Australian Mystery

Friday's Mum, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, has been accused of espionage. The police think she's been selling secrets about the CERN Hadron Super Collider. Friday knows her mother isn't capable of such a thing - this is a woman who can't even operate a dishwasher. She's got to smuggle herself into Switzerland to clear her Mum's name. Fortunately, Melanie is a master of disguise. After an extremely extreme make-over, Friday arrives at CERN and finds axolotls in the water coolers, graffiti in the great hall and most baffling of all - her sister has fallen in love with an engineer!

For more than 150 years, a grand house known as Alden Castle has stood proudly in the rolling hills of California's wine country, home to a family weighed down by secrets and debt. When the castle is sold, billionaire developers move in, only to discover one skeleton after another—including a fresh corpse—rotting in the old family cemetery. As three generations of the well-respected Alden-Stowe family come under scrutiny, police unearth a twisted web of rivalries, alliances, deceit, and treachery. Who lied? Who will survive? Who, amid all the horror and betrayal, is the lucky one?

During a broiling heatwave, the inner circle of a high-profile charity attend a critical meeting at White Ash Ridge, a small hotel nestled in the Australian wilderness. As the temperature rises, a body is found lying in the thick bush, bludgeoned to death. One of the four remaining guests is a murderer - but who, and why, is a mystery. Detective Dana Russo knows the national spotlight will be sharply focused on the case. The charity was formed when the founders' teenage son was killed after intervening in a vicious assault - sparking public outrage and a damning verdict on the investigation.

Take a devastatingly handsome movie star who would rather be a rancher, add one feisty Australian writer who would rather sit at home with her books, and stir in a cast of wonderful friends who think they know what is best for the star and the writer. It all adds up to a crackling enemies-to-lovers romance that sweeps around the world from Hollywood and Montana to the wilds of the Australian outback. Abby Lane vowed never to return to Hollywood but her flamboyant journalist cousin convinces her to do one interview with the movie star Jackson Baron. From the moment Abby arrives late at the ...

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 ...

If Hallmark Mysteries joined the Travel Channel describes the Challenge Series. Dave and Katie Parker are a retirement aged couple recovering from difficult circumstances. “I feel like our old life was a boat that went over a waterfall with us inside. Now we’re bobbing up in the pool below, glad to be alive, but without a boat,” says Katie. The Challenge Series of novels follow the Parkers as they solve mysteries, thwart criminals, and find new adventures in colorful locales. Challenge in the Golden State The Parker family travels in an RV to the Golden State on vacation. After Dave, ...

If Hallmark Mysteries joined the Travel Channel describes the Challenge Series. Dave and Katie Parker are a retirement aged couple recovering from difficult circumstances. “I feel like our old life was a boat that went over a waterfall with us inside. Now we’re bobbing up in the pool below, glad to be alive, but without a boat,” says Katie. The Challenge Series of novels follow the Parkers as they solve mysteries, thwart criminals, and find new adventures in colorful locales. Challenge Down Under Dave and Katie Parker’s only son, Jeremy, is getting married in Australia. In spite of ...

When Jenny Williams took a job as the new constable in an outback opal mining town, she thought she’d be hunting down clues to find her missing aunt and cousin. But when a young woman’s body is found at the bottom of a mine shaft, a possible murder forces her personal agenda to take a back seat. Jenny goes head to head with her new commanding officer. He doesn’t want to ruffle feathers in town and rules the case Death By Misadventure. But Jenny is sure the dead woman met with foul play.

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.

Three years into his tumultuous career as a black-ops wrecking ball, a young Jason King’s superiors mandate a week’s rest between assignments. But three days in, his vacation is nixed, and a mysterious CIA spook puts him on a plane to Chile for a training camp atop the highest volcano on earth. Ojos del Salado sits twenty thousand feet above sea level–within hours of arrival, the workload threatens to destroy him: physically, emotionally, spiritually. But there’s a reason they want him crippled by altitude sickness.

Under the fierce heat of the Australian outback, the laws of nature serve a rough justice. When a man vanishes deep in the Northern Territory, local police write it off. But his family suspect otherwise—and when the call for help goes out, Ben Hope and Jeff Decker are there to hear it. Ben’s instincts, honed by years of Special Forces missions, soon see the story told by a trail of bullet casings, rumours of a missing map and a lethal cocktail of greed, power and money.

When a mysterious client hires Penn Gwinn, a private investigator based in San Rafael, California, to locate the legendary opal called the Aqualene, Penn thought it would be a quick buck. He had no idea he was about to become involved in a bizarre chase for the Aqualene, called the Eye of God, part of the Australian Aborigine heritage. As this case takes him through Mexico and on to Australia, he attracts many so-called friends and allies. The confrontation with the Quad Lateral Council, an international criminal syndicate, leaves a trail of bodies. Penn deals with phony detectives and ...

In Darwin, Australia in the Northwest Territories, crocodiles aren't the only predators lurking about. Inspector Harry Chin, and his partner, Ash Friday, a fierce Aboriginal detective with dark brooding eyes, are sent from Canberra to investigate the murder of an Australian Federal Police Officer, Peter Riggs. Riggs had been working undercover on an international heroin ring that seems to be coming in through the Port of Darwin. The officer had been found in his car dead from an overdose of heroin--the very drug that he had been investigating. Everything seems to be pointing to a heroin ...

In April 2006, fifteen-year-old Oliver went hiking to the lookout on Burning Mountain - and vanished without trace.

Who knew boarding school could be this perilous!

In the small, sleepy town of Gattan, population 7448, it happened at eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. At the local soccer field, only one boy, aged ten years and one week, remained standing as the brothers, sisters and parents of his teammates realised the horror they were witnessing.

From the outside, the Delaneys appear to be an enviably contented family. Even after all these years, former tennis coaches Joy and Stan are still winning tournaments, and now that they've sold the family business, they have all the time in the world to learn how to 'relax'. Their four adult children are busy living their own lives, and while it could be argued they never quite achieved their destinies, no one ever says that out loud.

A woman has been found crushed and mutilated inside mining equipment. Jenny is sure the woman’s death was no accident. She investigates and uncovers a link to an extremist Sovereigntist cult who don’t take kindly to strangers. As if fanatics weren’t scary enough—the commune is full of armed men and what appears to be women held captive. Her gut instincts are telling her this cult is trouble, but she needs proof. Jenny’s boss tells her to do what she’s never been good at—be patient, don’t stir up trouble and keep her mouth shut.

I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder. Before the storm stranded us at the mountain resort, snow and bodies piling up. The thing is, us Cunninghams don't really get along. We've only got one thing in common: we've all killed someone.

In 2011, on a remote Iranian mountain, a group of high-level officials have just witnessed the successful demonstration of a new weapons system meant to upend the American-led war in Afghanistan by essentially decimating the population. The intelligence officer recognizes what this development signifies even if his contemporaries do not. A fellow participant seems to agree with the intelligence officer’s reticence, remarking that he wished there was someone they could tell about this madness. But there is someone the intelligence officer can tell. One man who might just make a difference.