Set in 2099, this story is themed around the consequences of global warming where Mara, her family and community realize they are asylum-seekers in a world torn between high-tech wizardry and the most primitive injustice. To save her people, Mara must not only find a way into the city but also search for a new land and a new home.
Wayne and Wendy's parents are always coming up with crazy business schemes. Having unsuccessfully tried their hand at goat farming they've now bought a bashed up old ice-cream van called Macaroni, and are ready to take to the road selling their extraordinary ice-cream.
Sixteen-year-old Mara and her ship of refugees are tracking the North Star, desperate to find a homeland in the melted ice mountains of Greenland. Unwittingly, the refugees bring catastrophe in their wake for Tuck, a gypsea pirate-boy, and also for Ilira - a land whose inhabitants exist in a state of terror at the top of the world.
Twins Wayne and Wendy have two extraordinary friends - an ice-cream van called Macaroni, and a goat called Gina. Then one day they both disappear! Hot on the trail of their missing friends, the twins meet Pa Periwinkle - a famous apothecary who once owned Macaroni. Pa and his magic Fizzbomb Sherbet soon explode into action.
It's a long, hot summer - and a climactic one. For 14-year-old Sapphire it brings the awesome, terrifying realization that she is pregnant - a discovery that catapults her into the eye of a storm as her body, her future, her life, become a battleground for everyone's needs but her own.
Kerrie feels trapped. She can't spend another day in her chaotic mother's house. Then Kerrie finds an escape. On the rooftop of a nearby tower block live two castaway teenagers, Mauve and Skip. As Kerrie starts to share their sky-high home, a freak fire destroys their towerblock, Kerrie decides to leave the city with Mauve and Skip.