88 is angry. Damien can feel it prickling the air between them. Every muscle in his body is taut, ready to run, planning his escape over the fire between those chairs and straight down to the creek. But he can't run. Not yet. Nothing has happened, yet. He'd just make a fool of himself. Out of the corner of his eye he watches as 88 slowly packs tobacco in a cigarette paper, rolls it into a cylinder, gets up and moves to sit right next to Damien, so close Damien has to clench his teeth and hang onto the chair to stop himself from bolting.Damien can't bear the thought of 88 coming back to live with him and Mum; memories of past violence are too strong. But there's glamour in having a father who rides a Harley Davidson and it leads Damien to run with the in-crowd at school and abandon his real friends. Set in a small-town community in northern Australia, The Devil You Know takes you inside the mind and under the skin of a troubled boy with a vivid imagination and one who must wrestle with his own violent impulses and minor betrayals.

 

This book was recognised by the Territory Read Literature Award. It was recognised in the Fiction - YA category by the Writers of Children's and Young Adult Fiction Award.

There are 252 pages in this book. This book was published 2011 by Allen & Unwin .

Leonie Norrington was born in Darwin, the third of nine children, and grew up at Barunga Aboriginal community, south of Katherine. Leonie works full-time as a journalist and writer. Her published books include Woman's Talk, a collection of conversations with Territory women; Under the Mango Tree, a collection of stories involving elderly Indigenous people; and Tropical Food Gardens, a book about growing fruit, vegetables and herbs in northern Australia. Her children's books include The Barrumbi Kids, Croc Bait, The Spirit of Barrumbi, The Last Muster (all published by Omnimbus/Scholastic) and her first collaboration with illustrator Dee Huxley, You and me: our place, published in 2007 by Working Title Press.