The Web by Kate Mulvany (Currency Press Play)

Travis is headstrong and confident, with the world at his feet. Fred is shy, isolated and dealing with the death of his father. When Travis takes Fred under his wing to help him with a social studies assignment, it triggers an intriguing chain of events that ends in a vicious attack. As the police investigate, it becomes clear that nothing is straightforward in the collision between the virtual and real worlds of the teenage imagination. Kate Mulvany has fashioned a gripping and contemporary mystery about a friendship that goes horribly wrong between two young men in a fictional regional town in Australia.