Books in Apple Signature series

Shawn has cerebral palsy: highly intelligent, he has no control whatsoever over his body or its functions. His eyes wander or settle without control. His mouth, tongue, swallowing muscles all have a life of their own. No act of will by Shawn can affect anything he does or anything that happens to him. Yet Shawn's mental life is full of dreams and hopes and love and appreciation of all that is around him - music he happens to hear, things and people that happen to cross his line of vision. Then Shawn begins to fear that his father - from despair at Shawn's condition and believing that Shawn has no life, and never can have, is no more than a vegetable, and never will be - is planning the unthinkable - to put him out of his misery - to kill him...

Hart is the son of a wealthy pearling master, Mitsy the daughter of a Japanese diver. Together they unconciously cross the boundaries of class and race, as they swim, joke and watch films in the local cinema. Then their world changes. Hart's mother abandons them for England, a terrible cyclone kills Mitsy's father and cripples Hart and most terrible of all - the war starts. As Japanese bombs fall on northern Australia, loyalties are divided, and love and friendship are put to the test. This is a beautifully crafted story evoking a war-devastated Australia and its agonising consequences on young adults forced to leave their childhood behind.

Fergal is helping his mother nurse a bedridden woman on a Yorkshire farm. In his free time he roams the hills and dales, and there meets a girl, Alex, sensing at once the peculiar obsession with the nearby reservoir that grips her and everyone else in the valley. As rainless heat settles over the parched land, everyone is watching the reservoir, seeing the water level fall day by day and waiting - as if something undefinable will rise from its depths. The undercurrents threaten Fergal too, with memories of his failure to help a drowning friend, and his belief that soon he will have to help Alex. This time he must not fail.

To begin with he couldn't make out anything in the shadows thrown by the trees, but then he saw a black shape take form in the grey... It was Michael's idea. Excluded from school and reckless since the death of his father, he has refused to listen to Tony's protest. 'Time to pick up the past.' he said. They cycled to the heath on a Friday. Tony played truant, lying to his parents - trying not to think of their faces already stretched taut by threatening financial disaster. Michael drew it from the water - a long-buried treasure dripping slime and algae. And with it came new conflict and new hope...