Australian Fiction Mysteries

When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti's hopes for a quiet posting in his old home town are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a local property developer, whose controversial plans to buy up Blackwood land means few are surprised he ended up dead. However his gruesome murder is overshadowed by the mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted.

Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical and many continue to perplex us today—and will probably continue to do so tomorrow. More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing—somewhere. Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia.

Thanks to a nomadic childhood, Revelle Lee is fluent in ten languages, which she puts to use at crime scenes and in courtrooms across London. Being a court interpreter is a stressful job, one that makes her privy to the most personal and often dark details of others’ lives. In the meantime, she’s close to adopting a six-year-old boy named Elliot from foster care. Revelle is determined to be the mother she never had, and to make up for a terrible mistake she made years ago.

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister.

The bestselling author of The Arrangement returns with a deliciously twisted story of friendship, retribution and betrayal about a homeless woman fleeing a dangerous past – and the wealthy society wife she saves from drowning, who pulls her into a dark web of secrets and lies.

The Central Intelligence Agency is in crisis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Congress is questioning the organisation’s necessity. Interim CIA director Thomas Stansfield must fight for his agency’s survival while explaining why the previous candidate for his job was found murdered in a French hotel – surrounded by booze, cash, and dead men. Worst yet, a brilliantly run sting operation in Moscow has resulted in the arrest of America’s most prized Russian asset and the expulsion of his CIA handler.

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing 14 grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she's witnessed - inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love.

When eighteen-year-old Ellie Canning is discovered wandering the countryside, dazed and traumatized, she tells a harrowing story of abduction, captivity, and escape. An overnight symbol of survival and empowerment, Ellie enthralls an outraged nation. Then authorities zero in on an unlikely suspect: high school teacher Suzannah Wells, identified by Ellie as the woman who kept her drugged and bound in a basement. The evidence against Suzannah is damning—vilified by the media, Suzannah’s only defense is that not a single word Ellie says is true. Suzannah has no reason to lie.

Prepare yourself for an exhilarating journey through humanity’s most profound questions in this gripping novel. Meet Albert, a boy genetically engineered for unparalleled intelligence, torn from the arms of his parents, and thrust into a world that cannot understand him. As Albert breaks free from his captors in a daring escape, he embarks on a path that challenges conventional notions of right and wrong. Detective Miriam Hunter is hot on his trail, determined to bring him to justice. But could there be more to Albert than meets the eye? Is he merely a victim, desperate to comprehend his ...

The hand of fate, that had torn their lives apart, is now set to make their worlds collide once again. BOUND TO SARAH will set you on a roller-coaster of emotions, graphic in description and action packed. This story is brutal and shockingly unpredictable. In the year 1823, at the height of the British Empire and the colonization of Australia, Pat Roche sits on board a convict ship, sentenced for the term of his natural life to the New Colonies. All hope of ever seeing his wife and child again appeared to be lost. The ship is a fraught with tension under such a strict military guard; with ...

In 1936, intrepid young Australian journalist Nancy Wake is living in Paris after witnessing firsthand the terror of Hitler’s rise in Europe, firing her resolve to join the fight to defeat the Nazis. When Nancy falls in love with a handsome French industrialist, no sooner has she become Mrs. Henri Fiocca than the Germans invade and Nancy adopts another name, a codename - the first of many.

Jimmy is a kid growing up fast on the poorest street in town. He tries to do everything right and look out for his mum and his younger brother. His older brother is in jail, so it's up to Jimmy to hold things together. But small-town life is unforgiving if you're from the other side of the tracks.

In the neon-drenched alleys of Budapest, Will Slater comes face to face with his past. Jason King is back–and he brings devastating news. When Slater agrees to help King get revenge, they quickly find themselves in a fight they know very little about. Because the world is changing and technology is rapidly advancing, spiralling toward a total transformation of society. There is a new breed of terrorist–the next step in human evolution. As the truth unravels, the terror amplifies. And by the time it's over, they both find out that there is a fate far, far worse than death.

Superstar footballer Luca Bruni is being blackmailed for a night of lust he swears he didn't participate in...except the ransom photo denies that. A media darling on and off the field, he has powerful charisma, a perfect home life he'll do anything to protect, and more money than he knows what to do with. He's determined to defy the extortion racket. When Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth learns that the cunning mastermind behind this crime has already swindled a dozen of the world's most highly prized male athletes, he is instructed to keep the situation from escalating.

Constable Jenny Williams moved to an outback mining town to find her missing cousin. The cold case is finally warming up, but it appears the remote, desolate desert community is hiding more secrets. When a car crashes into the local motel reception, Jenny jumps in to help dig the owner from the debris—only to find tragedy. A woman’s corpse is discovered hidden in the carnage, turning the crash scene into a crime scene. Jenny starts digging, but quickly discovers the prime suspect is her friend, the woman who’s been her rock since she came to town.

In the twilight of his career, Logan learns he has been a vessel for furthering government interests, not a rogue hitman for a band of vigilantes. The revelation destroys him. But when Jorge Romero—an investigative reporter and Logan's oldest friend—is brutally and inexplicably murdered, Logan allows his fury to deliver him from despair. With an ally in Alice Mason, a homeless witness with a target on her back, Logan goes to war. Against whom, he isn't sure, but he knows powerful forces are at work behind the scenes.

FOR ALMOST TEN THOUSAND YEARS THE KHILIOI HAVE LIVED IN THEIR CITY BENEATH THE REMOTE AUSTRALIAN DESERT, UNDISTURBED AND UNKNOWN. But every hundred years or so they have a need. The Khilioi’s energy machine brings a small aircraft within their control, causing it to land in the wilderness above. The Deka, the lords of the Khilioi, take the pilot and his girlfriend to their city, a city they will never be allowed to leave, not even after their purpose has been served – to provide new bloodlines for the Khilioi. Their time is finite. There is a limit to their usefulness. But how can they ...

When Rebecca Bundy fails to return home after the last day of school in 1984 her father reports her missing. But the teenager has run away before and recently she's been bragging about going to Queensland, so the police tell the family to wait it out. Days pass. Rumours swirl. A man seen loitering near the bus stop might have followed her. Was there something going on between Rebecca and a male teacher? What about the sheep farmer on Glen Lochan Road where she babysat? And why is her boyfriend, the rough cattle guy Bull Tennant, so sure something sinister has happened?

Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds herself recruited into an elite MI5 counterintelligence unit. A secret society seeks an alliance with Germany and, posing as a Nazi sympathizer, Evelyn must build a case to expose their treachery. But as she is drawn deeper into duplicity, some of those close to her become embroiled in her investigation.

Will Slater needs to lay low. With the whole U.S. government antagonised by his recent actions, he smuggles himself to rural eastern Zimbabwe and tries to keep his head down. But that was never going to happen. Whispers and rumours of a gang of psychopaths sweep across the plains. Remnants of the old regime, cast out from the previous dictatorship, continue to wreak havoc. They’re armed to the teeth and their manic leader is untouchable. They own this territory, and everyone in it.