2024 Ngaio Marsh Award Shortlist

Four teenage boys invent a sex game based on rolling dice and doing what the numbers say.

They are charged with multiple sexual offences against three teenage girls.

Twelve random jurors are brought together in a trial to work out what actually happened.

Only they can say whether crimes have been committed and who should be punished.

How does the jury find?

Dice is a stunning courtroom drama told from the perspective of a diverse group of ordinary people - the jury. How will twelve women and men, aged from eighteen to seventy-two with hugely disparate backgrounds, beliefs and experience, decide whether consent was given or crimes were committed?

How can they possibly arrive at a unanimous verdict? How will justice be properly served?

An isolated, empty ski resort in the off-season. A woman who doesn't want to be found. A man who may not be who he appears to be. A game of cat and mouse - with deadly consequences. On the run from a controlling husband and his underworld associates in Melbourne, Charlotte has adopted a new identity and found a job as an off-season caretaker in a tiny, deserted alpine resort. Some dangerous people are looking for Charlotte and so she's lying low, tending to the lodges, happy to be alone, but jumping every time a floor creaks or the wind whistles through the empty buildings. She's trying to convince herself she's okay, that she got away. But then strange things start happening around the resort. And Charlotte starts to realise that every escape route is being sealed off, one by one. From Gabriel Bergmoser, the master of propulsive, page-turning storytelling, The Caretaker will have readers second-guessing themselves at every turn. What's real and what isn't? Who's dangerous and who isn't? And who will survive? A menacing, nail-biting, nerve-racking psychological thriller.

Florence. Summer, 1538.

A night patrol finds a rich merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main piazza. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier on this date, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way in the same place. Does this new killing mean Savonarola’s vengeful spirit has risen again?

Or are his fanatical disciples plotting to revive the monk’s regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo has his suspicions but is hunting thieves and fugitives in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the ritual killing. When another important merchant is slain even more publicly than the first, those rich enough to escape the summer heat are fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous places.

Soon growing religious fervor combines with a scorching heatwave to drive the city ever closer to madness, while someone is stalking powerful men that forged lifelong alliances during the dark days of Savonarola and his brutal followers. Unless Aldo and Strocchi can work together to stop the killer, Florence could become a bonfire of the vanities once more . . .

Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.

Set in New Zealand in 1984 and 2014, and probing themes of racism and misogyny, Pet is an elegant and chilling psychological thriller by the bestselling author of The Wish Child, Remote Sympathy and The Axeman’s Carnival.

I've always been better with plants than people . . .

Eustacia Rose is a Professor of Botanical Toxicology who lives alone in London with only her extensive collection of poisonous plants for company. She tends to her garden with meticulous care. Her life is quiet. Her schedule never changes. Until the day she hears a scream and the temptation to investigate proves irresistible.

Through her telescope, Professor Rose is drawn into the life of an extraordinarily beautiful neighbour, Simone, and nicknames the men who visit her after poisonous plants according to the toxic effect they have on Simone. But who are these four men? And why does Eustacia Rose recognize one of them?

Just as she preserves her secret garden, she feels inexplicably compelled to protect her neighbour. But when her precious garden is vandalized and someone close to Simone is murdered with a toxin derived from a rare poisonous plant, Eustacia finds herself implicated in the crime and decides to take matters into her own hands . . .

TWO HOURS TO VANISH
Ten people have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter, FUSION can track anyone wherever they are on earth. But does it work?

ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE
Each participant is given two hours to 'Go Zero' – to go off-grid and disappear - and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3million in cash. If Cy's system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar contract with the CIA to develop FUSION and revolutionize surveillance forever.

ZERO ALTERNATIVES
For contestant Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than Cy could have ever imagined. Kaitlyn needs to win to get what she wants, and Cy will stop at nothing to realize his ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner…

A killer targeting pregnant women.

A detective expecting her first baby…

The shocking murder of a heavily pregnant woman throws the New Zealand city of Dunedin into a tailspin, and the devastating crime feels uncomfortably close to home for Detective Sam Shephard as she counts down the days to her own maternity leave.

Confined to a desk job in the department, Sam must find the missing link between this brutal crime and a string of cases involving mothers and children in the past. As the pieces start to come together and the realisation dawns that the killer’s actions are escalating, drastic measures must be taken to prevent more tragedy.

For Sam, the case becomes personal, when it becomes increasingly clear that no one is safe and the clock is ticking…

With no role in sight and nothing to lose, actor Lou Galloway leaves Los Angeles and heads to Mexico to drown his sorrows in cheap mezcal. But, after a round too many, he soon ends up at a grandiose wedding in the mansion of internationally wanted crime lord, Diego Flores, where Lou is mistaken for a rogue assassin known simply as El Flamingo. Before he can escape, he meets Maria-Carla, an enigmatic beauty with incredible perfume, and he inconveniently falls in love at first sight. When it becomes too late to turn back, Lou is swept into the dangerous world of Latin-American espionage, embarking on a journey that will take him from the desert fiestas of Mexico to the jungle-clad salsa bars of Colombia. To survive, Lou is forced to do the one thing he swore he would never do again-act.

However, as Lou assumes the identity of El Flamingo, he realizes that this may be what he was searching for all along. Maybe this was fate? Maybe this will be the role of his life!

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?

Beneath the sheen of its orderly streets and obedient populace, all is not well in the port city of Kobe. Business is as brisk as the Haru-ichiban spring breeze for Mami Suzuki, hotel clerk by day, private investigator by night.

Who's stealing from Japan's biggest pearl trader? Where's the master sushi chef and why are his knives missing? How did the tea ceremony teacher's brother really die? And what does an island of cats have to do with a pregnant Shinto shrine maiden?

From the Kobe wharfs to the rugged Japan Sea coast, the subtropics of Okinawa, and a remote island community in the Seto Inland Sea, each new adventure ends with a universal truth - that there are two sides to every story of misfortune.

Katipo Joe: Wolf’s Lair is the harrowing and thrilling story of Joseph St George (codename: Katipo) in Germany during World War II.

On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler is preparing to move from Bavaria to the ‘Wolf’s Lair’, his top secret headquarters in East Prussia. Little does he know that among his entourage is a British spy, teenager Joseph ‘Katipo’ St George, playing the part of a keen Hitler Youth who has been chosen as Hitler’s successor.

Already under suspicion by German counterintelligence, Joe has been given a risky new task by his handlers at MI5: the assassination of Hitler before he can lead Germany to victory over Russia.

The attack is to take place on the Führersonderzug, Hitler’s Special Train, en route to the Wolf’s Lair. But a perilous night-time crawl on the outside and roof of the train, in an attempt to poison Hitler’s water supply, ends in failure, as does an air raid the following day.

With Hitler safely ensconced at his new headquarters, the invasion begins, and Joe sits horrified in the daily briefings as German troops blitz their way into Russia. Aided by Sofie, a German girl disillusioned with the Nazi regime, he embarks on an even more audacious assassination plot, a plan that is complicated when he discovers that his father – arrested three years earlier on Kristallnacht – is among the prisoners working as forced labourers at the complex.

With German counterintelligence closing in, Joe and Sofie must now try to help Joe’s father escape, while continuing their plans for a powerful bomb right in the heart of the Wolf’s Lair.

Born in the middle of Australia’s biggest-ever earthquake, Miracle is fourteen when her world crumbles. Thanks to her dad’s new job at Compassionate Cremations — which falls under suspicion for Boorunga’s spate of sudden deaths — the entire town turns against their family. Miracle is tormented by her classmates, even by Oli, the boy she can’t get out of her head. She fears for her agoraphobic mother, and for her angelic, quake-damaged brother, Julian.

When Oli plays a cruel trick on Miracle, he sets off a chain of devastating events. Then her dad is arrested for a brutal attack. Miracle takes the full weight on her shoulders. How can she convince the town of her dad’s innocence?

How do you move forward if you don’t know where you started?

Russia 1996

11-year-old Nikolai and his 9-year-old sister, Anna, have lived most of their lives in an orphanage, built inside a 300-year-old former monastery. Their city has changed its name from Leningrad back to St. Petersburg.

The teachers and other staff at the orphanage are always grumbling about ‘too much change.’ Some children are being adopted by people from New Zealand. Adoption seems like a good escape.

Then, just when Nikolai and Anna are on the brink of being chosen, a stranger tells Anna that she looks like her mother, but then disappears. Could it be that their birth parents are not really dead after all?

Mysterious incidents and a secret tunnel. Nikolai and Anna can’t solve the puzzle alone, but who can they really trust to help them?

Witi was born a surfer. The ocean swells speaks to him. He doesn’t tell anyone he hears it because his mum would have him back to the psychiatrist. Witi wishes his dad was still around because he’d understand- he introduced Witi to surfing and music. But he mysteriously vanished 8 years ago. Now the voices are coming to him more often each day and he is sure it is his father speaking to him. And there is a cyclone closing in on the beach with unusual force and his whānau has come with tales of his heritage that he has never heard of.