Australian Mystery

Young real estate agent Madison May is shocked when a client at an open house says these words to her. The man, a stranger, seems to know far too much about her and professes his love - shortly before he murders her. Felicity Staples hates reporting on murders. As a journalist for a mid-size New York City paper, she knows she must take on the assignment to research Madison May's shocking murder, but the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway, right before he vanishes.

There is much that heavily pregnant Grace still doesn't know about her new husband King's background. So, when word comes that King's father is dying, Grace is eager to accompany him to his childhood home, Blackwater, located in a remote part of Tasmania. Things go badly from the start. The house is in terrible repair, King's dying father yells at Grace to leave and King's twin sister, Ruth, seems disturbed by Grace's presence. After his father's death, King convinces Grace they must stay and help Ruth settle the estate, but as time stretches on he grows strange and distant.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies with Sidney Noir. This collection comprises of all new stories set in Sidney, Australia, by 14 authors of crime fiction....

Television producer Laurie Moran and her fiancée, Alex Buckley, the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their mid-August wedding, when things take a dark turn. Alex’s seven-year-old nephew, Johnny, vanishes from the beach. A search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting shells behind the beach shack, but no one remembers seeing him after the morning. As the sun sets, Johnny’s skim board washes up to shore, and everyone realizes that he could be anywhere, even under water.

Outside the gigantic Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts, Will Slater–fresh off a brutal career as a government assassin–watches a young child get snatched off the street by an army of security. Acting out of instinct, he hurls himself into the fray, rescuing the girl and preventing her from a fate worse than death. Shien carries sensitive information capable of bringing down Peter Forrest, the billionaire owner of Mountain Lion. When Slater opts to protect her and pursue the truth, he unravels a horrifying discovery that will unlock his deepest, darkest rage.

After a very windy night Mum, Sally, is getting the washing in when she realises her favourite green sock is missing. She calls to her boys Pete and Angus to find out if they’ve seen it. No, they haven’t. Where is the Other Sock?

A finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne's ethnically diverse northern suburbs and the dark underbelly of city life. Down on his luck and hard up for cash, Carl works in the kitchen of a seedy rock 'n' roll joint in ethnically diverse Brunswick. The bouncers and bosses terrify him, he's desperately in love with a much younger Greek waitress, and to make matters worse his mother has come to stay with him. Then a dead body turns up. He and his best mate, Dave, will have to do something about it, and fast....

In "Uncle from Australia", a typical fun-and-games short story, Ellery interprets the dying message of an uncle from down under and must determine which of his greedy relatives skewered him for an inheritance.

Ryan and Elsie Delaney don't accept the official line that their young daughter drowned on Santa Monica beach. Her body has never been found and their pleas for a proper investigation are rejected. So now the desperate pair are raining hellfire on the police. Taking three hostages at the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, they give law enforcement an ultimatum: if Tilly isn't located in the next 24 hours, they will destroy evidence in several major cases. Detective Charlie Hoskins only just survived five years embedded with the ruthless gang known as the Death Machines.

Meet our narrator: witty, nosy, professional weaver of lies - aka ghostwriter for the rich and famous - and now, lander of The Dream Assignment (that is, a politician's tell-all memoir). Enter Dorothy Gibson: recently toppled Presidential Candidate, aka that woman, the most talked-about person in the country right now (for the wrong reasons).

It's 1973 and Detective Sergeant Eleanor Smith is finally assigned her first homicide case. A woman's body has been discovered at Harrowford Hall, a home for unmarried mothers deep in the Victorian countryside. Led by the formidable Mrs Montague, Harrowford has for decades sold itself as a refuge for 'girls in crisis' - like fourteen-year-old Jane McEvoy, who has no idea of how she got pregnant. And Marilyn Pollard, a scared, angry teenager desperate to escape.

Meg Morrissey has just lost her job and her partner to an overseas assignment, when she is called back to the family home of Hunters Reach in the picturesque Adelaide Hills. Her ailing grandmother, who raised her when she was orphaned as a child, has always been a formidable figure in her life and this is hardly a welcome summons. When Meg arrives at the ramshackle old homestead, she learns that the place is up for sale. She is expected to care for the property with its extensive garden, while packing up the contents of the house.

When Billy Gumboots returns to the small town he’s done everything to avoid, the local funeral director goes out of his way to help him. But why? What's in it for him? Billy encounters other bizarre characters – including a handyman who sprouts Latin, a red-headed Feng Shu expert who explains why Billy has his yin and yang all wrong, and an old man who looks like him but denies paternity. He soon finds himself tangled up in a mess he can’t easily escape. Can Dave, the undertaker, help him this time? Full of humour that makes you cringe and laugh simultaneously. You don’t need to ...

Spirit Sisters was inspired by the scores of women who would preface their stories with, 'I've hardly told anyone this, but...' The journalist would scratch the surface, and their stories would tumble out; they'd given up the ghost, so to speak. In Spirit Sisters you'll meet Australian women of all ages who share their very personal encounters with the supernatural.

You should not have come to the island. You should not have been speeding. You should not have tried to hide the body. You should not have told your children that you could keep them safe. No one can run forever.

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.

On the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 years earlier.

Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global anti-natalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity’s devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet.

'In 1954, at just fourteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.' In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past. In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel. 'She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?' When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.

Chrissy, a journalism lecturer struggling to re-enter the workforce after maternity leave, stumbles upon a decades-old mystery that could be her ticket back into the career she loves. A photograph of four young women in ski wear, taken in the Snowy Mountains in 1980, leads her to a chilling double-murder case that was never solved. Michael and Gloria Katzenbach vanished during a white-out, their bodies uncovered months later when the ice melted. The case went cold, but Chrissy is determined to find the truth.