Vernon and Penelope never want to see their son Caleb again. Not after he bashed his wife and ended up in gaol. A lifetime of careful parental love wiped out in a moment.

But when Vernon, a retired teacher, hears that Caleb is being regularly visited and savagely beaten by a local criminal as the police stand by, he knows he has to act. What has his life as a father been if he turns his back on his son in his hour of desperate needs? He realised with shame that he has grievously failed Caleb. No longer.

To stop the beatings, Vernon plans to approach Ernie Cahill, father of the man bashing Caleb, and head of the local drug-dealing operation. The Cahills run the town and the cops, but Vernon is determined to fix things in a civilised way, father to father. If he shows respects, he reasons, it will be reciprocated. But how wrong he is.

And what hell will he bring down on his family?

Reading like a morality tale Western but in a starkly beautiful Australian setting, Snake Island is a propulsive literary thriller written with great clarity and power. It will take you to the edge and keep you there long after the final page is turned.

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“Ben Hobson’s second novel is about the darkness of our hearts, and the search for lost light within them. Snake Island is not a tale of redemption, although you might catch glimpses of it. This is a book about actions and their consequences; big and small, and irrevocable. It is a violent, visceral and gripping tale about the cyclic, destructive nature of revenge; an exploration of the spectrum of morality, and the purity of hate versus the complexity of love and forgiveness, told in brisk declarative sentences that possess the cadence of a shotgun blast. The small town ambience is real enough to smell and taste; a good thing too, because I’m not sure I want to visit.” - Simon McDonald

“Snake Island takes you to the limits of human emotion. A vivid, consuming dive into family loyalty, violence, and the hearts broken when the two collide.” - Candice Fox

"Remarkable. Ben Hobson's characters are deeply flawed, deeply human and beautifully realised. Part Western, part Greek tragedy, part morality tale - yet wholly original.” - Chris Hammer

"A rollicking tale of crime, corruption, and vengeance." - Mark Brandi

The story of a young boy who has recently lost his mother, trying to make sense of the world of men and then embarking on a breathtaking adventure of his own - a stunning literary debut in the tradition of Favel Parrett's Past the Shallows and Tim Winton's An Open Swimmer.

To Become a Whale tells the story of 13-year-old Sam Keogh, whose mother has died. Sam has to learn how to live with his silent, hitherto absent father, who decides to make a man out of his son by taking him to work at Tangalooma, then the largest whaling station in the southern hemisphere. What follows is the devastatingly beautiful story of a gentle boy trying to make sense of the terrible reality of whaling and the cruelty and alienation of his new world, the world of men.

Set around Moreton Island and Noosa in 1961, To Become a Whale is an extraordinarily vivid and haunting novel that reads like an instant classic of Australian literature. There are echoes of Craig Silvey, Favel Parrett, Tim Winton and Randolph Stow in this moving, transformative and very Australian novel.

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“Hobson takes us to the depths of cruelty to show us life. A boy tries to be a man, a man tries to be a father, and both struggle to navigate what it means to be men. A great study in masculinity.” - Willy Vlautin

”A powerful tale of fathers and sons and all that can't be spoken between them. The writing is honest, rich and clean, and it made me feel so much. Too many writers fuss things up, but Ben tells it simply, which is so affecting.” - Sofie Laguna

“In terms of language, his closest contemporary is probably Favel Parrett, author of Past the Shallows and When the Night Comes. He writes with the same sense of directness that Parret achieves, the same sense of nostalgia for childhood that underpins so much of the emotion in the novel. He lingers for long moments over small details, allowing his readers to fully experience what Sam is seeing and doing.” - Rohan Wilson, in The Australian

He felt the lump of gold still in his pocket. He would find his way out of this place and leave his brother happy and he would etch his name into the red earth or be damned.

John Lacey lusts for power and knows that gold can bring 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 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 and colonisation, and the crimes committed in its 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.

From an automaton of Nick Cave, to a man who can’t keep his blood out of the food he is preparing; from a vengeful Uber driver to a spinner of souls; and from a boy caught up in a robbery to a girl desperate to save a failing greyhound, the characters who populate this short story collection have all been inspired by a Nick Cave lyric. These 21 stories, from some of Australia’s favourite creators, respond to Cave’s visionary genius with their own original and unsettling tales of death, faith, violence and love.

With contributions from: Neil A. White, Mark Smith, Jon Doust, Bram Presser, Goldie Goldbloom, Mykaela Saunders, Andy Griffiths, Christos Tsiolkas, Cate Kennedy, Arnold Zable, Emily Brewin, Melissa Manning, Rhett Davis, Sarah Bailey, Toni Jordan, Tony Birch, Kirsten Tranter, Gillian O’Shaughnessy, and Ben Hobson (that’s me!)