Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett Books In Order

Wilful Blue

When a stranger enters a family’s midst and insists on discovering all of their darkest secrets, the family begins a slow and painful descent into decay and madness. By the author of Wilful Blue.

Sleeping Dogs

When a stranger enters a family’s midst and insists on discovering all of their darkest secrets, the family begins a slow and painful descent into decay and madness. By the author of Wilful Blue.

Princes

In a dilapidated mansion overrun by rats, Indigo and Ravel Kesby have gone to war. Identical twins, their two selves have gradually entwined until they have become all but interchangeable: no one can tell them apart. But when one twin attempts to sever the ties to his brother, their insular world quickly disintegrates into madness, treachery, and violence. As the story sweeps toward a shocking and inexorable conclusion, identity becomes a malleable weapon that will ultimately differentiate brother from brother and victor from victim. Sonya Hartnett infuses gothic horror with menace in this mesmerizing story of twins turned enemies. About her last novel, Robert Cormier said She has truly pushed the boundaries of YA literature to their outer edges and perhaps beyond.

Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf

Two loners in a country town find cause for hope when one of them encounters a long lost animal in this taut, shimmering tale by Sonya Hartnett about daring to live a life beyond expectations. Ever since Dad went off the deep end and decided he didn’t need to work anymore insisting the Lord would provide Satchel O’Rye has felt stuck for life in his dying country town. A high school dropout drifting from one small carpentry job to the next, Satchel can see nothing beyond his own dreary duty to help keep the family afloat. But things start to change when he spies a strange doglike animal at a nearby mountain and mentions the fact to Chelsea Piper, an awkward young woman considered the local pariah. Could the animal he saw be a Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial thought to be extinct? And if they found it again, could it give them both a new chance at life?From the brilliant author of THURSDAY’S CHILD and WHAT THE BIRDS SEE comes a mesmerizing tale of a young man fighting his future, a young woman fighting her past, and a mysterious creature who teaches them something about survival.

Thursday’s Child

Sonya Hartnett’s haunting, mythical novel now in paperback Harper Flute believes that her younger brother Tin, with his uncanny ability to dig, was born to burrow. While their family struggles to survive in a bleak landscape during the Great Depression, the silent and elusive little Tin ‘born on a Thursday and so fated to his wanderings’ begins to escape underground, tunneling beneath their tiny shanty. As time pas*ses, Tin becomes a wild thing, leaving his family further and further behind. With exquisite prose, richly drawn characters, and a touch of magical realism, Sonya Hartnett tells a breathtakingly original coming of age story through the clear eyes of an observant child. It s an unsentimental portrait of a loving family faced with poverty and heartbreak, entwined with a surreal vision of the enigmatic Tin, disappearing into a mysterious labyrinth that reaches unimaginably far, yet remains hauntingly near. ‘Will be treasured by teens…
. A beautiful and complex coming of age story that will burrow into young people s deepest hopes and fears, shining light on the darkest rooms.’ BOOKLIST starred review

Of a Boy

‘Hartnett again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale.’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY starred review
Nine year old Adrian watches his world closely, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighborhood children might set out to buy ice cream one summer’s day and never be seen again…
. In a suburb that is no longer safe and innocent, in a broken family of self absorbed souls, Sonya Hartnett sets the story of a lone little boy unwanted, unloved, and intensely curious a story as achingly beautiful as it is shattering.

The Silver Donkey

From extraordinary novelist Sonya Hartnett comes a gently told fable of a lost soldier, heroic children, and a steadfast donkey.

One morning in the woods of World War I France, two young sisters stumble upon an astonishing find a soldier, temporarily blinded by war, who has walked away from battle longing to see his gravely ill younger brother. Soon the care of the soldier becomes the girls’ preoccupation, but it’s not just the secret they share that emboldens them to steal food and other comforting items for the man. They are fascinated by what he holds in his hand a tiny silver donkey. As the girls and their brother devise a plan for the soldier’s safe passage home, he repays them by telling four wondrous tales about the humble donkey from the legend of Bethlehem to a myth of India, from a story of rescue in war to a tale of family close to the soldier’s heart. Sonya Hartnett explores rich new territory in this inspiring tale of kindness, loyalty, and courage.

Surrender

Surrender is a mesmerizing psychological thriller from extraordinary novelist Sonya Hartnett.I am dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it. As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years, which have been clouded by frustration and humiliation. A small, unforgiving town and distant, punitive parents ensure that he is never allowed to forget the horrific mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends his dog, Surrender, and the unruly wild boy, Finnigan, a shadowy doppelganger with whom the meek Gabriel once made a boyhood pact. But when a series of arson attacks grips the town, Gabriel realizes how unpredictable and dangerous Finnigan is. As events begin to spiral violently out of control, it becomes devastatingly clear that only the most extreme measures will rid Gabriel of Finnigan for good.

The Ghost’s Child

This enchanting fable of a young woman and a wild boy is a haunting
meditation on the nature of love and loss.

Maddy, an old lady now, arrives home one day to find a peculiar boy waiting for her. Over tea, she tells him the story of her life long ago, when she wished for her days to be as romantic and mysterious as a fairy tale. It was then that she fell painfully in love with a free spirit named Feather, who put aside his wild ways to live with her in a little cottage, conceived with her a child never to be born, and disappeared leaving an inconsolable Maddy to follow after him on a fantastical journey across the sea. In a beautifully crafted tale, currently shortlisted for a 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Sonya Hartnett masterfully explores the mysteries of the heart, the sustaining power of memory, and the ultimate consolation that comes to souls who live fully and fearlessly.

Butterfly

Growing up during the 1980s in the safe complacency of the Australian suburbs, Plum Coyle should be happy. But on the cusp of her fourteenth birthday and on the fringe of her peer group she lives in terror of the disapproval of her cruel and fickle girlfriends, and most of all, she hates her awkward, changing body with a passion. So when Plum’s glamorous next door neighbour Maureen, a young wife and mother, befriends Plum, Plum responds with worshipful fervour. Plum feels herself reinvented. With Maureen, she becomes the girl she’s always wanted to be. But Maureen has an ulterior motive for taking Plum under her wing…

The Midnight Zoo

This is a brilliantly told magical story that questions what it means to be free. World War II, Eastern Europe: Tomas and his younger brother, Andrej, have fled their Romany encampment which has been besieged by the Germans; they carry Wilma, their baby sister, in a sack. In an abandoned, bombed-out town, the children discover a zoo. In it are a wolf and an eagle, a monkey, bear, lioness, seal, chamois and Ilama. The animals tell their stories to the children as they try to begin to understand what has become of their lives and, when they try to figure out a way to release the animals, what it means to be free.