Australian Crime

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 investigation.

On June 15, 1862, a gang of bushrangers held up a gold escort at Eugowra, just east of Forbes, NSW. They escaped with a pile of cash and 77 kilograms of gold, worth about $10 million today. It remains the largest gold robbery in Australian history. In this riveting recreation of the events, James Phelps finally tells the full story of how Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, John O'Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce, John Bow and Dan Charters planned and executed the robbery - and what happened to all that gold.

In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died.

Plunged into a nightmarish world of extreme violence, solitary confinement, gang allegiances, drugs, vindictive wardens, and regular stabbings, Paul Wood spent the next 11 years confined in some of New Zealand's toughest jails. Based on an account of his experiences he wrote while still inside, How to Escape from Prison chronicles Paul's road to redemption and a new life as a doctor of psychology, helping others strive to fulfill their potential and develop the resilience to flourish, even in adversity.

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers' ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy's brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home?

This book is Chopper's redemption. It is the real story of the man, the criminal and the prisoner, told with black humour and surprising insight.

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister.

Detective Rebecca Giles has just finished interviewing aging petty crim Sticky Pete over a spate of break-and-enters when a disturbing new report comes in. Twelve-year-old Kayleen Ellis has vanished from her home in Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter Valley. Hours later, Giles is a local hero, having apparently solved Kayleen's case and the spate of jewellery thefts. Yet the hangover from her celebrations has barely kicked in when the body of young jillaroo Ava Emmerson is discovered in gruesome circumstances on a nearby farm.

“Just a few pages in and I was so hooked, I even considered sneaking it into the cinema whilst the kids were watching their film!” Amzon rev. When Arena escapes Tom, her ab*sive and controlling husband, she finds solace and love in the arms of Bear Shaw, a cop who is loving, generous, and adores both her kids and Arena. Life is soon idyllic for all of them. But when her world is shattered as her SUV is stolen with her sleeping toddler inside, she immediately points at Tom, who promised to exact revenge on her for leaving him. Who else? To her surprise, the police point at Bear. Arena ...

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime-writing royalty. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Or commit one.

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.

Tessa is a thoroughbred. A brilliant young barrister. She has worked her way up from a working-class background to be at the top of her game: defending, cross-examining and lighting up the shadows of doubt in any case. Her masterful line of questioning in the courtroom has netted Tessa win after win, freeing men accused of rape and sexual assault. As controversial as it is, this is her job - it's just about the facts and who can game the system. Working late one night, Tessa falls into a casual relationship with Julian, a coworker, an attorney who comes from an elite, wealthy family.

When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti's hopes for a quiet posting in his old home town are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a local property developer, whose controversial plans to buy up Blackwood land means few are surprised he ended up dead. However his gruesome murder is overshadowed by the mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted.

A woman has been found crushed and mutilated inside mining equipment. Jenny is sure the woman’s death was no accident. She investigates and uncovers a link to an extremist Sovereigntist cult who don’t take kindly to strangers. As if fanatics weren’t scary enough—the commune is full of armed men and what appears to be women held captive. Her gut instincts are telling her this cult is trouble, but she needs proof. Jenny’s boss tells her to do what she’s never been good at—be patient, don’t stir up trouble and keep her mouth shut.

As a cop, I used to sit on one side of the interview room table facing murderers, child abductors and rapists. Now I'm sitting on the other side: disgraced, forced out of the police and judged to be a criminal. I want to show you what the world looks like from here.

The world is under cyber-attack. The secretive terror outfit of linked lone-wolf operatives known as Zodiac has activated another terrorist cell. Chaos will be unleashed at six-hour intervals, with each event more catastrophic than the last, culminating in a devastating global catastrophe within 48 hours. Consequences are unthinkable. The US president has the power to enact the Internet Freedom Act - the 'kill switch'. Turning off the net will stop the attacks and give the CIA and the Pentagon time, but it's not that simple.

When Jenny Williams took a job as the new constable in an outback opal mining town, she thought she’d be hunting down clues to find her missing aunt and cousin. But when a young woman’s body is found at the bottom of a mine shaft, a possible murder forces her personal agenda to take a back seat. Jenny goes head to head with her new commanding officer. He doesn’t want to ruffle feathers in town and rules the case Death By Misadventure. But Jenny is sure the dead woman met with foul play.

For more than thirty years, Mark Dapin has been hanging out with crooks, and both types of cop – from Chopper Read and John Killick to Roger Rogerson and Gary Jubelin. In The First Murderer I Ever Met, he sorts the tall stories from the truth about true crime and tells us what some of Australia’s most famous felons are really like. Underbelly meets Louis Theroux.

'In 1954, at just fourteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.' In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past. In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel. 'She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?' When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.

It's 1919, Richmond football club is on top of the ladder, cream buns are threepence each and four boys are gunning for the best job in town. Charlie is lucky enough to win the prime job - running messages for Squizzy Taylor, the most dangerous gangster in Melbourne. But things start to get a little too hot for Charlie, so he decides to take the money and run....