Australian Fiction Mysteries

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.

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 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'.

Melbourne is a city on the brink, suffering from arson-fed bush fires, searing heatwaves and the potential threat of terrorism. Detective Inspector Robbie Gray, falling foul of police bureaucracy, gets called to a body found lying in a rural swamp. When the nationality of the victim is revealed, ASIO takes over her investigation, and she is sidelined. Convinced they are misinterpreting the evidence, Robbie—along with a disenfranchised policeman—secretly digs for the truth.

In this thrilling sequel, Melissa, a lawyer turned successful podcaster, has recently married a man whose first wife died tragically, leaving him and their young daughter, Riley, behind. While Melissa and her brother, Mike, help their mother relocate to the idyllic Hamptons, Melissa’s new stepdaughter goes missing. Drawing on the experience of their own abduction, Melissa and Mike race to find Riley to save her from the trauma they still struggle with—or worse.

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!

Tikka Malloy was 11 and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, living in an Australian suburb with her sister and their three best friends. That summer was when the Van Apfel sisters, Ruth, Hannah, and the beautiful Cordelia, mysteriously disappeared. Did they just run - far away from their harsh, evangelical parents - or were they taken? While the search for the girls united the small community, the mystery of their disappearance was never solved. Now, years later, Tikka has returned home to try to make sense of that strange moment in time.

A whirlwind romance. When Theodora Scott met Connor - wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family - she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he's brought her to Idlewood, his family's isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Stay away from Connor Dalton. Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can't ignore the footprints in the snow outside her window or the cabin's strange familiar feeling. Then, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

At an exclusive private school in Switzerland, mystery surrounds the identity of the beautiful girl who arrives each morning and leaves each afternoon in a heavily protected motorcade fit for a head of state. She is said to be the daughter of a wealthy international businessman. She is not. And when she is brutally kidnapped across the border in the Haute-Savoie region of France, Gabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, is thrust into a deadly secret war with an old enemy that will determine the future of the Middle East—and perhaps the world....

Andrea Oliver's mother, Laura, is the perfect small-town mum. Laura lives a quiet but happy life in sleepy beachside Belle Isle. She's a pillar of the community: a speech therapist, business owner, and everybody's friend. And she's never kept a secret from anyone. Or so Andrea thinks. When Andrea is caught in a random violent attack at a shopping mall, Laura intervenes and acts in a way that is unrecognizable to her daughter. It"s like Laura is a completely different person—and that's because she was. Thirty years ago. Before Andrea. Before Belle Isle.

Kensy and Max's next spy mission sees them head to the City of Lights.

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....

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.

Adam Bowman, a battling journalist who grew up as the son of a teacher at Prince Albert College, might be the only one who can uncover the links between the school murder and the 'Blue Moon Killer'. But he will have to go into the darkest places of his childhood to piece together the clues. Detective Sergeant Rose Riley, meanwhile, is part of the taskforce desperately trying to find the killer before he strikes again. Adam Bowman's excavation of his past might turn out to be Rose's biggest trump card or it may bring the whole investigation crashing down, and put her own life in danger.

Someone is imprisoned in a horrible cage, but why is Jack trying to get caught by Ranger Johnny Wolf? What is Foxie up to? And just who is sharing Jack's basket these days? Everything is fine in Doggeroo until Sarge falls ill. Auntie Tidge is at hand to look after Jack, but Foxie is being disagreeable (again). When will Sarge be back? In no time, Jack has both a case and a moral dilemma - or even two. Is it right to leave his most dangerous enemy trussed up in a cage? And, who will mind the boy while he's off detecting?

Meet Evie, a young woman held captive by a man named Jim in the isolated New Zealand beach town of Maketu. Jim says he's hiding Evie to protect her, that she did something terrible back home in Melbourne. In a house that creaks against the wind, Evie begins to piece together her fractured memories of the events that led her here. Jim says he's keeping her safe. Evie's not sure she can trust Jim, but can she trust her own memories?

Bianca Bernini did not foresee she would inspire her own murder when she boarded the legendary Ghan for the two-day train trip from Sydney to Alice Springs. As the most read, most listened to gossip columnist in Australia, she was revelling in her power to ruin the lives of eight other passengers, eight highly placed, privileged people, who were determined on hiding their secrets at any cost. What would they pay to stop the public revelations she could and would make?

Widowed and at a crossroads in her life, Sandra Porter knows she must find the courage to find her true self. Deciding it's time to push her boundaries, she makes a booking to trek the Larapinta Walk across the centre of the remote Northern Territory. Renowned nature photographer Graysen Hughes has come to the outback seeking solace after the death of his wife. Always a loner, Graysen isn't happy when the tour guide insists on the participants walking in pairs. After a suspicious accident and the sudden disappearance of their guide, the group struggles on.

Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in a small town in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they've always had a close - sometimes too close - friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to diverge: Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains, as well as falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu. Unused to sharing Finn, Daphne starts to act up in ways that will allow her to maintain the control over her best friend she's always relished.