Australian Fiction Mysteries

Callum Haffenden swore he'd never return to Granite Creek. But, thirty years after a life-shattering accident, he's thrust back into the clutches of Far North Queensland and a local legend he worked hard to forget. When a man goes missing in the rainforest, the past begins to resurface, breathing new life into memories of previous tragedies - two girls lost, seventeen years apart. In a town where it's easiest to turn a blind eye, the guilt runs deep and everyone in Granite Creek has something to hide.

As the pearling ships return to Bannin Bay after a long diving season, 20-year-old Eliza Brightwell awaits the arrival of her father’s boat. But when his lugger finally limps in, it brings a tale of tragedy: Charles Brightwell, master pearler, has gone missing at sea. Whispers from the townsfolk point to mutiny or murder. Headstrong Eliza knows it is up to her to find out who—or what—is responsible for her father’s disappearance. Searching for the truth, she delves beneath the glamorous veneer of the south sea pearling trade.

On the evening of September 22, 1998, three teenage girls venture out for a night of mischief in the coastal town of Blairgowrie. But only two return. For over 20 years the disappearance of 15-year-old Cecilia May remains a baffling cold case - until human bones are discovered on an isolated beach. Now it's up to Detective Emmett Corban and his team to dig up decades of trauma, and find the missing piece of an investigation that's as complex as it is tragic.

Someone’s planting explosives on dams in the Twin Cities, and Bristol Bachmann and her bomb sniffing dog must move quickly to find them before everything ends up underwater. That means relying on the dams’ supervisor - an ex-boyfriend Bristol never thought she’d see again. Hopefully Remington Jones has grown up from the rakish charmer she knew in her academy days. Because lives now depend entirely on them....

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.

1898, Geelong, Victoria. Stella Truehart is all alone in the world. Her good-for-nothing husband has died violently at the hands of an unknown assailant. Her mother is dead, her father deserted them before she was born, and now her kindly Truehart grandparents are also in their graves.

Jo Ainsley has been running for a long time. From her childhood in small town England to art school in London to the messy end of a relationship in Sydney, Jo has chosen to run again and again, each time moving further from where her troubles began. This time, her escape will bring her to the remote northwest region of Western Australia, where she must work for 88 days on a farm in order to extend her visa.

When your builder finds bones under the floor of your heritage home, what do you do? For TV researcher Poppy McGowan, the first step is to find out if the bones are human (which means calling in the cops and delaying her renovations) or animal (which doesn't). Unfortunately, "help" comes in the form of Dr Julieanne Weaver, archaeologist, political hopeful, and Poppy's old enemy. She declares the bones evidence of a rare breed of fat-tailed sheep, and slaps a heritage order on the site.

Sometimes, only a kid can save the day.... Star athlete Josh and computer prodigy Madison begin the adventure of a lifetime when they discover the Small World Global Protection Agency. The GPA is a secret organization dedicated to helping other kids and saving the day when adults can’t. In New Kids on the Rock, their first mission takes them to Australia, where they go from the Outback to the top of the Sydney Opera House!

A young woman is hiding out in a sleepy North Queensland tourist town, trying to stay under the radar, when she stumbles across a dangerous drug cartel. Anyone else might back away shaking their head, pretend they hadn't seen anything, keep quiet, even though people are getting hurt. But Maggie is no ordinary girl. She's got skills, as well as plenty of secrets to keep, burdens to carry - and anger to burn.

Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Belinda, a crime he has no memory of committing. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanises the community to rally against him. Neighbours, employers, even some members of Thea’s own family turn away.

The annual Halloween block party is the pinnacle of the year on idyllic suburban cul-de-sac Ivy Woods Drive. An influential group of neighbourhood mums - known as the Ivy Five - plans the event for months. Except the Ivy Five has been four for a long time. When a new mother moves to town, eager to fit in, the mums see it as an opportunity to make the group whole again. This year's block party should be the best yet…until the women start receiving anonymous messages threatening to expose the quiet neighbourhood's dark past - and the lengths they've gone to hide it.

Sydney scientist, Marcus Hall, is developing a radical 5G Wi-Fi receiver for CSIRO. With access to secretive Lamarr computer chips—this technology promises billions to repair Australia’s ravaged economy. On a caffeine boosted whim, he inadvertently discovers a therapeutic breakthrough in neuroscience. Or so he thinks…His seemingly trustworthy lab partner, Henry, is an unlikely Australian spy. His official duty is keeping tabs on the project and their Lamarr chips. But the whole project is now classified top-secret.

Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him—especially the Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’. But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable—her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife.

Erma Bridges dreams of violence. After years of dedication to academic research, her career is falling apart, all because of a mysterious workplace complaint. Erma suspects Jenny, a vindictive colleague, who has seemingly disappeared. Panicked, overworked and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Erma sets out to find Jenny. Through her search, she uncovers a dark series of crimes on campus - do they have something to do with Jenny's disappearance?

Death follows Tommy McBride everywhere. Five years ago, his family was murdered; now a freak accident sends him fleeing into the wilderness of the Australian outback with a man lying dead in his wake. But Tommy is haunted by even worse - as children, he and his brother, Billy, witnessed the state-sanctioned massacre of the Kurrong people, and they haven't seen each other since. When an official enquiry is launched into the massacre, the successful life that Billy has built for himself comes under threat.

Ambitious young journalist Marlowe "Lo" Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local newspaper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of her best friend - the town's reigning showgirl, Lily Williams.

India, monsoon season. Connor, an Australian expat with a brutal past, spends his time running low-stakes scams on tourists in a sleepy beachside town. Sasha, an American in search of spiritual guidance, heads to an isolated ashram in the hope of mending a broken heart. When one of Connor's grifts goes horribly wrong, it sets in motion a chain of events that brings the two lost souls together - and as they try to navigate a world of gangsters, gurus and secret agendas, they begin to realise that within the ashram's utopian community, something is deeply, deeply wrong.

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning - except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God.

Oxford 1863: young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.