Australian Fiction Mysteries

While estranged twins Oliver and Theo Wingfield are identical in appearance, they couldn't be more different. Theo, an extrovert verging on arrogant, was always a drifter, a nomad, operating on the fringes of the law. Oliver, intense, creative and introspective, was destined to become a winemaker. Each vintage, every bottle from Oliver's Mudgee-based label, Four Dogs Missing, sells out. And now, after fifteen years without contact, Theo unexpectedly turns up at his brother's vineyard, bearing an invitation that his twin knows nothing about.

In the drought-ridden rangelands of Western Australia, Gabe Ahern makes his living trapping wild dogs for local station owners. Still coming to terms with his wife's death - and the part he played in it - the old bushman leads a solitary life. Until one morning, when he rescues a young Afghan man, Altair, from certain execution. Now, with a gang of people smugglers on his tail and the lives of Altair's family on the line, Gabe is drawn into a ruthless game of cat and mouse. His main opponent is Chase Hunter, a kangaroo hunter with bush skills as wily and sharp as his own.

Thanks to a nomadic childhood, Revelle Lee is fluent in ten languages, which she puts to use at crime scenes and in courtrooms across London. Being a court interpreter is a stressful job, one that makes her privy to the most personal and often dark details of others’ lives. In the meantime, she’s close to adopting a six-year-old boy named Elliot from foster care. Revelle is determined to be the mother she never had, and to make up for a terrible mistake she made years ago.

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. She and her husband, Benton, are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon, in a post-pandemic world that's been torn apart by civil and political unrest. Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to investigate a woman's body that has been shockingly displayed on railroad tracks. As Scarpetta follows the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own neighborhood....

Grab a flashlight, crawl under the covers and dive into the twisted, unexpectedly hilarious world of Rowley Jefferson's imagination. You'll meet zombies, vampires, ghosts and much more in these comically terrifying tales. Rowley's spooky stories might leave you laughing, but beware - you could end up sleeping with the lights on!

Adelaide, September 1917. Six months after solving the Dora Black case, Kate Cocks and Ethel Bromley are back walking the beat. The city is unsettled. Winter won't leave. Soldiers are returning from the Front with broken bodies and troubled souls. And now a powerful board governor has been found dead in the Art Gallery - dumped beneath a scandalous nude painting that has attracted both pious outrage and record crowds.

When Sassi Stapleton receives a middle-of-the-night phone call to tell her that her beloved grandmother is unwell, she quickly puts her job on hold, packs her ute and sets off on the long drive home, knowing her grandfather will need her. Less than an hour away from Sassi's hometown, Barker, she swerves to miss a roo and her car rolls down an embankment. By the time Sassi is found, her grandmother has already passed away.

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 ...

What would you do if you woke up in a strange place? If your whole life changed in the blink of an eye and you had no idea what was going on? Twins Kensy and Max Grey's lives are turned upside down when they are whisked off to London, and discover their parents are missing. As the situation unfolds, so many things don't add up: their strange new school, the bizarre grannies on their street, the coded messages they keep finding and the feeling that, all around them, adults are keeping secrets....

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....

Police are baffled by several deaths, each unique and bizarre in their own way - and shockingly brutal. Scotland Yard sends in its crack DCI, the enigmatic Jack Hawksworth, who wastes no time in setting up Operation Mirror. His chief wants him to dismiss any plausibility of a serial killer before the media gets on the trail. With his best investigative team around him, Jack resorts to some unconventional methods to disprove or find a link to the gruesome deaths.

Tully and Rachel Aston are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease. Announcing his plan to divorce and then remarry, the news of Stephen and Heather's engagement sets a chain a family implosion. With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets and what this new woman really wants.

Tully and Rachel are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease. Heather knows she has an uphill battle to win Tully and Rachel over, while carrying the burden of the secrets of her past. But, as it turns out, they are all hiding something.

Maverick political journalist Paul Ryder is now the press secretary of the Minister for the Arts. It is a lowly job in a lowly portfolio. That is fine. He wants an undemanding gig with no strife. However, as usual, strife comes looking for him. He stumbles upon a scandal that could blow the roof off Parliament House. He could look the other way. But that is not his style. Suddenly, he is facing death in a very tough job. Another fast-paced comic romp through Australian politics.

The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way—handsome, intelligent, popular—until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? Years later, the twins are long estranged, each convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married with children of their own, they are finally ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents’ murder.

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home. Ronnie's going to find her; she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone; Ronnie won't believe it. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it; she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible. Lewis can believe it, too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

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'...

When last we encountered Gabriel Allon in Portrait of a Spy, he was pitted in a blood-soaked duel with a deadly network of jihadist terrorists. Now, exposed and war-weary, he has returned to his beloved Rome to restore a Caravaggio masterpiece for the Vatican. But early one morning Gabriel is summoned by his friend and occasional ally Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to the Pope. The broken body of a beautiful woman lies beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. Donati calls upon Gabriel to pursue the truth—was it suicide, or something more sinister?

When Milla is invited to a reunion in the cosy resort that saw the peak of her snowboarding career, she drops everything to go. While she would rather forget the events of that winter, the invitation comes from Curtis, the one person she can't seem to let go. The five friends haven't seen each other for 10 years, since the disappearance of the beautiful and enigmatic Saskia. But when an icebreaker game turns menacing, they realise they don't know who has really gathered them there and how far they will go to find the truth.

Brisbane 1999. It's hot. Stormy. Dangerous. The waters of the Brisbane River are rising. The rains won't stop. People's nerves are on edge. And then... A body is found. And then another. And another. A string of seemingly ritualized but gruesome murders. All the victims are men. Affluent. Guys with nice houses, wives and kids at private schools. All have had their throats cut. Tabloid headlines shout, THE VAMPIRE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN! Detective Sergeant Lara Ocean knows the look. The 'my-life-will-never-be-the-same-again look'.