Australian Fiction Mysteries

In the scorching heat of Alice Springs, where temperatures regularly exceed 40°C, Detective Senior Constable Sarah Reeves is called to investigate when gallery owner Maxwell Reid is found dead among his prized Aboriginal artworks. What begins as an apparent poisoning soon reveals a sophisticated art forgery operation exploiting indigenous artists and their cultural heritage. When evidence points to multiple suspects—from rival gallery owners to exploited Aboriginal artists with legitimate grievances—Sarah must navigate both the brutal summer heat and the closed ranks of a town where ...

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.

When Emily's beautiful cousin Aspen goes missing somewhere in the Outback, no one seems to take it seriously, not even the police. After all, Aspen has a history of drug use and a string of broken relationships to her name. But Emily knows that her disappearance is totally out of character, so she books a flight to the Northern Territory to find her. Emily's search takes her south of Darwin to every road stop and tourist trap she can find, but the only person who turns up is the last person she expected to see, her ex-husband Ben. But there is a violent killer on the loose.

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.

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 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned, and a media storm descends. Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella's beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose apparent easygoing nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street smarts only experience can bring. As Chris is plunged into despair and searches for answers, reasons, explanation - anything - that could make even the smallest sense of Bella's death, her ex-husband, friends and neighbours do their best to support her.

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.

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.

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....

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....

Will Slater needs to lay low. With the whole U.S. government antagonised by his recent actions, he smuggles himself to rural eastern Zimbabwe and tries to keep his head down. But that was never going to happen. Whispers and rumours of a gang of psychopaths sweep across the plains. Remnants of the old regime, cast out from the previous dictatorship, continue to wreak havoc. They’re armed to the teeth and their manic leader is untouchable. They own this territory, and everyone in it.

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.

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.

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....

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.