The French Gift

A forgotten manuscript threatens to unravel the past …

Fresnes Prison, 1940: Margot Bisset, a former maid from the Riviera, finds herself in a prison cell with writer and French Resistance fighter, Josephine Murant. Together, they are transferred to a work camp in Germany,...Read more

Red Edge

Cassi Whelan, aged 12, and her father, Mike, have recently moved into a repaired house in Avondale, on the edge of Christchurch’s Red Zone. Although only four when the earthquakes destroyed the city, Cassi’s memories still haunt her, affecting much of her life. She is an obsessive runner...Read more

Puzzle Me Dead

The countdown has begun!

On her nineteenth birthday Careen survived a terrifying assault at the hands of the Clown Killer. She was lucky; she escaped - the next eleven girls did not. On each dead body the killer left a card numbered two to twelve.

Careen has tried...Read more

Shakti

Special powers are gifted, but there is a Faustian price to pay in this epic novel, packed with laughter, darkness, pain, dreams, superpowers, love and light.

What if the greatest gift you ever received came from those you trusted least? What if it stained your hands with...Read more

The Tally Stick

A compulsive and chilling novel about subjugation, survival and the meaning of family.

Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tyre tracks in the mud leading into the almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other...Read more

A Trio of Sophies

Secrets, lies and love.

Mystery and unsettling revelations keep up the suspense in this page-turning novel.

The last time I saw Sophie A, she was kissing James Bacon. She could have any guy she wanted, but she was kissing an English teacher who was eight years...Read more

Bush Sick Land

Bush Sick Land is a mystery.

The setting is a small New Zealand town at the tail end of the 1960s.

After the violent death of his best friend, Constable Colin Coates is drawn into a case involving an old flame and her missing teenage son, a taxidermist timber...Read more

Sprigs

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

Crimechurch

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

Dark Empire

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

Dance Prone

1985. Neus Bauen, a post-hardcore band from Illinois, are touring America, on the brink of fame. When one member of the band is sexually assaulted and another is wounded by a gunshot, these two cataclysmic events alter the course of the band’s four members’ lives forever.

...Read more

Hidden Killer

As a final year Law student Gilbert Hastings and Lucille Dellow take a holiday job to renovate the Old Stone House in Arbor Valley. The owner of the Old Stone House, Elsie Leggat has moved into a rest home and has been persuaded to sell her house by a corrupt Nadine Norton. Nadine has a...Read more

The Family Doctor

Paula is a dedicated suburban GP, who is devastated by the murder of a friend and her children by their estranged husband and father. Stacey and the children had been staying with her after fleeing his control, and Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn't protect them when they...Read more

The Angel of Whitehall

West Africa, the Arctic convoys of World War Two and modern Britain have one thing in common?

The answer?

One man.

Many people.

And the darkest secrets of a government past and present.

In the winter of his life an elderly...Read more

The Stone Wētā

“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

The Secrets of Strangers

A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for five strangers whose paths cross in a London café - their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye and as the captives grapple...Read more

Missing on Lion Rock

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

The Security

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

Low Flying

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

The Boys and Men of Auckland's Mickey Rooney Gang

In a working-class suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1957, eight mildly rebellious schoolboys, inevitably obsessed with sex, were attracted to the arrogant and thoroughly delinquent little Mickey Rooney whose fantastic dreams of Hollywood fame were to be his downfall.

It wasn...Read more

The Killing Hour

'They come for me as I sleep. Their pale faces stare at me, their soft voices tell me to wake, to wake. They come to remind me of the night, to remind me of what I have done.'Read more

The Paris Affair

She thinks love can kill you. It turns out she might be right.

Meet Harper Brown… 

Occupation: Arts journalist
Dream job: Hard-hitting news reporter
Location: Paris
Loves: True crime podcasts, art...Read more

Ash Mountain

Fran hates Ash Mountain, and she thought she’d escaped. But her father is ill, and needs care. Her relationship is over, and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway.

She returns to her hometown to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the...Read more

The Spiral

Erma Bridges' life is far from perfect, but entirely ordinary. So when she is shot twice in a targetted attack by a colleague, her quiet existence is shattered in an instant.

With her would-be murderer dead, no one can give Erma the answers she needs to move on from her trauma...Read more

Welcome to Bellevue

“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

Over My Dead Body

Cryogenicist Dr Georgette Watson has mastered the art of bringing frozen hamsters back to life. Now what she really needs is a body to confirm her technique can save human lives.

Meanwhile, in New York City, winter is closing in and there’s a killer on the loose, slaying...Read more

The Night Whistler

The summer of 1966–7. Hal and his little brother have just come to live in Moorabool. They’re exploring the creek near their new home when they find the body of a dog.

Not just dead, but killed.

Not just killed, but horribly maimed.

Constable Mick...Read more

You Yet Shall Die

A novel about family secrets and discovery of a long-ago crime. Hilda is a reclusive single woman who lives on the North Kent marshes with her rescue cats. One day she has a visit from a young woman called Nicky, who claims to be her half-sister, the "love child" of Hilda's father who has...Read more

A Cold Wind Down the Grey

Greymouth, New Zealand, 1866: The Burgess gang is heading towards town, and a young surveyor from one of the country's leading families has vanished. Inspector James is preparing for trouble.

In the gold-mining town of Greymouth, where drunks fall asleep...Read more

A New Name for the Colour Blue

I still see her sometimes in my sleep. She is walking through the blue and orange lights of the city or in the desert country of red ground, spinifex and oaks. Last night I dreamed she was climbing a green and blue mountain, the kind you see in the tropics, rich and heavy with steam and...Read more

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