Updates - Fortnight Ending 15th September

At 65, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age - that she'll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.

Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses - for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she's known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw's world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

Helena Statham never imagined herself as a sleuth. But when she stumbles upon the body of a young woman while on a walk, she can't resist the urge to discover who she was and how she got there. Even if it means upsetting the tight-knit community of the small New Zealand town she lives in, and uncovering secrets that have long been buried.

Thirty years ago, a young woman went missing, but no one tried to find out what had happened to her. As Helena investigates deeper, she learns more about what took place back then, putting herself in danger now.

Join Helena on her journey as she becomes an unlikely amateur detective, determined to uncover the truth and bring justice to the long-forgotten young woman whose story has been buried in silence for far too long.

A brilliant debut crime novel centred on a 501 deportee gang, set in a remote coastal New Zealand town

After surviving a brutal attack, Auckland cop DS Honey Chalmers has returned to her hometown to care for her mother. The remote coastal settlement of Waitutu holds complicated memories for Honey, not least the tragic suicide of her younger sister, Scarlett.

Honey is hardest on herself. She let herself get too close to a gang informant. She got sloppy. The Reapers are a 501 gang of Aussie imports, ruthless and organised, and she's pretty sure the informant, mother-of-three Kloe Kovich, paid the price. But when a couple of gang enforcers turn up in Waitutu, Honey realises they are hoping she will lead them to Kloe. But if Kloe is still alive, can Honey save her this time around?

When Honey catches up with her oldest friend, Marshall, her feelings are complicated. As teenagers they were inseparable, but Marshall was the last person to see Scarlett alive, and there are rumours they were sleeping together, that he broke her heart. Honey fears Marshall is not who she wants him to be. Eventually she learns the awful truth about the events that led her sister to take her own life.

When Kloe arrives in town, Honey and Marshall must work together to try and keep the hapless Kloe out of the hands of those who want her – and Honey – silenced.

Gripping and suspenseful, with a killer ending, The Call propels the reader into the world of a terrifying new kind of gang – and introduces a major new talent in crime writing.

It's 1974 in the Riverina

The weather is hot

But the body in the Murray River is stone cold . . .

A captivating and compulsive crime thriller about guns, drugs and a young woman dead on the money

Riverina 1974:

When nineteen-year-old farmgirl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. Its owner, Valdene Bullark, sees something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide.

Val puts Adelaide straight to work. What starts as a routine assignment covering an irrigation project soon puts Adelaide on the trail of a much bigger story. Water is money in farming communities, and when Adelaide starts asking questions, it's as if she's poked a stick in a bull ant's nest. Violence follows. Someone will do whatever it takes to stop Adelaide and Val finding out how far the river of corruption and crime runs.

Shady deals. Vested interests. A labyrinth of lies. It seems everyone in Gunnawah has a secret to keep. But how many want to stop Adelaide dead?

Mia's grief counselling practice, The Pleiades, is named for the seven sisters from Greek mythology who were the companions of the Goddess of the Hunt—and who, in some stories, die of grief or are killed to be saved from attackers.

Mia has been gathering broken women together for a radical form of group therapy. Amy. Gabrielle. Katy. Brooke. Olivia. Five women crippled with grief by the murders of their sisters—and seething with rage that the partners who killed them all walk free. She just needs one more.

When Mia meets Naomi, she knows she has found the perfect candidate, but Naomi is resistant. She only needs to meet the others before she realizes that they, too, are consumed with desire for hands-on revenge. Under Mia's guidance, the women devise a plan to heal themselves. They'll take back their lives from the men who took their sisters. The premise is satisfyingly I'll kill yours if you kill mine...

Hookers and hawkers. 

Mosques and mosquitos.

Paul has had enough of Southeast Asia.

He's only here ‘cos it's cheap. 

And he's on the run from police after leaving Australia.

No, that place wasn't much better either. 

Well, it was when he was young. When his life was full of promise.

An up-and-coming boxer. And he had friends. And fun.

Then a bit of bad luck later and he found himself on the run in outback Australia.

Paranoid. Hiding from shadows.

The heat. The dust. The sweat. 

Next stop, Southeast Asia.

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.

If only his mum didn't drink so much.
If only he could win the school billycart race.
If only his best friend understood.
If only he could stop his mum's boyfriend from getting angry.
If only he was there.

Jimmy soon learns that even when you get things right, everything can still go wrong.

IT'S BEEN TWENTY YEARS
BUT ALL IS NOT FORGIVEN

Katy is not the shy schoolgirl she once was, and she's looking forward to showing her classmates who she's become.

Annabel was the queen bee. But her fall from grace changed her life forever.

Zach was cruel, but he thinks he's changed.

Robbie was a target. And he never stood a chance.

The reunion will bring together friends and enemies, many for the first time in decades. But someone is still holding a grudge...

Will the mountain give up its secrets? While walking on an isolated track in the windswept Wimmera, rock-climber Skye discovers the body of a young woman. The body has injuries that suggest a rock-climbing accident, but it's been found more than 5km from the nearest cliffs at Mount Arapiles.

Jane Halifax will need all her forensic experience to unlock the secrets of one of the world’s most formidable a Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-business partner has just been murdered … A thrilling journey into the dark places where genius, money and murder meet.

It’s been ten years since Jane was in New York, but within hours of arriving in the city for a well-earned break and to catch up with her step-daughter Zoe, she’s dragged into a case … and finds herself up against one of the toughest minds she’s ever had to crack.

Sarah Noble is the darling of the tech world – the genius behind an AI defence system that hijacks enemy missiles and turns them against those who launched them. But when Sarah’s estranged business partner is killed in a mysterious plane crash, suspicion immediately falls on one of the few people who could hack the plane’s guidance system and had a motive to do Sarah herself. Brilliant, ruthless, erratic, addicted – but is she a murderer?

Against her better judgement, Jane Halifax agrees to profile Sarah – and is immediately sucked into a world beyond her control, where money is no object, murder a tool of trade and the stakes go straight to the heart of the United States itself.

The latest unputdownable Jane Halifax thriller takes us deep into the smartest – and deadliest – places in the where Silicon Valley and the US defence industry combine, billions of dollars are made, and souls are for sale.

Ten days. Eight suspects. Six cities. Five authors. Three bodies. One trip to die for.

Eleanor Dash, author of the Vacation Mysteries series, is on a book tour on the gorgeous Amalfi Coast when she finds life imitating art as her ex-boyfriend is targeted by a killer. Eleanor’s sleuthing skills are about to be put to the ultimate test as, among the literary rivals, rabid fans, a crazed stalker and former flame Oliver, suspicions on tour are flying faster than paperbacks off a bestseller shelf. But who is really trying to get away with murder?

The first in an irresistible new series, Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is The White Lotus meets Only Murders in the Building and is destined to be the hit of the summer!

Sydney, The body of a young woman is found in Chinatown. She's been beaten, tortured - and tattooed with the image of a sun. Called to the scene, Sergeant Jackie Rose asks herself whether this was a drug murder, or something else. But before her investigation can get under way, she is ordered to hand the case over to the Australian Federal Police.

Cape Town, South A local girl recruited to study in Australia has fallen off the radar. Veteran detective Schalk Lourens - recently suspended from duty - has already made plans to visit his daughter in Sydney, with emigration in mind. He decides to search for the missing girl while he is there.

Jackie and Schalk join forces, exposing a trail of corruption and crime stretching from the foreshore of the city's iconic harbour, back to South Africa and across the world.

Together the pair must navigate a minefield of deceit and manipulation set by an enemy more powerful and depraved than they can imagine. And failure isn'tan option, because not only their own futures, but those of hundreds of vulnerable young people, hang in the balance.

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.

Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women—one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.
 

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not: feminists and margarine

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

When human remains are discovered in the forests of regional Victoria, the 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, dragging his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed

1948. An unidentified dead man is found on Somerton Beach, Adelaide. Officer Kitty Wheeler yearns to work the case - but the city's women police are typically assigned to more domestic matters. A wryly funny, sharply observed novel about one of Australia's great mysteries, and the life choices available to mid-century women.

December, 1948. Officer Kitty Wheeler is a member of the Women Police, responsible for 'upholding the moral virtue' of Adelaide's at times unruly and amorous citizens. Patrolling Somerton beach one night, Kitty and her partner spot a man leaning against the sea wall, apparently drunk. It's late, they're tired, and they leave him to sleep it off ...

The man is dead, his identity unknown, and Kitty has missed a career-making opportunity. In the following months, the case of the Somerton Man grips first Adelaide, then Australia, as bizarre clues point towards international espionage, Eastern mysticism or salacious scandal. Kitty, preoccupied with the case, joins the investigation wherever she can, although the men are firmly in charge. Meanwhile, she must decide whether she wants husband and family, or a career - in 1940s Australia, she can't have both. Her boyfriend Peter wants to pop the question, but Kitty is keener on solving the case ...

Olivia Wearne has threaded Kitty's story into the real-life 1940s mystery of the Somerton Man. This intriguing, sharply observed and wholly engaging novel explores the life and crimes of a city and its people, few of whom are without their secrets.