Australian Thrillers

Liora has shone from within ever since a star collided with her house when she was a child. Since that day, she has spent her life indoors, only venturing out on the brightest days when her magic can’t be detected. For discovery could mean falling prey to the king’s warlock, Darius, who uses mages’ magic to grow his own power. But when her worst nightmare comes to pass, and Darius discovers her, she’s not the one taken. Instead, he demands that her younger sister return to the capital with him to work under his watchful eye.

Oxford 1863: young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.

As the resourceful, relentless Li tracks her lost daughter across a disintegrating country, the journey will test the limits of her trust, her hope and her love. Unsheltered will leave you wrung out and gasping.

Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, powerful and sometimes treacherous family, they've relied on each other for support and confidence. Now, though, Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella's poisoning of their whole family. What in their dark and complicated past has brought them to this point? As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this brutal act.

You wake up alone after an emergency caesarean, desperate to see your child. And when you are shown the small infant in the nursery, a terrible thought takes root: this baby is not your baby. No one believes you. Not the nurses, your father or even your own husband. They say you’re confused and delusional. Dangerous. But you’re a doctor - you know how easily mistakes can be made. It’s up to you to find your real child, your miracle baby, before it’s too late. With everyone against you, is it safe to trust your instincts? Or are memories from your past clouding your judgement? This can’t all be in your head...can it?

He knows he's innocent. She knows he's a killer. Whom do you believe? In a small town in the shadow of Mount Wellington, a woman named Ana is watching the clock, marking the days until she ends her life. The strange, reclusive daughter of the local pariah, that's how people will remember her, when they remember her at all. No one will mourn her, she reasons, not really. Not even her faithful dog, River. The only thing she's waiting for is the opportunity. But then, on the very day she planned to end it all, the police find the body of local woman Rebecca Marsden....

Robert O'Hara Burke (1821-1861) was one of the great Victorian explorers. In 1860 he was appointed to lead the Victorian Exploring Expedition, which aimed to cross the Australian continent from south to north. The expedition left Melbourne on Monday, 20 August 1860 with a total of 19 men, 27 (rum fuelled) camels, and 23 horses. The expedition was dogged by disputes and poor leadership decisions from the start. Even at the first staging post the second in command and the medical officer resigned.

It's winter in Melbourne, and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk. So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he's convinced this is the big case he's been waiting for - the woman's husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched. But things aren't all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

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.

Low Morrison is not your average teen. You could blame her hippie parents or her dreary, isolated island hometown. Whatever the reason, Low just doesn’t fit in—and neither does newcomer Freya, an ethereal beauty and once-famous social media influencer. After signing up for Freya’s pottery class, Low quickly falls under her spell. Buoyed by Low’s adoration, Freya is compelled to share her darkest secrets and deepest desires. Finally, Low feels a sense of belonging ... until Jamie walks through the studio door. Freya, Jamie and their husbands become fast friends, leaving Low alone once again.

Broken by his last case, homicide detective Joe Cashin has fled the city and returned to his hometown in South Eastern Australia, while his wounds heal and the nightmares fade. His recovery is interrupted when a local man is brutally attacked and left for dead. In the small town, suspicion quickly falls on three young men from the local Aboriginal community - but Cashin's not so sure.

Ex-Boston homicide detective Billy Robinson has retreated to a quiet life on the New England coast. Struggling to cope following the death of his beloved wife, he must now run the inn that Siobhan took care of so well. The inn's quirky residents help keep Billy on solid ground as he grieves, and the group soon become an unconventional family. But this small town is in the grips of a growing opioid epidemic, and when a young resident gets hooked into the crisis, Billy knows he must act to save the people in the inn that he has grown to care so much about.

On his 11th birthday, Jacob's father gives him a diary. To write about things that happen. About what he and his father do on their farm. About the sheep, the crop, the fox and the dam. But Jacob knows some things should not be written down. Some things should not be remembered. The only things he knows for sure are what his father has taught him. Sheltered, protected, isolated. But who is his father protecting him from? And how far will his father go to keep the world at bay?

Kate Webb still grieves over the loss of her young son. Ten years on, she spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there. Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she knew at university, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son.

England, 1961. Samuel's mother has been away for 113 days. Now it's just Samuel and Ruth, the housekeeper, alone in the once-great house. His mother is abroad, purportedly tending to her late husband's faltering business. Samuel yearns for her return but knows she must have had her reasons for leaving in the middle of the night, without saying good-bye. Although Samuel receives occasional postcards from his mother, her absence weighs heavily on his mind.

Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him—especially the Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’. But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable—her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife.

It's funny how quick it happens and without you really noticing. Anton said once that it's like walking out into the sea, and you think everything's fine and the water's warm, but when you turn back you're suddenly miles from shore. I've never been much of a swimmer, but I get what he means. Like being caught in a current or something. A rip.

Sidney Allen is a Fed. Part of the Australian Federal Police's K block, a unit doing whatever it takes in order to stop terrorist attacks on home soil. But when young Muslim men on the Terror Watchlist start turning up dead, Sid and his partner, Haifa, have to work out what's going on. Sectarian war? Drugs? Retribution? For Sid, there's nothing unclear about a bullet to the head and a severed hand. Someone is sending a message....

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....

Lina and Cain are doing their best to stay afloat. Money has been tight since Cain returned from active duty, and starting a family is proving harder than they thought. Putting Lina's inherited lake house up for rent at weekends seems like the solution to at least one of their problems. The secluded house is more of a burden than a retreat, anyway, and fixing up the old place makes Cain feel useful for once.