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
The Thorn Birds is a robust, romantic saga of a singular family, the Clearys. It begins in the early part of the 20th century, when Paddy Cleary moves his wife, Fiona, and their seven children to Drogheda, the vast Australian sheep station owned by his autocratic and childless older sister...Read more
In St Kilda a teenage girl is murdered. It is no ordinary murder - the method was violent but the pretty face and body remain composed, almost serene in death. When a second and third murder occur, Inspector Ryan McAbbey assigns a taskforce and a manhunt beginsRead more
There was an eerie silence in the packed courtroom as everyone looked towards the foreman of the jury. 'Guilty' he pronounced five times.
The third most senior Catholic cleric in the world had been found guilty of sex crimes against children, bringing shame to the Church on a...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
Beyond the new city center developments, the old Sheffield canal is overgrown, run down, and deserted. Signs of regeneration creep along its towpaths, including a small innovative gallery housed in one of the warehouses. But between the renovations it’s a dark and lonely place—the perfect...Read more
One of the most shocking murder trials in Australia's legal history, and the tribulations of the man who conducted it
In 1838, eleven convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in...Read more
Stepan Povin, the KGB’s chief of foreign intelligence, is the West’s most prized intelligence agent. For years he has been passing secrets from the heart of the KGB. Now he wants out, and is seeking asylum in the West.
In exchange he has a stunning piece of information to offer:...Read more
Lucy Sorrenson is the only grown-up at her place, in her opinion. Her father acts like a teenage muso. Her grandad’s grasp on reality is slipping away and she’s sick of the responsibility of looking after them.
She wants to be in the school play, go to the cast parties, have...Read more
How far would you go to save your daughter?
Set seventeen years into a very recognisable future, Fauna is an astonishing psychological drama with an incredible twist: What if the child you are carrying is not entirely human?
Using DNA technology, scientists...Read more
Journalist and podcaster Andrew Rule brings us eighteen Australian crime stories that have fuelled fears, fired outrage and broken hearts and dreams. Among them are events so infamous that a word or phrase propels us back to a time and place. The disappearance of the Beaumont children from...Read more
To new nanny Amanda, the Temple family seem to have it all: the former actress; the famous professor; their three successful grown-up children. But like any family, beneath the smiles and hugs there lurks far darker emotions.
Sixteen years earlier, little Niamh Temple died...Read more
It is May 1957. In London eight friends gather for a party. They are all displaced persons who have survived the worst World War II could throw at them. This gathering will be a time to share the fragile joy of liberty. But before the night is out, one of them will be dead. Who would commit...Read more
Where does the adventure end . . .
and the nightmare begin?
Frank owns a service station on a little-used highway. His granddaughter, Allie, is sent to stay with him for the summer, but they don't talk a lot.
Simon is a...Read more
Seven missing. One dead. No hope.
The Australian outback is beautiful, idyllic, peaceful, and all Detective Bo Campbell has to do is fit in.
Within a day of his arrival, however, he's asked to cover up the murder of a local Aboriginal woman found...Read more
Two eyes bore into him from across the room. They're not her eyes. They're the same colour and shape, but they're not her eyes.
'I see you.'
Silas didn't have a happy childhood. Aunt Bunny made sure of that. But out of money and almost...Read more
Joshua is convinced there is a family curse. It's taken away his biological parents, robbed him of his eyesight, and is the reason his father Logan, the detective who raised him, is killed while investigating the homicide of a young woman. The suspect, Simon Bowers, is killed by Logan's...Read more
Livia Denby is on trial for attempted murder. The jury have reached a verdict.
Two years earlier, Livia was a probation officer in Yorkshire, her husband Scott a teacher. Their children, Heidi and Noah, round out a happy family until the day Scott's brother dies.
...Read more
There's nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory—until it turns out to be true
When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges...Read more
Born in the middle of Australia’s biggest-ever earthquake, Miracle is fourteen when her world crumbles. Thanks to her dad’s new job at Compassionate Cremations — which falls under suspicion for Boorunga’s spate of sudden deaths — the entire town turns against their family. Miracle is...Read more
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
'They come for me as I sleep. Their pale faces stare at me, their soft voices tell me to wake, to wake. They come to remind me of the night, to remind me of what I have done.'Read more
James Devlin is a celebrated artist whose past is as blank as an empty canvas. When Jan Bilowski brings a painting, which was a gift to her dead sister, into Mark Lewis’s gallery, she tells him it was created by a seventeen-year-old boy called Charlie. Why then does the work look exactly...Read more
Margaret Hickey’s Rural Dreams takes a look at life outside the big smoke, featuring the kind of characters you might expect in the country – as well as some you might not.
A football coach ponders obsession . . . a...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
James Brandt didn’t look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now, he’s returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge.
The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm ...Read more
‘When I last saw Ashleigh, she was lying in a pool of blood . . . Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly into the sky. I’d like to think she saw the stars before she died; that in her last moments she flew, soaring on serotonin, dreamy with dopamine. I’d like to think she didn’t suffer...Read more
Since its appearance nearly two centuries ago, crime fiction has gripped readers' imaginations around the world. Detectives have varied enormously: from the nineteenth-century policemen (and a few women), through stars like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, to newly self-aware voices of the...Read more
The most dangerous people are those with the most to lose.
It is 1887. The young colony of New Zealand is in the grip of a deep depression. Insolvent speculators conspire with corrupt politicians while Maori land slips from the hands of its owners.
Into this...Read more
Jack Furey is a decent man caught up in an indecent time.
Retired police sergeant Jack Furey is celebrating his 100th birthday, and he’s not happy about it. Unable to speak following a stroke and estranged from his son, all he wants is to reunite with his beloved, late wife....Read more