Australian Crime Fiction New Releases 2024

In the isolated mountain town of Blarnie, the murder of local policeman Darcy Comer shatters the peace, with the crime seemingly linked to a sinister murder from the past. The murder of a local two decades ago was just the beginning, now, as the town reels from fresh bloodshed, it becomes clear that these new murders echo a dark legacy.

The old town rumours of a devil cult, long dismissed as folklore, are suddenly revived, and a new, enigmatic cult has arrived in Blarnie, promising enlightenment but bringing fear. The arrival of these outsiders in town, led by a mysterious ex-local stirs up old wounds and intensifies the scrutiny on the town’s secrets.

Detective Sergeant Nick Vada is summoned to Blarnie with his partner Joanna Gray, two years on from Darcy's murder to untangle the cold case. As he investigates he discovers unsettling connections between the murder and the town's shadowy past. With the line between reality and the occult blurring, Nick and Joanna must confront the sinister forces at play and unravel a chilling conspiracy that threatens to engulf the town in darkness...

Home again on Ceann Mara station, Roisín O'Byrne, a steadfast lawyer committed to protecting the environment, finds herself embroiled in a battle to protect the threatened Darling River that her family have called home for almost two centuries. But her dedication pits her against formidable adversaries within the government body entrusted with safeguarding water resources, including her enigmatic boss, Seth Brodie.

As her family continue in their quest to uncover the history of the settlement of Ceann Mara, and the hidden life of one of the first settlers, Samuel O’Byrne, Roisín delves deeper into the murky waters of corporate interests and governmental corruption.
When an unexpected twist complicates her pursuit of environmental protection—her undeniable attraction to Seth Brodie, a man whose ideals clash with her own yet whose magnetism is undeniable—Roisin has to make a choice.

Will she risk everything, including her happiness, to expose the truth and save the Darling River?

Maitland, 1889

When nineteen-year-old Constance Montague wakes one Wednesday she expects the day to unfold like any other. Breakfast with her grandmother Nell and her mother Faith, a meeting in Maitland with the ladies of the Benevolent Society, perhaps a gentle stroll along the banks of the Hunter River. But this Wednesday is different. Nell has vanished.

Concerned, Connie determines to track Nell down and follows a lead to Old Government House in Parramatta, now a guest house. There, to her astonishment she finds her grandmother holding court.

When Nell introduces her as her companion to a varied cast of colourful guests, including a frail but observant old lady, a travelling salesmen, a bearded lothario, a clever articled clerk, a lively seamstress and an enigmatic housekeeper who is connected with Nell's past, Connie begins to realise that her grandmother is not who she seems. Nell is looking for something and following a thread stitched long ago, a thread that leads from some missing gold, to a damask dress and the attic of Government House. As the story unravels so do the secrets of the past, secrets that surface into the present to threaten not just Nell, but Connie too.

Lexi Winter is studying for her detective exams but her nemesis Vaughn is out there somewhere and her concentration is fractured. Just as she's wondering if her hypervigilance is tipping over into madness, Vaughn resurfaces and issues a challenge. Five people will be dead by the end of the month. If Lexi can identify and save the last one before the deadline, he'll turn himself in.

As Lexi's colleagues scramble to untangle what it all means, Lexi is implicated deeper and deeper into the murders. On top of this, she begins to see a strange figure everywhere she goes. Branded as suffering from PTSD, Lexi's credibility is in tatters with her colleagues, but Lexi knows it isn't her mind that is the problem. A wicked game is afoot, and Lexi is just a chess piece in play - and she suspects that check mate will mean her death. There is only one thing that Lexi can do - play along, wait for the chance to strike back, and bring about the endgame...

Things have not been going well for Zoe Ann Weiss. Once a young novelist full of promise, now she has a failed debut under her belt, a mountain of debt, a dead-end job, and an agent who's about to drop her if she doesn't write something new and brilliant soon.

Worst of all, she's blocked. Can't-write-a-word blocked. But all that changes one night when she runs into her old flame, Zach Hamilton. It's like no time has passed at all. They start casually dating, and Zach makes her feel like anything is possible. Like the stars have finally realigned themselves in her favour.

Best of all, her writer's block has disappeared.

The only issue is Zach isn't just some hot guy with a dream anymore. Now he's a movie star with billboards and PR people and fans and paparazzi ... and even though they're dating in secret, Zoe soon finds herself splashed all over the press. Now everyone seems to know her name.

But the problem with everyone knowing your name is that everyone knows your name ... including the stalker who's obsessed with Zach.

The stalker who's re-enacting violent, creepy plot twists from Zoe's first novel, exactly how she wrote them - except now, she's the victim.

Left alone on the vast cattle station with her baby while her husband, Alex, works the farm, Hallie Donaldson is having trouble adjusting to the flies, dust, snakes and isolation in the Flinders Ranges.

At least today, Hallie knows that she and their daughter Ruby can watch Alex on the security camera erected at the windmill where he'll be working. But something goes horribly wrong and he suddenly disappears from view.

Alex is found later, dead at the bottom of the windmill.

After Alex's death, Hallie discovers an alarming series of phone messages sent to a still-shared link on Alex's phone. A short time later, one of Alex's close friends from agricultural college, Danny Betts, loses his life in another tragic rural accident.

When Hallie reveals the horrifying information she's been keeping secret to Detective Dave Burrows and his partner, Constable Mia Worth, they quickly realise that all is not what it seems.

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.

Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women—one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

THE MAGICIAN
THE ASSISTANT
THE EXECUTIVE
THE HYPNOTIST
THE TWIN
THE COUNSELLOR
THE TECH

My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there; A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens; And an advent calendar. Because, you know, it's Christmas.

If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it.

After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?

When Detective Mark Turpin is assigned the task of investigating the death of a local businessman, the case is first thought to be one of accidental drowning.

Until a bullet hole is found where the victim fell into the River Thames.

Then a number of graves are unearthed at a disused airfield site being redeveloped by the dead man, exposing a horrific secret and plunging Mark into one of the darkest investigations of his career.

After two more bodies are discovered amongst the burnt-out ruins of a building on a nearby industrial estate, Mark realises that a serial killer is at large.

Except as the police draw closer, the killer already has their next victim in their sights – and both have disappeared without a trace…

When mystery author Tiggy Jones receives an email from a famous forensic scientist, she’s shocked that Dr Helena Loxton is offering her private life as the plot for Tiggy's next book. Tiggy’s dangerous curiosity is piqued.

But there's a catch.

In exchange, Dr Loxton wants Tiggy to research some things she’s forgotten from her past, especially one crucial thing that’s keeping her awake at night.

Wouldn’t she do better with a private investigator?

And after too many real mysteries that have turned out to be crimes, Tiggy has sworn off acting like an amateur PI.

Hasn’t she?

Join Tiggy Jones and her dog Raider as a tangle of unexpected incidents, including murder, hook them into investigating the dark secrets behind a stellar career.

Are they about to expose a public scandal of epic proportions?

Or is it something private – and shocking?

Marytè is a devoted beekeeper. She lives by the old rules: work with fellow beekeepers, be a good Christian and a good harvest will follow. These rules help her cope with her grief when she inherits her husband's tree hollows. But as harsh conditions and tax increases threaten the harvest, Marytè begins to question her faith, her community and her own sanity.

There is little help to be had from her eldest daughter. Austėja is no worker bee. She takes risks, speaks her mind and dreams of escaping their isolated community. As her mother works, she finds refuge in the ancient forest and the old beliefs instilled in her by her defiant grandmother.

When Austėja discovers the mutilated body of the Hollow Watcher and uncovers a honeycomb of lies and betrayal, she is intent on finding the truth and protecting her family. Will mother and daughter overcome their differences, learn the truth behind the murder and complete the honey harvest?

Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic are back – as Nell is thrown into her most emotionally fraught investigation yet.

A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan and Nell are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers.

But it's when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative that the past begins to take on a looming significance.

What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell's mother doing there, and what was her connection to troubled young police officer Simmons Burnside? And why do the police hierarchy insist Ivan and Nell stay with the case despite an obvious conflict of interest?

For Broome detective Dan Clement, it seems that crime is as plentiful as wet season rain. When his sergeant is beaten up, and a woman is brutally assaulted, it seems like the same two suspects are behind both incidents. But when a woman’s hand is discovered in crocodile-infested waters, things take a macabre turn.

The stakes rise sky-high as Dan races against time to solve this complex and puzzling case.

When Roz Chen’s wife, Niamh, is killed in a hit-and-run on a lonely Tasmanian road, the grieving widow begins to wonder if Niamh’s death was an accident after all. Meanwhile, SAS veteran Sam Willard is hoping for a fresh start with a job at a salmon farm. But as allegations of old war crimes surface and Sam is ‘promoted’ as a special operative against anti-salmon farm activists, he and Roz form an unlikely alliance.

Forced to retreat into the unforgiving Tasmanian wilderness, Roz and Sam find themselves scrambling for the truth with murderous thugs on their trail.

When Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy, David Kane, hear reports of a plane crashing into the mountains that surround Black Rock Falls, their hearts shatter. Their friend’s blonde-haired teenage daughter, Julie, was on that flight. They won’t sleep until they bring Julie home to her distraught family.

A blizzard closing in, Jenna pushes on with the search until, just beyond the snow-capped trees, she finds the plane. She falls to her knees at the sight of the lifeless bodies, still buckled into their seats. But one passenger is missing: Julie has vanished…

Racing into the remote forest, Jenna finds heavy footsteps around the crash site which are too big to be Julie’s. Someone was here before them. Following the prints, Jenna’s pulse races as she finds the bodies of three young women hanging from the tall pine trees, their limbs frozen, their faces lifted to the sky above.

When the victims are identified, Jenna notices that each girl had long blonde hair when they went missing, just like Julie. But when they were found in the forest, their hair had been cut, their looks changed forever. Is a twisted killer preying on girls who he can manipulate before their death? Could Julie be his next victim? With snow piling up around them, Jenna doesn’t have long to find Julie alive. Can she track down this monster before he takes his next innocent life?

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the ‘Wire’ crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile-phone blackspots.

Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride . . . and then their nightmare begins.

The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew - and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions, or else be blown to smithereens.

Senior Sergeant Edna Norris is dealing with a runaway teenager; not an unusual job in a place where people go to disappear. But an unfolding crime spree turns this outback cop’s night into a fight for survival. Hot on Harvey and Clare’s trail, Edna finds a burnt-out car, a missing woman, a bank robbery and a bullet-riddled body.

And this road trip from hell has only just begun . . .

Bringing secrets to light can be dangerous…. keeping them buried might be deadly.

Dawn Grave is a career detective who’s holding on to a dark past - one that destroys relationships and wreaks havoc on her personal life.

For more than twenty years, she’s tried to forget the horrors of her youth - while her sister has spent all that time digging for answers. Now a cryptic text message threatens to throw it all back into the light.

Dawn attempts to call her sister, but when Lisa can’t be reached, she knows something terrible has happened. But finding Lisa means returning to the remote tropical town in northern Australia where her nightmares all began.

Dawn is out of her jurisdiction, but nothing is going to stop her investigating her sister’s disappearance. When Lisa’s car is found abandoned and a body is retrieved from the water, she’s afraid her past has come back to haunt her.

When she’s called to ID the body, she realises, her search for the truth has only just begun.

When bride-to-be Alicia Finlay sees a body drop off the Indian Pacific in the dead of night, even her beloved Book Club think her mind is up to its usual tricks. After all, they’ve brought along not one but EIGHT iconic train mysteries to read while on an iconic train—in this case, a real-life locomotive that crosses Australia's wide brown girth.

Surely Alicia's mixing fact and fiction? Or perhaps they can blame it on all that celebratory champagne…

Soon after, a first-class passenger is reported missing and the Book Club quickly sober up. The family of "Wheat Baron” Clay Dartmoor insist he got off willingly at a remote mining town, but Alicia’s convinced Clay was pushed long before then, and his shifty family aren’t the only suspects.

With a cast of colourful passengers and crew to choose from, the amateur sleuths have just two days to work out whodunnit before they reach Perth and the professionals jump aboard.

Grab your Akubra hat, book your cosy berth and snuggle in, folks, for the Book Club’s most rollicking adventure yet. It’s a locked-door, closed-circle thriller that offers twists, adventure, love and laughs while whisking you across the stunning red heart of Australia.

The seventh instalment in the best-selling cosy mystery series is one for true train(mystery)spotters. Have you read all the train mysteries on the Book Club’s list? And can you connect the dots before they reach Perth?

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the ‘Wire’ crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile-phone blackspots.

Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride . . . and then their nightmare begins.

The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew - and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions, or else be blown to smithereens.

Senior Sergeant Edna Norris is dealing with a runaway teenager; not an unusual job in a place where people go to disappear. But an unfolding crime spree turns this outback cop’s night into a fight for survival. Hot on Harvey and Clare’s trail, Edna finds a burnt-out car, a missing woman, a bank robbery and a bullet-riddled body.

And this road trip from hell has only just begun . . .

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew.

Noel never should have been released from prison. My job helping ex-prisoners turn over a new leaf usually warms my heart, but as soon as I lock eyes with Noel the skin along the nape of my neck prickles. He wasn’t locked up for a petty crime; it was manslaughter. And now he’s dating my sister.

Brooke says she’s never met a man who makes her feel so cherished and protected. That a single brush of his hand makes her heart flutter. A knight in shining armor who will finally lay to rest the twisted secrets in her past.

But he whispers words to me that Brooke can’t hear. Words that sound like threats. And I do the one thing I know I shouldn’t: I search through his prison files to find out all his secrets. And with trembling hands I discover that he didn’t kill his brother by accident…

Noel has no idea what I’m capable of. He could never imagine the darkness that lurks in our family. The things we’ll do to protect our own.

I nearly lost Brooke once, and I’ll never let that happen again…

Within hours of arriving in New York City, Jane is dragged into a case and finds herself up against one of the toughest minds she’s ever had to crack: a Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-business partner has just been murdered.

Sarah Noble is the darling of the tech world – the genius behind an AI defence system that hijacks enemy missiles. But when Sarah’s estranged business partner is killed in a mysterious plane crash, suspicion immediately falls on one of the few people who could hack the plane’s guidance system and had a motive to do so: Sarah herself.

Against her better judgement, Jane agrees to profile Sarah and is immediately drawn into a world beyond her control, where money is no object, murder a tool of trade and the stakes go straight to the heart of the United States itself.

Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.

As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a series of disturbing flashbacks, Kate realises her past hides a frightening truth, but can she trust her own mind?

Faced with dark secrets and duplicity, Kate must unlock the answers she’s so desperate to find – and survive the danger she has unwittingly walked into.

Paul Cutler is a former undercover operative, now working off the books for his handler, Malik Khalil. When Cutler is tasked with investigating the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, Cutler realises that the apparent murder he’s investigating points to a slew of much darker crimes. Onboard, Cutler discovers that the vessel’s crew members are kept as slaves, subject to brutal punishment and forced to work long hours with little rest. And when he learns of the recent massacre of the crew of an Indonesian fishing vessel in the same waters, he realises his quest for the truth will be meaningless if he cannot escape with his life.

When Toby Bowman vanishes, his brother Lachlan retraces a road trip to the last place Toby phoned from – a remote northern town called Jasper Cliff. There, Lachlan finds himself marooned at the dying town’s pub, and soon learns that his brother is just one of many to have gone missing in recent years. Like Toby, his brother becomes obsessed with finding the Rift, a deep hole in a ravine somewhere in the hills. But what will Lachlan learn, and what will he see, if he stares into the Rift, too?

Sydney, Australia: The body of a young woman is found in Chinatown. She’s been beaten, tortured – and tattooed with the image of a sun. Called to the scene, Sergeant Jackie Rose asks herself whether this was a drug murder, or something else. But before her investigation can get under way, she is ordered to hand the case over to the Australian Federal Police.

Cape Town, South Africa: A local girl recruited to study in Australia has fallen off the radar. Veteran detective Schalk Lourens – recently suspended from duty – has already made plans to visit his daughter in Sydney, with emigration in mind. He decides to search for the missing girl while he is there.

Jackie and Schalk join forces, exposing a trail of corruption and crime stretching from the foreshore of the city’s iconic harbour, back to South Africa and across the world.

Together the pair must navigate a minefield of deceit and manipulation set by an enemy more powerful and depraved than they can imagine. And failure isn’t an option, because not only their own futures, but those of hundreds of vulnerable young people, hang in the balance.

There's nowhere to run. But so much to hide.

Keen to flee the wreckage of her marriage, Australian scientist Kit Bitterfeld accepts a coveted winter research position at Macpherson Station in Antarctica. On the way there, Kit and her fellow researchers field a distress call from a nearby ship.

By the time they reach the vessel it is on fire and the crew has vanished. A lone survivor is found, but he can't remember who he is or what has happened.

They bring the survivor, identified as geophysicist Nick Coltheart, to Macpherson but it's clear that something is wrong. More and more of Kit's colleagues are acting strangely. And she can't shake the suspicion that Nick knows more than he's letting on. With the winter darkness setting in, Kit must figure out the truth before they are completely cut off from the outside world. But is the danger lurking out on the ice, or is it closer than she thinks?

Even the worst person has a best friend.

A chilling black comedy, The First Friend imagines a gangster mob in charge of a global superpower.

The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia.

By his side is Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is dangerous; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. The tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played?

If you knew when you were going to die, what would you do differently?

It all begins on a flight from Hobart to Sydney. The flight will be smooth. It will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off the plane.

But almost all of them will be changed forever.

Because on this ordinary flight, something extraordinary happens. 'A lady', unremarkable until she isn't, predicts how and when many of the passengers are going to die. For some, death is far in the future; for others, it is very close.

A brilliantly constructed story that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. Liane Moriarty is a modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery and asking profound, universal questions.

Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things – back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate – but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges.

When a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it's the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed – all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.

Miss Phoebe Astin of The Economic Undertaker found herself charmed by the recently deceased perfume salesman, Mr Edward 'Teddy' Tate, as were many of his former clients. Not unaccustomed to speaking with spirits as they leave this life on their way to the next, the debonair salesman had two requests of Phoebe: to investigate his death, which he believed was not an accident and to send his love to three ladies whom he had been romancing.

Phoebe passes the information on to her beau, Detective Harland Stone, and when two of Teddy's love interests are found dead, the detective gets a whiff of a crime afoot. Aided by her brothers, Julius and Ambrose, and her dear friends, the Vexed Vixens, Phoebe is doing her best to grant the dearly departed justice. After all, for the Astin family, being dead is no excuse for letting crime go unpunished (even if he was romancing three ladies, the cad!)

She knows everything about you… but can you trust her?

I walk in to my interview with Ava Green and carefully hand over my application. It’s all made up, of course, but Ava doesn’t have to know that.

There is so much worry in her blue eyes. Her phone pings with constant messages and a small stain marks her crisp shirt. Breakfast with her two little girls before heading out to this high-flying job every morning can’t be easy.

Ava needs me, I think. More than anything.

The interview goes perfectly, because I have made myself into the perfect assistant. Now I just hope Ava never finds out why I’m really here. Not before she lets me into her home, and I meet her charming husband, and get to babysit her children.

Because I have plans for Ava. She just has to trust me…

Ilene, a working-class mother, is struggling to survive and desperate to reconnect with her children, Jack and Lonnie, in the aftermath of a near-fatal tragedy.

But her children vanish, setting off a chain reaction within the community.

Suspended detective Omar helps out with the investigation, uncovering disquieting clues, but he keeps getting pulled away by a dangerous cold case.

Benji, a recovering addict, finds peace by breeding lorikeets and caring for his mother, only to have his clean life upended by a stranger’s menacing threat.

Nera, a city lawyer grieving on a country farm, wants to find out who killed one of her animals and is faced with increasingly strange and unsettling answers.

In this gripping tale of human frailty and the other-worldly, each character must confront the mystery of what really happened to Jack and Lonnie.

Set between the Blue Mountains and a Sydney hospital, Lisa Kenway’s All You Took from Me is a thriller brimming with great characters and nail-biting tension.

Anaesthetist Clare Carpenter has just lost her husband and her memory in a single-vehicle accident. So why is a stranger following her? After questioning patients about their dreams, she becomes convinced that an anaesthetic drug might help her access missing memories. But there’s no way to be certain without jeopardising her career or her life.

As unexplained threats escalate, Clare realises she must take matters into her own hands to learn the uncomfortable truth about her secretive husband, his connection to a mysterious club and what she did to trigger a stranger’s crusade for vengeance. But how far will she go?

In Melbourne for a passing visit for a friend's birthday, Detective Sergeant Nick Vada meets the beautiful Evie Gibson. Twenty four hours later he sits in the lockup of the Victorian police headquarters, arrested for murder.

Detective Sergeant Eli Roberts is brought onto the case to investigate just what would cause the detective to snap and commit such a horrible crime. Detective Joanna Gray is sent in to assist the investigation and soon finds that not all is what it seems.

The Victorian team is sure of Nick's guilt, but a long lost connection between Evie and Melbourne's seedy criminal underworld begins to surface, and Joanna must race against the clock to prove Nick's innocence before he loses his chance at freedom forever..

Pushing fifty and reeling from an ugly divorce, Paul has decided it's time for an adventure. With the Bee Gees on the radio and the open road ahead, he sets out into the middle of nowhere, open to whatever comes. But things take a sinister turn when he impulsively decides to pick up a hitchhiker. Clutching a ragged backpack with his eyes locked on the rear-view mirror, it's clear this twitchy young man is running from something. But what? And when the truth is revealed, how far will he - and Paul - go to survive?

A brutal murder in a town called Treachery? It's a story most journos would kill for, but for Stuart Dryden, it's a major inconvenience. He didn't take the gig at the local rag for its bustling crime beat. He'd sacrifice a career-making story for happy hour at the pub, but not even he can let a grisly murder through to the keeper. Especially when he keeps getting scooped by a persistent kid with a disposable Kodak.

Life's tough for eleven-year-old Matty Finnerty. His mother's gone, his father's gone most of the time and, as hard as he tries, he just can't get the kids at school to like him. When his favourite teacher Wendy Millburn turns up dead on the beach, it puts his dad Robbie in the crosshairs of a town that never liked him anyway. Worse than the bricks through the window, the dead animals on the lawn and the fish heads in the mailbox is the fact no one seems to be looking for the killer.

Matty starts to wonder whether Robbie knew Wendy better than he's let on. He needs a hero, and Dryden will have to do – that is, if he can just stay sober for a night or two. He might even cast off the ghosts of his own past.

As they stumble their way to answers, can they find the truth about Wendy – and what they're really made of?

Special agent Beth Katz races through the dense Montana woodland toward a small, isolated cabin. She’s investigating the disappearance of her partner Dax Styles’s sister who went missing as she walked home from school, and Beth finally has a solid lead. Outside the decrepit building, her heart pounds wondering what she will find on the other side of the door.

A young woman with long brown hair and cornflower blue eyes, just like Dax’s, shakes in the kitchen. It’s clearly Ginny, but before Dax can speak to his long-lost sister, Beth hears a noise from outside. In a rundown outbuilding, they discover another young girl, reported missing just weeks before. Dressed in a thin nightie, Ava cowers as Beth breaks into the padlocked room. Her captor has fled, but Beth will use every skill she’s got to track him down.

Working night and day, Beth uncovers more cases of young girls taken from remote roads near their homes. Twelve-year-old Shiloh Weeks vanished as she walked home just days ago. Her story remarkably similar to Ginny and Ava’s.

Beth and Dax are on a mission to stop to this twisted individual and save any new girls from being taken into the woods and lost forever. But when the trail leads them to a man impersonating a police officer to gain the trust of his victims, will Dax hand him over or take matters into his own hands?

Victim ... or killer?

For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria’s high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge.

Also found dead near the scene was Bill ‘Creeper’ Durant, a bushland loner, expert deer-hunter, and a man with a known reputation for stalking campers . . .

Conclusion: murder-suicide. Case closed.

But as the ten-year anniversary of the massacre draws near, Detective Constable Sally White – the only officer at Edenville’s modest police station – finds herself drawn into the dark world of the notorious Durant family.

Lex Durant, in particular, has started to publicly protest his brother's innocence and accuse the police of persecution.

As Sally combs the investigation to prove him wrong, it becomes all too clear that each murdered hiker had skeletons in their closet - and possible enemies in their past . . .

Why would my best friend want to destroy my life?

Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they've always had a close - sometimes too close - friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to diverge: Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains, as well as falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu.

Unused to sharing Finn, Daphne starts to act up in ways that will allow her to maintain the control over her best friend she's always relished. Then, one fateful day, Finn, Daphne and Magdu all go mountain climbing - and Magdu falls to her death. Is it suicide, or a terrible accident - or has something more sinister happened?

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further - into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer's home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without putting the killers at the centre of the story?

On a cold, dark night, two cars collide …

Inside the vehicle at fault, Jennifer Ashby survives with barely a scratch. In the wreckage of the second, the occupants are not so lucky. Jennifer’s good character helps her escape jail, but she is traumatised by the event.

Desperate for a change, and with her marriage buckling under the stress, she convinces her husband Jon to move to the beautiful but wild Daintree region, far away from family and friends.

As Jon spends long hours at his new job and Jennifer makes plans to absolve her lingering guilt, cracks begin to form in their idyllic new life. Will the shadow of their past continue to haunt them? Will their dark secret be exposed?

Will the mountain give up its secrets?

While walking on an isolated track in the windswept Wimmera, rock-climber Skye discovers the body of a young woman. The body has injuries that suggest a rock-climbing accident, but it's been found more than 5km from the nearest cliffs at Mount Arapiles.

Police ask Skye to help them navigate the perilous world of rock climbing as they try to unravel what happened. Skye is secretly thrilled to be part of the investigation, but as it becomes clear that a killer is on the loose, all thrill turns to fear. In the isolated crags of the mountain, stark beauty can conceal horrific truths.

Everyone is guilty of something.

Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years – and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago.

When Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six years of drug addiction, jail and, eventually, rehab, Barb offers him a job, hoping to help him turn his life around. However, when another new resident of Bullford Point is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect.

Barb thinks the police have got it wrong, but the more she tries to find the truth and clear Joe's name, the more confusing things become. Is the murder connected to the developers circling the waterfront home Joe inherited from his parents? Or to the true crime podcast he has been making about the death of his ex-girlfriend, seven years previously? And what was the information the murdered woman had been trying to horse-trade with police?

As her off-the-books investigation continues, Barb discovers that drowsy Bullford Point is actually a town full of secrets – and that even though she's known everyone in the close-knit community for years … everybody lies.

Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2019: Ongoing clashes between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russian activists make this city a deadly destination.

However, Matt Latham – Australian foreign correspondent and reluctant spy for ASIS (Australia’s secret service) – isn’t too picky with the work he accepts, as long as the money is right. When offered a lucrative assignment to interview a reclusive Russian billionaire in Kharkiv, he jumps at the chance. But an explosion at the club where they were to meet leaves Matt hospitalised and his interpreter, Katya Fomina, dead.

Was it just another random act of violence in this strife-torn region?

Released from hospital, Latham travels to Katya’s Ukrainian village to meet her parents and pay his last respects. There, he learns of his interpreter’s fruitless search for her missing younger sister, Nadiya, and discovers that Katya led a double life.

Picking up the threads of Katya’s investigation, Latham becomes a man on a mission. And his search for Nadiya will propel him across Europe and ever deeper into a murky world of double agents, illegal arms shipments, drug running and human trafficking.

On the unforgiving streets of 1920s Sydney, the Leach family have nothing but each other.

In a tale spanning decades, three children of the broken, working-class family find adventure, heartache and trouble as their lives drift apart.

John finds faith and love at a young age. The inevitable clash between the two leads him into a different kind of brotherhood as war clouds gather.

Maureen dreams of a life 'just like the movies' and waits to be swept off her feet. Yet at every crossroad, she makes the wrong choice.

Bob discovers a natural talent with his fists and an instinct for trouble. But with every win he earns the hard way, more enemies rise.

From police corruption and gambling dens to brothels and blood feuds, the Leach family toil in Sydney's seedy underbelly and on battlefields far away. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Second World War, The Youngest Son chronicles one family's mesmerising fate in a grand saga and a masterclass in epic storytelling.

In this thrilling mystery novel, centuries-old secrets and modern-day danger collide in a heart-pumping race to find a killer. Intelligence analyst Richard Worse is pulled into the investigation of a murder in the parish where an unspeakable evil occurred over 600 years ago. As Worse and his partner, Emily Misgivingston, delve deeper into the case, he lays bare a shocking secret that will strike at the heart of his own family.

Professor Denise 'Doc' Rado is South Africa's expert on pangolins, busting poachers and freeing the endangered anteaters in elaborate undercover stings.

After a risky operation backfires, Doc's life is shattered, but she still has to lead an eclectic group of donors on a wildlife tour of southern Africa.

But there's a target on her back.

As the safari ventures deep into Africa, Doc fears they're being followed and she will do anything to keep them all safe - especially Ian Laidlaw, a handsome Australian businessman turned accidental philanthropist.

Is Doc being hunted by the poachers she once fought, or is there some other bloodthirsty predator prowling the wilderness?

Paradise has a price
A murder. A disappearance. A sinister network.

Steels Creek is an idyllic retreat in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It's a place where everyone knows their neighbours and no one locks their doors. Investigative journalist Lars Nilsson who has moved to the settlement following a public fall from grace is trying to live a quiet life far from the crime reporting he was once feted for.

But when a backpacker's body is found floating in a nearby waterhole and hours later his best friend's daughter is reported missing, Lars is compelled to investigate, putting him back in the cross-hairs of police. What he finds may not only destroy his tightknit community but also the life he has worked so hard to rebuild.

Detective Holly Sutton has been seconded to work with the New South Wales Homicide Squad to investigate the murder of Sydney socialite, Tottie Evans, who was found dead at the Palm Beach home of a millionaire property developer.

Alec Blacksmith isn’t like other real estate guys. He’s a former mercenary soldier who shot to fame after appearing on a reality TV show. Blacksmith is refusing to cooperate with police because he has his own secrets.

John Bailey is an old school reporter with a nose for a story.

He gets a call from the police about a break-in at the house he inherited from his former girlfriend, Sharon Dexter – a cop murdered in the line of duty.

Whoever crowbarred the lock was looking for Dexter’s case file about the murder of a waitress named Sally King at an exclusive Sydney gentlemen’s club a decade earlier. After examining the file, Bailey discovers something that will blow up the Homicide Squad’s investigation into Tottie Evans’s death – a link to the murder of King.

The only problem is that a serial killer is already serving a life sentence for the crime.

Catching killers is Holly Sutton’s job. But for John Bailey, solving the case offers him a chance to finish a job for the woman who saved his life.

She's the one to turn to when you need saving. But first she has to save herself...

Lou Alcott is turning over a new leaf as a private investigator. Formerly police, she was forced to resign when she attacked a domestic violence perpetrator. She's always vowed to be nothing like her grandfather Hamish, Melbourne's biggest crime boss, delivering an eye for an eye, but this guy had it coming.

On her first day she draws two cases helping at-risk women. First there's Diane Paterson, who has apparently left her husband without a word. Who should Lou believe? The charmingly distraught husband, Diane's suspicious parents, or the freezer full of lovingly prepared food left behind?

Then a house security check for an isolated young woman who is convinced her abusive ex is stalking her again turns worrisome when she fails to show up for their meeting. Lou reports Melinda's odd disappearance to the police but with no signs of a struggle she fears they're not able to act quickly enough.

With her protective radar pinging, Lou keeps digging until she unearths chilling evidence that puts her in the hot seat. Suddenly Lou is embroiled in a cat-and-mouse-game where there will only be one survivor... Will Lou's first case be her last?

WHAT IF YOU'RE SCARED YOU COMMITTED A CRIME BUT CAN'T REMEMBER?

Family. It means everything to Sheridan. She has missed having her brother around. At last, Lachy is back in Australia, and Sheridan can't wait to spend the Easter holidays all together in the mountains with their kids.

But, on Good Friday, something devastating happens that rips their two families apart, and now she can't imagine ever forgiving him.

Lachy knows he's not coping, but his sister doesn't have the full story. And, terrifyingly, nor does he. There are some critical gaps in his memory. How is he connected to a missing woman, a hit-and-run, and a request for DNA?

To untangle the truth, Lachy must decide who he can trust. His sister? His friends? Even himself?

Melbourne, 1868.
When dazzling theatre star Marie St Denis dies in the arms of her best friend, fellow actress Lola Sanchez, everyone believes it was suicide by laudanum overdose. Everyone except Lola. On the brink of stardom herself, she risks everything by embarking on a quest to find Marie's killer.

When journalist Magnus Scott, writing as 'the Walking Gentleman', publishes a compassionate obituary about her friend, Lola decides to seek his help. A fraught attraction develops between these two amateur detectives from opposite sides of society, and their volatile relationship soon begins to compromise their investigation.

Lola keeps a secret from Magnus. She traverses the corrupt underbelly of the brash young metropolis just as he does, but disguised as a boy, entering dangerous, forbidden spaces where the lives of the rich and privileged intersect with the city's underclass and outsiders: bohemians, theatre folk, prostitutes, down-and-outs and opium addicts.

Neither are prepared for the truths they will uncover about the powers that rule Melbourne – or the consequences for their own lives. And now they must race to find the murderer before the city destroys them both.

Lies + Deception = Murder

Melbourne 1925. Jasper Fitzalan Howard is found stabbed to death in his room at The Hotel Windsor. In a bizarre twist, he is clutching a tarot card, the Ten of Swords, in his right hand. Initially, the police identify him as a wealthy investor and a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk. However, while investigating the murder, Reggie da Costa, The Argus’s celebrated crime reporter, uncovers a web of lies and deception surrounding Howard’s carefully constructed façade. It seems that Howard has engaged in swindling wealthy businessmen whilst blackmailing their wives, giving Reggie a host of suspects for the murder. Enlivened by what he discovers, Reggie embarks on a crusade to rid the city of confidence men and ‘snake oil’ salesmen, while tracking down a killer.

Paradise has a price
A murder. A disappearance. A sinister network.

Steels Creek is an idyllic retreat in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It's a place where everyone knows their neighbours and no one locks their doors. Investigative journalist Lars Nilsson who has moved to the settlement following a public fall from grace is trying to live a quiet life far from the crime reporting he was once feted for.

But when a backpacker's body is found floating in a nearby waterhole and hours later his best friend's daughter is reported missing, Lars is compelled to investigate, putting him back in the cross-hairs of police. What he finds may not only destroy his tightknit community but also the life he has worked so hard to rebuild.

Twin sisters May and June couldn’t be more different. May is quiet, self-conscious, withdrawn; June is boisterous, beautiful, magnetic…and missing.

It’s been a year since June disappeared, a year of May waiting for her to turn up with an explanation of where she’s been and why she left. But with the discovery of an old newspaper article comes a secret: their mother once vanished, too, on the same date when she was nineteen years old.

Just like June.

This was no coincidence. June was investigating this buried family mystery, and she left May a series of clues to pick up where she left off. Now, if May wants to find June, she’ll have to retrace her footsteps through their mother’s past.

The more answers she digs up, the more questions May has. And the biggest one of all: When her sister’s trail of breadcrumbs runs out, what or who will she find?

The most painful of Evie Cormac's memories have been locked away, ever since she was held prisoner as a child - a child whose rescue captured hearts and headlines.

Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven's mission is to guide her to something near normality. But today, on a British beach, seventeen bodies wash up in front of them. There is only one survivor, with two women still missing. And Evie's nightmares come roaring back . . .

Whatever happened all those years ago lies at the core of this new tragedy. Because these deaths are no accident. The same dark forces are reaching out, dragging her back into the storm.

Evie must now call upon Cyrus's unique skills, and her own, in their search for the missing pieces of this complex and haunting puzzle. But will that be enough to save them? And who will pay for the past?

Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.

Although Winter quickly settles in Australia and comes to love her life and the people in it, she notices strange happenings in the shadows of her new home. When a news story prompts her to look back as her past, she begins to wonder whether things were as idyllic as she had thought at the time.

As she uncovers secret after secret, she realises a much darker narrative may have been – and perhaps still is – playing out ...

Ivy Ross left Rivers End ten years ago, vowing never to return. Her heart broken, her trust gone, the father she adored behind bars. But when her sister Jody begs Ivy to return to finalise their inheritance, the majestic Fairview House, she is drawn home. And when she finds a collection of heartfelt letters hidden in her father’s library, everything she thought she knew is called into question.

The anonymous letters reveal a heartbreaking love story that force Ivy to rethink the terrible night that tore her family apart. And when Ivy meets Leo, the man whose life was also devastated by her father’s crime, she realises that it’s time to uncover the truth. But that’s not the only secret waiting for them in Fairview. Can facing up to her shocking family history lead Ivy to a future she could never have imagined…?

What secrets lie in the ashes?

After a brutal wildfire tears through the town of Jasper in the Californian sierras, a body is discovered in a shed. It looks like an open-and-shut case of accidental death – until further investigation reveals that the victim was locked in from the outside.

Years after leaving Jasper, Detective Alex Markov has been sent back under the shadow of an LAPD corruption investigation. She is convinced that the man, a family friend, was murdered opportunistically under the cover of the fire. As the smoke clears, Alex reveals a town corrupt to its core – but exposing that corruption could destroy her and the people she loves. Will she ignore the crookedness and deceit, or face the consequences of pursuing an inconvenient truth?

Listen deeply now, if you remember how and why.

On a hot October afternoon, a girl walks barefoot out of the Wimmera desert, near the small town of Gatyekarr.

She finds sanctuary with Beth, a regenerative farmer and collector of seeds, devoted to bringing her family's farm back to life. The arrival of the mysterious 'desert girl' unsettles the community and old tensions erupt. The longer the girl stays silent, the more volatile the town becomes. Who is she and what does her presence mean?

When Dakota Slade fails to turn up to work at the general store, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane visit her home in Black Rock Falls. TV still blaring, Dakota’s lifeless body is draped across the battered old sofa, her dark hair hanging over her delicate face, her young life taken too soon. With a shuddering breath, Jenna notices two small scorch marks on the back of the victim’s neck. Dakota has been electrocuted.

Leaping into action, Jenna traces Dakota’s last steps but quickly hits a wall. Dakota went to church every week, helped at local charities, and she was loved by those around her. Why would anyone want to harm her?

Then another young woman is found dead in her living room, the same two burn marks on her neck. Jenna’s heart shatters. Convinced a twisted killer is preying on women who live alone, she fears another innocent soul will be taken soon.

A breakthrough comes when Jenna uncovers rumors of a sleazy customer who visited both victims at work. Watching CCTV footage, her pulse pounds as she looks at the screen. The man in the film is someone close to her, someone she thought she could trust. Can Jenna take down the killer if it’s someone she loves? And will she catch him in time to stop another vulnerable young woman being murdered?

SHE'S MEANT TO SAVE LIVES. NOT DESTROY THEM.

Police officer Tia recently failed her exam to become a negotiator: her dream job. But when a peaceful climate change protest at a London museum escalates, and one of the radicalised members takes Tia and others hostage, she realises this is her chance to prove she has what it takes.

Only not everyone gets out of the siege alive.

Three years later, Asher is being released from prison for the part he played at the museum that day. He’s always maintained his innocence, but when someone starts threatening the survivors, leading one of them to take their own life, Tia isn’t convinced Asher is telling the whole truth. Refusing to have another death on her conscience, Tia begins to investigate.

But Tia was a hostage that day too... and now she's a target.

When kiwi backpacker Cody Short goes missing on one of the biggest cattle stations in Australia, the local police in the town of Secret are out of their depth and are forced to ask for reinforcements.

Detective Sergeant Nick Vada is sent with his new partner Probationary Detective Joanna Gray to the harsh environment to search for the man, along with looking into the disappearance of another woman who had gone missing on the same station in mysterious circumstances a year earlier.

Aided by a local Aboriginal tracker in his quest for answers, he is forced to tackle some unruly locals as well as the desert, where some truely baffling new problems arise while he tries to give the grieving families some closure…

When kiwi backpacker Cody Short goes missing on one of the biggest cattle stations in Australia, the local police in the town of Secret are out of their depth and are forced to ask for reinforcements.

Detective Sergeant Nick Vada is sent with his new partner Probationary Detective Joanna Gray to the harsh environment to search for the man, along with looking into the disappearance of another woman who had gone missing on the same station in mysterious circumstances a year earlier.

Aided by a local Aboriginal tracker in his quest for answers, he is forced to tackle some unruly locals as well as the desert, where some truely baffling new problems arise while he tries to give the grieving families some closure…

On the Coral Coast of Western Australia, solo traveller Katy is on a mission to find her free-spirited sister, Phoebe, who disappeared along the same route a year ago. But as she drives her campervan further into the wild north, Katy realises she's not as alone as she'd first believed. Soon she is pulled into a complicated web of secrets, lies, myths and stories that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her sister.

In this nerve-shredding outback thriller, our obsessions with freedom and beauty collide with our fear of what lies in the wilderness, and the truth behind Phoebe's disappearance proves stranger and darker than Katy could ever have guessed...

There's no such thing as safety in numbers ...

Rachel and Rory Sullivan decide to celebrate making it through a difficult year by taking their teenagers, Emmet and Bridie, to their first stadium concert. By the end of the night, one of the four has vanished without a trace.

As the police investigation intensifies, suspicion is cast on the remaining family members. Everyone has been deceiving one another, but who is to blame for what went wrong? The passing of each hour amplifies their terror that life will never be the same again.

People come to visit my home and I love to show them around. It's not the original house of course. That was destroyed the day my entire family died. But I don't think their ghosts know the difference.

Pera Sinclair was nine the day the pilot intentionally crashed his plane into her family's grand home, killing everyone inside. She was the girl who survived the tragedy, a sympathetic oddity, growing stranger by the day. Over the decades she rebuilt the huge and rambling building on the original site, recreating what she had lost, each room telling a piece of the story of her life and that of the many people who died there, both before and after the disaster. Her sister, murdered a hundred miles away. The soldier, broken by war. Death follows Pera, and she welcomes it in as an old friend. And while she doesn't believe in ghosts, she's not above telling a ghost story or two to those who come to visit Sinclair House.

As Pera shows a young family around her home on the last haunted house tour of the season, an unexpected group of men arrive. One she recognises, but the others are strangers. But she knows their type all too well. Dangerous men, who will hurt the family without a second thought, and who will keep an old woman alive only so long as she is useful. But as she begins to show them around her home and reveal its secrets, the dangerous men will learn that she is far from helpless. After all, death seems to follow her wherever she goes...

It is 1910. Halley’s Comet is coming. Harry Houdini is in Australia for the first time. The most celebrated escape artist in the world has sold-out seasons in both Melbourne and Sydney. 

Houdini has a new obsession: aviation. He has brought with him from Europe his own Voisin biplane, being put together and prepared in a Diggers Rest paddock by his French mechanic, Brassac. Houdini is intent on claiming a record: first to fly in Australia. But he has competition from aspiring aviators in several states, and is left restless and distracted when his promotional leap-in-chains from a Melbourne bridge disturbs a corpse in the Yarra. 

Meanwhile, his wife Bess, left alone in their hotel, stumbles upon her own mystery- music with no apparent source. Then she realises that her preoccupied husband is far from being the most famous visitor to Australia- Also present, though in hiding, is an Italian composer who has performed his own vanishing act.

Home again at Ceann Mara Station, where she spent a happy childhood with her four sisters on the banks of the Darling River, Caitriona O'Byrne feels safe. Scarred by a harrowing attack during her final year at university, she falls into the familiar, nursing both her body and her trust in all that she once believed in.

Desperate for a pursuit that will fill the days as she recovers, and eager to escape the shadows of her past, Caitriona stumbles upon a hidden family legacy. Her father's relentless research of their ancestors, the O'Byrne brothers—Thomas and Samuel—leads her on a journey through time and Caitriona begins to uncover family secrets.

In the nineteenth century, two siblings faced a life-altering choice: to abandon their ancestral farm in County Kerry or remain and endure the relentless struggle of famine. As Caitriona unearths the layers of history, a gripping family saga unfolds. Thomas’s pursuit of success along the Darling River stands in stark contrast to Samuel’s arduous battle to adapt to a foreign land. Hidden resentments festered, and Caitriona is surprised to uncover the existence of a third brother who did not emigrate with Thomas and Samuel.

For a century and a half, silence has shrouded their Irish kin, but Caitriona becomes captivated by the whispered betrayals of the past and Samuel's tenacious fight for survival. As she immerses herself in the stories of their forbears, she uncovers a multitude of secrets.

When her university friends arrive unannounced at the sheep station, Caitriona is confronted by a betrayal that threatens not only her newfound peace but her very survival.

In her confusion, where past and present collide, can Caitriona navigate their sad family history and learn who she can trust before it’s too late?

A riveting tale of resilience, secrets, and the unbreakable bonds of family, where betrayal and survival hang in the balance.

Detective Dave Burrows has longed for the top job in the Stock Squad but never thought he'd be acting in that role while his partner and best mate, Detective Bob Holden, is treated for melanoma.

Bob is keen to get back on the road and Dave can't wait to go bush either, expecting the trip will be much the same as usual.

But the trip doesn't play out that way.

Multiple bomb blasts in the small country town of Kallygarn send shock waves through the state of Western Australia, and Dave and Bob are once again drawn into the criminal underworld.

When loathed landholder Fred O’Donnell is found dead in a locked room with a bullet in his chest, rookie Detective Hartley must seek help from a mysterious wanderer to solve the case. And it’s one where everyone, including his family, has a motive and a secret to keep.

Featuring the mendicant monk from Thorpe’s previous novel, Death Leaves the Station, readers will be drawn into the world of small-town Western Australia in the late 1920s, delighting in the characters as they navigate the strained sensibilities and dark secrets of the past.

Full of twists and turns, this seemingly impossible murder mystery is cosy crime writing at its finest.

Child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney with one goal in mind: locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn’t anticipating is an unexpected attraction to her colleague’s younger brother, Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud. When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish and a police task force discovers an increase in drug trafficking across the border, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden’s disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run. To complicate matters further, torrential rain causes the Condamine River to break its banks, and the town gets cut off.

As Dana continues to ask questions, tensions peak with the rising flood waters and she soon realises that the tight-knit community is not all that it seems. Long-held secrets start to unravel and loyalties are questioned, forcing Dana to make a decision about who she can trust and how much she is willing to fight for what she believes in.

Spanish Netherlands, 1620s: raised by her father Lucas to know her mind, Antonia Vorsterman sees everything that goes on in her world - all the rivalries and jealousies that course through the artists' studios and workshops of Antwerp.

Drawn into the lively household of the artist Peter Paul Rubens, whose work her father engraves for a living, Antonia begins to see a life of colour and possibility for herself - until Lucas entrusts her with a terrible secret that will alter the course of their family's future.

Belgium, present day: haunted by the recent loss of her mother, art historian Charlotte Hubert moves to Antwerp to research her hero, the Baroque master Rubens, and to seek answers about the father she's never met.

But a startling discovery hidden inside an ancient map folio turns Charlotte's quiet academic life into a dangerous hunt for long-lost treasures, missing for 400 years. In the shadowy cloisters of the university, where ambition, obsession and violence run deep, nothing is as it seems.

Charlotte is certain of one thing - no one can be trusted.

Centuries apart, Charlotte's and Antonia's lives intertwine as they unearth long-buried secrets about a master and his engraver where theft, betrayal and the fallout of family loyalty run rampant.

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs.

At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.

What happens to a community when murders and abductions sit alongside petty workmates, teenage tribulations and longstanding friendships? It will take a town to solve this crime, but what will be broken in the effort to piece together the truth?

Grace is a thief: a good one. She was taught by experts and she’s been practising since she was a kid. She specialises in small, high-value items—stamps, watches—and she knows her Jaeger-LeCoultres from her Patek Philippes. But it’s a solitary life, always watchful, always moving. It’s not the life she wants.

Lying low after a run-in with an old associate, Grace walks into Erin Mandel’s rural antiques shop and sees a chance for something different. A normal job. A place to call home.

But someone is looking for Erin. And someone’s looking for Grace, too.

And they are both, in their own ways, very dangerous men.

When a teenage girl goes missing, Nicola Miller fears for her own daughter. Not for Abby's mental health or safety, but that she might have had something to do with it. She worries her daughter is a killer. Just like her.

Nicola has never told the truth about what happened with Abby's father. But now as the search for Cara continues, Nicola, her mother Joyce and her daughter Abby all risk their secrets coming to light.

A stunning, captivating and yet unnerving exploration of how the sins of the fathers - or in this case, the mothers - can echo down the generations.

In ZigZag Lane, in the heart of Sydney’s rag-trade district, tea ladies Hazel, Betty and Irene find themselves in hot water. Having already solved a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, they have proved themselves a useful resource and earned the respect of a local police officer. Now he needs their help to solve a plot that threatens security.
As if that’s not enough, Irene gets a coded message directing her to the spoils of a bank robbery, which sends the tea ladies on a treasure hunt with an unexpected outcome.

There’s also trouble brewing within the walls of Empire Fashionwear, where an interloper threatens not just Hazel’s job but the very role of tea lady. It’s up to Hazel to convince her friends to abandon their trolleys and take action to save their livelihoods – before it’s too late.

During a train journey across Turkey's Anatolian Plain in 1915 during World War I, Shoshana Adelstein witnesses the slaughter of the Armenians and knows she has just come face to face with her destiny.

Convinced that her Jewish community in a small outpost of the Ottoman Empire will soon meet a similar fate, she is desperate to save her people. With Turkey and Britain locked in a global conflict, she orchestrates an audacious plan. Enlisting a group of co-conspirators who include her charismatic lover Eli and her impetuous brother Nathan, this young woman forms a clandestine spy ring. Conquering almost insurmountable obstacles, they risk betrayal, torture and death to spy on the Turks and pass on intelligence to the British to help them win the war.

This epic novel explores the fate of ordinary people whose mission collides with the secret agenda of powerful countries, people ready to risk everything to rescue their communities. But can individuals affect the fate of nations? And when life is at stake, how far will we go to reach the limits of our dreams?

When dark secrets come to light, a trail of murder and deceit will follow.

Constable Jenny Williams spent the last decade obsessed with finding her missing cousin. She became a cop, moved to a remote outback mining town and put her career on the line to track Melanie down. Now she’s been found, Jenny should be overjoyed…

But her cousin’s past is full of unanswered questions and dark secrets. Jenny is willing to ignore it all, until a woman’s body is uncovered at William Creek Station - the very same place Melanie disappeared from all those years ago.

As the investigation kicks into high gear, Jenny’s gut instincts scream there must be a connection between Melanie’s disappearance and the suspicious deaths at William Creek Station.

When she finds the connection, she won’t be the only one who wishes it never came to light.

1911, on a winter's night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a road that Hawkins should have been patrolling, had he not been busy bedding the local schoolteacher.

Detectives arrive from Sydney and the disgraced Hawkins, a traumatised veteran of the Boer War, comes under fierce scrutiny. With his honour and sanity at stake, he becomes hell-bent on finding the murderer. But as ever darker secrets are revealed about the people he thinks of as friends, Hawkins is forced to confront an uncomfortable question: who is paying the price for the new nation's prosperity? 

Kate Delaney has made the biggest mistake of her life. She picked the wrong guy to humiliate on a girls' night out and now she is living every woman's worst nightmare. Kate finds herself brutalised, bound and gagged in the back of a car being driven god knows where by a man whose name she doesn't know, and she is petrified about what's in store for her.

As a journalist who is haunted by the crimes she's had to report over her career, Kate is terrifyingly familiar with the statistics about women who go missing—and the fear and trauma behind the headlines. She knows only too well how those stories usually end.

Kate can only hope the police will find her before it's too late, but she's aware a random crime is hardest to solve. As the clock ticks down, she tries to keep herself sane by thinking about her beloved boyfriend and friends, escaping into memories of love and happy times together. She knows she cannot give way to despair.

As the suspense escalates, Kate's boyfriend Liam is left behind, struggling with his shock, fear and desperation as the police establish a major investigation. The detectives face their own feelings of anguish and futility as they reflect on the cases they didn't solve in time and the victims they couldn't save. They know Kate's chances of survival diminish with every passing hour.

When a city’s heroes become its boldest criminals . . .

For years the firefighters of New York’s Engine 99 have rushed fearlessly into hot zones, saving countless lives and stopping devastating blazes in their tracks.

They’ve also stolen millions from banks, jewellery stores and art galleries. With their inside knowledge and specialist equipment, they’ve become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast.

Their newest member, Andrea ‘Andy’ Nearland, is not what she seems either. She’s an undercover operative, hunting the men of Engine 99 for a host of crimes – including the murder of an off-duty cop and the disappearance of a mother and child.

As the clock counts down to the gang’s most daring heist yet, loyalties begin to fray and mistrust boils over. Andy’s career is all smoke and mirrors, but infiltrating this crew of ‘heroes’ might prove to be her most dangerous job of all . . .

A SERIAL KILLER WITH A BURNING DESIRE

In the country town of Tallmans Valley, an arsonist is burning homes down. Their signature move is placing an identical model of the house on the front porch before setting the fire. But no one is there to witness this in the silence of each dark winter night.

A happy couple is out celebrating their anniversary when they receive a chilling phone call – a recorded children's verse warning them their house is on fire and their children gone. They race home to an inferno and missing children.

Detective Jace Franco is first on the scene and is confronted by scenes that will haunt him. The couple were good friends of his. And there's something else – a model house near the front door. He sighted exactly the same thing thirteen years ago, at a fire that claimed the lives of a whole family.

Franco becomes certain a twisted killer is at work. But with the fire officially deemed a tragic accident, his team is not convinced.

There is just one other person who saw what Franco did thirteen years ago – Franco's former homicide partner, Kate Wakeland. Can he tempt her away from her new role with the federal police for this one case?

Or will the arsonist continue to destroy the evidence with each of their deadly blazes?

During a broiling heatwave, the inner circle of a high-profile charity attend a critical meeting at White Ash Ridge, a small hotel nestled in the Australian wilderness.
As the temperature rises, a body is found lying in the thick bush, bludgeoned to death.
One of the four remaining guests is a murderer - but who, and why, is a mystery.

Detective Dana Russo knows the national spotlight will be sharply focused on the case.
The charity was formed when the founders' teenage son was killed after intervening in a vicious assault - sparking public outrage and a damning verdict on the police investigation.

But under huge pressure and with few clues - plus suspects who instinctively distrust the police - how can Dana unravel the truth?

Theo has one dream—to become a bestselling author. Determined to make her mark in the literary world, she heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar—and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect.

As Theo grapples with the shocking turn of events, she realizes that Dan may not have been the person he seemed to be, and there is something sinister going on in the world of publishing. Desperate to clear her name and uncover the truth, Theo sets out on a quest to find out who killed Dan and why.

As she digs deeper, Theo uncovers a web of deceit, conspiracy, and hidden motives, with clues leading her to a shadowy organization with far-reaching power. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.

Freya thought she could relax when Ryan's best mate Jamie got engaged to her best friend Hannah. Two couples, four friends - what could be better than that? But a day before the wedding Freya's torn between keeping the peace or blowing it up.

Hannah's perfect wedding is hours away and she's daydreaming of a honeymoon in Tahiti and starting the family she longs for when she hears the first-responder sirens. Is it a grass fire? Worse? And why aren't Ryan or Jamie answering their phones?

When a car veers off the road with devastating consequences, the small wheatbelt town of Garringarup is left reeling, but no one's worlds are more shattered than Hannah's and Freya's.

As disturbing details surrounding the accident emerge and questions pile up, ugly secrets rise to the surface.

Mystery, lies and scandal - it's soon obvious nothing is as it seems in this small town...

Every year, the reputable Queensland institution of St. Ignatius, affectionately called Iggy, hosts a Gala Day. This battle of brains and brawn, where 11-year-olds vie for a spot inside those hallowed ivory walls, directly affects admissions and determines the path of each and every candidate.

But in the cutthroat environment of elite academia, three mothers will stop at nothing to see their boys succeed. As Gala Day draws near, one scholarly prospect is struck down in a hit-and-run, and as whispers escalate to accusations, scandals and lies unravel until the only question on everyone’s mind is: who will be left standing?

Exploring the dark side of motherhood and the fierce competition that destroys close-knit communities, this chilling descent into the dangers of suburbia will thrill fans of Lisa Jewell and Andrea Bartz.