Updates - Fortnight Ending 16th February

As a wise man once said, just because you're done with the past, doesn't mean the past is done with you.

Paul can't let an incident from his past go. When he finds out a rival detective agency played a key role in it, he drags MCM Investigations into a blood feud that they can't hope to win. Soon they're faced with the prospect of the company going out of business and Brigit going out of her damn mind.

When long-buried bodies are discovered in the Wicklow Mountains, Bunny's past starts closing in on him too. Who can he trust when he can't even trust himself? When he finds himself with nowhere left to run and nobody he can turn to, will the big fella make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the ones he loves?

When all that's left is the fall, the fall is everything.

And even the mighty fall.

Last Orders is the thrilling conclusion of the critically acclaimed Dublin Trilogy, which melds fast-paced action with a distinctly Irish acerbic wit. It's best enjoyed having read the other books in the series, particularly the prequel Angels in the Moonlight.

So many people had reason to hate her, but did anyone have reason to kill her?

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs.

At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel. 

What happens to a community when murders and abductions sit alongside petty workmates, teenage tribulations and longstanding friendships? It will take a town to solve this crime, but what will be broken in the effort to piece together the truth?

In the darkest hour, a blood-soaked teenager flees the rural Gerandaroo football oval. Eight months later, Bess, a young teacher, returns home to Gerandaroo. A childhood game of dare with her former best-friend forces Bess to form a women's footy team to play against Denby, a rival town. Bess reluctantly recruits players, but the team has to contend with hostile locals - including Beth's own father. Will this help the small community to come back together - or will it be the final thing that blows everything apart? As tensions in the town boil over, so too do resentments and secrets and violence that have been previously held tight and close. Darkly told and breathlessly compelling, Darkness Runs Deep is a striking new Australian crime novel about the best and worst of who we are.

A missing girl ... a cold case ... a sister who won’t give up …

'I was there on the day Rebecca disappeared. I watched her hurry away. If I close my eyes I can still see her...'

When Rebecca Bundy fails to return home after the last day of school in 1984 her father reports her missing. But the teenager has run away before and recently she’s been bragging about going to Queensland, so the police tell the family to wait it out.

Days pass. Rumours swirl. A man seen loitering near the bus stop might have followed her. Was there something going on between Rebecca and a male teacher? What about the sheep farmer on Glen Lochan Road where she babysat? And why is her boyfriend, the rough cattle guy Bull Tennant, so sure something sinister has happened?

Then a shocking murder-suicide at a local farm diverts police attention and Rebecca’s disappearance all too quickly becomes a cold case.

But her younger sister Eliza has never forgotten, and for almost forty years she’s been looking for answers.

Once she kept Rebecca’s secrets. Now she’s ready to share her story . . .

Paradise has a price. A murder. A disappearance. A sinister network. 

Steels Creek is an idyllic retreat in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It's a place where everyone knows their neighbours and no one locks their doors. Investigative journalist Lars Nilsson who has moved to the settlement following a public fall from grace is trying to live a quiet life far from the crime reporting he was once feted for.

But when a backpacker's body is found floating in a nearby waterhole and hours later his best friend's daughter is reported missing, Lars is compelled to investigate, putting him back in the cross-hairs of police. What he finds may not only destroy his tightknit community but also the life he has worked so hard to rebuild.

Fast-paced and thrilling, The Community is also about fatherhood, family ties and redemption, told through the eyes of a man struggling to make peace with his past.

Bavaria, Germany, 1947

At the end of the war, Afra Zauner returns to her parents’ cottage on the edge of Mauther Forest. Unmarried, and pregnant. As she struggles to raise her child, her father’s shame, her mother’s fury and the loud whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh upon her. She doesn’t believe in her sin. But everyone else does.

And someone brings judgement down upon her.

Many years later, Hermann Müller is throwing a drunk out of his tavern. A traveller, who won’t stop ranting about a murder left unsolved, about police who never investigated. Out of curiousity, the file is reopened. And in the cold light of hindsight, a chilling realisation creeps upon the community.
No-one ever atoned for Afra’s death. But her story is waiting to be told.

In the sleepy town of Gainesville, Cooper Fox is a beloved local figure with a mind clouded by amnesia from a devastating car accident. But a chance encounter with three menacing strangers shatters the image of Cooper as a gentle guy with a foggy past, leaving the town of Gainesville to grapple with a startling Who—or what—is Cooper Fox?As Cooper grapples with the emergence of bewildering new memories, he finds himself caught in a maelstrom of dark secrets, clandestine experiments, and lethal killers. With his nascent abilities emerging, Cooper is thrust into a relentless battle that will not only challenge his newfound strengths but also force him to confront the truth of his identity. In a world where nothing is what it seems, and danger lurks in the shadows, Cooper must navigate a path fraught with peril and deception, where the stakes are not just his own life, but the very essence of what it means to be human.

There's no such thing as safety in numbers ...

Rachel and Rory Sullivan decide to celebrate making it through a difficult year by taking their teenagers, Emmet and Bridie, to their first stadium concert. By the end of the night, one of the four has vanished without a trace.

As the police investigation intensifies, suspicion is cast on the remaining family members. Everyone has been deceiving one another, but who is to blame for what went wrong? The passing of each hour amplifies their terror that life will never be the same again.

One of Us is Missing is a dark domestic thriller about the dangers lurking right in plain sight.

Four caravans, four families inside waking up to a horrifying new reality.  They, their cars and caravans, even their pets, are no longer where they were located when everyone went to bed the night before. It seems that their world has somehow moved on, taking them away from their Swedish holiday camping ground to a new place that only superficially resembles where it is that they came from.   Acres and acres of grass that is yet not grass.  An endless sky, and the frustration of having no landmarks in a sterile and unpopulated landscape.  But is it truly empty?

Rather than banding together for the common goal, it seems at first that the families are in denial.  Not everyone, but then there are small children to consider.  Life of a form will go on.  Escape seems impossible from an environment where not even their navigation systems can detect their true location.  When the dead begin to seek them out and someone in their own group seems set on sabotage, it is hard for the holiday makers to decide who or what might be the bigger threat.

Meet the roommates from hell

On her first shift at a halfway house for violent offenders in Edinburgh – the only job she could get – rebounding Australian expat Lou is taken hostage. For nine long hours, the only people who can help her are the residents. But who can Lou trust? The mum-and-dad-killer, the elderly legless rockstar paedophile, the stammering suicide chat room guy, or the Armani-suited conman?

Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder: never corner a desperate woman.