Rachel McManus has just started at the New Zealand Alarm and Response Ministry. One of the few females working there, she is forced to traverse the peculiarities of Wellington bureaucracy, lascivious colleagues, and decades of sedimented hierarchy. She has the chance to prove herself by...Read more
A small community, broken families, a bloody murder, and an ending you won’t see coming
When Frida Delaney returns home to New Zealand after a self-imposed exile the last thing she expects to find is her neighbour’s bloody body and to be caught up in a murder inquiry. An...Read more
Set against a backdrop of actual events in 1995, Martyn Percival, a middle-aged New Zealander, seeks adventure on his first OE to the United Kingdom. A chance sighting, providing a possible link between an explosion that has rocked the nation and the whereabouts of a renegade IRA operative...Read more
In an idyllic resort on the island of La Réunion, Liane Bellion and her husband Martial are enjoying the perfect moment with their 6-year-old daughter. Turquoise skies, blue sea, palm trees, a warm breeze.
Then Liane disappears. She went up to her hotel room between 3 and 4pm...Read more
The fact that the term ‘school shooting’ is even part of our modern vernacular is tragic enough. This seems to cover anything from the mass murder of children and staff at primary schools to that of adult students and staff at universities. It is a dissection of the aftermath of a single...Read more
Giverny. During the day, tourists flock to the former home of the famous artist Claude Monet and the gardens where he painted his Water Lilies. But when silence returns, there is a darker side to the peaceful French village.
This is the story of thirteen days that begin with...Read more
When 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm descends.
Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella's beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose...Read more
In Winstone’s imagination, the Kid and his partner ride through the Wild West on the trail of their quarry. In Winstone’s actual life, he’s had to abandon his ‘partner’ and is hiding out in the tough landscape of Central Otago.
What has this boy run from, and how will the...Read more
Jason Ginaff doesn’t get out much. Partly because of the anxiety, mainly because he works at home. Researching people on the internet. Job candidates doing bucket bongs on Instagram accounts they thought they’d deleted; the prospective new head of sales stripping for a hens’ night…...Read more
In 2004, the body of a young Perth woman was found on the grounds of a primary school. Her name was Rebecca Ryle. The killing would mystify investigators, lawyers, and psychologists - and profoundly rearrange the life of the victim's family.
It would also involve the author's...Read more
An unnamed city, in which crime families flourish and police pinch pennies from those with most power...
Black Sails, Disco Inferno retells the classic medieval romance of Tristan and Iseult by turning things on their head, reversing the sex of our...Read more
Politicians are said to be bet for lots of reasons.
The crimes of Milton Orkopoulos are barely remembered outside NSW. It is hard enough to stay awake when following the politicians in one's own state perhaps. If he had restricted his criminal activity to personal possession of...Read more
The body of Yoshino, a female insurance saleswoman, is found at Mitsue Pass, an eery inland spot in the southernmost region of Japan, rumoured to be home to ghosts. A young construction worker, Yuichi, is soon arrested by the Nagasaki police on suspicion of strangling the victim.As Yuichi...Read more
Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode.
Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is...Read more
When Erika, an attractive local heiress, falls to her death near her lakeside villa, the police conclude it was a tragic accident. Scholten, a longtime employee of Erika’s, isn’t so sure. He knows a thing or two about the state of her marriage and suspects an almost perfect crime. Scholten’...Read more
These are the true and uncensored accounts of Australia’s hardest inmates.
Martin Bryant – who killed 35 people and injured another 23 at Port Arthur in 1996 – is a 160kg slob who trades sex for chocolate in Risdon Prison. Twenty years after Australia’s worst massacre, his...Read more
Despite sweeping reforms by the Keating government following the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the rate of Indigenous imprisonment has soared. What has gone wrong? In Arresting Incarceration , Don Weatherburn charts the events that led to Royal Commission. He also...Read more
Martin Frobisher has been beating close family members about the head with an epergne. Frobisher, successful publisher and community leader, is in the City Remand Centre, awaiting trial for murder. What shadow has fallen across the comfortable lives of Frobisher, his ambitious wife Coralie...Read more
One of the hallmarks of French author Patrick Modiano’s writing is a singular ability to revisit particular motifs and episodes, infusing each telling with new detail and emotional nuance. In this evocative novel the internationally acclaimed author takes up one of his most compelling...Read more
Christian Lang, a famous novelist and television show host, wants to keep secret his affair with the enchanting Sarita, but she has her own reasons for keeping quiet too. Lang finds himself caught up in a sinister love-triangle with Sarita and her psychotic ex-husband. He knows that his...Read more
Is there really such a thing as an innocent person?
Teachers, cops, mothers, wives, everyone has their breaking point; that moment where it could go either way. From the prostitute with no way out, to the bitter author, and a cop who just wants his leave, the characters in this...Read more
You don’t have to believe in ghosts for the dead to haunt you.
You don’t have to be a murderer to be guilty.
Within six months of Pen Sheppard starting university, three of her new friends are dead. Only Pen knows the reason why.
College life had seemed like...Read more
Aleksi lost his mother on a rainy October day when he was thirteen years old. Twenty years later, he is certain that he knows who's responsible. Everything points to millionaire Henrik Saarinen. The police don't agree. Aleksi has only one option: to get close to Henrik Saarinen and find out...Read more
1943 is a dangerous time to fall in love...
In wartime Melbourne loose lips sink ships, so when Australian Women's Army sergeant Stella Aldridge overhears soldiers whispering about a revenge killing, she follows her instincts to investigate, despite finding herself drawn to one...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
Karen's life is abruptly thrown into chaos when her flatmate is gunned down in front of her in the street where they live.
Within days she is forced to take drastic action to ensure her own safety. She criss-crosses New Zealand to evade the killers, changes her appearance and...Read more
Cooper Bartholomew's body is found at the foot of a cliff.
Suicide.
That's the official finding, that's what everyone believes. Cooper's girlfriend, Libby, has her doubts. They'd been happy, in love. Why would he take his own life?
As Libby searches...Read more
BEHIND THE WALLS OF GOULBURN JAIL
An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990s – seven in just three years – earned Goulburn Jail the ominous name of ‘The Killing Fields'. Inmates who were sentenced or transferred to the 130-year-old towering sandstone menace declared they...Read more
On the night of 22 December 1980, a plane crashes on the Franco-Swiss border and is engulfed in flames. 168 out of 169 passengers are killed instantly. The miraculous sole survivor is a three-month-old baby girl. Two families, one rich, the other poor, step forward to claim her, sparking an...Read more
