Kathryn's Inbox

Imagine being a kid looking for eels and stumbling upon an ancient sword. Not only is the sword ancient, but it is enchanted and it can speak. Better yet, it turns out the one who pulls it from the water will be a knight. That's the opening premise of Have Sword, Will Travel , the first book in an exciting new series for kids, written by Aussie Authors Garth Nix and Sean Williams. (Fans of the genre might recognise these two as the authors of the Troubletwisters series.) Odo and Eleanor are out looking for eels when they discover the enchanted sword. Only trouble is, that it is Odo who pulls out the sword and it is Eleanor who wants to be a knight, just like her mother was. As for the sword, well, Biter, just won't stop shouting instructions and he wants to send these kids on a mission to slay a dragon, immediately! Lots of fun and adventure follow. I absolutely enjoyed reading this one for its clever humour, adventure and the sage lessons that Odo and Eleanor learn a...

Well, I can't argue with that logic.

"I love them," said Dorothy. "They are so nice and selfish. Dogs are too good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human." Anne of the Island  by  Lucy Maud Montgomery

The latest Literary YA offering from John Green starts off strong, and ends on a depressingly real note. Aza Holmes is sixteen years old and is basically a good kid. She tries hard at school, gets along well with her best friend Daisy and loves her Mum, who also happens to be a teacher at her school. (Aza's Dad died a few years earlier.) Aza also happens to have anxiety. Aza and Daisy get caught up in a missing person's investigation--the father of Aza's childhood friend Davis has gone missing--and she learns a few important lessons about life, and managing her mental illness along the way. This is a difficult book for me to review as I very much enjoyed the opening chapters, and the realistic depictions of what it is like to be living with a mental illness. The reader travels with Aza through her obsessions, thought spirals and how she navigates her first relationship when her illness threatens to get in the way. I also liked how the author showed the impact that A...

Exciting news! I have a new (very) short story available for download on Smashwords. Love, Unrequited is a Literary short story about a young woman who develops a crush on an older man. She starts to lose her mind a bit, as you'll see as the narrative goes on. I wrote this one a long time ago (back in 2012) but I've only plucked up enough courage to publish it now. Anyway, the link if you'd like to read it is:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/754531 Hopefully the story will be available on iTunes, Kobo, B&N etc. soon.

Another great Peanuts moment this week, this time featuring Peppermint Patty. Schoolwork has never been her forte, she's the kind of kid who takes more of an interest in sports and the outdoors, and finds it difficult to concentrate on other things. 

Welcome to another great Writers on Wednesday post. This week I am speaking with Cher Chidzey, author of Ken's Quest. Tell me a bit about yourself … I am the youngest of nineteen children, twelve girls and seven boys. My father Huat was born at the end of the Qing dynasty in Shantou, a fishing village. Father and his three wives, four sons and eight daughters migrated to Singapore when the Japanese invaded China. I was born in a household of over thirty people, in a house built on stilts, in the “House of Ninety-Nine Closed Doors”. Father relocated shortly after with my mother and her two sons and six daughters to a simpler dwelling in Serangoon Gardens, the stomping ground of Australian and British military personnel. Growing up in a household of siblings schooled in the Chinese language I learnt to appreciate Chinese poetry, Teochew opera and calligraphy. My childhood was chaotic with the comings and goings of relatives; the stepbrothers and their fami...

A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathrynsinbox) on Sep 28, 2017 at 5:47am PDT

The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break--the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. She  by  H. Rider Haggard

Poor Sally. Often the Peanuts character who has both the most and conversely, the least, amount of imagination, she just doesn't get what is so fun about holding a balloon. (She's obviously not keen to start playing with it.) Oh well, at least we don't have to worry about any Peanuts/It crossovers anytime soon. 

If V.C. Andrews and Gillian Flynn had ever co-authored a novel the result would be something akin to The Roanoke Girls , a sinful tale of murder and incest. The Roanoke girls are rich, beautiful, mysterious, and cursed. All of the girls either run away from the family home in Kansas, or they die. Lane is a survivor. She fled Roanoke a long time ago, but when her beloved cousin Allegra goes missing, she feels that she has no choice but to return--and hopefully to expose the wicked truth about what it means to be a Roanoke girl. Despite the ugly subject matter, this novel was captivating. In duel narratives author Amy Engel skilfully moves between the past and the present to tell Lane's story. The first story is that of a fifteen year old girl from New York who finds herself living with her family that she has never met before, following the suicide of her mother. From the outset, it is clear that not one of the Roanoke family is quite sane or normal, not her cold grandmo...

A fascinating setting and a ripping (and often hilarious,) plot make The World of Tomorrow a winning read. In 1939, the World Fair opened in New York. For America, at least, it was a time of hope, optimism and unity with other nations. (Of course, as history cruelly reminds us, what lay in the immediate future was the Second World War.) In the middle of all this is Francis Dempsey an escapee from an Irish Prison, who after a misadventure involving an accidental explosion is now wanted by the IRA. In tow is his younger brother Michael, an escaped trainee priest, who had his eardrums blown to bits in the explosion, but who can now see and speak with none other than William Yeats. Francis also has a suitcase full of cash that he has stolen from the IRA and he's using this to fund his and Michael's escape to America, where they pose as a pair of wealthy Scotsmen and live it up in high society as they search for their older brother Martin who is a poor but talented jazz musici...

❤️ #graffiti #rundlemall #adelaide #love #streetart #inspiration A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathrynsinbox) on Oct 1, 2017 at 4:24am PDT

Just another Peanuts comic. Poor Snoopy!

An evil twin, a psychotic mother, a fraught family relationship and a shocking abduction are the themes of Broken Glass, the twisted second instalment in the Mirror Sisters trilogy. And it all goes downhill from there, really. The novel opens from the perspective of the supposedly evil twin, Haylee Blossom Fitzgerald. Haylee has just arranged for her identical twin sister Kaylee to be abducted by a crazy redneck who has marriage--and a honeymoon in a basement--on his mind. Never mind the obvious hell that her sister is about to endure, Haylee is looking forward to the prospect of being an only child. Maybe now her domineering mother will allow her to be her own person, instead of parading her and Kaylee around like a pair of purebred puppies. And no longer does Haylee have to be constantly good like her well-behaved sister. Meanwhile, Kaylee is coming to terms with one, a massive betrayal from her sister and two, the fact that she's basically trapped inside a rape camp and...