Australian Fiction Mysteries

After the violent death of her husband, Callie Jones retreats to a cottage in the grounds of an old mansion in Tasmania. The relative remoteness of the place and the wild beauty of the Tasmanian landscape are a balm to her shattered nerves, and the locals seem friendly, particularly horseman Connor Atherton and his siblings at the nearby property, Calico Lodge. But all is not well: The old mansion has a sinister past, one associated with witchcraft and murder.

The annual Halloween block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul-de-sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighbourhood mums - known as the Ivy Five - plans the event for months. Except the Ivy Five has been four for a long time. When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the mums see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year's block party should be the best yet…until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighbourhood's dark past - and the lengths they've gone to hide it.

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?

When Billie wakes up in a strange guy’s bed, her first thought is: what happened last night? She can't even remember meeting him. And how the hell did she get to Coney Island? Then reality bites and the memories flood in—the reason she was in that bar, drinking to start with: today she's going to get fired. Because yesterday her law firm lost a big case: Jane Delaney v Samuel Grange. And it looked like it was her fault. It wasn't.

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.

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.

It’s sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she’s anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her.

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.

A woman's quest to save wildlife turns lethal. A very eager - and rather naive - Australian lawyer, Kerry Maxwell, flies into South Africa to volunteer at a wildlife orphanage run by notorious vet Graham Baird. Graham is as jaded and reckless as Kerry is law-abiding and optimistic. When Kerry arrives at the animal sanctuary it's to the news that Graham is imprisoned in Mozambique following a shootout with elephant poachers. In the gunfight he killed the brother of corrupt politician and poaching kingpin Fidel Costa.

For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year. Once, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch. Now, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared.

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.

Four years ago Eliza Dacey was brutally murdered. Within hours, her killer was caught. Wasn't he? So reads the opening titles of Jack Quick's new true-crime documentary. A skilled producer, Jack knows that the bigger the conspiracy, the higher the ratings. Curtis Wade, convicted of Eliza's murder on circumstantial evidence and victim of a biased police force, is the perfect subject. Millions of viewers agree. Just before the finale, Jack uncovers a minor detail that may prove Curtis guilty after all.

When investigative journalist Chrissie O’Brian lands a senior job at The Argus, she is desperate to escape the nightmares of her past. Her life has become a daily battle to numb the pain. But her job is something she can do better than anyone else - and the only thing that keeps the memories at bay.

Ambitious young journalist Marlowe "Lo" Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local newspaper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of her best friend - the town's reigning showgirl, Lily Williams.

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.

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.

Initially comforted by unlikely spectres from past cases, Jane is unaware of everyone else’s concerns: the police who believe she was deliberately run off the road; a lawyer whose files were in her car at the time of the accident – files he should never have lent her; her neurosurgeon who fears a relapse; and her partner, Tim, who has to cope with the fact Jane remembers almost nothing of the last two years – including their relationship.

It’s opening night. The stage is set, the houselights have dimmed, and the handsome male lead is waiting. This is your time. Your chance to prove you are so much more than the understudy. You have worked so hard and would have done almost anything to get here. But not what they are accusing you of - never that. It’s simply bad luck that Australia’s darling of opera has gone missing, throwing the spotlight on you just as the whole world is watching history in the making. But the show must go on, and it’s all down to you.

Witches only exist in stories. Everyone knows that. But what if the stories are real? Four friends. Four truths. One nightmare. If you wander into the wood. If you hear scratching sounds from the old quarry. If you go too close to the edge. Watch. Out.

Butter O'Bryan lives in a Very Small Castle with his father and three aunts—Aunt Elephant, Aunt Cake and Aunt Peculiar. These aren't their real names, of course, just as Butter's father isn't really called 'Pongo'. And even though Butter is only twelve years old, and the grandson of one of Australia's most successful Jam Kings, he is very aware of the hardship many people are experiencing. Butter has been told there are ghosts at the nearby isolated Howlers Beach, but are there? And how can the children Butter plays cricket with on the beach simply vanish?