This update hasn't been happening recently - I've been dealing with a tsunami of elderly animal health challenges which have just chewed up every available waking hour, to say nothing of creating a severe dose of frazzled brain syndrome.
#JustFinished
Empathy by Brian Walpert (2026 Ngaio's)
Against the Grain by Bing Turkby (2026 Ngaio's)
A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan (2026 Ngaio's)
Fatima Down Under, Julie Ryan (2026 Ngaio's)
#CurrentlyReading
Like, Follow, Die by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
What Rhymes with Murder by Penny Tangey
The Bathing Box Murders, Laraine Stephens (early ARC / details to come)
#NextUp
Against Their Will by Karina Kilmore
Later, Only Love Remains by Leah Swann
The Ledge by Christian White (because I can see it from where I'm sitting most days).
Parrot Heaven by Jessica Howland Kany (because I loved the first one - A Runner's Guide to Rakiura)
Red River Road by Anna Downes (after a massive nudge from somebody whose opinions I value)
A Man Called Box by Tina Clough (2026 Ngaio's)
The Writers Retreat by Victoria Brownlee
The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney (2026 Ngaio's)
The Birds Began to Sing by Jeffrey Buchanan (2026 Ngaio's)
Honey
The first time, Yrsa doesn’t intend to kill.
But the Cambridge professor sitting opposite has manipulated her friend, stolen her research. When she flicks the bee into his Sanpellegrino, she thinks he’ll get a nasty sting.
Then he’s dead. And Yrsa, who – let’s face it – has been bored for a while, is alive.
It’s a sweet feeling, finally having some control.
Comic, sexy, addictive, unpredictable, Honey is about the not-always-righteous path of taking justice into your own hands.
Honey, Imani Thompson
The blurb for HONEY starts out with a no punches pulled approach.
The first time, Yrsa doesn't intend to kill.
Which is going to mean that the style of this novel might come as a bit of a surprise to some readers. If you're one of those, like me, that was more than mildly put off by the chick lit tone of the opening sections, and felt just a little bit like something needs to happen soon... then hang in there. This goes from feeling all a bit silly to deadly (and I mean deadly) serious in the blink of an eye. A blink that might make you think you've missed something.
Having said that, the tone never does vary which makes for an astounding combination of disconnect and deep involvement in every single word, thought and action of the central character Yrsa.
A young university student and lecturer, Yrsa is bored with life, bored with her friends, bored with her active, and mostly self-initiated sex life, basically she's majoring in bored. Which you'd think would make her, as the narrator of her own story, also a bit boring, bordering on whingy. But she's engaging, probably because she's also profoundly confusing. A young woman who seems to have it all, a loving family, although she thinks her mother is overly pushy and her father too passive. She's also very good at poor decisions, impulsive actions, and what an outsider would be excused for assuming is complete and absolute self-involvement. With fleeting moments of compassion and concern for others, when she's not allowing her worst instincts to take over, and well, there's no other way to say this, and indulging in a bit of vigilante behaviour.
All of which sounds confusing I know and in this particular instance it's hard to write a review of this book without slipping into some major spoilers. Instead let's cut to the chase. The blurb also says:
Comic, sexy, addictive, unpredictable, Honey is about the not-always-righteous path of taking justice into your own hands.
Yes to all of that, and as to the question of whether or not I'd wholeheartedly recommend this - it's complicated. If you'd asked me that at the outset I'd have told you there's probably nothing to see here, quarter of the way in I'd still have been suggesting that moving along might be the best choice, halfway through I'd have asked you to go away because I was reading, and by the time the unresolved / will she / won't she / did she / what the hell just happened ending came around, I'd have said most definitely yes.
Empathy
Marketing executive Alison Morris bets her reputation on a project to sell empathy in a perfume bottle. Her husband, Jim, is inspired to try a similar thing in a game he's developing - sinking all their money into EmPath, where people progress by learning to understand one another without direct communication. All at once Alison's fragrance develops dangerous effects and Jim's game falters in the market, then the chemist working on the perfume project vanishes. His son, David, seems to be the only one looking for him. A widower with two children, David is a man of routine who just wants to get on with his life, but his love for his father takes him into a murky world where empathy can be bought and sold and can lead to murder.
Against the Grain
Dana Osborne is looking forward to some quiet time after going undercover with a rock band to solve her last case. But she’s forced into action when an old friend starts to receive mysterious threats, and Detective Wade McNeish once again proves about as much use as a custard guitar pick.
Dana, her assistant Brody, and guitar shop cat Paws McCartney are thrown into a world of dodgy corner stores, illegal distilleries, and – scariest of all – a community ukulele group. To save their skins, they need to figure out who’s making the threats - and fast!
The Guitar Store a rock’n'roll cosy mystery series set in small-town Aotearoa New Zealand where Brokenwood meets Black Sabbath
A Beautiful Family
Over the course of one sunbaked summer vacation, a family is pulled into a web of mysteries that the younger daughter sets out to solve. A tense, page-turning debut of childhood, innocence, and evil.
At ten years old, she catches more than her parents and older sister suspect. Over their summer break, her mother plans to finish her novel, her father wants to grill and watch cricket, and her fifteen-year-old sister hopes to catch the eye of a local lifeguard. With everyone around her distracted, she teams up with a new friend to solve a mystery that haunts this vacation they'll close the case of what happened to Charlotte, a child who was presumed drowned two years earlier.
But things aren't quite as they seem, and as the children look for clues, they inadvertently dislodge information they wish they'd never uncovered. Are her parents happy together? Is her sister putting her trust in the wrong people? Is their vacation rental as safe as it seems? And when someone else goes missing, the family find themselves at the center of an urgent police investigation.
Debut novelist Jennifer Trevelyan viscerally captures the confusion and frustration of childhood, the fraught but unshakeable bond between sisters, and the dangers that lurk in the white lies we tell--especially about the people we love most.
Fatima Down Under
Fatima Downunder is Book Three of the journeys of Dennis Bogdanovich, sanitary engineer and keen fisherman, last seen in Book Two, Swimming with Crocodiles. The final book in the trilogy is affecting, engaging and immensely satisfying.
Like, Follow, Die
Corinne Gray’s life is falling apart. When homicide detective Kyle Nazarian unexpectedly knocks on her door on a rainy morning, she knows why. He wants to talk about her son, Ben.
An average teen in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Ben is dating his first girlfriend and trying to find an after-school job. But as his luck sours, he’s increasingly drawn into shadowy corners of the internet.
This is Corinne’s chance to finally explain how her sweet-natured child, who loved history and dreamed of swimming for Olympic gold, grew up to do the unthinkable. What really happened to Ben? And could anyone have prevented it?
Kyle, meanwhile, is grappling with his own crisis both at home and at work. Torn between his duties and a growing sympathy for Corinne, Kyle must decide how far he’s willing to go in his pursuit of justice.
Like, Follow, Die by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt continues her exploration of the perils of malicious online communities in Like, Follow, Die.
Readers of Blunt’s debut crime fiction Dark Mode will remember how that novel addressed the obsession of stalkers in a pre- and post-internet world. The manipulation of that main character, Reagan Carsen, was visceral, despite her attempts to keep a very low profile: no social media, no photos, no online ‘profiles’ anywhere. Yet she was subjected to a targeted campaign of terror by one depraved individual. Close readers of that novel may recall a reference at the end of it to a website called ‘A New Place for Men’, and this is where Blunt takes the story in Like, Follow, Die.
The timeline is a combination of present-day characters and events and pages of notes, headed ‘NSW Police Evidence’, from a past case. In the early stages you’ll need to be paying attention, as a lot of information about a number of people is provided very rapidly on a variety of timelines, which become more obvious as the plot reveals itself.
The first character we meet is Corinne Gray. A downtrodden woman living in poverty, we first meet her on a rainy morning in March 2025 when homicide detective Kyle Nazarian knocks on her door.
When the knock came, Corinne Gray wasn’t expecting the cops. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
Kyle Nazarian wasn’t expecting to be knocking on her door, either. Recently returned to Sydney from a rural posting, he was only made a probationary detective in the homicide squad the month before.
Detective Kyle Nazarian dashed through the rain, up the driveway and towards the forensics tent erected at the entrance of 68a Seabeach Avenue, Mona Vale. Anticipation prickled through him.
After five years of being held back, this was it.
However, while Corinne was not expecting him, she knows why Kyle is knocking on her door. He wants to talk about her son, Ben. Everybody wants to talk about him, even though it will be quite a while before the reader finds out why.
NSW Police evidence #JH-17-9
Handwritten journal belonging to Benjamin Gray, aged 12
13 February 2016
Dear Dad, Writing to you was Mum’s idea. It feels a bit weird, since we’ve never met. But Mum said that’s okay, I can introduce myself and tell you whatever I want.
The storyline deploys these three main voices – Corinne, Kyle and Ben – in a series of interspersed chapters that cleverly reveal the reasons why Corinne and Kyle are meeting, why the police have Ben’s handwritten journal as evidence, and what happened to him. It all comes down to a series of desperate stories and the manipulation of others that culminate in Corinne and Kyle’s discussion on that rainy afternoon. A discussion Corinne sees as her chance to finally set the story straight.
A single mother who struggled to raise her much-wanted son, her relationship with Ben became increasingly fraught. Financial troubles had forced them from their reasonably comfortable life, and Ben from his exclusive boys’ school, to less salubrious accommodation and a public school. Having to part with his beloved pet dog Cheddar, and finding it difficult to fit in with his peers, poverty does not sit well with Ben. When Corinne spirals into depression after she loses her job, it seems that things cannot get much worse for these two. As Ben hits puberty, he becomes even more antagonistic towards his mother. Then he meets a girl, Chelsea, and that relationship rapidly becomes equally fraught. There’s also something else building there – a tendency towards misogyny, fostered, it seems, by an online community he’s become very involved in – ‘A New Place for Men’.
I read the first volume of Y: The Last Man. Except for the main guy, all the characters are women, which makes it pretty dull.
As his contempt for his mother grows, and his relationship with Chelsea gets more erratic, there are a few hints of normality. Corinne finally finds a meaningful relationship of her own, which Ben’s hot and cold on, as he seems to be with everything.
Mum finally told me about the guy she’s been seeing, as if I didn’t know.
She used to bang on about how we should eat dinner together like a ‘family’, but now she’s at this guy’s place all the time. His name is Gavin.
There is a reason why Kyle knocked on Corinne’s door that morning, despite his wife really needing him at home – her at-risk pregnancy is getting more and more complicated with every passing day, with only limited support from extended family. Operationally, he was not authorised to be there; his probationary status has been suspended, and he is in trouble for something he did as part of a double homicide investigation he’s involved in.
However, the detective he’d been assigned to work with, Duff, is a legend – one of those old-fashioned, kick-doors-and-heads-in-if-necessary investigators who’s back working after an illness that is still threatening to take away the job he loves.
Duff was in his sixties, a heavy-boned man with the face of one of those disgruntled owls. He was part of a homicide investigation team that worked out of headquarters, the team Kyle was now officially part of.
He’s a respected mentor for Kyle if you ignore the dodgy evidence handling and the leaping to conclusions that’s going on in the dual investigations of the death of Scott Chambers, a seemingly normal family man shot dead in his own bathroom when his wife and daughters were staying with her parents, and of a more notorious man, Nestor Vernon, someone the team had been looking for, who was shot in a similar manner inside his locked apartment.
‘Uniforms entered with the building manager and found the owner deceased. Single gunshot wound to the forehead, same as Chambers.‘
The investigation of those deaths is what sent Kyle to Corinne’s door. He’d found evidence of a connection between these two seemingly unconnected men, and then worked backwards to Benjamin Gray. Kyle’s there to scratch an itch, and Corinne sees this as an opportunity to finally get a fair hearing for her son – and for herself as a parent.
She’d never said this part out loud though. ‘You know there are cultures where, if someone goes astray, it’s not considered an individual failing. The community looks at themselves and asks “How did we fail? What could we have done to prevent this?” You’d never see that here …’.
The conclusion to the story is red hot and explosive, but the underlying message here – that the worst people are using the anonymity, immediacy and voice the internet provides as a vehicle for growing hatred – is stone cold and chilling.
What Rhymes With Murder?
When exhausted new mother Frida attends Baby Rhyme Time at the local library, she feels a sense of purpose that has been lacking in her anxious, apartment-bound, sleep-deprived life. But at the end of the session a piercing scream is heard, followed by the thump of a body, and the library becomes a crime scene.
Before long, Frida finds herself part of an unlikely group of sleuths investigating the murder. Between gossip and cups of magic at their local cafe, they are too busy having fun to realise how close they are to danger . . .
What Rhymes With Murder?, Penny Tangey
Featuring new mother Frida, WHAT RHYMES WITH MURDER? is a cosy, baby focused story about a body in a library, with a bit of social commentary along the way.
The basic premise is that Frida attends her first ever session of Baby Rhyme Time at the library in her inner Melbourne suburb - a trendy place with cafe's / come local stores and a hefty quota of women pushing those huge prams that seem to be all the go nowadays. As the session with a group of new parents, including Frida and new friend / parent Josh, there's a loud thump and a woman has died falling over a barrier to the floor below.
Right from the start you're going to have to be a reader that utterly and completely empathises with the sort of new mother who suffers from considerable anxiety and simultaneously wants to describe everything about having a baby. Nappy changes, feeding times, lack of sleep, pram envy - they are all here in massive amounts. Buried within that there is a bit of social commentary about anti-abortion groups, and the trials and tribulations of dealing with extreme religious groups. There's also a lot of sitting in the local cafe drinking coffee and gossiping.
Needless to say a book targeted at a particular audience, which I freely admit, isn't me. Particularly as the balance here is tipped (hefted?) to the baby side of things - the talk about all of that is extremely forward in the entire novel, taking up a lot of text space, so you're going to have to be the sort of reader that "gets" that, or you may find yourself wondering whether the shelf next to you could stand a bit of a dust....
Of it's type, this is definitely a bit of fun, with a slight edge in the way that the abortion argument is drawn in, although the comparisons to ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING and THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB didn't work for this reader - being a fan of both the later outings which feel more inclusive, less self-involved. Having said that the topics of motherhood, anxiety and life pressures will undoubtedly resonate with some readers.
Happy Woman
Gwynne Hogg is an enviable woman – until she discovers her beloved dad is a serial killer.
As her dad’s decades-old secrets finally catch up with him, Gwynne struggles to reconcile the man she trusted most with the crimes he’s accused of. She tries to process it all while keeping the wheels of her ‘normal’ life turning. That means caring for her depressed mum, enduring the stares of other parents on the nursery run, and showing up for clients at her PR firm, all under the relentless gaze of the media.
But as the court case unfolds, Gwynne can’t shake the fear that a murderous gene might live inside her too.
Her thoughts grow darker, her once-happy life unravels, and she begins to wonder what she herself might be capable of …
Hero
DS Lucas Walker is back home in Queensland, following the dramatic fallout from his last case. He is just getting to grips with his new role in the small outback town of Katima, when the body of an unknown young man is found hanging from a tree in the park.
What at first looks like a tragic suicide soon has Walker's detective instincts on alert, and he and his young partner throw themselves into the case - discovering a connection with an unsolved death.
And then a brutal murder changes everything. The victim is Caden Conroy, national cricketing hero, and the dark nature of his death leads to an unparallelled media frenzy.
When Walker is sidelined by Brisbane Homicide after being first on the scene, he must go his own way to unpick the deceit and corruption at the heart of these cases. Only then will he know if they are connected, and how - but at what cost?
Hero, Patricia Wolf
HERO is the 5th book in the DS Lucas Walker series that has taken him from outback Queensland to Germany and back, and from the Australian Federal Police to the Queensland Police Force. One thing that stays the same though is the outreach of organised crime, which is surprisingly prevalent in these small Queensland towns.
Walker is stationed in the small outback town of Katima, driving distance from his home in Caloodie, working as a DS with a local cop who rapidly proves himself to be an able partner. For readers new to this series, there's been quite a bit happen in Walker's backstory, starting out when AFP DS Walker was at home in Caloodie on leave, only to find himself the only cop around to look into the disappearance of young German backpackers in OUTBACK. Which lead to a relationship with a German police officer - Barbara, and a run-in with organised crime and a major criminal bikie group, this time in Surfers Paradise, in the novel titled PARADISE. Back in the outback, and family involvement in OPAL, which then leads to Germany, and another close run in with the leader of that criminal bikie group in NEMESIS. All of which leads to the obvious question - is this a series that needs to be read in order, and pretty much that's a yes.
These novels centre heavily on DS Lucas Walker, his stuttering love life and his extended family. Why he still calls Caloodie home, living in his grandmother's house there, where Ginger the dog came from, how he ended up working as a Queensland Police Officer after years in the AFP is all background that is really going to help you understand how everything fits together. Especially as the action in HERO is mostly about corruption, and criminal activities again, only this time in the world of high-profile sport. Although there's a twist at the end.
The title of this novel refers to Caden Conroy, a famous fast bowler, a cricketer that everyone admires. Good at the game, a supporter of up and coming talent, he's made a lot of money in his life, and his brother Cameron and his wife and daughter, as well as his girlfriend Bronte and business Manager Ollie all work hard at ensuring that what Conroy wants and needs, he gets. Until he's found bashed to death in his palatial country estate just outside Katima.
Whilst Walker and his colleague are first on scene, it doesn't take long for the higher ups to fly in the elite murder investigation squad, and Walker finds himself back in Katima trying to work out the story behind the unknown man found hanging from a tree in the local park, and whether or not that death is connected to the unsolved death of another young unidentified man in the area a few years before.
In many aspects, HERO is a hark back to the first novel in the series, in that it's good old fashioned, boots on the ground, investigation and chasing down leads that ultimately means that they are able to solve those two local cases, and the death of a national hero along the way. There's a hefty dose of romantic personal angst in there as well as some career jeopardy, and some complications with his immediate family back in Caloodie that has a bit of a hattip to a common theme these days - sovcit's and their ridiculous carry on.
Whether or not that aspect is actually going to head somewhere in future novels it's hard to tell, and to be honest, one would hope so because it went nowhere pretty rapidly in this one, but that was a minor distraction from the whole question of sport, corruption, money and power. Walker's past in the AFP gave him plenty of ways to find out the things that a standard outback cop might not have access to, and there's plenty of meat to the main plotline, including a lot of things to think about when it comes to sporting heroes.
Against Their Will
After walking away from traditional journalism, Danny Boyd is recruited to The Open—a covert investigative unit hunting the world’s darkest criminal networks. She proves herself quickly, until a mission against Kronos, a brutal trafficking syndicate, blows her cover. Ordered to stand down, Danny refuses. Children are still vanishing. Kronos is still out there.
Forced to moonlight as a PI, Danny takes a case a bit closer to home: a wealthy Ohio family unraveling after their patriarch, real estate developer Bob Wilson, is killed in a botched robbery. His will exposes shocking betrayals and a secret heir, so the Wilsons hire Danny to dig deeper. What begins as a privileged family succession dispute soon unearths deadly secrets, financial schemes, and a legacy of bitter revenge.
But someone is watching her. Is it Kronos? Or the Wilson family’s enemies? With two ruthless forces closing in, Danny must expose the truth—this time with no backup and nowhere to hide—before she’s silenced for good.
Later, Only Love Remains
From award-winning, bestselling writer Leah Swann comes a lyrical, powerful, dark and devastating novel. once you start reading, you will not be able to put this novel down.
Jack Wolfe, a difficult, complicated old man, retreats to a remote family shack in the Otway Forest near the Great Ocean Road to grieve his wife's death in a car crash where he was the driver. It's cold, with endless wind and rain, and the bush shack is basic. But he's half mad with remorse and old memories of wrongs he has done to others, so what Jack craves more than anything is forgiveness - and solitude.
Instead, he meets Lotus, an exuberant yet lonely young woman who insists on trying to help him, although he's determined to keep her at bay. He doesn't want or need anyone. But late one night, when his dog starts howling, Jack discovers a shivering and wet stranger on his property. Is this man a dangerous threat, or someone who simply needs his help? His late wife would want him to show kindness, but he can't help suspecting the man's motives. And what should he do about the unwanted friendship from Lotus, with whom he has a surprise connection?
A tense, powerfully compelling story with a spiralling, slow-burn intensity which escalates into a gut-wrenching, dark and achingly beautiful read, Later, Only Love Remains is a propulsive and unputdownable novel about the violence of men, birth and death, the yearning for redemption, and the endless wellspring that is love.
Later, Only Love Remains, Leah Swann
A follow-on from SHEERWATER, LATER, ONLY LOVE REMAINS is a tense, spiralling, dark story built around three main characters, and the life changing events that are happening to them, some a result of their own actions. The story starts out introducing the reader to the main three characters as much as is possible, although reading the earlier novel would definitely help in creating an instant connection, particularly as there are some elements to the men in this story that are very confronting.
Jack Wolfe, survived childhood polio, going on to marry the love of his life. Driving the car that crashed killing is wife, he's retreated to a remote family shack in the Otways, a cold, wet, endlessly windy place, the shack is basic, his life full of remorse and plagued by memory, all he wants is solitude.
Into this life, come two people, firstly Lotus, a young, vibrant woman who insists on connection with Jack, her life has been upturned by her pregnancy, which makes for a family connection with Jack neither of them knows how to manage. In a more sinister way, late one wet and horrible night, after Jack's dog started howling, he discovers a desperate man hiding in his shed, a man who it subsequently turns out has committed an unthinkable act. Which leaves Jack with two choices. Keep Lotus at bay, maintain the solitude he desires, and then whether or not to help another stranger based on what he believes his late wife would have done.
Part of the fascination of this novel is the way that Jack has accidentally done the worst possible thing, Lawrence has deliberately done a dreadful thing, and Lotus seems, perhaps, to have the potential to be the least problematic, most normal of the three of them. All of which is delivered in a lyrical, gentle, rolling sort of a style, although with no punches pulled on the characters worst, and eventually, better traits.
There's no shying away from the reveal of Lawrence's actions early on in the story though - and this review has to warn readers - it involves filicide which will be confronting for some. Having said that, there is consideration and care in the handling of all these stories, nothing sensational, nothing overt.
All of the plotlines in LATER, ONLY LOVE REMAINS contribute to a novel that's ultimately about life, death, male violence, and a yearning for redemption. Balanced as always against love. It's exploring if it is true that at the end of the day, only love remains.
The Ledge
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.
In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a cliff-hanger nobody will see coming. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.
Parrot Heaven
BDTH! The Foveaux Fisherman Facebook page posts this acronym to advise Rakiura Stewart Islanders to ‘batten down the hatches’ before severe weather events.
New Zealand’s southernmost librarian Maudie Sanderson reckons this warning could be applied to her life in general these days.
Haunted by a parrot and falsely accused of soliciting d**k pics, Maudie navigates a minefield of rabbit holes and mental health crises as she struggles to be a fit and proper person in a pandemic-hungover world. Sidelined by buggered knees, the avid runner needs projects to maintain sanity.
Island life keeps her busy. Maudie is drawn into an axe cult, scraps with the preschool teacher, discusses The Epic of Gilgamesh in a jailhouse book club, and mis-manages a community astronomy course. When a shocking crime wreaks havoc on her family, she dons her deerstalker cap and dives into the investigation.
All the while, Maudie feels a growing kinship with the ancient desert king Gilgamesh, as the words from 5,000-year-old clay tablets guide her through life’s myriad of mysteries.
Red River Road
On the Coral Coast of Western Australia, solo traveller Katy is on a mission to find her free-spirited sister, Phoebe, who disappeared along the same route a year ago. But as she drives her campervan further into the wild north, Katy realises she's not as alone as she'd first believed. Soon she is pulled into a complicated web of secrets, lies, myths and stories that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her sister.
In this nerve-shredding outback thriller, our obsessions with freedom and beauty collide with our fear of what lies in the wilderness, and the truth behind Phoebe's disappearance proves stranger and darker than Katy could ever have guessed...
A Man Called Box
Sam thought the worst part of living alone was the loneliness. She was wrong.
When a hunted man arrives on her doorstep late one night and asks for sanctuary, she agrees to hide him and to not call the police. The mention of a cabal of corruption is enough to convince her to do what he asks.
A decision based on compassion, which will soon change her life, force her to abandon everything and flee to avoid being killed.
But hiding and leading a lonely, anonymous life locks Sam into a situation she cannot resolve.
Thomas, searching for his long lost sister, finds a fugitive living alone in the mountains. Two stubborn people surrounded by danger and distrust, in a situation where one misstep will get them killed.
Who can you turn to if even police can’t be trusted? And who is the man called Box?
The Writers Retreat
A wickedly twisty and atmospheric thriller set at a writers' retreat in the South of France, The Writers Retreat is Knives Out meets Anna Downes’ The Safe Place from an exciting new voice in the thriller/mystery space.
Welcome to The Writers Retreat – a creative haven for writers to hone their plotlines and sharpen their characters while soaking up the Provençal atmosphere. But this year’s retreat offers something different, as real-life blurs with fiction, and suspense isn't contained to the page.
Kat Hale is a bestselling Australian author crumbling under the pressure of writing her second novel. On a whim, she has fled to a writers retreat in the South of France run by internationally acclaimed author Helen Thorne. What Kat hopes will be two blissfully uninterrupted weeks to focus on her writing in anonymity quickly turns into something more sinister, when Kat begins to suspect that Helen isn't quite as perfect as everyone seems to believe.
Will Kat’s drive to uncover the truth about Helen be any match for Helen’s desire to hold onto her career, her reputation and her writing retreat, or is Kat at risk of falling victim to a more dangerous climax?
The Good Father
Gordon and Sarah Rutherford are normal, happy people with rich, fulfilling lives. They have a son they adore, a house on the beach and a safe, friendly community in a picture-postcard town.
Until, one day, Bonnie the labrador comes in from the beach alone. Their son, Rory, has gone - the only trace left behind is a single black sandal.
Their lives don't fall apart immediately. While there's still hope, they dig deep and try to carry on.
But as desperation mounts, arms around shoulders become fingers pointed - at friends, family, strangers, each other. Without any answers, only questions remain. Who can they trust? How far will they go to find out what happened to Rory?
And the deadliest question of what could be worse than your child disappearing?
When the truth begins to emerge, they find themselves in a world they could barely have imagined.
Out on the Ice
One brief but tragic moment out on a frozen Reykjavík lake changes Sóley’s life forever. Now, looking back on the last twenty-three years of her life, she attempts to make sense of it all. The tears, the pain and the lives lost along the way.
No one ever told her bringing up a son all on her own would be easy but not in her wildest dreams did she imagine it might be so hard.
Together Jakob and her have walked alone through the worst that Iceland could throw at them and now she’s here to tell you her tale.
The Birds Began to Sing
In the harbour city of New Plymouth in the 1960s there’s a fizz of seedy sexuality beneath a veneer of respectability. Godfrey’s world is the Balmoral Hotel his parents own, where visiting sailors drink and local fringe-dwellers congregate.
When Reggie, the openly gay barman, goes missing Godfrey senses something sinister. There’s a prevailing attitude of inevitability. Godfrey doesn’t get it, but he’s hungry to understand. Guided by his daytime-television and pulp-fiction detective heroes and a very active imagination, he attempts to solve the mystery—in the process stumbling into his own sexual adventures and discovering a new-found power in a perplexing adult world.
The Nowhere Boy
The stunning debut novel by the Winner of the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize 2025. An emotionally charged exploration of what happens when one moment changes everything.
A child disappears in broad daylight—and no one sees a thing.
Three-year-old Oliver, known as Apple Man, vanishes from a remote car park while his young father, Scott, carries fishing gear down to the beach. When he returns, the car is empty. His son has vanished without a trace.
Apple Man's mother, Fae, gets the call that shatters her life. Enraged with her ex, Scott and drowning in her own guilt, she is pulled back into Scott's orbit as police launch a desperate search across a wild coastline and dense pine forest. With every hour that passes, the case tightens around them—and the question no parent can bear to answer grows louder: what if he's never coming back?
Far from the search, a grieving woman convinces herself she's been given a second chance. Tessa has lost three babies and the future she believed was hers. When she encounters a small, abandoned boy, she sees not a crime, but a miracle she cannot surrender. As the hunt intensifies, her fragile fantasy of motherhood begins to unravel.
As the pressure continues to mount, everyone involved is forced to confront the same terrifying question: when love becomes possession, how far is too far?
The Nowhere Boy, Anne Cleary
A child disappears in broad daylight—and no one sees a thing.
Three-year-old Oliver, whose nickname is Apple Man (explained as the story progresses), was sleeping in the car in a remote carpark, whilst his father Scott, was supposedly only away for a few minutes, carrying fishing gear down to the beach. On Scott's return, the boy had disappeared, vanished without a trace. Only the reader knows what's happened, meanwhile Scott and his mate frantically search for the boy, then have to report the disappearance first to the police and then, eventually to Apple Man's mother, Fae.
There's a lot going on with this child's family, the baby that Scott and Fae had when she was barely 16, after what could only be called a momentary encounter at a party. They'd tried the couple thing, but really two strangers living in his mother's basement, with a baby - that was never going to work, especially as they are both young, and understandably not ready for anything like that responsibility. Complicated by the fact that Fae's own family background is dysfunctional. All of which comes into play as the story of the disappearance of a young boy is told alongside the absolute train wreck of relationships, heightened by a tendency for just about everybody in this story to be the sort of people you'd normally put a lot of work into avoiding at all costs.
Which sounds like a lack of empathy for a couple of young people in a difficult situation, no doubt about that. The reader's who get the most out of this book will be those that find themselves feeling for Scott and Fae, especially as their background stories fill out. They are annoying undoubtedly, but then so are a lot of people whose lives are off the rails. The contrast between the two of them is also interesting - she's on edge, anguished, flighty, determined to live and party hard. He seems almost passive, put upon in contrast.
The other main player in this story is Tessa. A woman unable to have children she's dealing with an ex-husband who has moved onto parenthood with his new partner, and she's most definitely not coping well with that. A possibly sympathetic figure, it's equally possible she will come across as entitled and overly superior. There's something about that woman that meant this reader, in particular, struggled with any sense of empathy.
Even allowing for the backgrounds of all these main characters, and the situation they find themselves in with a missing young boy in what seems to be the dense, cold bush of New Zealand, I really struggled with the overwhelming feeling that if there were ever people who needed to be lined up and given a bloody good talking to, these 3 were it. I mean Fae's mother is a bloody nightmare, and the terror of where that young boy went should be more than enough to have you caring a hell of a lot about this young couple, and there's a whole heap of ethical and moral considerations in all of this to give the reader more than enough to think on, but fair warning, there was something so annoying about the lot of them, that it did require some hard sock pulling up to keep on with it at points.
A feeling of slog that wasn't particularly helped by the fact that it all turned into an emotional mishmash towards the middle of the novel which made for some very heavy going. Particularly as the basic premise was played out very early on and there wasn't a lot of tension in what was likely to happen from here.
All of which probably makes this sound like it wasn't the greatest read, which is unfair. For audiences invested in the parental nightmare this may work really well. For those really invested in the train wreck that unfolded after the disappearance of the child this may indeed work really well. For those, like this reader, who find the choice to make everyone at the core of a story a pretty unpleasant character to be around, it could indeed work well also. Definitely one for a bookclub, with wine. And a long session of full and frank discussion.
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