This time the temptations are made up of soon to be released, quite a way off release, and things I recently lucked upon.
The Ride
When justice and family loyalties collide, how far will we go to protect the ones we love?
On a blustery Melbourne night, Detective Jonathon Carver gets a call. Fourteen-year-old Summer King didn’t come home.
When Summer’s body washes up on the banks of the Yarra River, her dance teacher, Harry Pickering, quickly becomes the prime suspect.
Harry swears he drove Summer home that night.
Her parents claim she never arrived.
When the investigation gets too close to the truth, those Detective Carver loves the most must pay the price.
What happens when a good cop is pushed too far?
The Nowhere Boy
The stunning debut novel by the Winner of the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize 2025. An emotionally charged exploration of what happens when one moment changes everything.
A child disappears in broad daylight—and no one sees a thing.
Three-year-old Oliver, known as Apple Man, vanishes from a remote car park while his young father, Scott, carries fishing gear down to the beach. When he returns, the car is empty. His son has vanished without a trace.
Apple Man's mother, Fae, gets the call that shatters her life. Enraged with her ex, Scott and drowning in her own guilt, she is pulled back into Scott's orbit as police launch a desperate search across a wild coastline and dense pine forest. With every hour that passes, the case tightens around them—and the question no parent can bear to answer grows louder: what if he's never coming back?
Far from the search, a grieving woman convinces herself she's been given a second chance. Tessa has lost three babies and the future she believed was hers. When she encounters a small, abandoned boy, she sees not a crime, but a miracle she cannot surrender. As the hunt intensifies, her fragile fantasy of motherhood begins to unravel.
As the pressure continues to mount, everyone involved is forced to confront the same terrifying question: when love becomes possession, how far is too far?
Dying Days
In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite.
May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied forces have come to a tense standoff in the city of Trieste. Every day, locals with fascist and Nazi ties are disappearing, arrested by Yugoslav soldiers. Meanwhile the Allies watch on, reluctant to become mired in yet another conflict.
But when rumours circulate that New Zealand soldiers are among the missing, the stakes begin to rise.
A British MI6 agent and a New Zealand intelligence officer must uncover the truth behind the rumours. But the schisms in the city are becoming harder to cross, and one wealthy family keeps getting in their way. In a mission where moral lines are hopelessly blurred and violence is a necessity, deciding whether they can trust their sources – or even one another – becomes a matter of life and death.
Behind Trieste’s grand facades is a divided, shadowy world shaped by lies and betrayals.
The Reckoning
When the system fails, justice must take another form.
When two convicted rapists walk free on appeal, the town of Deception Bay splits down the middle. The men swagger onto a packed cricket ground on Australia Day to a hero’s welcome. Before lunch is over, dozens of people fall ill. Among them, the newly released men.
As panic rips through the town and emergency services buckle, Detective Antigone Pollard and her partner, Wozza, scramble to figure out what has happened. Is it an accident? Or was this deliberate?
When Antigone’s mother, a doctor, vanishes while responding to a call for help, Antigone enters a desperate race to find her. But time is running out.
Antigone faces a choice and, this time, she doesn’t wait for permission. With no good options left, she does what she always does – relies on herself.
The Reckoning is an unflinching, morally uncompromising crime novel about thwarted justice, institutional failure, exacted revenge and the price paid when the system looks away.
S.I.G.M.A. 1: Web of Spies
When Ollie heads out for a run in the park, the last thing he expects to find is a dead body. But the real shock is that Ollie recognises the man. And somehow, he's connected to Ollie's father ... who vanished ten months ago.
And then he learns that the dead man was a spy.
With everything he thought he knew about his dad now in doubt, there's only one way for Ollie to get answers. He's going to have to solve the murder.
Armed with an old spy kit, a couple of bikes and a drone, Ollie and his friends Ella and George are about to step into a world that is more dangerous than they could ever have imagined ...
From bestselling author Tim Ayliffe comes a children's debut that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Tell Me Something True
I look along the road and notice how many people are standing outside their houses or watching from doorways and windows. Staring. Studying.
“Do you think this town will ever forgive me?” I ask.
“Not in a million years.”
Small towns are quick to anger and slow to forgive, but Arlo Hackett doesn't expect mercy when he emerges from a twelve-year prison sentence and makes his way back to Yulara, a waypoint on Australia's Great Southern Road. The last time Arlo was home in 1988, his brother Luke was charged with a terrible crime, and Arlo was found guilty by association.
His return to Yulara is like cracking open a time capsule full of hatred and violence, along with memories of the people he loved—the ones he couldn't save.
The small town wants Arlo gone, or worse, but every insult and humiliation pushes him to confront what really happened all those years ago. The truth will shock you, surprise you, and break your heart.
For fans of Liz Moore and Chris Whitaker, Tell Me Something True is a poignant, slow-burning mystery filled with palpable tension and tender love about the cost of clemency and the need for revenge.
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