Ashbury/Brookfield Books in Order

The Ashbury/Brookfield books are set around two imagined Sydney schools, private Ashbury High and public Brookfield High. The gap between the schools gives the series some of its friction, but the real draw is the students themselves. They are bright, messy, funny, dramatic, and often much less sure of themselves than they sound on paper.

Each novel shifts focus. Feeling Sorry for Celia follows Elizabeth Clarry through a year of changing friendships, family confusion, and one school exercise that turns letter writing into a lifeline. The Year of Secret Assignments widens the lens to Lydia, Emily, and Cassie, whose pen-pal exchange with Brookfield boys becomes a tangle of crushes, school rivalry, vandalism, and misunderstandings. The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie turns to Bindy, a high achiever whose perfect system starts to collapse when she is forced into a friendship group. Dreaming of Amelia, also published as The Ghosts of Ashbury High, brings in Amelia and Riley and leans into secrets, atmosphere, and final-year nerves.

These books are linked, but they do not behave like strict sequels.

Characters wander in and out of one another's stories. Someone who is a side note in one book can become the emotional center of the next. That gives the series a roomy, lived-in feel. You are not just following one plot line. You are spending time in a social world where gossip travels, old wounds linger, and the person you dismissed earlier may turn out to be far more interesting than you thought.

The format is a big part of the charm. Moriarty tells these stories through letters, emails, notes, diaries, transcripts, school assignments, and, in the later books, even exam memoirs. That sounds gimmicky until you read it. Then it feels like the most natural possible way to eavesdrop on teenagers. People say one thing, mean another, and accidentally confess a third. The jokes land quickly, but the painful moments do too.

Sydney matters here as well. These are suburban books, full of buses, school corridors, family kitchens, and the social weather that blows between different neighborhoods and schools. By the time the series reaches the HSC pressure cooker of Dreaming of Amelia, the stakes feel both ordinary and huge, which is exactly how being a teenager often feels. What ties the books together is not one villain or one mystery. It is the slow process of learning how to see other people more clearly.