A powerful story of friendship, bravery, and a desperate bid for freedom, inspired by true events.
Ming survived the famine that killed his parents during China's "Great Leap Forward", and lives a hard but adequate life, working in the fields.
When a group of city boys comes to the village as part of a Communist Party re-education program, Ming and his friends aren't sure what to make of the new arrivals. They're not used to hard labor and village life. But despite his reservations, Ming befriends a charming city boy called Li. The two couldn't be more different, but slowly they form a bond over evening swims and shared dreams.
But as the bitterness of life under the Party begins to take its toll on both boys, they begin to imagine the impossible: freedom.

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• Also available as an Audiobook (US)

"Heart-wrenching... The novel provides an insightful look at the powerful role food plays in our emotional lives." - The New York Times Book Review

An authentic novel about growing up in an Asian immigrant family with a mother who is suffering from a debilitating mental illness.
Anna Chiu has her hands full. When she's not looking after her brother and sister or helping out at her father's restaurant, she's taking care of her mother, whose debilitating mental illness keeps her in bed most days. Her father's new delivery boy, Rory, is a welcome distraction and even though she knows that things aren't right at home, she's starting to feel like she could be a normal teen.
But when her mother finally gets out of bed, things go from bad to worse. And as her mother's condition worsens, Anna and her family question everything they understand about themselves and each other.
The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling is a heart-wrenching, true-to-life exploration through the often neglected crevices of culture, mental illness, and family. Its strong themes are balanced by a beautiful romance making it a feel-good, yet important read.

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• Also available as an Audiobook (US)

Shaozhen has no intention of staying in his remote Henan village and becoming another poor farmer: he'll finish school, and then, hopefully, work in a factory in one of the major cities, just like his father. But when Shaozhen returns home for the summer holidays, imagining days filled with nothing but playing basketball with his friends, he's in for a shock. The worst drought in over sixty years threatens the crops that the entire village relies on for income. As the water situation becomes dire, Shaozhen realises he must come up with a plan. But will it be enough to save his family and friends and secure the future of his village?

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Since the death of Mei’s father, her ma has refused to keep animals on the family farm. So when Mei finds two baby chickens, she shares her delightful discovery with no one but her older brother Guo.
Mei does her best to keep her newfound friends a secret, but all does not go as planned. When Ma sells the chooks to the fearsome one-eyed butcher, their fates seem sealed.

The series contains three titles that follow the adventures of Mei and her pet chooks.

• Chook Chook: Mei's Secret Pets
• Chook Chook: Little and Lo in the City
• Chook Chook: Saving the Farm

One bite of an apple from a family shrine unearths hungry ghosts. A poison garden unfurls a polite boy's deepest, darkest desires. Interfering with an Indigenous burial site unleashes ancestral revenge, to a metal soundtrack. An underground dance party during Covid threatens to turn lethal. And on the edge of a coastal rainforest, a grieving sister waits to witness a mysterious 'unravelling'.
This #LoveOzYA anthology - the first to focus entirely on horror - unites a stellar cast of Australia's finest YA authors with talented new and emerging voices, including two graphic artists.
Contributors are Wai Chim, Sarah Epstein, Alison Evans, Lisa Fuller, Margot McGovern, Poppy Nwosu, Michelle O'Connell, Emma Osborne, Emma Preston, Marianna Shek, Holden Sheppard, Jared Thomas, Vikki Wakefield and Felix Wilkins.
The stories in this wide-ranging collection dig deep and go hard. While some are straight-up terrifying rollercoaster rides, others are psychologically rooted in our society's deepest fears and concerns: acceptance and fitting in, love and loss, desire and temptation, and the terror of a world threatened by catastrophic change ... and even collapse.
From body horror to the supernatural, hauntings to transformations, and the everyday evil of humans to menacing outside forces, Hometown Haunts will have you glued to your chair ... until you leap out of it!

• Read more from Wakefield Press