Meet Madeleine Brooks. Ex-probation officer. Ex-wife.
Finally free of her failed marriage, Maddie has transformed herself into a successful estate agent in her delightful but not-so-sleepy English village in Oxfordshire.
Maddie’s most recent listing is a renovated...Read more
A vacant manor-house.
A missing owner.
A potential heir.
And a freshly-minted estate agent.
Madeleine Brooks is learning on the job. What she doesn’t need is a grouchy seller. What’s worse, he doesn’t yet own the grand manor but hopes to inherit...Read more
The first book in the new Madeleine Brooks Mystery series!
Madeleine Brooks, Senior Probation Officer, is having problems at work with a boss who is threatened by Maddie’s competence. And now one of her long-term probation clients has been returned to prison on...Read more
It is Saturday afternoon and two boys’ schools are locked in battle for college rugby supremacy. Priya – a fifteen year old who barely belongs – watches from the sidelines.
Then it is Saturday night and the team is partying, Priya's friends have evaporated and she isn't sure...Read more
Life in the safe suburbs of Christchurch isn't dangerous enough for Marty. He needs excitement in punk, protest, politics and crackpipes. Marty soon finds Mona, a teenage runaway living in a flophouse of skinheads and goths. The two of them live for drugs and dodgy deals but they are...Read more
Katherine Mansfield created some of literature’s most chilling characters, not least Harry Kember and his wife. They seemed out of place among the families enjoying summer holidays at Wellington’s Days Bay. Some of the women at the Bay thought that one day Harry would commit a murder....Read more
“We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country.
That distance will not save us.”
With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organizations are forced to traffic data to ensure the...Read more
Sandy Barrett's hiking escapades were usually uneventful and relaxing, until the day she risked her life saving a trapped seagull and tumbled down a 100 metre cliff. After tree branches miraculously broke her fall, her body lay battered on a rocky ledge. A greater horror lay await to...Read more
Famous crime writer Bella Tyson is hired to co-host a Murder Mystery cruise, on a luxury liner sailing from Southampton to New York. She’s expecting an easy ride; fun and games, surrounded by amateur sleuths and fans of her books, all the while staying in a deluxe cabin and enjoying the spa...Read more
She hasn't seen her brother in years. Now, he's dead.
When Judi Westerholme finds out her estranged brother has been murdered, she assumes it's connected to his long term drug addiction. Returning home, she is shocked to discover he had been clean for years,...Read more
Secrets. Everyone has them. Nice ones that make your heart soar, little ones that make you blush, naughty ones that make you smile and dark ones you hope will remain hidden forever.
One thing’s for certain – everyone wants their secrets kept out of the public eye. Especially...Read more
Matt Bullock, an Auckland university student clashes with his flying instructor Jason Collins who tries to hit on Matt's racy girlfriend Fleur Lassiter, resulting in the two men brawling at their aeroclub.
Illegal immigrant Vladimir Zhukov, a ruthless Russian veteran of the...Read more
Suspended from duty, Detective Frølich is working as a private investigator, when his girlfriend’s colleague asks for his help with a female asylum seeker, who the authorities are about to deport. She claims to have a sister in Norway, and fears that returning to her home country will mean...Read more
Joseph St George is a young New Zealander, the son of diplomats in 1930s Berlin.
But the Nazis are on the rise and the world is on a spinning path to destruction.
Joe’s world is about to change, violently.
After a narrow escape from Germany with his...Read more
“I am in great danger … I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty.”
This letter containing heartfelt and urgent pleas for help is received by three very eminent citizens of Flaxborough, including the Chief Constable...Read more
It all unraveled at the funeral...
Horace Reid's death opened the door to our freedom. His widow, Elizabeth, exists only on paper. She disappeared thirty years ago. It's us, the Tribe, who live in her body now. But nobody knows that. Us are Elise, the reluctant...Read more
Whatever can have happened to Lil?
Flaxborough butcher Arthur Spain is worried that his sister-in-law hasn’t been in touch lately, so he pays her a visit. But Lil’s not at home, and by her porch door are a dozen bottles of curdling milk… Alarmed, he calls in...Read more
'The body is in the library,' Colonel Osborne said. 'Come this way.'
Following the discovery of the body of a highly respected parish priest at Ballyglass House - the Co. Wexford family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family - Detective Inspector St. John...Read more
“Welcome to Bellevue, where the mountains meet the sea…”
Harry awakes on a ferry with no memory of how he came to be there. The boat is bound for Bellevue, a place he has never heard of. When he goes ashore, his attempts to leave are thwarted.
Feeling trapped and...Read more
The gripping sight of four burly policeman manhandling a bath down the front path of a respectable villa isn’t one the residents of Flaxborough see every day.
Net curtains twitch furiously, and neighbours have observations to make to Chief Inspector Purbright ...Read more
Tuesday nights have suddenly turned quite ridiculously noisy in the country town of Chalmsbury, where the good folk are outraged at having their rest disturbed.
It begins with a drinking fountain being blown to smithereens – next the statue of a local worthy loses his head, and...Read more
In 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami Clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan's terrible secrets of forbidden...Read more
In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions...Read more
If old age doesn't get her..the murderer will.
97 year old Alice Atkinson should be comfortably living out her days at the Silvermoon Retirement Village. But she's bored. A lifetime of living in the grey area between right and wrong means that winning money off her friends at...Read more
In the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough, the equally respectable councillor Harold Carobleat is laid to rest. Cause of death: pneumonia.
But he is scarcely cold in his coffin before Detective Inspector Purbright, affable and annoyingly...Read more
Dead isn’t always followed by and gone.
An all but forgotten cold case, all for one person that is. No one in their right mind would go back again… Right mind? Correct!
Frozen Summer is the nickname Dan Calder’s girlfriend Tara gives to a cold case, the coldest one...Read more
Journalist Hope Barber disappears two weeks after returning to New Zealand from an assignment in Pakistan, leaving her front door open and her bag and phone inside. The police are tight-lipped about their reluctance to act, and Hunter Grant and Dao agree to help Hope’s brother Noah find her...Read more
Missing money, a dead body, and a new ghostly hitchhiker.
Oliver Atkinson should be helping plan his fortieth birthday party. Instead he meets Toni, a young woman about to embark on a charity run. When her boyfriend is found murdered and she is the prime suspect, Charlie...Read more
Senior Nurse Amber leaves her medical clinic in the city following a late shift to grab a quick meal in the new Britomart Mall. Her window-shopping spree takes longer than expected. Hurrying to catch the last ferry to her home in Gulf Harbour, she is blindsided by a shocking turn of events...Read more
Dylan Harper's career is already in tatters when he arrives home late one night to find someone waiting for him. The Chief of Police has an undercover assignment that needs to be conducted "off the books" and with the utmost secrecy. So Harper heads to the rugged West Coast of New Zealand...Read more