'With their father there's always a catch…'

When the picture-perfect Jenson's move into her quiet neighbourhood, Freya Kiley is bothered. There's something strange about them, they seem impeccable, a world away from her large and quarrelsome family. Somehow these new neighbours effortlessly start to take up so much space in their lives.

The local boys: Avery and Garrick; and Freya's brothers Syd and Declan, take this change to their world with delight. The Jenson boys, Colt and Bastian, are showered with gifts from their father Rex and their arrival has brought with it a splendid bike and playroom full of skateboards, slot cars, miniature trains, and the promise of a swimming pool by summer. The Jensons are like a family from a magazine, and Rex the hero – successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand.

But Colt finds his father's presence impossible. He's unbearable and suffocating, spending money not merely to make his sons envied, but to make them enticing.

Golden Boys is a compelling new novel by Sonya Hartnett, one of Australia's sharpest and edgiest writers of contemporary fiction.

'Hartnett does a wonderful job of depicting the sometimes brutal world of childhood that runs parallel to, and occasionally intersects with, the world of adults.' Books and Publishing

Praise for Butterfly:

'Exquisitely written – you end up rereading sentence after sentence – and unforgettable.' Nick Hornby

'A heart-stopping representation of adolescent girlhood, as strange and riddling and true as fiction gets.' The Age

'Lucid yet beautiful, compassionate yet unflinching, enigmatic yet touching, sometimes tragic sometimes funny ... a writer at the height of her powers.' Weekend Australian

'Rich, Visceral … Hartnett's tiny domestic insights unleash a tornado of human experience.' Herald Sun

Sonya Hartnett is the award-winning author of several 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. She is also the author of an early chapter book, Sadie and Ratz, illustrated by Ann James. The Children of the King follows two other acclaimed middle-grade novels set in times of war: The Silver Donkey and The Midnight Zoo. In 2008, Sonya Hartnett was awarded the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for the body of her work. She lives in Australia.