Updates - Week Ending 14th June

Alec de Payns, espionage operative of the Y Division of the DGSE, France's famed foreign intelligence service, is tasked with tracking down an agent of influence sending highly classified material against the Kremlin to embassies all over Europe.

A deadly conspiracy is aligning the West against Russia. But who is behind it? And to what end?

The clues lead to a secret meeting of businessmen, terrorists and mercenaries on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean, which de Payns must infiltrate. What he discovers sets off a Europe-wide manhunt in a desperate scramble to prevent an international catastrophe.

Former DGSE spy Jack Beaumont's Dark Arena is another chillingly plausible thriller delivering all the taut plotting, superb action and authentic spycraft that made The Frenchman a critically acclaimed bestseller.

A rare day off from policing leads DCI Vera Stanhope across the tidal causeway to Holy Island, the lure of crab sandwiches there too hard to resist.

While on the island, she is reminded of the day decades before when, as a teenager, she went with her father Hector on another day trip. The day she watched him meet with a mystery woman on the beach...

Vera already knew then that Hector kept secrets, but this time the fledging investigator was determined to find the truth of why he was meeting the woman on the island, never realizing it would mean taking her first step onto a path to becoming a detective...

In this wonderful short story, Ann Cleeves shows us the origins of Vera as a detective, and showcases the setting for her forthcoming novel, The Rising Tide.

‘You and I are going to have a chat. If you hang up, this girl dies.’

Adam Turner works the mid-dawn shift at his local radio station. From 12am to 6am, it’s his job to fill the airtime with old songs, inane chatter, and the occasional talkback caller. It’s a long way from his prime-time slot from over a decade ago, when he was a star in the making. Now there’s no producers, no billboards, no stakes, and, crucially, not many listeners. His frequent callers are drunk college students headed home from a night out, or long-range truck drivers. He is completely alone in the studio from midnight until dawn every night.

And then one night at 12:45am, he gets a different kind of call, with higher stakes than he could ever have wanted. The caller’s rules are simple – stay on the line, live on air, until dawn, or the woman they are holding captive will die.

The night wears on and Adam is tormented by his caller, forced to answer increasingly personal questions, exposing his fall from grace for all to hear. He must try to figure out just who is calling him, what they really want, and how he can stop them. All while staying live on air, and keeping the psycho talking.

But as the conversation gets deeper, is Adam willing to broadcast his darkest secrets to the world in order to keep a stranger safe?

Nothing is ever easy.

Bunny McGarry has finally got a lead in his mission to find the Sisters of the Saint but the lead, one Father Gabriel de Marcos, isn’t willing to play ball. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Bunny has to put the padre under surveillance with a little help from some old friends. Father Gabriel runs a boxing club at the bad end of the Bronx, battling to keep kids out of gangs – noble, thankless work. Thing is, saints don’t typically have assassins sent after them. What sins are hidden in the padre’s mysterious past?

The Sisters of the Saint are many things but pushovers they ain’t. To regain their trust, Bunny must save the priest from the demons that are on his tail. Keeping the cantankerous priest alive would be difficult for anyone, never mind that Bunny has to resist the urge to kill him, himself. He has to manage all this while living under the rules that chill him to the very bone. No drinking. No swearing. No violence.

Look who’s back in hot water! The highly anticipated new novel in The Tea Ladies mystery series, a runaway bestseller of the year. Ideal for fans of Richard Osman and Bonnie Garmus.

In ZigZag Lane, in the heart of Sydney’s rag-trade district, tea ladies Hazel, Betty and Irene find themselves in hot water. Having already solved a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, they have proved themselves a useful resource and earned the respect of a local police officer. Now he needs their help to solve a plot that threatens security.

As if that’s not enough, Irene gets a coded message directing her to the spoils of a bank robbery, which sends the tea ladies on a treasure hunt with an unexpected outcome.

There’s also trouble brewing within the walls of Empire Fashionwear, where an interloper threatens not just Hazel’s job but the very role of tea lady. It’s up to Hazel to convince her friends to abandon their trolleys and take action to save their livelihoods – before it’s too late. 

Getting into prison is easy, it’s getting out that’s tricky.

Almost everyone in prison will tell you they’re in there for a crime they didn’t commit, but Anthony Rourke really means it. That’s because he’s actually Bunny McGarry, who has got himself into one of Nevada’s finest penitentiaries under false pretences. He is there to bust someone else out.

The Sisters of the Saint, no ordinary bunch of nuns, find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place when two of their order are taken hostage. The only way to ensure their safe return is to trade them for the mysterious man who is now Bunny’s cellmate. Rumours abound as to who this man really is, but seeing as nobody is allowed to communicate with him in any way, figuring that out will be tricky.

The last thing the situation needs is further complications, but when Sister Dionne comes into contact with an UFO cult, she recognises it as a massive con job. The reason she is so sure is because the whole thing was her idea in the first place—and now she is determined to put an end to it.

The clock is ticking, the prison authorities are suspicious, and lying low has never been a McGarry strong suit. Can Bunny and the Sisters pull off an audacious prison break against near impossible odds?

Dorothy Graham is dead. This is hugely inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of her truly dreadful family want to get their hands on her money, they will have to do so via a fiendishly difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy's devising. Just because you're dead, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable. 

Paul Mulchrone, to his unending credit, is neither related to Dorothy nor happy that she is dead. What he is, however, is a contestant in this competition whether he likes it or not, which he definitely doesn't. He and his girlfriend, the formidable Brigit, are supposed to be running MCM Investigations, a detective agency. Instead, they have to go into battle against Dorothy's bloodsucking relatives. As if that wasn't enough, they get hired by the aforementioned dead woman to find out who killed her. 

DI Jimmy Stewart is retired, bored out of his mind and contemplating lawn bowls. When the offer comes to get back into the crime solving business, it is too good to turn down. But when he finds himself teamed up with the nephew of a man he imprisoned, and a flatulent dog, he starts to think that taking up lawn bowls wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. 

The Final Game is a standalone crime novel perfect for readers new to Caimh McDonnell's blackly comic take on his hometown, as featured in the international bestselling Dublin Trilogy books. His previous works have been optioned for TV and nominated for awards, which they stubbornly keep refusing to win.

He is a record collector — a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the “Vinyl Detective” and some people take this more literally than others.

Like the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording — on behalf of an extremely wealthy (and rather sinister) shadowy client. 

Given that he’s just about to run out of cat biscuits, this gets our hero’s full attention. So begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all…

On a hot November morning, the first body lies in a cattle trough . . . It will be another two hours before rigor mortis sets in. Until then, the slim fingers will float below the water’s surface, gently bobbing, beckoning Detective Giles to come and find her.

Detective Rebecca Giles has just finished interviewing aging petty crim Sticky Pete over a spate of break-and-enters when a disturbing new report comes in. Twelve-year-old Kayleen Ellis has vanished from her home in Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter Valley.

Hours later, Giles is a local hero, having apparently solved Kayleen’s case and the spate of jewellery thefts.

Yet the hangover from her celebrations has barely kicked in when the body of young jillaroo Ava Emmerson is discovered in gruesome circumstances on a nearby farm.

Giles is convinced the link between all three cases lies in the town’s tragic history, perhaps even in her own mother’s mysterious drowning thirty years ago.

In a place where nothing much changes, suddenly a great deal is happening - and Giles’s life and career are now on the line.

One of Australia's most experienced court reporters goes on a judicial road trip.

Outback Court Reporter is a sometimes funny, sometimes tragic look at the comings and goings on inside the country courtrooms dotted across Australia.

From the case of the stolen cat flap, to missing lollipops and exploding chocolate milk in a country supermarket, to a custody dispute over a camel - Jamelle has seen the lighter and quirky side of outback courts but has also witnessed the harsh, dark, and petty side of outback life - including the high rates of Indigenous incarceration, alcohol-related and domestic violence.

After spending almost twenty years in city courtrooms reporting for the ABC on some of the country's highest profile cases, in Outback Court Reporter, Jamelle Wells takes you into our country courtrooms, from the grand sandstone edifices of Cobar and Grafton to the repurposed community halls and police stations in outback Queensland the Northern Territory - introducing you to the court staff - the solicitors, prosecutors, magistrates, witnesses and the accused, in cases that shock, captivate and divide communities.

Outback Court Reporter is also a timely reminder of the need for reform as country magistrates struggle with massive caseloads and limited resources, the fall-out of failing regional health system and limited bail and sentencing options in a justice system that is under pressure and communities still disadvantaged by the vastness of our continent.