Australian Thrillers

Henry "Hal" Courtney has always lived at sea. He watched his own father executed during the Anglo-Dutch naval war, and spent his entire young adulthood avenging his father's death. Now a truce has been made between the warring countries and Hal is captain of his own ship - the Golden Bough. From the slave markets of Zanzibar to the pirate-riddled waters of the Indian Ocean, Hal leads his crew in and out of the waves of danger. But he soon realizes that just because the war is over, does not mean the battle is won, and the more a man achieves, the more he has to lose.

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.

For 35 years, the United States and Russia each had their own superhero. Three days ago, America's hero died. Today will be bad. In the face of an overwhelming attack, one young woman—unassuming and anonymous—might be America's only hope. Her codename...Cobalt Blue.

Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball. GPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens.

Aboard a luxury passenger train in the desolate Russian Far East, Slater heads for the port city of Vladivostok with a mysterious grudge. After traumatic past events, he was reluctant to return to the region, but he’s got unfinished business to attend to. Terrified passengers, secret police, and shadowy underworld figures are just the beginning. Arriving in Vladivostok, he finds something wretched–something dark, twisted and shocking.

The small town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of New South Wales. Once a thriving outback centre, years of punishing drought have whittled it down to no more than a couple of pubs and a police station. And its one sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of Evelyn McCreery 19 years ago from the bedroom she shared with her twin sister. Mina McCreery's life has been defined by the intense and ongoing public interest in her sister's case. Now an anxious and reclusive adult, Mina lives alone on her family's sunbaked destocked sheep farm.

Of all the nightmare options that passed through Antonia Heaveringham's head when her husband Hugo uttered the words, 'I've got something to tell you,' a coming out speech never figured. Suddenly alone in their adopted home of Sydney, with no friends save for her six-year-old son Tom and a pair of jeweled Jimmy Choo mules, Antonia soon finds that an attractive single woman is not nearly so welcome on the champagne social scene as the wife of a glamorous English aristocrat.

It's the height of summer in Australia, 1979, and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac in Canberra a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white chequered tiles of the bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems.

Ex-mercenary Sonja Kurtz is out for revenge after her daughter Emma is assaulted by an abalone poacher while on a beachside holiday near Cape Town. When the poacher is murdered, Sonja is targeted by a violent local gangster and must flee the country. As Sonja leaves a trail of destruction in her wake—from the threatened wilderness of Zimbabwe to the treacherous beaches of northern Mozambique—a concerned Emma must find the courage to rescue her mother. But is Sonja a cold-blooded killer? Or is there a darker conspiracy taking place in southern Africa's underworld?

Certainly! Here's the revised blurb, emphasizing that this is the complete series: Secrets Beneath the Red Dust. A Conspiracy Worth Killing For. In the heart of the unforgiving Australian Outback, the land is vast, the people are tough, and the secrets are deadly. When Jenny Tyler returns to the dusty, sunbaked cattle station she once called home, she’s thrust into a web of mystery, betrayal, and a decades-old conspiracy hidden beneath the red dust. A skilled operative with a turbulent past, Jenny faces ruthless enemies, cryptic allies, and a shadowy organization determined to unearth ...

A spate of seemingly unconnected murders in southern England prompt a high-profile task force to be formed and led by DCI Jack Hawksworth, one of the Force's new rising stars who combines modern methods with old-school instincts. The victims appear as disparate as their style of death; the only link that Hawk and his team can pull together is that the murdered are all men of an identical age. The task force has nothing but cold cases of decades past to comb through in the hope that they might find a clue to who is behind the savagery.

For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria's high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge. Also found dead near the scene was Bill 'Creeper' Durant, a bushland loner, expert deer-hunter, and a man with a known reputation for stalking campers . . .Conclusion: murder-suicide. Case closed. But as the ten-year anniversary of the massacre draws near, Detective Constable Sally White - the only officer at Edenville's modest police station - finds herself drawn into the dark world of the notorious Durant family.

Two criminal empires together control all of New England. Until a beautiful modern-day Helen of Troy comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire. Danny Ryan yearns for a more 'legit' life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself.

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime-writing royalty. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Or commit one.

For as long as they can remember, Claudia, Margo and Jackie have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance of a happy family life. But their childhood wasn't the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

Joanne Flack is on the run - suspected of stealing a rare African plant thought to be extinct and worth millions of dollars. Sonja Kurtz is hired by the CIA to hunt down Joanne and find the link between the missing plant and a terrorist group hiding out in South Africa. Joanne is a member of the Pretoria Cycad and Firearms Appreciation Society, who take it upon themselves to track down the plant...and the traitor in their midst who is willing to kill for it.

'In 1954, at just fourteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.' In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past. In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel. 'She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?' When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.

Meg McLean is a scholarship student at the ultra-elite Douglas College. Meg's younger sister, Liza, is along for the ride, and everything Liza has done since they arrived at the school seems to be putting their chances of success at risk. Until one day, when Liza's behaviour is so at odds with her usual temperament that Meg knows something is very, very wrong. Benedict Hargreaves (the 4th) is Douglas College's wealthiest student and perhaps the only one who isn't influenced by the school and its strict code of conduct. Is he brave enough to help Meg uncover what has happened to her sister?

Andrea Oliver's mother, Laura, is the perfect small-town mum. Laura lives a quiet but happy life in sleepy beachside Belle Isle. She's a pillar of the community: a speech therapist, business owner, and everybody's friend. And she's never kept a secret from anyone. Or so Andrea thinks. When Andrea is caught in a random violent attack at a shopping mall, Laura intervenes and acts in a way that is unrecognizable to her daughter. It"s like Laura is a completely different person—and that's because she was. Thirty years ago. Before Andrea. Before Belle Isle.

Former housemates Mac and Erika are homeless. Well, Erika is fine, she just has to live with her parents until she can find another rental. Mac's situation is much worse—family isn't an option and she's surfing the couches of her increasingly exasperated friends. Driving around one lonely afternoon, Mac discovers Barren Cape. Once destined to be a luxury escape, now it's just wire fence and gray cement. It's stark, but quiet. There's no harm in staying a little while…