Australian Fiction Mysteries

When almost-thirteen-year-old Josephine Eloise Thomas moves from Sydney to a chateau in the southwest of France, she expects many things - adventures, inspiration for the stories she loves to write and maybe finding out more about her French mother, who tragically died when she was a toddler. What she doesn't expect is to find a beautiful gold locket with the ghost of Louis XVII trapped inside! After being accidentally released into the twenty-first century, the young prince proves to be annoying, strange and obviously from another time.

Detective Jason Smith is sick and tired of the English weather. It's February in York and the dark, dreary days are getting him down. When his wife, DC Erica Whitton wins a holiday to Australia, Smith is reluctant to go. He has no desire to go back home. Against his better judgement, Smith agrees to show his wife and daughter where he grew up. The perfect holiday soon turns into a nightmare as Smith finds himself in a race against time to save the only people he's ever cared about. Children in Smith's home town are being murdered. There's something rotten there.

After many tumultuous years spent grappling with the past, Jenny Hooper might have expected her latter years to be the best of her life, and they are - until tragedy strikes. Left floundering in a house full of memories, not all of them good, Jenny knows a reckoning is in order. But it won't be easy. History is beginning to repeat itself for Jenny's adopted daughter, Trudy, who finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship. Jenny and her older daughter, Georgie, can only stand by and watch as Trudy's life implodes.

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....

Meet Evie, a young woman held captive by a man named Jim in the isolated New Zealand beach town of Maketu. Jim says he's hiding Evie to protect her, that she did something terrible back home in Melbourne. In a house that creaks against the wind, Evie begins to piece together her fractured memories of the events that led her here. Jim says he's keeping her safe. Evie's not sure she can trust Jim, but can she trust her own memories?

Tully and Rachel Aston are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease. Announcing his plan to divorce and then remarry, the news of Stephen and Heather's engagement sets a chain a family implosion. With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets and what this new woman really wants.

In the long, hot summer of 1989, Ben and Fab are best friends. Growing up in a small country town, they spend their days playing cricket, yabbying in local dams, wanting a pair of Nike Air Maxes and not talking about how Fab's dad hits him or how the sudden death of Ben's next-door neighbour unsettled him. Almost teenagers, they already know some things are better left unsaid. Then a newcomer arrives in the Wimmera. Fab reckons he is a secret agent, and he and Ben stake him out.

After a tumultuous school term, a family holiday with sunshine, sleep-ins and Portuguese tarts is just what Kensy and Max need. And Granny Cordelia is adamant: there are to be no investigations while on vacation. But when strange incidents start piling up, the twins are torn between their loyalty and their nose for adventure. As all leads point to the annual E-Prix championship, Kensy and Max find themselves drawn into the middle of a menacing plot.

Someone is imprisoned in a horrible cage, but why is Jack trying to get caught by Ranger Johnny Wolf? What is Foxie up to? And just who is sharing Jack's basket these days? Everything is fine in Doggeroo until Sarge falls ill. Auntie Tidge is at hand to look after Jack, but Foxie is being disagreeable (again). When will Sarge be back? In no time, Jack has both a case and a moral dilemma - or even two. Is it right to leave his most dangerous enemy trussed up in a cage? And, who will mind the boy while he's off detecting?

Ashley has recently lost her husband. Daughter Emily is being bullied online. Best friend Nikki is holding a huge secret. And why is husband Chris receiving so many text messages lately? Their teenage children are glued to technology, be it PlayStation, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat.... The two women hatch a plan: for three weeks, both families will stay in a rustic, remote coastal camp with no phone reception.

Patterson's greatest crime-solving team since the Women's Murder Club is the Bird Sisters. Rhonda and Barbara "Baby" Bird are half-sisters-and full partners in their Los Angeles detective agency. They agree on nothing.

After a disastrous fire in the village leaves a family without a home, Alice-Miranda and her friends pitch in to help. They decide to hold a music festival to raise funds. The only trouble is, not everyone's as keen on the idea. Things are also heating up in Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies with Miss Reedy at the helm. The arrival of a new teacher, a deputy turned diva and an entire faculty of disgruntled staff sees tempers flare. Has the power gone to Miss Reedy's head or is there a sinister hand at play?

A near-fatal car accident left Jane Halifax in a coma, and when she wakes, she has no idea who she is...Initially comforted by unlikely specters of past cases, Jane has no memory of the accident and is unaware of everyone else’s concerns: the police, who believe she was deliberately run off the road; the lawyer, whose files were in her car at the time of the accident—files he never should have given her; her neurosurgeon, who fears a relapse; and her partner, Tim, who is slowly realizing Jane remembers nothing of the last two years—including their relationship.

Kenna arrives in Sydney to surprise her best friend, shocked to hear she's going to marry a guy she's only just met. But Mikki and her fiancé, Jack, are about to head away on a trip, so Kenna finds herself tagging along for the ride. Sorrow Bay is beautiful, wild and dangerous. A remote surfing spot with waves to die for, cut off from the rest of the world. Here Kenna meets the mysterious group of people who will do anything to keep their paradise a secret.

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.

Eleanor Jones has just started at her ninth high school in less than five years. Since she and her mum are always moving on, Eleanor likes to stay on the outer, to stay invisible. So maybe it's just bad luck that the very first person she talks to at Cooinda Secondary College, Angus Marshall, is stabbed and left for dead the same day. The last message on Angus's phone is from Eleanor Jones.

Russia, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police herd Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence, Anna Anderson is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars.

Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in a small town in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they've always had a close - sometimes too close - friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to diverge: Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains, as well as falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu. Unused to sharing Finn, Daphne starts to act up in ways that will allow her to maintain the control over her best friend she's always relished.

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....

Tully and Rachel are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease. Heather knows she has an uphill battle to win Tully and Rachel over, while carrying the burden of the secrets of her past. But, as it turns out, they are all hiding something.