Sorted on book title (not in series order)

Ngaio Marsh Shortlist Best Novel 2025

The Call

A brilliant debut crime novel centred on a 501 deportee gang, set in a remote coastal New Zealand town

After surviving a brutal attack, Auckland cop DS Honey Chalmers has returned to her hometown to care for her mother. The remote coastal settlement of Waitutu...Read more

A Divine Fury

Florence. Autumn, 1539.

Cesare Aldo was once an officer for the city’s most feared criminal court. Following a period of exile, he is back – but demoted to night patrol, when only the drunk and the dangerous roam the streets.

Chasing a suspect in the rain, Aldo...Read more

Hell's Bells

Eustacia Rose's life is beginning to return to normal: she is back teaching at UCL and her relationship with Matilde is blossoming. But when a man is found dead with a needle in his neck, that fragile peace begins to crumble. Eustacia finds a painting of herself with a syringe next to her...Read more

The Hitchhiker

The Driver:

Ahead he could see only the stretch of unending road, on either side brown-scorched plains of dirt and scrub, above it all a soaring blue sky and blinding sun. Desolation that looked, to him, a hell of a lot like freedom. He wasn’t playing by anyone’s rules anymore....Read more

Home Truths

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

The Mires

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks...Read more

Ōkiwi Brown

The Burke and Hare anatomy murders of 1828 terrify Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears. Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown, sets up a pub with an...Read more

Prey

On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.

The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it' s...Read more

Return to Blood

After the perils of a case that landed much too close to home, Hana Westerman turned in her badge and abandoned her career as a detective in the Auckland CIB. Hoping that civilian life will offer her the opportunity to rest and recalibrate, she returns to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she...Read more

Woman, Missing

She's the one to turn to when you need saving. But first she has to save herself...

Lou Alcott is turning over a new leaf as a private investigator. Formerly police, she was forced to resign when she attacked a domestic violence perpetrator. She's always vowed to be...Read more