Peter Goldsworthy

How far would you go to help a dying friend? This stunning new novel - a lyrical page-turner from the author of Honk If You Love Jesus - treads provocatively and wittily on shifting moral ground.

Paul "Mack" McNeil has a reconstructed knee, an unreconstructed life, and a taste for Baci chocolates. The favourite son of a struggling Italian soccer club in the western suburbs, he is desperate to keep playing. But does the Club, his surrogate family, still want him? Once known for his quick wit, of late Mack finds his jokes falling on deaf ears. His mother is in a nursing home which he never visits; his wife, who wants a baby, won't talk to him; her best friend thinks he belongs in the Stone Age, and his new coach thinks he is past it - and yet Mack jokes on, relentlessly. Porn-and-prawn nights at the Club, early morning milk runs, and day and night marital disharmony are the raw material from which he must reshape his life, stepping stones as he struggles towards a new perception of himself and his world.

In Jake, Marisa has found everything she's ever wanted. Then their new lodger Kate arrives. Something about Kate isn't right. Is it the way she looks at Marisa's boyfriend? Sits too close on the sofa? Constantly asks about the baby they are trying for? Or is it all just in Marisa's head? After all, that's what her Jake keeps telling her. And she trusts him--doesn't she? But Marisa knows something is wrong. That the woman sleeping in their house will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Marisa just doesn't know why. How far will she go to find the answer--and how much is she willing to lose?

In 1960s California, eighth-grader Abby Lovitt has trouble with True Blue, the newest horse on her family's ranch, a beautiful dappled gray who is so often spooked, Abby wonders if he is haunted by the ghost of his deceased former owner.