Australian Crime Fiction

For police officers Steve Fraser and Tess Ballard, a split-second decision saves the lives of 50 members of a cult - but also puts their careers on the line. Tess' work is everything to her; she's forged a new life through sheer determination, so when her past returns to haunt her, Steve must race through wild country if he is to save the people he most cares about.

Ethan Haddock is discovered in his apartment, dead, apparently by his own hand. His professor is taken in for questioning, and rumors swirl that his death is the result of a student-teacher bad romance. The story hits the media, an investigation is opened and the professor is suspended. Marlitt Kaplan has never investigated love affairs. A former detective turned research assistant, she misses the excitement of her old job. When her mother, a colleague of the accused professor, asks for her help, Marlitt finds herself in the impossible position of proving something didn't happen.

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, eventually identified as geophysicist Nick Coltheart, to Macpherson but it's clear that something is wrong

When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania's Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of 'the Hungry Man' still haunts locals to this day. Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, the local dealer and father of missing student Jasmine, instantly becomes the prime suspect.

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning - except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God.

For as long as she can remember, twenty-eight-year-old Leah has suffered from akinetopsia—her eyes can’t process movement, only still images. As she walks around her neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, her white stick tapping the pavement, most people assume she’s blind. But Leah sees a good deal, and she remembers every image her eyes capture. Accustomed to a solitary life in her rambling apartment complex, Leah’s routine is thrown out of whack when someone new moves in next door. Alice is beautiful and kind, but Leah can smell waves of anxiety coming off her.

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve. I've spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I've never been a hostage before. The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.

For much of their lives, Joy has been telling Cassie and Andie one big, fat lie: that they are from the future, and that when they turn 21 they will travel back to the year 2050. What started as a colourful tale to explain how the girls came to live with her has now become a decade's-long deception. Worse still, Joy has started to believe it herself. The big lie is certainly preferable to the truth she just can't face - about what happened to the girls' real mother, Britney; and how far Joy's gone to keep them 'safe'...

India, monsoon season. Connor, an Australian expat with a brutal past, spends his time running low-stakes scams on tourists in a sleepy beachside town. Sasha, an American in search of spiritual guidance, heads to an isolated ashram in the hope of mending a broken heart. When one of Connor's grifts goes horribly wrong, it sets in motion a chain of events that brings the two lost souls together - and as they try to navigate a world of gangsters, gurus and secret agendas, they begin to realise that within the ashram's utopian community, something is deeply, deeply wrong.

True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace.

In the darkest hour, a blood-soaked teenager flees the rural Gerandaroo football oval. Eight months later, Bess, a young teacher, returns home to Gerandaroo. A childhood game of dare with her former best friend forces Bess to form a women's footy team to play against Denby, a rival town. Bess reluctantly recruits players, but the team has to contend with hostile locals - including Bess's own father. Will this help the small community to come back together - or will it be the final thing that blows everything apart?

Talya and Samuel have to find a man - the one they call the Puppeteer. They know it is the only way for them to clear their names from the accusation of treason against the State of Israel that has pursued them for nearly two years now. Although Mossad made sure they were cleared of the accusation during a recent trial in Washington, D.C., the director of the Israeli agency still has some doubts about Talya and Samuel's innocence. David Bernstein doesn't like coincidences.

Erin Sloane was 16 when high school senior Andre Villiers was murdered by his friends. They were her friends, too, led by the intense, charismatic Ricky Hell. Five people went into West Cypress Woods the night Andre was murdered. Only three came out. Ativan, alcohol and distance had dimmed Erin's memories of that time. But nearly 20 years later, an ageing father will bring her home. Now a journalist, she is asked to write a story about the Southport Three and the thrill-kill murder that electrified the country.

Erma Bridges dreams of violence. After years of dedication to academic research, her career is falling apart, all because of a mysterious workplace complaint. Erma suspects Jenny, a vindictive colleague, who has seemingly disappeared. Panicked, overworked and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Erma sets out to find Jenny. Through her search, she uncovers a dark series of crimes on campus - do they have something to do with Jenny's disappearance?

Kenna arrives in Sydney to surprise her best friend, shocked to hear she's going to marry a guy she's only just met. But Mikki and her fiancé, Jack, are about to head away on a trip, so Kenna finds herself tagging along for the ride. Sorrow Bay is beautiful, wild and dangerous. A remote surfing spot with waves to die for, cut off from the rest of the world. Here Kenna meets the mysterious group of people who will do anything to keep their paradise a secret.

Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to the small, insular town in New Zealand - a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her to protect her. But Evie can't remember anything about that night - she doesn't know if he's telling the truth. As fragments of her memory starts to return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her saviour...or her captor.

True-crime podcaster Rachel Krall gets pulled into the cut-throat and narcissistic world of social media influencers as she investigates the mysterious disappearance of an Instagrammer. Racing to find the missing woman before it's too late, Rachel discovers a connection to the abduction and murders of other young women years earlier.

On a November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps into a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling. Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. A local and the daughter of a professor at the university, she knows all its shameful history. But in the course of investigating this hit-and-run, she will uncover more chilling secrets in the system of fraternities and sororities that empower the university's most elite students.

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she's dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it's missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That's when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: Stay awake.

Sex. Drugs. Danger. Death. This is the adrenaline-pumping story of the world's most audacious drug runners and the police hunt to track them down. These drug-running playboys travel the globe: they ski in Europe, surf in Bali, hook up with celebrity models and live in five-star hotels. They are 24/7 party boys with brass balls, steely nerves and reckless ambitions. They pay for their high-risk, hedonistic lifestyle by trafficking cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana on international flights and through the world's biggest airports. But to ride the wave you have to roll the dice.