Australian Crime

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.

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....

Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to the small, insular town in New Zealand - a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her to protect her. But Evie can't remember anything about that night - she doesn't know if he's telling the truth. As fragments of her memory starts to return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her saviour...or her captor.

Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only. That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper's trail of death seventeen years ago was her innocuous little teashop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her police officer husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate.

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. She and her husband, Benton, are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon, in a post-pandemic world that's been torn apart by civil and political unrest. Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to investigate a woman's body that has been shockingly displayed on railroad tracks. As Scarpetta follows the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own neighborhood....

When Tim Bowden went back to Tasmania to explore his state of origin for the first time in many years, he was reminded of his adolescent assertion that "Tasmania is the testicle of Australia, suffusing the mainland with strength and vigour. What a pity there is only one of them".

1967: Hazel's new job at the docks quickly turns perilous when she stumbles into the criminal underworld that lurks beneath the surface. A million in gold coins has vanished from a cargo ship and a dead body washed up. Suddenly, she's in over her head. Disillusioned with her life, Betty is led astray by a charismatic new friend and finds herself exposed in more ways than one - until a crisis drags her back to reality. Living in a high-class brothel, Irene gets wind of a threat that could destroy her livelihood.

Andrea Oliver's mother, Laura, is the perfect small-town mum. Laura lives a quiet but happy life in sleepy beachside Belle Isle. She's a pillar of the community: a speech therapist, business owner, and everybody's friend. And she's never kept a secret from anyone. Or so Andrea thinks. When Andrea is caught in a random violent attack at a shopping mall, Laura intervenes and acts in a way that is unrecognizable to her daughter. It"s like Laura is a completely different person—and that's because she was. Thirty years ago. Before Andrea. Before Belle Isle.

As Australia's most distinguished criminal psychologist, 'Doc' Tim Watson-Munro has assessed over 30,000 'persons of interest' in some of the nation's most notorious court cases, including Hoddle Street gunman Julian Knight, corporate fraudster Alan Bond, Melbourne gangster Alphonse Gangitano and, in recent years, Australia's first terrorist convicts. But the front line of psychology is no place for the fainthearted.

In 1977, Vera 'Toddie' Hays and Florice 'Beezie' Bessire thought they were about to embark on the trip of a lifetime when Vera's nephew, Vern Todd, offered them a campervan to drive from Germany to India. Little did the women know that Vern and his accomplices would secretly pack two tonnes of hashish into the vehicle along the way. This shocking inside story chronicles Toddie and Beezie's wild ride across continents and oceans to our shores, their arrest by Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents and all that the women faced in the aftermath.

Plunged into a nightmarish world of extreme violence, solitary confinement, gang allegiances, drugs, vindictive wardens, and regular stabbings, Paul Wood spent the next 11 years confined in some of New Zealand's toughest jails. Based on an account of his experiences he wrote while still inside, How to Escape from Prison chronicles Paul's road to redemption and a new life as a doctor of psychology, helping others strive to fulfill their potential and develop the resilience to flourish, even in adversity.

A poacher vanishes into thin air, defying logic and baffling ace tracker Mia Greenaway. Meanwhile Captain Sannie van Rensburg, still reeling from a personal tragedy, is investigating the disappearance of two young girls who locals fear have been abducted for use in sinister traditional medicine practices. But poachers are also employing witchcraft, paying healers for potions they believe will make them invisible and bulletproof.

This book is Chopper's redemption. It is the real story of the man, the criminal and the prisoner, told with black humour and surprising insight.

Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth of Scotland Yard has headed up three major serial operations, and in each of these cases, it seems he has lost a part of himself. He is burnt out and taken a shift sideways for a while, taking on a low-profile role of desk investigator out of London that's looking into whether a global crime scam exists. But when a number of young women start returning home ill and dying after travels in Europe, Jack uncovers a shocking black-market operation, with links that lead him all the way to a crime syndicate in South Australia.

'The only way to comprehend this tragic story of mine is to write it.' On the 10th of February 2017, there was a sentencing hearing for murder in the Victorian Supreme Court. The young woman in the dock, who sat quietly with her hands in her lap, had perfect skin and light-brown hair tied back as neatly as a private school prefect's. When the judge asked her to confirm her plea, the young woman answered in a clear and polite voice. 'Guilty, Your Honour.' That killer is Mary K. Pershall's beloved daughter, Anna.

In an incredible 25-year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles' conviction rate was 99 percent. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as 'The Great Man'. Tough, inventive and incorruptible, stoic in the face of senseless horror yet unafraid to shed tears for a victim, Ron has applied his country cunning and city savvy to over 320 homicide cases - some of them the most infamous, compelling and controversial crimes in the nation's history. To the victims of crime, Ron is both a shoulder to cry on and an avenging angel.

This is the truly remarkable life story of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and later was arrested for obtaining goods by false pretences. With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary tale of Australia's greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.

On Australia Day, 26 January 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont were abducted from Colley Reserve, Glenelg, South Australia and never seen again, leading to one of Australia's most extensive police investigations and manhunts. Five decades later, no trace of the children has ever been found. Over the years, several individuals have been put forward and investigated as suspects, resulting in false leads and dead ends and with no real suspect until now: Harry Phipps.

All farmer Mathew Dunbar ever wanted was to find love and have a family of his own. That’s why, just months after meeting Natasha Darcy, the much-loved grazier didn’t hesitate to sign over his multi-million-dollar estate to her. When Mathew died in an apparent suicide soon afterwards, in a stranger-than-fiction twist, Natasha's estranged husband – who she was once charged with trying to kill – was the first paramedic on the scene.

On the fifth floor of the White Caps Hotel, four young friends are left alone while their parents dine downstairs. But when Sara Farrow checks on the children at midnight, her son is missing. The boys swear they stayed in their room, and CCTV confirms Richie has not left the building. Despite a thorough search, no trace of the child is found.