Australian Fiction Mysteries

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home. Ronnie's going to find her; she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone; Ronnie won't believe it. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it; she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible. Lewis can believe it, too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.

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.

Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy - including the identity of the baby's father - hidden from her family and coworkers for as long as possible.Her mother, Grace, cannot let this secret rest, even while her own life begins to crumble around her. For Floss, Neva's grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva's situation thrusts her back 60 years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter's - a secret which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all.

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.

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.

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.

In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir. It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason's name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin's most closely guarded secret. Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West - a mole who stands on the doorstep of ultimate power. Only one man can unravel the conspiracy: Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel's vaunted secret intelligence service.

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.

My name's Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I'd hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

Penny Carter's quiet life in Southbend, running a nursery with her ex father-in-law, is turned upside down when Lisa, the young daughter of her late husband, is unexpectedly deposited on her doorstep. The unwelcome houseguest stirs up more than just memories of Penny's husband's betrayal, when a cyclone leads to the discovery of a skeleton buried next to the town cemetery.

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.

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.

When Emily's beautiful cousin Aspen goes missing somewhere in the Outback, no one seems to take it seriously, not even the police. After all, Aspen has a history of drug use and a string of broken relationships to her name. But Emily knows that her disappearance is totally out of character, so she books a flight to the Northern Territory to find her. Emily's search takes her south of Darwin to every road stop and tourist trap she can find, but the only person who turns up is the last person she expected to see, her ex-husband Ben. But there is a violent killer on the loose.

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).

For years the firefighters of New York's Engine 99 have rushed fearlessly into hot zones, saving countless lives and stopping devastating blazes in their tracks. They've also stolen millions from banks, jewellery stores and art galleries. With their inside knowledge and specialist equipment they've become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast. Their newest member, Andrea 'Andy' Nearland, is not what she seems either. She's an undercover operative, hunting the men of Engine 99 for a host of crimes - including the murder of an off-duty cop and the disappearance of a mother and child.

In late 1932, Iris Webber arrives in Sydney looking for work but the city is still in the grip of the Depression and there are few jobs for women at the best of times. She makes her way as best she can: a scam here, a shoplift there, busking with an accordion. And she knows how to use a gun. When Iris meets young sex worker Maisie Matthews, everything changes. But what options are there in a world where even on the margins, queer desire is harshly punished? The only way forward is paved with violence.

Police are baffled by several deaths, each unique and bizarre in their own way - and shockingly brutal. Scotland Yard sends in its crack DCI, the enigmatic Jack Hawksworth, who wastes no time in setting up Operation Mirror. His chief wants him to dismiss any plausibility of a serial killer before the media gets on the trail. With his best investigative team around him, Jack resorts to some unconventional methods to disprove or find a link to the gruesome deaths.

Someone wants Russian millionaire Dmitry Lebedev dead. After years flying under the radar in Sydney, he’s just had a narrow escape when a sex worker is poisoned in his hotel room. In desperation he contacts his former CIA case officer, Ronnie Johnson, offering to expose a traitor inside the Australian government in return for protection.