You don’t have to believe in ghosts for the dead to haunt you.
You don’t have to be a murderer to be guilty.
Within six months of Pen Sheppard starting university, three of her new friends are dead. Only Pen knows the reason why.
College life had seemed like...Read more
A man is washed up on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris, barely alive and borderline hypothermic. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his identity is a map tracing a track called the Coffin Road. He does not know where it will lead him, but filled...Read more
June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time? Because while it’s a tour de force of the classic country-house murder mystery, it’s also a delightful romp, poking...Read more
Karen's life is abruptly thrown into chaos when her flatmate is gunned down in front of her in the street where they live.
Within days she is forced to take drastic action to ensure her own safety. She criss-crosses New Zealand to evade the killers, changes her appearance and...Read more
You thought you knew who you were. A stranger knows better.
You've left the city - and the career that nearly destroyed you - for a fresh start on the coast. But soon after the move, your daughter starts to withdraw, because her new best friend, George, is unfairly...Read more
Tara has lost her voice. She knows there was pain and fear but she cannot remember anything else. Now she can only answer the questions with silence.
Minnie has buried her voice for years, losing herself in silence and isolation, keeping her secrets safe and her broken heart...Read more
For Alex Mercer, his wife Millicent and their eleven-year-old son Max are everything, his little tribe that makes him feel all’s right with the world. But when he and Max find their enigmatic next door neighbor dead in his apartment, their lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed. As the...Read more
The most dangerous people are those with the most to lose.
It is 1887. The young colony of New Zealand is in the grip of a deep depression. Insolvent speculators conspire with corrupt politicians while Maori land slips from the hands of its owners.
Into this...Read more
In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a...Read more
John Doyle just wanted a peaceful life in Liverpool with his wife, Josie, and her teenage daughter, April. But when local crime boss Barry Wood and his thugs threaten April, Doyle is forced to revive the identity he thought he'd buried. Wood is a man used to taking what he wants, and soon...Read more
English writer Paul D Brazill's 13 Shots Of Noir is a collection of short stories in the vein of Roald Dahl, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The first story, "The Tut", was nominated for a 2010 Spinetingler Award, while the story "Anger Management" was chosen as one of the...Read more
Perfect isolation. No phones. No neighbors. No help.Read more
When Kim Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, he became the most notorious double agent in the history of espionage. Recruited into His Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service at the beginning of World War II, he rose rapidly in the ranks to become the chief liaison officer with the CIA in...Read more
Can you commit the perfect crime?
Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on...Read more
Ben Cowper, an attending psychiatrist at the prestigious New York–Episcopal Hospital, is stunned to learn the identity of the emergency patient he’s just been assigned to treat: Harry Shapiro, a Wall Street colossus and one of Episcopal’s most prominent donors. But a high-profile reversal...Read more
In a small town near Port Arthur in Tasmania in the mid-nineties, Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted student. Kate becomes fixated on the unsolved crime of passion that occurred years earlier, less and less aware of her own reputation in the present. Is it her...Read more
It's January 1943. Australia is at war and Perth is buzzing.
US troops have permanently docked in the city in what local men refer to bitterly as the American occupation, and Perth women are having the time of their lives. The Americans have money, accents like movie stars,...Read more
A literary detective story ingeniously told in ten cases. John Dorn is a classic gumshoe. His woman has left him, he lives in his office, and he drinks too much. His one friend, a lawyer named Demetri, hands Dorn an infinite supply of hopeless cases and lost causes, to which Dorn, ever the...Read more
C.R.O.P.: Covert Rural Observation Posts are places where men like Danny 'Badger' Baxter hide for endless, motionless hours, secretly recording criminal or terrorist activity.
But now Badger has a bigger job than photographing dissident Republicans in muddy Ulster fields or...Read more
It should have all been so easy for Vincent Madigan. Take four hundred grand from the thieves who stole it in the first place and who could they turn to for help?
Madigan is charming, resourceful, and knows how to look after himself. The only problem is that he's up to his neck...Read more
Absolute Zero Cool is a post-modern take on the crime thriller genre.
Adrift in the half-life limbo of an unpublished novel, hospital porter Billy needs to up the stakes. Euthanasia simply isn’t shocking anymore; would blowing up his hospital be enough to see Billy...Read more
In Hollywood, Cary Grant has grown weary of cinema's constant glamour, but Her Majesty's Secret Service will break his malaise with a bizarre diplomatic mission. In Naples, Lucky Luciano fixes horse races and launches the global heroin trade. And in Bologna, a bartender searches for true...Read more
World-famous singer Polly MacMurtha had given many people strong cause to hate her, and most of them were present at her first recital on her return to Australia after fourteen years abroad.
Small wonder, then, when Polly was murdered during the interval, that Superintendent...Read more
Because of a never-healed quarrel between Mike Langard's father and grandfather, 'Bregal' the house situated on the edge of large mangrove swamps, had lain empty for many years.
Now his grandfather was dead, and Mike had arrived in Gnarkona to take possession. To his astonishment...Read more
Is it a CRIME to steal from bookies?
Can you TRUST an ex-Bank Manager?
Lambert Hampton is the man the Munni-Munni locals allturn to, and for good reason. This former bank manager helped them transform three million dollars - stolen from bookies by a gang of...Read more
'One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock...' The year was 1956 and the world was in the grip of rock 'n' roll. Sydney's youth flocked to the local dance halls and juvenile crime rocketed out of control. Teenage gangs like the Overlords ruled the streets, forcing the NSW Police...Read more
It is two days since Dr John Brand's death and his eldest son, Davis, suspects a cover-up. Survived by two sons, the death notice said. Peacefully.
This is a lie: there are three sons, and the circumstances of their seemingly conservative father's death are unclear. No-one...Read more
Sometimes, all you can do is run . . .
When Mark Stamp fires an air gun through the window of his father's shed, he's afraid he may have damaged something. But what he discovers is far worse. Peering through the broken window, he sees such a horrifying sight that he has to flee...Read more
Susan and Ed Middleton are perfectly content with their lives. Two kids, two cars, a solid brick bungalow in a respectable northern beaches suburb. They're good people, model citizens. There's barely a ripple in the surface of their happy existence. But when Susan's older sister, who...Read more
These are tales of fugitive lives: dazzling portraits of women and men on the run; from their present, their past, their future – from themselves…
Here, finally, is the complete collection of short fiction from award-winning author Wendy James. Holding a discerning mirror to...Read more