Updates - Week Ending 23rd February

Four caravans, four families inside waking up to a horrifying new reality.  They, their cars and caravans, even their pets, are no longer where they were located when everyone went to bed the night before. It seems that their world has somehow moved on, taking them away from their Swedish holiday camping ground to a new place that only superficially resembles where it is that they came from.   Acres and acres of grass that is yet not grass.  An endless sky, and the frustration of having no landmarks in a sterile and unpopulated landscape.  But is it truly empty?

Rather than banding together for the common goal, it seems at first that the families are in denial.  Not everyone, but then there are small children to consider.  Life of a form will go on.  Escape seems impossible from an environment where not even their navigation systems can detect their true location.  When the dead begin to seek them out and someone in their own group seems set on sabotage, it is hard for the holiday makers to decide who or what might be the bigger threat.

Meet the roommates from hell

On her first shift at a halfway house for violent offenders in Edinburgh – the only job she could get – rebounding Australian expat Lou is taken hostage. For nine long hours, the only people who can help her are the residents. But who can Lou trust? The mum-and-dad-killer, the elderly legless rockstar paedophile, the stammering suicide chat room guy, or the Armani-suited conman?

Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder: never corner a desperate woman.
 

A narcotics pick-up at sea goes horribly wrong. A man is lost overboard. A dangerous series of events sends shockwaves through the local community.

On a wintery day a young woman is found dead at a local beach. Sergeant Bill Granger, the local policeman, is called in to investigate. He had hoped for a quiet off-season. Instead, what seems to be a straightforward case of an unfortunate death turns into a complex web of small town secrets and desire for revenge that will soon place Bill's family in danger.

With Niko Sopoaga, a young South Auckland constable working alongside him, Bill falls into the dark and dangerous world of drug distribution and a hardened motorcycle gang wreaking havoc, while they chase a clever killer.

As Bill and Niko search for clues to uncover the killers identity, Annika Granger prepares for an art exhibition. She is befriended by Crystal, a young woman new to the close-knit community. Crystal overhears a conversation and ultimately discovers her partner, Andrei, is not the person she believed him to be.

Everyone discovers that secrets run deep, even in the best of communities.

A TV reality hit. Players dying to win. Can Inspector Joe Horseman penetrate a fantasy world to stop a killer?

The Champion crew is shooting the hit TV game show near Suva. For the first time, a Fijian is competing for the million-dollar prize and the whole population is ecstatic. Except for Inspector Joe Horseman, whose TV is tuned permanently to the rugby channel.

But when a fit young finalist dies, Horseman must enter the world of the TV reality shoot to investigate. It’s a world he struggles to understand, even with the help of the Champion fans on his team. Horseman must unpick Champion’s tangle of ambition, fantasy and greed before another player is eliminated - for good. This time, he stares failure in the face.

So many people had reason to hate her, but did anyone have reason to kill her?

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs.

At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel. 

What happens to a community when murders and abductions sit alongside petty workmates, teenage tribulations and longstanding friendships? It will take a town to solve this crime, but what will be broken in the effort to piece together the truth?

Four caravans, four families inside waking up to a horrifying new reality.  They, their cars and caravans, even their pets, are no longer where they were located when everyone went to bed the night before. It seems that their world has somehow moved on, taking them away from their Swedish holiday camping ground to a new place that only superficially resembles where it is that they came from.   Acres and acres of grass that is yet not grass.  An endless sky, and the frustration of having no landmarks in a sterile and unpopulated landscape.  But is it truly empty?

Rather than banding together for the common goal, it seems at first that the families are in denial.  Not everyone, but then there are small children to consider.  Life of a form will go on.  Escape seems impossible from an environment where not even their navigation systems can detect their true location.  When the dead begin to seek them out and someone in their own group seems set on sabotage, it is hard for the holiday makers to decide who or what might be the bigger threat.

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
 

The third book in the Melbourne Spotlight Mystery series finds television colleagues Kim Prescott and Jo Trescowthick travelling New Zealand in a motorhome.

It should be a carefree summer adventure with an idyllic itinerary: whale watching in Kaikōura, mud pools in Rotorua, the stunning Marlborough Sounds.

The leisurely road trip will take them from the largest city, Auckland, to the tourist mecca of Queenstown in the deep south.

They won’t make it.

A seemingly foolproof plan to make some quick money turns into a race for their lives…

It’s the mid-nineties and methamphetamine casts its shadow over the Californian city of Santa Lucía. Nathan, happy running a small marijuana grow operation with his two best friends, takes advantage of meth’s rise in popularity and makes a lucrative one-time deal.

Betrayed, beaten, and desperate…

But a devastating betrayal leaves him entangled with the city’s merciless crime boss. Risking everything, Nathan and his friends embark on a wild plan to steal millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds to settle the debt.

Caught in the crosshairs of corrupt cops, a relentless Russian henchman and his temptress partner, they face setbacks at every turn as they pursue the diamonds across the city.

As the death toll rises, can Nathan save them all before the real bad guys find them?

Jack Harris, the disgraced son of Australia’s most powerful business tycoon, has just been exiled to Byron Bay as a junior journalist at his father’s smallest regional newspaper, The Beacon. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of the newspaper’s editor, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, while out on his morning surf. When Patrick’s body is discovered in the ocean, with a severed leg, it appears certain that he’s fallen victim to a shark attack.

But when rumours emerge that Patrick was about to publish an explosive article – its subject unknown – Jack begins to suspect his death is not what it seems.

Although police aren’t buying his murder theory, Jack joins forces with Patrick’s daughter and investigates anyway, taking a sometimes less than lawful dive into the newspaperman’s past. Together they discover plenty of Byron locals with a motive to kill, including a bioholistic dentist with a secret, a naturist with an undisguised grudge, and even the mayor of Northern Rivers Shire. But has Jack bitten off more than he can chew?