Extract! Extract! Extract! Read all about it!

Sometimes, on the Friday before a federal election, all you need is an escape.

In that spirit, here is a mini Festival of Extract that will take you for a spin around the world and out of the world of spin.

First stop: Woolworths - just down the road... Good Oil by Laura Buzo

'Miss Amelia Hayes, Welcome to The Land of Dreams. I am the staff trainer. I will call you grasshopper and you will call me sensei. And I will give you the good oil, right?'

21-year-old Chris will give 16-year-old Amelia more than that - he'll give her a pain in the heart, mixed messages, and plenty to think about. One Onion's mother, after receiving the report on the most recent teen sleepover/movie outing/party would habitually say, 'Yes, that sounds fun, but did you talk about ideas?'

Good Oil is a book that talks a lot about ideas. It's an absolutely gorgeous, achingly funny, heartbreakingly real story about first love and growing-up. But it's also about feminism and literature and film and the wider world.

So go go go, go read the extract - fall in love with Amelia and Chris. We know you will.

Next stop: Madras High Court, April 1910. India Dark by Kirsty Murray

'I knew too much too soon. Once you know, you can't ever turn back to not knowing.'

13-year-old Poesy Swift and 15-year-old Tilly Sweetrick are members of Percival's Lilliputian Opera Company, a troupe of young Australian performers touring India, and they are caught up in a scandal that will change their lives forever. Amid the heat and dust of a lost Empire there is secrecy, conflict and a string of disasters. As everything unravels, can the girls find a way to protect themselves? Or is escape an option? Dive in here.

Third stop: medieval Europe.* The Rebel Prince by Celine Kiernan

'Christopher's clear grey eyes hardened, his chin lowered, and Wynter's heart squeezed in alarm as she realised that he was going to say something both of them would regret.'

The final instalment of The Moorehawke Trilogy is brimming with sacrifice, invention, loyalty, romance, revenge, insurrection and ultimately a Kingdom in jeopardy. Wynter - 15-year-old apprentice stone-mason, former King's Cat Keeper and strong female lead in a dangerous and war-torn world - will have her loyalty stretched to its limit. Who will be left standing when the swords are re-sheathed at the end of the final battle?
Extract! Extract! Read all about it!**

Final Stop in our whirlwind tour: your local polling booth
Voters - queue convivially, cast your ballot bravely and savour your well-earned sausage sizzle.

* Well, a fantasy version of medieval Europe and who doesn't love their medieval served up with a little of the magics.

**Although if you haven't read Book I in the series, The Poison Throne, you should probably dip into this extract instead.