Australian Fiction Mysteries

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.

FOR ALMOST TEN THOUSAND YEARS THE KHILIOI HAVE LIVED IN THEIR CITY BENEATH THE REMOTE AUSTRALIAN DESERT, UNDISTURBED AND UNKNOWN. But every hundred years or so they have a need. The Khilioi’s energy machine brings a small aircraft within their control, causing it to land in the wilderness above. The Deka, the lords of the Khilioi, take the pilot and his girlfriend to their city, a city they will never be allowed to leave, not even after their purpose has been served – to provide new bloodlines for the Khilioi. Their time is finite. There is a limit to their usefulness. But how can they ...

The Central Intelligence Agency is in crisis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Congress is questioning the organisation’s necessity. Interim CIA director Thomas Stansfield must fight for his agency’s survival while explaining why the previous candidate for his job was found murdered in a French hotel – surrounded by booze, cash, and dead men. Worst yet, a brilliantly run sting operation in Moscow has resulted in the arrest of America’s most prized Russian asset and the expulsion of his CIA handler.

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.

Acclaimed explorer Rob Nash has lost his way. Grieving the death of his wife, and blaming himself, he sees no reason to carry on. But when 'Uncle' Frank Douglas offers him the chance to lead a cave-diving expedition in the jungles of Papua, Nash can see some light at the end of the tunnel. But the expedition might not be what it seems. With a decades-old Japanese submarine buried deep in a cavern, and a team hellbent on unleashing the treasures it hides, Nash finds himself on a ship heading for danger.

Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister, Rose, three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life, and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous. When Rose discovers that she cannot fall pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.

Of all the nightmare options that passed through Antonia Heaveringham's head when her husband Hugo uttered the words, 'I've got something to tell you,' a coming out speech never figured. Suddenly alone in their adopted home of Sydney, with no friends save for her six-year-old son Tom and a pair of jeweled Jimmy Choo mules, Antonia soon finds that an attractive single woman is not nearly so welcome on the champagne social scene as the wife of a glamorous English aristocrat.

Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global anti-natalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity’s devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet.

Mitch Rapp hates owing anyone a favor—especially when it’s the world’s most powerful crime lord. But when Damian Losa calls, Mitch is honor-bound to answer. The Syrian government appears to have created a highly addictive new narcotic that it plans to distribute throughout Europe. It’s a major threat to Losa’s business and he’s determined to send someone to keep him on top by any means necessary. Rapp is the perfect choice for the mission. Not only does he have extensive experience operating in the Middle East, he’s also entirely expendable.

Running from a bad relationship, journalist Jo Sharpe heads home to Arthurville, the drought-stricken town she turned her back on years earlier. While some things have changed - her relationship with her ailing, crotchety father, her new job at the community newspaper - Jo finds that her return has rekindled the grief and uncertainty she experienced during her childhood following the inexplicable disappearance of her mother and baby sister.

Aboard a luxury passenger train in the desolate Russian Far East, Slater heads for the port city of Vladivostok with a mysterious grudge. After traumatic past events, he was reluctant to return to the region, but he’s got unfinished business to attend to. Terrified passengers, secret police, and shadowy underworld figures are just the beginning. Arriving in Vladivostok, he finds something wretched–something dark, twisted and shocking.

Ex-US black ops warrior Will Slater wasn’t looking for peace. He anticipated carnage when he decided to venture into war-torn Yemen–but he didn’t expect to have to call on his skill set so soon. A young Yemeni boy is dead–maimed by northern highland tribesmen in the Hadhramaut Valley. The act was intended to send a message to the remote mountain town of Qasam, ordering them not to interfere with the business of the tribes. Slater sets off into the mountains in pursuit of vengeance. It was supposed to be a simple act of vigilante justice, but the boy was just the tip of the iceberg.

Georgia and Luke are in love. They've only been dating for a few months, but Georgia is pretty sure he's the one. They get along so well; he's romantic and kind and funny. There's just one problem: Luke's ex-girlfriend, Cadence, is having trouble moving on. She texts him all the time, won't give Luke back some of his things, and Georgia is convinced Cadence has followed them on more than one occasion. It's starting to get creepy. Georgia and Luke soon move in together, but the shadow of Cadence looms large.

Little Sammy Went vanishes from her home in Manson, Kentucky - an event that devastates her family and tears apart the town’s deeply religious community. Kim Leamy, an Australian photographer, is approached by a stranger who turns her world upside down - he claims she is the kidnapped Sammy and that everything she knows about herself is based on a lie. In search of answers, Kim returns to the remote town of Sammy’s childhood to face up to the ghosts of her early life. But the deeper she digs into her family background the more secrets she uncovers....

Half a year ago in Macau, Will Slater waged war to rescue nine-year-old Shien from the clutches of a hellish industry. He left her with an old government colleague, who promised to find her a foster home and give her some semblance of a normal upbringing. Slater moved on... Now, deep in cartel-infested Colombia, he hears dark whispers of something called the Lynx program–a clandestine division that raises young girls and forges them into sociopathic killers. A division founded by the very same man Slater left Shien with.

When Detective Constable Lillian Tate arrives at a remote paleontological research site in the harsh Nullarbor Plain, she expects a routine missing person case. Dr. Noah Henshaw, a respected scientist studying ancient fossils, has vanished into the red dust of the Australian desert. What begins as a straightforward welfare check quickly transforms into something more sinister. The discovery of Dr. Henshaw's body reveals a brutal murder that shatters the quiet academic world of fossil research and threatens to expose secrets that powerful people will kill to protect. As Tate delves deeper ...

Detective Senior Constable Riley Murphy thought Lightning Ridge was career exile—a remote opal mining town where the biggest crimes were petty theft and neighbourly disputes. Then respected opal dealer Elena Kozlov is found brutally murdered in her ransacked workshop, and Riley's routine investigation spirals into something far more dangerous. Elena wasn't killed for her valuable stones—she was eliminated for asking the wrong questions about suspicious corporate activity. As Riley digs deeper, she uncovers Asset Beta, a covert operative who's been surveilling Lightning Ridge residents ...

In the twilight of his career, Logan learns he has been a vessel for furthering government interests, not a rogue hitman for a band of vigilantes. The revelation destroys him. But when Jorge Romero—an investigative reporter and Logan's oldest friend—is brutally and inexplicably murdered, Logan allows his fury to deliver him from despair. With an ally in Alice Mason, a homeless witness with a target on her back, Logan goes to war. Against whom, he isn't sure, but he knows powerful forces are at work behind the scenes.

An arsonist is on the loose in Colmstock, Australia, most recently burning down the town's courthouse and killing a young boy who was trapped inside. In the weeks after the courthouse fire, precise porcelain replicas of Colmstock's daughters begin turning up on doorsteps, terrifying parents and testing the limits of the town's already fractured police force. Aspiring journalist Rose may have finally found her story. But as her articles gain traction and the boundaries of her investigation blur, Colmstock is seized by a seething paranoia.

In war-torn Syria, a massacre survivor is pulled from beneath a pile of bodies. She is given one instruction: 'find Jed Walker'. Walker is ex-CIA - a man who thought he was long out of the game. Discovering a terror outfit is running people-smuggling from the Middle East and into the United States, he is drawn back in to fight their evil trade. At first Walker thinks these human traffickers are driven purely by profit and greed. But it is much worse than that - and it has ties to the highest levels of power.