The Cross
In the dying days of 1974, a mysterious yellow sports car speeds into the quiet Riverina town of Gunnawah. While the locals are initially intrigued by the stranger in their midst, nobody is prepared for what comes next.
At the town's only newspaper, the Gunnawah Gazette, cadet journalist Adelaide Hoffman starts looking into a proposed new resort development on the banks of the Murray. Her street-smart boss, Valdene Bullark, and Val's long-time friend, Wayne Trevaskis, have been around the block and they're pretty sure something shady is going down. Meanwhile, the town's only cop, raw recruit Jack Overlund, is about to learn the stranger has brought more than an oversized ego to the town.
Over the years, the echoing, heat-rimmed days of the Riverina have concealed a lot. A secretive priest. A pregnant teenager. The dark shadows of the Nugan Hand Bank. A faded TV star. A deadly shame. When big city money arrives and long-buried secrets threaten to surface, some will be forced to deal with their past and others will have to grapple with their future.
The richly comic and deeply dark companion novel to Gunnawah, The Cross is set in a time of football, meat pies, Gough Whitlam and shag-pile carpet. A quintessentially Australian crime story of ratbaggery, religion and revenge that deftly blends gripping crime with acerbically funny, moving and distinctly Australian characters.
The Good Father
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.
But as desperation mounts, arms around shoulders become fingers pointed - at friends, family, strangers, each other. Without any answers, only questions remain. Who can they trust? How far will they go to find out what happened to Rory?
And the deadliest question of what could be worse than your child disappearing?
When the truth begins to emerge, they find themselves in a world they could barely have imagined.
Criminally Bad
Dubious ninja training. A scam religion. Swords, guns and homemade bombs. Extortion gone wrong. All cooked up in a cosy lounge room over a nice cuppa in Australia's least-likely-to-succeed capital, Hobart.
Criminally Bad is journalist and comedian Claire Sullivan's deep dive into the jaw-dropping true story of a cult-ish ninja crime gang that self-imploded in 1990s Tassie.
Drawing on old evidence and intrepid new research, Claire takes us on a fascinating, darkly funny ride through power, friendship, free will, toxic masculinity and almost unimaginable ineptitude. It won't surprise you that not everyone gets out alive.
Completely true and utterly bonkers, Criminally Bad uncovers an until-now buried batshit slice of Australian true crime history.
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
Strap in.
Cold River
Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly . . .
Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria’s high country. But there’s something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up Mount Viking, that’s not sitting right with her.
Louis was an aspiring journalist, researching the illegal tobacco trade – also known as chop chop – that was once so prevalent in the area. And the last person he interviewed before his hike has just met a gruesome end . . .
But with no other leads, and with the search winding down, Sally is forced to accept the young man died in a tragic accident.
Until she learns of another missing person case that bears striking similarities. Astrid Marlowe, a young lawyer, vanished in the same mountains two years before.
Were Louis and Astrid simply unlucky hikers lost in the treacherous terrain? Or did they both stumble into something – or someone – they shouldn’t?
Gone Guru
Gone Guru is a cosy mystery that punctures the writing bubble with a sharp pen and an even sharper look at an industry often accused of peddling unrealistic dreams.
Noni Barlow is broke, jet-lagged and alone in New York with nothing but a dream and a manuscript.
When her idol Joyce Carol Oates tells her that Born Again memoirs are so 'last year', Noni's big break starts to feel like a big mistake.
To add to the general weirdness, she meets her new flatmate only once before he vanishes into thin air - and that's even before Noni discovers he is a transcendental meditation guru with a massive following, and a million-dollar trust fund.
Aided by an octogenarian social worker, and the sarcastic daughter of her Puerto Rican landlady, Noni finds herself deep in the case of the disappearing guru.
Is this the new plot line she needs to save her writing career?
Into the Flames
Ilene, a working-class mother, is struggling to survive and desperate to reconnect with her children, Jack and Lonnie, in the aftermath of a near-fatal tragedy. But her children vanish, setting off a chain reaction within the community.
Suspended detective Omar helps out with the investigation, uncovering disquieting clues, but he keeps getting pulled away by a dangerous cold case.
Benji, a recovering addict, finds peace by breeding lorikeets and caring for his mother, only to have his clean life upended by a stranger’s menacing threat.
Nera, a city lawyer grieving on a country farm, wants to find out who killed one of her animals and is faced with increasingly strange and unsettling answers.
**In this gripping tale of human frailty and the other-worldly, each character must confront the mystery of what really happened to Jack and Lonnie.
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