Eat Well And Stay Out Of Jail'.

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Catherine is a science-loving fifteen-year-old. Richard helped build the atom bomb. Catherine's just trying to survive school. When your life is falling apart around you, is talking to a dead physicist normal? Catherine thinks so, but it isn't until her life begins unravelling that she learns who she can really trust.

Josh Swensen is not your average 17-year-old. At the age of two, he was figuring out algebraic equations with colored magnetic numbers. He is a prodigy who only wants to make the world a better place. Josh́ s wish comes true when his virtual alter ego, Larry, becomes a huge media sensation. Larry has his own Web site where he posts sermons on anti-consumerism and has a large following of adults and teens. Meanwhile, Larrý s identity is a mystery to everyone. While it seems as if the whole world is trying to figure out Larrý s true identity, Josh feels trapped inside his own creation. What will happen to the world, and to Larry, if he is exposed?

After a chance encounter with a mysterious woman one night, Cal's life is changed forever. He's been infected with an insidious parasite. The good news: he's only a carrier. The bad news: he's infected all his former girlfriends - and now they've turned into what Cal calls 'Peeps'. The rest of us know them as vampires. And it's Cal's job to hunt them down, before they create even more of their own kind . . .