Golden Boys

With masterful nuance and vividly drawn characters, Sonya Hartnett’s novel visits a suburban neighborhood where psychological menace lurks below the surface.

Colt Jenson and his younger brother, Bastian, have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts — toys, bikes, all that glitters most — and makes them the envy of the neighborhood. To the local kids, the Jensons are a family out of a movie, and Rex a hero — successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives? This brilliant and unflinching novel reveals internationally acclaimed author Sonya Hartnett at her most intriguing and psychologically complex.

Sonya Hartnett is the award-winning author of many novels for teens, including Thursday’s Child, What the Birds See, Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf, The Ghost’s Child, Butterfly, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Surrender, as well as a number of books for younger readers. In 2008, Sonya Hartnett was awarded the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for her body of work. She lives in Australia.