Australian Crime Fiction

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.

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.

Things have settled down in Cooinda and Eleanor Jones is getting used to her new normal - spending time with her friends, going to school, and working on a project at the local old age home. But just as things start to feel calm, a series of events once again rock Eleanor's world: Troy's ex-girlfriend is back in town and, during a visit to the old age home, Eleanor's buddy Nance admits to witnessing a murder, swearing Eleanor to secrecy.

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.

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.

She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down her killer: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. Gabriel's target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin.

Counter terrorism expert Sid Allen knows nothing good ever comes from a phone call at five a.m. Politician Dan LeRoi, chairman of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, has been shot. Four bullets to the head. The crime scene is chaotic. Homicide. Counter Terrorism. Media. And for Sid, hunting the killer is going to get complicated. Journalist Zephyr Wilde is complicated. She's tenacious and she's got Sid's number. Sid knows the gossip: how Zephyr's mother was murdered when Zephyr was a kid. He doesn't know that Zephyr is still getting letters from her long-dead mother.

This is the story of Yun. It's the story of Adam. Two young people. A familiar chase. But this is not a love story. It's a story of revenge, transformation, survival. Who are we, if we lose hold of the body? What might we become?

Port Brighton hates outsiders. The small coastal town has its own ways of dealing with the evil, the foolish, the misled, and it holds tightly to them. But the seams start to split after two deaths occur on the same tragic night: a baby abandoned at the foot of a lighthouse, and a drunken teenager drowned in the storming sea. As gossip fuels rumours and tensions erode trust, the bonds that keep Port Brighton together begin to fray, threatening to expose the truth about more than just the two deaths.

The first murder is brazen, violent and ritualistic. Committed in the victim’s home, the killer leaves few clues as to their motive or their identity. All the police know is that the perpetrator entered the house and impaled the art collector on one of his own priceless sculptures before melting away into the night. Inspector Eric Ringer is desperate for Dr Jane Halifax to profile the killer, but Jane is cautious. She and Eric have a past … plus, she hates these kinds of cases; a psychopath is a psychopath, any way you slice it.

A young woman is hiding out in a sleepy North Queensland tourist town, trying to stay under the radar, when she stumbles across a dangerous drug cartel. Anyone else might back away shaking their head, pretend they hadn't seen anything, keep quiet, even though people are getting hurt. But Maggie is no ordinary girl. She's got skills, as well as plenty of secrets to keep, burdens to carry - and anger to burn.

It's winter in Melbourne, and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk. So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he's convinced this is the big case he's been waiting for - the woman's husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched. But things aren't all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

Queensland in 1976 churns with corruption. When Detective Ray Windsor defies it, he is exiled deep into the state's west. Royalton is a town on its knees and plagued by crimes left largely un-investigated by the local police chief, Kennedy, and his elusive boss. Mutual dislike between Kennedy and Ray gradually turns ugly as Ray and his new partner, Arshag, uncover a pattern of crimes that no one seems concerned about solving. But when two girls from local immigrant families are found dead and another disappears, Ray and Arshag are forced to take the law into their own hands.

Welcome to the neighbourhood. We do things differently here. Nora Spangler is a successful lawyer, but when it comes to domestic life, she's always the one doing more. She packs her daughter's lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are and buys the birthday cards. Her husband, Hayden, works hard, too...but why is she always working so much harder?

On the evening of September 22, 1998, three teenage girls venture out for a night of mischief in the coastal town of Blairgowrie. But only two return. For over 20 years the disappearance of 15-year-old Cecilia May remains a baffling cold case - until human bones are discovered on an isolated beach. Now it's up to Detective Emmett Corban and his team to dig up decades of trauma, and find the missing piece of an investigation that's as complex as it is tragic.