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A Sydney family's picture-perfect life is upended in an unputdownable new novel from the bestselling author of The Mothers.

What if the worst day of your life turns out to be the making of you?

With two bright children, a beautiful home and a husband she's always depended on, Lillian Hogarth considers herself blessed. Until, on her son Jamie's final day of high school, he fails to come home. Hospitalised by a coward's punch, Jamie has been the victim of a muck-up day celebration that went too far.

Lillian's support is unflinching, even as her world begins to crumble. A son whose fate hangs in the balance, a teenage witness who refuses to name the one who threw the punch, and a husband who's hiding a secret that could destroy their marriage...

Is this the end of the Hogarth family's good luck? Or will Jamie's determination—and Lillian's love—be the making of them?

An Australian western set in the goldfields of Ballarat, The Death of John Lacey is a viscerally powerful story of greed, power and violence from the author of Snake Island.

'A ripping, unflinching reckoning with Australia's past. Hobson turns the popular national mythos on its head and, with guns blazing, creates one of his own.' Bram Presser, author of The Book of Dirt.

John Lacey's lust for power and gold brings him riches and influence beyond his wildest dreams. Only he knows the terrible crime he committed to attain that wealth. Years later, as Lacey ruthlessly presides over the town he has built and named after himself, no one has the courage to question his power or how he wields it.

Brothers Ernst and Joe Montague are on the run from the law. They land in Lacey's town and commit desperate crimes to avoid capture. Lacey vows retribution and galvanises those in the town to hunt them down. But not everyone is blind to Lacey's evil, and a reckoning is approaching.

A visceral, powerful dissection of dispossession, colonisation and the crimes committed in their name, The Death of John Lacey is also a moving and tender account of the love between brothers and a meditation on the true meaning of mercy and justice.

Taking on law's old boys club can have deadly results... A gripping thriller from a bold new voice about misogyny, corruption and the legal industry.

'Keeps you gripped … The perfect tonic for anyone who has had a difficult client.' RICHARD BEASLEY SC and author of Hell Has Harbour Views

'Everyone is going to say what a great guy and a great lawyer he was. He wasn't. He was a prick … And a shithouse lawyer.'

Gavin Jones is dead at thirty-nine. As an in-house lawyer who controlled millions of dollars in fees per year, he was legal firm Howard Greene's biggest client and wielded that power with manipulative contempt. But he saved his worst behaviour for women, at work and at home.

The partners of Howard Greene relied on his favour to fund their lavish lifestyles. If sycophantic admiration of the man was all it took to secure work from Gavin, that's what they delivered.

But no one liked Gavin. The list of those who suffered from his cruelty was long enough to include pretty much everyone who had contact with him. So who actually killed him?

A fast-paced and wickedly funny thriller about power and revenge set in the pristine towers of capitalism, How to Kill a Client is a scorching debut straight out of tomorrow's headlines.