Australian Fiction Mysteries

Last summer, Alice Ogilvie's basketball-star boyfriend, Steve, dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. Where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or at least it was. Because now, another one of Steve's girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice's ex-best friend. And it doesn't look like Brooke will be coming back ...

My name's Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I'd hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

In late 1932, Iris Webber arrives in Sydney looking for work but the city is still in the grip of the Depression and there are few jobs for women at the best of times. She makes her way as best she can: a scam here, a shoplift there, busking with an accordion. And she knows how to use a gun. When Iris meets young sex worker Maisie Matthews, everything changes. But what options are there in a world where even on the margins, queer desire is harshly punished? The only way forward is paved with violence.

When Sydney socialite Tottie Evans is found dead at a house in Palm Beach, Detective Holly Sutton is called in to investigate. She immediately suspects the boyfriend, a millionaire property developer and ex-mercenary soldier, who refuses to cooperate with police.

Darwin, Summer, 1963. The humidity sat heavy and thick over the town as Senior Constable Ned Potter looked down at a body that had been dragged from the shallow marshland. He didn't need a coroner to tell him this was a bad death. He didn't know then that this was only the first. Or that he was about to risk everything looking for answers.

An irresistible tale of swashbuckling pirates in the New World; a classic story of treasure and betrayal Jamaica in 1665 is a rough outpost of the English crown, a minor colony holding out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, Jamaica's capital, a cut-throat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses, is devoid of London's luxuries; life here can end swiftly with dysentery or a dagger in your back.

It's New Year's Eve. Three thirty-something women—Aimee, Melinda and Lou—best friends for decades, let off sky lanterns filled with resolutions: for meaning, for freedom, for money. As the glowing paper bags float away, there's a bright flare in the distance. It could be a sign of luck—or the start of a complete nightmare that will upend their friendships, families and careers. The day after their ceremony, the newspapers report a small plane crash—two victims pulled from the wreckage, one a young boy. Were they responsible?

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.

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.

Someone wants Russian millionaire Dmitry Lebedev dead. After years flying under the radar in Sydney, he’s just had a narrow escape when a sex worker is poisoned in his hotel room. In desperation he contacts his former CIA case officer, Ronnie Johnson, offering to expose a traitor inside the Australian government in return for protection.

Australia has been invaded. While the outnumbered Australian Defence Force fights on the ground, in the air, and at sea, this quickly becomes a war involving ordinary people. Ben, an IT consultant, has never fought a day in his life. Will he survive? Grant, a security guard at Sydney's International Airport, finds himself captured and living in the filth and squalor of one of the concentration camps dotted around Australia. Knowing death awaits him if he stays, he plans a daring escape.

In six intense novellas connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt, and redemption, Broken is number-one international best seller Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heart-stopping, heartbreaking best. In Broken, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life on and off the job, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters, and fugitives, the lost souls driving without headlights through the dark night on the American criminal highway.

IN A LOCKED HONOLULU OFFICE BUILDING, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye. IN THE LUSH FORESTS OF OAHU, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined.

When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania's Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of 'the Hungry Man' still haunts locals to this day. Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, the local dealer and father of missing student Jasmine, instantly becomes the prime suspect.

Frankie Gray has come to the island for the summer, hoping for one last shot at reconnecting with her teenage daughter, Izzy, before starting a job as a deputy sheriff. They are staying with her mother, Diana, at The Fairmile Inn, soon to be a boutique hotel, but when an elderly nun is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and then a tiny skeleton is discovered in the grounds of the house, Frankie is desperate for answers.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost 20 years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her beloved niece that raise dangerous legal implications, leaving Scarpetta confused, worried, and unable to turn to Lucy, her FBI husband Benton Wesley, or her investigative partner Pete Marino.

Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her one-time professor, Patrick is much older than JB. A maverick when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and JB is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art, that has been forever overseen by Patrick, is starting to overshadow his.

The Road to a New Start is Lined with Secrets Jasmine Apple thought inheriting a house in the heart of the Australian bush would be her fresh start. Nestled in the remote hinterland, her new home—a cement bunker surrounded by wild beauty—seems like the perfect escape for her and her five-year-old son after a messy divorce. But the bush hides more than just natural dangers. National Parks officer Hugh Samson is at her doorstep within days, accusing her of environmental violations. With years of experience dealing with defiant landowners, Hugh has little patience for Jasmine’s protests ...

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....

1901. Night draws in. With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship Azizye approaches the famous vistas of Mingheria. 'An emerald build of pink stone.' The 29th state of the ailing Ottoman Empire. The ship carries Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each of them holds a separate mission. Not all of them will survive the weeks ahead. Because Mingheria is on the cusp of catastrophe. There are rumours of plague—rumours some in power will try to suppress. But plague is not the only killer.