We were halfway up the spur when we heard it. Homer and Gavin and I, just the three of us... I'd say there were fifteen shots in the first volley, evenly spaced, lasting about twenty-five seconds... All the way down the spur I'd heard the scattered shots, getting closer as I got closer, and all the way down I tried to think of reasonable explanations for them, and I couldn't think of a single thing that made sense.

Wars never end. They go on loudly or they go on quietly. They grip you with bulldog teeth.

The town of Wirrawee is emerging from war, slowly. School's back in, Juicy's is open for coffee, farmers are bidding at the cattle sales.

Ellie Linton at last gets what she longed for and what she fought for, to be back on the farm with her parents.

But it's not the same. A new nation is on the other side of a new border. Suddenly the war is about to explode into Ellie's life again. The effects are devastating. The consequences will change her forever.

While I Live: The Ellie Chronicles is the first in a new series featuring the immensely popular Ellie Linton, heroine and narrator of the Tomorrow, When the War Began, series.