Last Fortnight on AustCrime

Half the Glasgow copshop think DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she's a fuck-up.

No one thinks much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride.

One kidnapping later, he's officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like 'Keep Yer Kneecaps' with any poor bastard who crosses him.

Bestselling author Marnie Elliott has invited her three oldest friends to a secluded holiday house in Tasmania. On the surface it’s an excuse to catch up and drink champagne — but really, Marnie’s there to escape the fallout from an upcoming exposé. Sure, she’s told some lies over the course of her career... but this time the allegations go further... Did Marnie even write the books that made her millions?

Lies are poison . . .
. . . but so is truth

Professor Eustacia Rose has been arrested for the possession of poisonous plants without holding the proper licence. Waiting in a grimy police cell, Eustacia's mind starts dredging up forgotten memories from childhood, when her father, a disgraced professor, was accused of murder. Linking all the memories is Marcus Smith, her father's unscrupulous assistant, a man she thought was long dead.

THE GIRL FROM SARAJEVO
Young and beautiful immigrant Katia will do anything to become a novelist. When she encounters her neighbour, a once famous Croatian author, she embarks on an audacious plan to represent Dragan’s new novel as her own. Weaponising her sexuality, she enters into a cynical twisted affair with the aging wordsmith. But Dragan holds a dangerous secret that may destroy them both.

Over the course of one sunbaked summer vacation, a family is pulled into a web of mysteries that the younger daughter sets out to solve. A tense, page-turning debut of childhood, innocence, and evil.

Nicolette Briggs doesn’t do humans.

As Wellington’s premier, and possibly only, animal detective, Nicolette mostly investigates missing pets and cases of animal cruelty. So when her latest client asks her to investigate a case of a poisoned cat, it seems right up her alley. Until a body shows up, then another, and suddenly despite her resolve to not get involved, Nicolette is right in the middle two murder investigations. Or is it just one killer?

Skulls, Hitmen, and Deadly Secrets—One Explosive MysteryHis life at a crossroads, Ric Peters is torn between his perilous job and dreams of a future with Elaina. But their trip to New Zealand throws them into chaos as they are swept up in a whirlwind of danger and dark family secrets.

When bones of a mother and her child, wrapped in a Shetland lace shawl, are dug up from a forgotten graveyard, two worlds collide.

Ariel is raised on an isolated farm in New Zealand. She’s tough but when she’s blamed for an accident for which she has no recollection, her world implodes. Ariel seeks refuge back at university in Dunedin where she prefers the company of old gold-miners bones to real people.

In this compulsive debut thriller set in Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs, one detective’s investigation into a family tragedy threatens to collapse a powerful dynasty. . . .

When Skye married into the wealthy Campbell family, she thought she was entering paradise. But lately, she’s been unhappy in her marriage to Duncan and hiding a few secrets of her own as she tries to maintain a normal, happy life for their six-year-old daughter, Tilly.

Being special can make you a target

In a world ravaged by pandemics and poisoned by acid rain, experimental pharmaceuticals are used to genetically engineer the population to adapt to the toxic atmosphere. However, unexpected results have created drug-dependent individuals and powerful telepaths. Among them is Michaella, a telepath tasked by the Pregutor to keep the truth hidden from the public.

A timeless deadly conspiracy, a faceless enemy—can they stop Minerva before democracy falls?

CIA veteran Tony Mancini and ambitious MI6 officer Caroline Sinclair navigate a deadly clandestine world, tracking Minerva— a shadowy force manipulating global events through fear and terror. What Mancini first dismisses as Sinclair’s wild theory soon spirals into a terrifying chain of events, claiming lives and threatening the very fabric of democracy.

Justice doesn’t stop at blue water.

At night, the ocean bleeds.
By morning, sharks wash up without their fins.
And a village that once lived in harmony with the sea now looks the other way.

Leilani is a champion freediver and marine biologist, now working for the Ocean Enforcement Agency. Sent to the islands of Samoa, she expects illegal fishing. What she uncovers is a silent, industrial-scale slaughter unfolding beyond pristine coral reefs.

Gordon and Sarah Rutherford are normal, happy people with rich, fulfilling lives. They have a son they adore, a house on the beach and a safe, friendly community in a picture-postcard town.

Until, one day, Bonnie the labrador comes in from the beach alone. Their son, Rory, has gone - the only trace left behind is a single black sandal.

Their lives don't fall apart immediately. While there's still hope, they dig deep and try to carry on.

Blue Money is hardboiled New Zealand crime noir, set in the dirty back streets of Wellington and the rich estates of the Wairarapa.

Courage, first love, and a secret worth fighting for.

Spring in suburban Finland. Tuomas Ylivire is on the verge of growing up—and trouble.

With a judo kit, a sharp tongue, and the rule-bending instincts of his legendary detective father, he thinks he’s ready for anything. Then Esa walks into his life, truths surface, and everything changes. One throw on the Judo tatami, and Tuomas's life changed forever.

Assassin. Gardener. Reluctant cat adoptee.

All Dante wants is to be left alone in the small New Zealand town no one’s heard of. No drama. No bodies. No questions.

But then, of course, the orchid convention comes to town, and Dante is knee deep in suspects, intrigue, and red herrings.

On top of all this, Dante must navigate a mysterious woman from his past, cat issues, and the terrifying prospect of a first date.

And he has to do it while fighting his instinct to solve problems the old-fashioned way: permanently.

The past was meant to stay buried. But someone is digging it up - one body at a time.

Six years ago, the Melbourne Spotlight current affairs team covered a shocking crime spree - a series of brutal, seemingly random attacks. As the body count rose, the police and journalists worked tirelessly to unmask the perpetrator.

When the killer was finally stopped, everyone assumed the violence was over.

They were wrong.

Be careful who you cross.

Evin leads a quiet, orderly life as a classic motorcycle restorer in a small seaside town. Until she witnesses a gang-affiliate’s nasty little secret. A body washes up on the coast several days later, dragging her further into a dangerous maelstrom. Turns out Evin was one of the last people to see the victim alive.

Just as life is returning to normal for unlikely housemates Bella and Freyja after their dramatic rescue of an abducted child on the Kāpiti Coast, strange threats disrupt their peace, and they find themselves helping Jonah, a young man caught up with violent conspiracy theorists. When Freyja’s usual supports fail, Bella must try to unravel a series of obscure messages to prevent Jonah from falling so far down the rabbit hole he’ll never make it out. Meanwhile, it seems the two women now face a very real menace to their own lives. 

At the beginning of summer, a young Lotto millionaire is found dead in the clay pit of a renowned pottery retreat. The body is laid out in the shape of an X, with markings in the earth that resemble an angel-deliberate, unsettling, and inexplicable.

The Serenity Centre in Cambodia was full of secrets, of skeletons, bones in the closet, things unrevealed and undisclosed. You sensed it. There was an atmosphere. The discovery of a dead body only added to the tension, and triggered in Rita painful memories of events in New Zealand five years earlier. A woman had been found dead at Rita’s workplace, and compromising material related to the death dumped in Rita’s bag. Who put it there? Why? Finding herself under suspicion, Rita embarked on a perilous hunt to find the answers.

Private investigator and former spy Veronica “Ronnie” Tracey knows trouble when she sees it, like the stranger lurking around her friend Emily’s house. Detaining the intruder only makes things worse. The woman is not a petty criminal. She is Kerrin Costa, an Argentine intelligence officer, and Nana’s newest client.

Within hours, Emily vanishes, Jenn is left unconscious, and Ronnie is chasing an abduction tied to foreign agents, buried secrets, and a past Emily does not remember.

Thea, a young woman crushed by guilt, flees to Central America to escape her life in New Zealand.

In Guatemala, she meets the charismatic Chris and his partner, Sarah, and the three of them form a tight bond. While the rest of the world is caught in the grip of the global financial crisis, the three friends find a false reality in the backpacker party town of San Pedro. Surrounded by the dark volcanic beauty of the Guatemalan highlands, Thea starts to come to terms with her past. But everything changes when a tragedy occurs.

Venice. Winter, 1539.

When Cesare Aldo learns of a conspiracy to assassinate Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, he is hired to protect the ruler of Florence – with his life, if necessary. The deadly attack that follows leads to bodies, bloodshed . . . and something far more dangerous.

Those behind the plot obtain a journal of the duke’s containing explosive secrets that – in the wrong hands – could destroy all of Florence. Aldo must hunt down those responsible and reclaim the journal, or face banishment from the city and everyone he loves.

Marriage. Memory. Medicine. Malice.

Charlotte and Henry, a married couple in their sixties, lead comfortable but monotonous lives in Middle England. Following a health scare, Henry has retired from his post as a consultant pathologist. Charlotte once wanted to become a doctor too, but abandoned her training after a harrowing experience left her emotionally shattered. Now she devotes herself to good works, which are not always appreciated.

What does a pile of clothes left on a deserted beach tell you? It's a cold midwinter Monday. Seaweed and shells litter the flat expanse of sand. There is a light wind, the sea more disgruntled than choppy, the tide out. And there amongst it, the neat pile of clothes. Almost like a coded message waiting to be deciphered.'

Two couples – Annabelle and Luke, Des and Julianni – embark on a camping trip to K’gari, a picturesque island off Queensland’s coast. Things have been tough lately, but this holiday is just what they need – white sands, clear waters, a chance to decompress and reconnect.

On a snowy winter morning, an abandoned shipping container is discovered near Reykjavík. Inside are the bodies of five young women – one of them barely alive.

As Icelandic Police detective Daníel struggles to investigate the most brutal crime of his career, Áróra looks into the background of a suspicious man, who turns out to be engaged to Daníel's former wife, and the connections don't stop there…

Keeping on top of the family funeral directors' and private-investigation businesses is no easy task for the Skelf women, and when matriarch Dorothy discovers a human foot while walking the dog, a perplexing case presents itself … with potentially deadly results.

Corinne Gray’s life is falling apart. When homicide detective Kyle Nazarian unexpectedly knocks on her door on a rainy morning, she knows why. He wants to talk about her son, Ben.

An average teen in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Ben is dating his first girlfriend and trying to find an after-school job. But as his luck sours, he’s increasingly drawn into shadowy corners of the internet.