Australian Crime Fiction Novels Coming Soon

A high-profile murder case is just part of the job—until it re-opens deep wounds that never healed…

Detective Dawn Grave is a career cop—a workaholic, hiding from a tumultuous past. A recent threat on her sister's life forced Dawn back to the place where her nightmares began. 

She's since managed to overcome most of her demons, but a local murder investigation threatens to unearth a secret she's worked hard to keep buried. 

When a woman’s remains are found in croc infested waters, mauled and unrecognisable, Dawn finds herself working alongside a ghost from her past.

One who could be the lynchpin she needs to solve the case. Or her prime suspect…

In a city gripped by recession and shattered by violent bank robberies, three lives collide in a web of corruption, ambition, and revenge.

Detective Bruno Karras, haunted by past secrets, receives mysterious photos of a blood-stained house. Amy Owens, a reluctant investigator entangled with the underworld, digs into the dark dealings of a wealthy businessman. Mike Nichols, a backroom player with big dreams, finds himself caught in the crossfire.

As the glittering façade of the Gold Coast crumbles during the 1982 Commonwealth Games, Bruno, Amy, and Mike uncover a sinister plot that threatens to consume them all. In a world where power and deception reign supreme, they must confront their own demons while navigating a labyrinth of danger and betrayal.

I stare at the photo of my beautiful daughter. Her hair is shining and her face is lit up with a smile. The man with her looks so happy too. But my mother’s instinct is screaming. I know something is terribly, terribly wrong. And I know what I have to do… 

I wish I could hold her tight. See if she still wears the same perfume she always wore. But my daughter blames me for her father’s death. She won’t even talk to me… I just know she isn’t really safe with her boyfriend, Garth. I will keep my distance and I will just watch her. For now.

But I tremble with fear when the police knock at her door. Garth has gone missing. And my daughter is accused of his murder.

There’s no evidence that I ever hurt anyone… is there? Do the police know about my past – and what I’ve really been doing?

Only one thing is certain. My beautiful girl is in terrible danger.

But from the man she loves? 

From herself?

Or from me?

When a heavy storm hits Black Rock Falls, it brings a trail of destruction. Sheriff Jenna Alton is more than prepared, but she never expects to find college sweethearts Abby Jaye and Cole Peters floating among the wreckage in the river. Missing for twelve years following an end-of-school party, no clues were ever found and the couple’s devastated parents gave up hope that their beloved children would ever come home. Could the fraternity pin clutched tightly in Abby’s hand be the key to finding out what really happened that night?

As Jenna and her deputy David Kane speak to the pair’s classmates, they’re struck by how startlingly similar their stories are. They all say that nothing suspicious happened that night—they describe the open fire, the cans of cheap beer and the way Abby and Cole seemed totally in love before they disappeared. Their accounts are word-for-word identical, Jenna suspects the friends are keeping a deadly secret, and she’s determined to find out what it is.

Days later, Marissa, who still lives in town with her husband and young children, is found dead at a remote farm miles from her cozy family home just hours after answering Jenna’s questions. Jenna’s pulse races as she realizes the killer could be one of the group, and so could their next victim…

As Jenna inspects the isolated barn, gun shots ring out nearby. Heart pounding, she receives a panicked phone call from the youngest member of her team. She races to the forest, praying that her friend is still alive. But with a deadly storm brewing overhead, and a twisted killer on the loose, will she make it in time to save another life from being taken?

Miss Phoebe Astin is quite accustomed to speaking with spirits as they leave this life on their way to the next.

As the mortician at The Economic Undertaker, Phoebe and her brothers, Julius and Ambrose, find themselves inundated with victims from a ferry disaster on the river. But when one of the victims, Miss Elizabeth Rowe, appears to Phoebe and insists she did not die on the ferry, but her killer hopes it will appear as such, Phoebe is compelled to help. 

Passing the information on to her beau, Detective Harland Stone, it soon turns out all is not as it appears, especially when photographs taken by Phoebe’s friend, Kate, tell a different story. It is a time of flurry for the Astin family, who believe being dead is no excuse for letting a crime go unpunished.

After posting a drunken rant that goes horrifically viral, Bronte needs a place to lie low. Jobless, friendless, broke, she volunteers as a carer on an isolated rural property. She won’t be paid for looking after dementia sufferer Nell, but at least she’ll have a place to stay. Bronte’s host is Nell’s daughter Veda, who runs spiritual rebirthing retreats. She also claims the rights of a sovereign citizen and rejects the authority of the state, refusing even to register her car. She has acquired a small but devoted following of the like-minded.

Are they harmless cranks, with their conspiracy theories and outrage at government overreach? Or dangerously paranoid domestic terrorists? And what is the dark secret that Nell, in her confused state, keeps harking back to? Bronte, increasingly uneasy, would be getting far away from the whole place—if she had anywhere else to go.

A group of old friends. A grieving mother. A lying bride.

Adele and Jason are childhood sweethearts. Their wedding day on the sunny Australian coast is a chance to reunite and celebrate with friends and family.

But Adele isn't telling the truth about her relationship. And some of the bridal party – still reeling from a tragic death in the group a decade before – hold secrets of their own.

What happened on the jetty all those years ago was an accident, everyone agrees.

Or do they?

Someone is stalking gold hunters. Now a bushman is stalking them . . .

Terry Drage is not the first amateur gold prospector to rock up to the Murchison Hotel, brag about an exciting discovery - and then vanish into thin air. But Gabe Ahern is determined he will be the last.

No one knows the land around the remote Western Australian town of Cue better than Gabe - a wild dog trapper who's in his element in the bush. Feeling responsible for his friend's fate, he races there to join the search.

But it won't be an easy ride. For a start the local cops seem sure Terry going missing is nothing more than a tragic accident. It's down to Gabe to spot the sinister pattern of disappearances and deaths in recent years.

Plus, the last time Gabe was in his old home town it was under the very worst of circumstances. And now, to stop a killer, he'll need to confront the ghosts from his past . . .

Harlow Close has made a career as an influencer uncovering the secrets of Winnipeg, dubbed ‘North America's strangest city’. The region is renowned for its sub-zero temperatures, dropping to minus 40 degrees – sometimes for months at a time. Yet, it’s not just the frigid winters and geographic seclusion that render Winnipeg peculiar.

When Harlow's father mysteriously disappears amidst a particularly brutal cold snap, suspicions of foul play arise. It’s not like Scott to miss phone calls –and he's been even more cautious since that time he was catfished by a romance scammer. Unhappy with the pace of the police investigation, Harlow launches her own search, enlisting her sister Blaise’s reluctant help.

As Harlow struggles to uncover what happened to her father, she’s forced to question everyone and everything around her – including herself. 

Fleeing Melbourne for a village in the Yorkshire Dales had felt right. Sanctuary, I’d thought.

But nowhere is as straightforward as it first appears.

When Giselle flees to the north Yorkshire village of Hollydale, she doesn’t give much thought to what she might find there. She's more concerned with what she's leaving behind – a toxic marriage, the loss of her beloved sister, Lina, and the cloud of suspicion over the circumstances of Lina's death.

But in this small community she makes new and fascinating friends, chief among them Margaret, a wealthy elderly local who lives in Chatswood Hall, the mansion perched on a hill above the village, and Tom, the local handyman. Giselle hopes to start life over, but the past cannot be outrun and her husband will not be cut loose, threatening to arrive on in Hollydale at any moment.

When a bomb explodes on the one road that leads to her cottage, Giselle realises that her Hollydale life is larger and more complicated than she’d understood.

New Year's Eve, Loloma Island, Fiji. At one of the most exclusive island resorts in the Pacific ocean, the champagne is poured, the fireworks are ready, and the countdown to new year is just beginning. It's set to be a night that no one will forget.

Especially when a body washes up on the shore...

But it's impossible to find answers when everyone here has a motive.

The billionaire's daughter, glamorous, untouchable, hungry for her inheritance.
The start-up founder, out of money, and out of time.
The young dive instructor, in way over his head and struggling to stay afloat.
The husband, blinded by desire, in all the wrong ways.
And the lover, hidden in the shadows, where no one can see them....

One person's holiday of a lifetime is about to be the last they'll ever have.

Ruth Dawson has taken a break from big city law to fill in for a few months for an old mate in Myddle. How hard can it be? she thinks. Turns out, very hard. 

So when Ruth hears the front door of her office open, she's expecting a weird demand, or a question she doesn't know the answer to ... but it's Bea Baulderstone's mum, worried that she hasn't seen her seventeen-year-old daughter for five days, and Constable Gazza Parker is refusing to report the girl missing. Easily fixed, thinks Ruth, and heads off down Myddle's main street to charm Gazza into action. 

But Victoria Baulderstone was right: Gazza doesn't care. That is until Dash Rogers is found at his farm gate, dead from a gunshot wound, and suddenly the town is very interested in Bea's whereabouts. 

And it's not just Bea who can't be found. Dash's wife Evie is AWOL too. 

Then Troy, Evie's protg and Bea's only friend, also smoke-bombs.

Rain slicked streets, riots, murder, chaos. It's July 1992 and the Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after twenty-five apocalyptic years. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy got his family safely over the water to Scotland, to "Shortbread Land". Duffy's a part-timer now, only returning to Belfast six days a month to get his pension. It's an easy gig, if he can keep his head down.

But then a murder case falls into his lap while his protege is on holiday in Spain. A carjacking gone wrong and the death of a solitary, middle-aged painter. But something's not right, and as Duffy probes he discovers the painter was an IRA assassin. So, the question becomes: Who hit the hitman and why?

This is Duffy's most violent and dangerous case yet and the whole future of the burgeoning "peace process" may depend upon it. Based on true events, Duffy must unentangle parallel operations by the CIA, MI5 and Special Branch. Duffy attempts to bring a killer to justice while trying to keep himself and his team alive as everything unravels around them. They might not all make it out of this one.

For years the boglands of Northern Europe have given up bodies of the long-deceased. Bodies that are thousands of years old, uncannily preserved. Bodies with strange injuries that suggest ritual torture and human sacrifice.

When a corpse is found in a bog in Galway, Cormac Reilly assumes the find is historical. But closer examination reveals a more recent story. The dead man is Thaddeus Grey, a local secondary school principal who disappeared two years prior.

There's nothing in Grey's past that would explain why he was murdered, or why his body was mutilated in a ritual manner. At first, progress on the case is frustratingly slow and Cormac struggles to keep his mind on the job. His ex-girlfriend, Emma Sweeney, is in trouble, and she's reached out to him for help - Emma's new husband has gone missing in Paris, and the French police are refusing to open an investigation into his disappearance.

Cormac is sure that he has found Grey's killer, and is within hours of an arrest, when another mutilated body is discovered on the other side of the country. Two days later, a third body is found. Press attention is intense. Is there a serial killer at work in Ireland? Has Cormac been on the wrong trail? And if so, can he find the murderer before they strike again?