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The Gateway Trilogy

Rage Winnoway is an independent and introspective teenage girl who’s closest friends are her four pet dogs and goat. She must travel through multiple portals to wild and dangerous places in order to save her mother from a deep coma that has arrested her life, and later to rescue the land of Valley from a cruel magically devised winter. Rage undertakes these hazardous missions with the help of her animal fellowship to whom these otherworldly transitions have the peculiar yet thrilling effect of transmogrification. Upon passing through a portal the animals take a heightened form, now appearing as a sweet-natured teenage boy, a large bear, an amazon, a small gentleman with protruding ears and a self-loathing satyr. This trilogy approaches themes of family, boundless love between owner and pet as well as self-actualisation and magical realism. Fans eagerly await the third instalment of the series!

Books in

The Gateway Trilogy

Billy Thunder and the Night Gate, in The Gateway Trilogy
Billy Thunder and the Night Gate

First published: 2000

Rage Winnoway’s mother has been asleep since she had a terrible accident. In a quest to find healing magick, Rage and her animal friends travel through a strange gateway to Valley, a land of mythical beasts, talking dogs and streets that change shape. But Valley is no paradise. Harsh guardians rule a sinister black city, and fugitive witch folk work forbidden magick. Rage desperately wants to go home, but the one person who can help her, a wizard, has disappeared. Her only guides are the treacherous firecat and an enchanted hourglass …

Awards for Billy Thunder and the Night Gate
  • 2001: Patricia Wrightson Prize for Childrens Literature (NSW Premiers Literary Awards)
Where to buy Billy Thunder and the Night Gate
The Winter Door, in The Gateway Trilogy
The Winter Door

First published: 2003

Faced with the mysterious hatred of a boy at school, and afraid that her strange, silent uncle will vanish again before he is reunited with her sick mother, Rage Winnoway longs to return to the land of Valley. One night she manages to dream-travel to Valley, only to find it is being destroyed by a cruel, enchanted winter flowing through a gateway from another world. To save Valley, and her own world, Rage must travel to the unknown land beyond the Winter Door. But both the powerful wizard who created Valley and the courageous Lady Elle have already passed through it, and vanished…

The Firecats Dream

First published: Forthcoming

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