William Taylor: Spider

He's 17, hunky and has talent to burn. Spider is brilliant at playing the piano, and is at that time of life when he has to make some important decisions.

Luckily, Spider has a cool mum who has single-handedly created a comfortable, solid life for him. But just as Spider is deciding whether he should enter a national music competition, pitting ambition against the possibility of failure, he discovers something disturbing about his mother (and the father he has never known) and must come to grips with some big questions about personal morality and identity.

An involving read, albeit with a rather shaky premise.

Longacre

$16.95