AustLit

'As we got closer I could see behind the sandstone a curved concrete building: a purpose-built structure. But still no fence, no wire. Not a bar in sight. For this, I’d been told that morning, I should be grateful. This was a ‘lifeline…a last chance’. That is what the judge said.

'Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail.

'Then, suddenly, he’s not.

'A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other ‘gifted delinquents’: the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter.

'So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the ‘lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit—not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.

'He knows he and the others are part of an experiment.

'But he doesn’t know who’s running it or what they’re trying to prove. And he has no idea what they’re doing to him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Martin and Maggie have been together for thirty-seven years. He is a judge and she is a painter. They have a high-flying lawyer son and a much loved grandson. Life is good, comfortable, familiar.

'But one day Martin leaves a family lunch and takes his son's car, driving to a suburb miles away, where he has an accident. No one knows why he was there, not even Martin himself, whose mind starts unravelling. It's clear to Maggie that something from Martin's past is troubling him greatly, and she resolves to find out what it was that drew him there, to that particular street.

'As Maggie attempts to piece together the events of that day, Martin takes refuge in what he can remember, regaling his son with his now-vivid memories of one night in New York more than forty years ago, the night he and Maggie met. As Martin's mind spirals inward, the fabric that has been holding his lifetime of secrets at bay gradually starts to tear, and in the process we also see that the son keeps very similar secrets to his father's. Nothing is what it seems in this searing story of love and betrayal, and a family coming apart at the seams.

'This Picture of You is urgent, gripping, insightful and intoxicating, an unforgettable journey into the heart of a family and the secrets that threaten to tear it apart.' (Publication summary)

'Michael, a psychiatrist, is trying to put his life together after a brain tumour. His lawyer wife Elizabeth is wrestling with her new role as carer and breadwinner. Their teenage children are acting out the chaos their parents refuse to confront.

'This is the story of a troubled daughter who cannot talk to her mother, a mother who does not know how to listen, a father who listens but cannot see, and a son who will only talk to God.

'Over the course of one week, events will threaten to tear this family apart - but also bring them from the brink of darkness towards a kind of redemption.

'From one of Australia's most acclaimed new novelists, Speak to Me is a compelling tale of love, loss and survival.' (From the publisher's website.)