Death in Black and White

High in the stand at the MCG, the Holloway family settle in to watch their beloved Carlton play the might Collingwood Magpies. A beautiful winter's day, their son Alfie playing happily at their feet, and always the promise of victory; for Harry and Effie, life seems very agreeable....Read more

Taken In

Effie Davis is a modern young woman, educated and independent. And for a free-spirited woman in Melbourne in 1896 there is much to fight for ..... causes like universal suffrage and equal pay for women. But Effie's principles and beliefs become far more than academic when a chance meeting...Read more

The Housemate

Three housemates.
One dead, one missing and one accused of murder.

Dubbed the Housemate Homicide, it's a mystery that has baffled Australians for almost a decade.

Melbourne-based journalist Olive Groves worked on the story as a junior reporter and became...Read more

The Devil's Caress

The fourth in Dark Passage’s reissue series of crime mysteries by June Wright, The Devil’s Caress , originally published in 1952, is an tense psychological thriller set on the wild southern coast of the Mornington Peninsula, outside Melbourne.Read more

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The Pool

Prince of spin and life of the party, Baz King, is missing. Nine years ago, at an innocent summer barbecue in Melbourne, everything imploded. For the Kings and the four other young families there that fateful day marriages fractured, friendships crumbled and lives were upended.

...Read more

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Murder in Punch Lane

Melbourne, 1868. When dazzling theatre star Marie St Denis dies in the arms of her best friend, fellow actress Lola Sanchez, everyone believes it was suicide by laudanum overdose. Everyone except Lola. On the brink of stardom herself, she risks everything by embarking on a...Read more

The Inheritance

The author of the bestselling The Hunted returns with another unmissable, white-knuckle, gritty urban suspense thriller: think Jack Reacher meets John Wick in a high-octane, high-speed chase on the dark streets of Melbourne.

A young woman is hiding out in a sleepy...Read more

Cherrywood

'One rainy Friday evening in the winter of 1993, a taxi swept through the streets of East Melbourne, on its way from the city to Richmond. That year was one of the few remaining when a great deal was known of the world, but not yet so much that the world had become over-known. Small gaps...Read more

Madame Brussels

A must-read biography of an enigmatic personality who helped shape early Melbourne

Madame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the...Read more

Woman, Missing

She's the one to turn to when you need saving. But first she has to save herself...

Lou Alcott is turning over a new leaf as a private investigator. Formerly police, she was forced to resign when she attacked a domestic violence perpetrator. She's always vowed to be...Read more

Dark City

'Silvester is the doyen of Australian true crime. No one else comes close.' Nick McKenzie

From madmen to matriarchs, stooges to heroes, eye-watering bungles to sweet justice - strap yourself in for a masterclass in storytelling from Australia's most formidable crime...Read more

Make-Up For Murder

Mother Paul, the incomparable nun-detective, is faced with her most perplexing case when a former pupil at her convent school is murdered at their annual reunion.As a schoolgirl Maisie Ryan was often bullied by her peers, but a decade later she’s a TV star, the glamorously...Read more

Faculty of Murder

Faculty of Murder is set at Brigid Moore Hall, a girls' hostel in the University of Melbourne, where "freshettes" are shocked by a new arrival, Judith Mornane, who announces that she intends to discover her sister's murderer. Her sister, Maureen, had mysteriously disappeared from the hostel...Read more

Reservation for Murder

June Wright had already published three popular mysteries by the time she created her most memorable detective, the Reverend Mother Mary St Paul of the Cross. The kindly Mother Paul may seem vague and otherwordly, but little escapes her attention―she has a shrewd grasp of everything that’s...Read more

Naked City

John Silvester has been reporting on crime from the cop stations, courthouses, back alleys and gangster mansions of Melbourne for forty years. His contact book is a who's who of both sides of criminal justice, and the shadowy worlds between. He is the trusted confidante of cops, criminals,...Read more

The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt

I met my husband on the same day I committed my very last murder. There's a joke in there somewhere, about ending two men's lives.'

Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things - back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate - but she fled that life and moved home to Australia...Read more

The Hunted

Where does the adventure end . . .
and the nightmare begin?

Frank owns a service station on a little-used highway. His granddaughter, Allie, is sent to stay with him for the summer, but they don't talk a lot.

Simon is a...Read more

Lies and Deception

Lies + Deception = Murder

Melbourne 1925. Jasper Fitzalan Howard is found stabbed to death in his room at The Hotel Windsor. In a bizarre twist, he is clutching a tarot card, the Ten of Swords, in his right hand. Initially, the police identify him as a...Read more

Resurrection

Jane Halifax is back in a twisted story of betrayal, where the formidable forensic psychiatrist will discover that the only person you can trust is yourself. A near-fatal car accident left Jane Halifax in a coma, and when she wakes, she has no idea who she is …

Initially...Read more

The Glasgow Smile

Inside every person you think you know, there is someone you dont know. Contemporary crime thriller set in the grimy tangled innercity laneways in Melbourne.

In a grimy graffiti covered recess a woman is found stabbed and strangled. "why would anyone want to kill her, she was...Read more

A Deadly Game

A secret life exposed

Melbourne, 1925. Reggie da Costa, The Argus ’s celebrated crime reporter, takes a break from investigating gangland crime to assist Ruby Rhodes, whose identical twin sister has died in mysterious circumstances. Together, they investigate how Katherine...Read more

Gunshine State

Gary Chance is a former Australian army driver, ex-bouncer and thief. His latest job takes him to Surfers Paradise, Queensland, working for aging standover man, Dennis Curry. Curry runs off-site, non-casino poker games, and wants to rob one of his best customers, a high roller called...Read more

Transgression

Based on the hugely successful Channel 9 drama series starring Rebecca Gibney as forensic psychologist Dr. Jane Halifax, whose criminal profiling, twenty years later, might be the only way to track down Australia's most dangerous serial killer yet. 

The first murder is brazen,...Read more

Naked Ambition

‘You’re a politician, a public figure. What on earth were you thinking?’

Up-and-coming junior minister Gregory Buchanan has had a portrait painted of himself by the acclaimed artist Sophie White — a painting she intends to enter in this year’s Archibald Prize....Read more

Orphan Road

Gary Chance is an ex-Australian army driver and nightclub bouncer turned professional thief and in need of a job. An offer comes from a former employer, once notorious Melbourne social identity, now aging owner of a failing S&M club, Vera Leigh.

A shadowy real estate...Read more

Home Before Night

As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew hits, they must live for four weeks and stay within a 5km radius. When Lou’s son Samuel doesn’t arrive home by nightfall she begins to panic....Read more

Murder in Williamstown

Accustomed to both murder and dalliance, Australia's favourite detective, the inimitable Miss Fisher, returns in a case that will test her tact and judgement to the full.

When the redoubtable Miss Phryne Fisher receives threatening letters at her home, she enlists the unflappable...Read more

Deadly Intent

It is October 1923. What looks like a routine report, on the heavy rains battering Melbourne, becomes another case of murder for The Argus’s celebrated crime reporter, Reggie da Costa, devotee of fashionable suits and flamboyant automobiles. A flooded basement hides a ghastly secret: the...Read more

For Reasons of their Own

Robbie Gray, a talented but troubled Detective Inspector stationed in Melbourne, who has fallen foul of police bureaucracy, is called to a investigate a dead body found in a rural wetland swamp. Under-resourced, with a corpse that cannot be identified and no apparent motive for the murder,...Read more

The Death Mask Murders

Death is just a close shave away.

It is February 1918. Somewhere in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne, the Death Mask Murderer is lurking, engaged in a ritualistic killing spree: shaving the heads of young women, strangling them and creating a gruesome...Read more

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