Australian Thrillers

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).

Journey through the colonies of 19th-century Australia with three stand-alone novels of love, loss, survival, and redemption. In 1806, a fateful decision sends Eleanor Marling from the salons of London to a prison ship bound for New South Wales. She is put to work at the female factory of Parramatta. English settler Grace Ashwell flees an abusive lover in Hobart Town, with six-year-old Violet in tow. Deep in the wilderness, they find a crude hut inhabited by an escaped convict long presumed dead.

When Lou sees an ad for a long-abandoned mining town up for sale, it doesn’t take her long to convince her sister and their oldest friends to go in on the idyllic property buried in the bush – a place where the four families can hide away on weekends, get back to nature and unstick the kids from their screens. But things start to go wrong before they even arrive for their first camping trip – a rogue deer sends a trailer off the road, a neighbour complains about the fence line and squatters have set up camp down by the river.

Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children, only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful and inexplicably dangerous.

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.

Meg McLean is a scholarship student at the ultra-elite Douglas College. Meg's younger sister, Liza, is along for the ride, and everything Liza has done since they arrived at the school seems to be putting their chances of success at risk. Until one day, when Liza's behaviour is so at odds with her usual temperament that Meg knows something is very, very wrong. Benedict Hargreaves (the 4th) is Douglas College's wealthiest student and perhaps the only one who isn't influenced by the school and its strict code of conduct. Is he brave enough to help Meg uncover what has happened to her sister?

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.

Since leaving the Boston Police Department, Bill Robinson has run The Inn by the Sea in Gloucester, Massachusetts. There he offers a safe and supportive home for his long-term guests. That tranquil life, however, is about to be shattered. Two murderers are heading to Bill's door. One needs his help to evade the cops. The other plans to kill again to silence the truth. Standing in their way are the residents of the Inn. And not everyone will get out alive.

A vampire with a thirst for revenge. A witch who doesn’t know she’s a witch. In this small Australian town, darkness is waiting to rise… When Holly Burke’s eccentric aunt dies, she’s drawn to the country town of Dunloe. The small community is haunted by its violent Gold Rush past, where deadly paranormal secrets lay as thick as gold in the hard quartz below their feet. Oblivious to the supernatural world, Holly soon finds herself in the middle of a war for power that’s been raging for almost two centuries. A power, according to legend, her family holds the key to. The catch? She...

This highly anticipated sequel to "In Strange Worlds" takes the reader back to the community of survivors who are living in the Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland, Australia. Derek returns to Maleny with more survivors, but discovers that Meg has lost her life trying to give birth to twins. He is a sensitive man, finding the challenges of this strange new world too great to bear. When an elderly man appears and offers him a deal, he accepts. The consequences of this deal are surprising to say the least.

EARTHQUAKE. TSUNAMI. DISASTER. Off the coast of Australia, a massive submarine landslide triggers a tsunami of unprecedented scale, hurtling towards the iconic Queensland Coast. Thousands are in the path of destruction, and time is running out. For Amy Jacobs, it’s an ordinary morning—until she notices the ocean pulling back unnaturally during her walk along the boardwalk with her two young children. She knows something is terribly wrong. Mark Jacobs is across town getting a haircut when he receives the emergency alert: head for higher ground. With nothing but flat terrain in sight, his...

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.

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.

Natasha Mori and Bryan Ferrago work for the Net Force Cyber Squad, an elite government agency created to lead the charge against America’s online enemies. They’ve travelled to Maine’s coast for a project to study extreme weather forecasting - and hopefully enjoy a little vacation.

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 ...

'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.

Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens. The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him, his name was Aaron and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.

Twelve-year-old Will Haddon and his twin friends, Dar and Juno, find a safe full of money and human bones in an old house that's sticking out of a rapidly receding lake amid the worst drought in history. Their mission to identify the body reveals secrets that will rewrite the history of their town and the story of their lives. When Will was five, his dad, a young cop, went missing just days before Old Scarborough was drowned beneath a man-made lake for a hydroelectric scheme.

You'll never see a wasp in the same way again ... When Beth’s marriage ends, she’s determined to build a new life in the country for herself and her children. A quiet life lived closer to nature. She thinks she’s achieved the impossible – a civilised separation, a happy home and a cordial relationship with her estranged husband, Mark. There's even the promise of new love on the horizon. But when Mark tries to change the rules, Beth’s peaceful world is turned upside down. Disturbingly, she also discovers that European wasps have invaded her garden. Beth’s obsession with them and...

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve. I've spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I've never been a hostage before. The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.