Charles finds himself uncharacteristically employed in a film, having landed the part of Szabec, a middle management vampire in 'The Wreathing'. His co-star is swimwear model turned actress Jodie Ricks and before long, Jodie is using Charles as a confidant.Poor Jodie is in terrible trouble—...Read more
A young woman is found murdered in a small English town, while the main suspect has spent the night drinking, and denies any involvement. It looks like an easily solved case for Detective Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill, but it soon proves more complex than they originally thought...Read more
Meet Mrs Melita Pargeter, a vivacious widow whose mystery-solving talents come in handy when a murderer stalks a hotel for well-to-do retirees.
She checks into the Devereux Hotel on England’s sunny south coast. Where secrets hide behind every door and the sea-views are to die for...Read more
In the remote Welsh mountain village of Gwytherin lies the grave of Saint Winifred. Now, in 1137, the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the sacred remains for his Benedictine order. Native Welshman Brother Cadfael is sent on the expedition to translate and finds the...Read more
A body is discovered in a Milan apartment, and Inspector De Vincenzi investigates. The apartment happens to belong to an old university friend of his, Aurigi. When the body turns out to be that of Aurigi's banker, and a phial of prussic acid is discovered in the bathroom, suspicion falls on...Read more
Andrea Maria Schenkel's first novel, THE MURDER FARM won considerable acclaim for its clever orginality. While it's not exactly factual, it's not entirely fiction either. Rather it's the fictionalised story of a real case cleverly interwoven with witness statements taken at the time of the...Read more
One autumn evening in the city of Cardigan a bicycle goes flying off the end of the pier and its rider disappears, never to be seen again. The key to the mystery is held by Adam Windsong, who possesses the extraordinary ability to breathe underwater.
It is an ability that is to...Read more
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When popular children’s author Micky Douglas takes his niece and nephew for a caravan holiday on Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast, he’s expecting nothing more exciting than three weeks of sun, sand and swimming. And he wouldn’t mind getting to know fellow...Read more
Since the referendum, supporters and volunteers have been asking for guidance as to how to continue to support Indigenous recognition. Mayo, a leader of the Yes 23 campaign and co-author of the bestselling The Voice to Parliament Handbook, has penned a new book to answer that...Read more
The River twists and snakes and encompasses the world, a rain-wet, neon-lit place of eternal night.
For Cass, it’s a place to escape the dull grind of her lonely life, a place where she can run its twisted laneways and live out her violent fantasies. For Detective Poe, it’s a...Read more
In a small village in the north of England, an elderly woman is brutally hanged with piano wire, and a detective’s hunt for the killer uncovers, instead, the shocking double – and triple – identify of the victim. Now, assassin and murdered imposter, connected by horrors long buried with the...Read more
In war time london, air raid wardens on the prowl for blackout infringements.. behind heavy curtains Cecily Lightwood's party is in full swing. they are all awaiting the arrival of a famous playwright, Aubrey Ritter, but his entrance is delayed - fatally! His body is found upstairs savagely...Read more
In the pages that follow, I have collected some of my favourite exchanges which can fairly be described as acid drops. The cruel bon mot which has its sting drawn from the laughter that ensues. It was Oscar Wilde who pointed out that no comment was in bad taste if it was amusing - and if...Read more
Nepal, 1978. High in the Himalayas, a renegade Chinese agent is brutally murdered while trying to reach the British Embassy in Kathmandu. A Triad revenge killing? Or does the mutilated corpse point to sinister espionage activity that might set the powder-keg of South East...Read more
Was Mrs. Sibley, the fat, elderly lady found dead tangled up with a broomstick on the East Anglian marshes, really a witch? The small Norfolk town was agog with the mystery, but Inspector Lovick was not convinced that witch-like flying had caused her death. There was a bruise on her head...Read more
The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a blind man who stumbles across a murder. As he has not seen anything, the assassins let him go, but he finds it is impossible to walk away from murder.
“The Detective Story Club”,...Read more
Two men - total strangers - establish the perfect alibis by arranging to switch victims. Ned Stowe will kill Stuart Hammer's wealthy uncle for which service Hammer is to eliminate Stowe's neurotic wife, Helena. Too far-fetched? Perhaps. But the men plot and the plan - with its horrifyingly...Read more
June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time? Because while it’s a tour de force of the classic country-house murder mystery, it’s also a delightful romp, poking...Read more
The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII.Read more
Following death of the Soviet premier, the head of the KGB gains control of Moscow in a partially successful coup but also triggers a full-scale, nuclear civil warRead more
Boom and Bust is a violent hard-boiled crime novel about a man forced into acts of desperation and depravity by debt. He is over-committed in the property market and is changing careers to have a crack as a real estate agent just as the Global Financial Crisis is about to hit. His timing...Read more
Laurence Deegan, QC, had just won his latest case. At fifty, already a distinguished and famous barrister, he seemed set to become a judge at an early age. That same evening, his triumph still fresh, he ran his bath, got into it and slit the veins in both wrists. Why had he done it? His...Read more
Since his retirement from King’s University, life has been rather quiet for Professor Daly…
In fact, a peaceful retirement, even when that retirement has been punctuated by helping the police to solve the odd crime, may be slightly over-rated: at least in Daly’s...Read more
Just as he strikes it rich with his pseudonymous romance novels, poet and professor of literature Arnold Simon finds his double life falling apart, with his agent vanished, a fellow author murdered, and the model hired to pose as the author missing.Read more
In a bungled attempt to kidnap an ambassador's son, four revolutionaries make hostages of a hundred children rehearsing an opera.Read more
An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands; a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night; a country music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy; and a young girl's love for her father transcends language.
In this...Read more
In a German village in the aftermath of the Second World War, Old Man Danner, his wife, their daughter, her two children and their new maid all lie dead. They have been brutally murdered with a pickaxe at their remote home, now known as 'The Murder Farm'.Read more
Every Saturday evening, travelling salesman Fernand Ravinel returns to his wife, Mireille, who waits patiently for him at home. But Ferdinand has another lover, Lucienne, an ambitious doctor, and together the adulterers have devised a murderous plan.
Drugging Mireille, the pair...Read more
Thwarted ambition turns to murderous frustration…Sydney, 1975
Accountant Edward Piper is a discontented man. Plagued by self-doubt and patronised by his activist wife Sibyl, he yearns to follow what he believes to be his true...Read more