The Creeper

Victim ... or killer?

For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria’s high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge.

Also found dead near the scene was Bill ‘Creeper’ Durant, a bushland...Read more

Don't Hang Up

‘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...Read more

Tags: 

Crossing the Line

War is brutal—but some lines should never be crossed. In mid-2017 whispers of executions and cover-ups within Australia's most secretive and elite military unit, the SAS, reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. He and Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only...Read more

His Favourite Graves

Desperate for reward money – and to rescue his marriage – an embattled sheriff takes incalculable risks to find a missing boy. An edge-of-your-seat, twisted and twisty thriller from New Zealand's King of Crime.

Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Logan's life is falling apart – his ...Read more

Pheasants Nest

She wonders if they have discovered her missing yet. Has it broken in the news? Who has been assigned to cover her story? Have they started spooling through her social media and pulling out photographs? Constructing a narrative about who she is and what possible reason any person has to...Read more

One Boy Missing

It was a butcher on smoko who reported the man stashing the kid in the car boot. He didn't really know whether he'd seen anything at all, though. Maybe an abduction? Maybe just a stressed-out father.

Detective Bart Moy, newly returned to the country town where his ailing,...Read more

Dirt Town

My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home....Read more

Point Zero

A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992), the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.

Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uehara, ten...Read more

Tags: 

A Quiet Place

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed....Read more

Sleeper Agent

In the sleepy town of Gainesville, Cooper Fox is a beloved local figure with a mind clouded by amnesia from a devastating car accident. But a chance encounter with three menacing strangers shatters the image of Cooper as a gentle guy with a foggy past, leaving the town of Gainesville to...Read more

Gone

A missing girl ... a cold case ... a sister who won’t give up …

'I was there on the day Rebecca disappeared. I watched her hurry away. If I close my eyes I can still see her...'

When Rebecca Bundy fails to return home after the last day of school in 1984 her father...Read more

The Dark Meadow

Bavaria, Germany, 1947

At the end of the war, Afra Zauner returns to her parents’ cottage on the edge of Mauther Forest. Unmarried, and pregnant. As she struggles to raise her child, her father’s shame, her mother’s fury and the loud whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh...Read more

And Away ...

Bob Mortimer’s life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his...Read more

The Pain Tourist

A young man wakes from a coma to find himself targeted by the men who killed his parents, while someone is impersonating a notorious New Zealand serial killer … the latest chilling, nerve-shredding, twisty thriller from the author of The Quiet People…

James Garrett was critically...Read more

The Year of the Locust

If, like Kane, you're a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again - by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide - and when to shoot.

But some places don't play...Read more

Madukka: The River Serpent

Aunty June is the proud owner of a TAFE certificate III in Investigative Services.

It took her thirty hours to complete online.

Now, she has set up her own private investigation Yanakirri Investigative Services – Confidentiality Guaranteed.

When...Read more

Sand Talk

A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability—and offers a new template for living.

As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global...Read more

Sydney Noir

Australia can no longer be held back from the Akashic Noir Series; herein, Sydney reveals itself to be a world-class hub of noir.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all...Read more

The Registrar

Dedicated and ambitious, Emma Swann is about to start a gruelling year as a surgical registrar at the prestigious Mount teaching hospital. She's excited to join her adored older brother Andy in pursuing the same career as their father, an eminent surgeon who made his name at The Mount....Read more

Flawed Hero

The shocking story of the case against Australia's most highly decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, and the defamation trial of the century.Chris Masters is joint winner of the 2023 Walkley Honour for Media Freedom for his investigation of the Ben Roberts-Smith story ...Read more

QAnon and On

In QAnon and On, Guardian columnist Van Badham delves headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory, unpicking the why, how and who behind this century’s most dangerous and far-fetched internet cult. 
 
From Gamergate to Pizzagate and beyond to QAnon, internet manipulation...Read more

Life

With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done.Read more

Sister Kate

Kate Kelly grew up in a house of women: when the Kelly men were not in jail, they were outlaws. Kate's loyalty to her family becomes a bitter obsession: 'They were bent on destroying us - like a nest of rats the farmer comes on with his plough - not caring that they hurt women and children...Read more

Summer of Blood

Two Australian police officers travel to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the summer of 1967 in search of a missing young man, only to find themselves fully immersed in the world of music, free love, drugs and hippie counterculture. They soon realise this isn’t just any ordinary missing...Read more

Pine Creek

On a bitter winter’s night in Pine Creek, 1989, central New South Wales, 14-year-old city boy Alec tells his mother a secret before he goes to bed.

It’s the last time she will see him alive.

In the weeks before, forbidden to go near the new neighbours, Sara is watching...Read more

In the Clearing

Amy has only ever known what life is like in the Clearing. She knows what's expected of her. She knows what to do to please her elders, and how to make sure life in the community remains happy and calm. That is, until a new young girl joins the group. She isn't fitting in; she doesn't want...Read more

Box Office Browning

Richard 'Box Office' Browning, the Australian-born actor, recollects his early days from his decidedly ungraceful old age. The escapades with the famous and the infamous are a delight.Read more

My Sister, the Serial Killer

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her...Read more

A Room Of One's Own, And Three Guineas

This volume combines two books which were among the greatest contributions to feminist literature this century. Together they form a brilliant attack on sexual inequality. A Room of One's Own, first published in 1929, is a witty, urbane and persuasive argument against the...Read more

Pages