The Murder Rule
First Rule: Make them like you.
Second Rule: Make them need you.
Third Rule: Make them pay.
They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal...Read more
The Fatal Path
![[node:field_alt_text]](https://austcrimefiction.org/files/styles/medium/public/book-covers/fatal-path.jpg)
A twin girl learns a terrible family secret that will cause the demons lurking within her young mind to rise up and threaten her close-knit family. As a toxic element seeps into their lives they all, in their own way, struggle with feelings of distrust and helplessness.
The...Read more
Isobar Precinct
A chain of events sparked by a murder in a cemetery sends tattoo artist Lestari Cassidy into the orbit of an unpredictable drug.
Its connection to several deaths amongst the local transient community, along with the uncovering of illegal clinical trials in the 1980s, sends her...Read more
The Leaning Man
Wellington. The land dips and rolls, the wind has a life of its own. Dig a little deeper and the city is unforgiving and unrepentant. Forget the politicians, they’re poor amateurs in deception and crime.
It’s Saturday night down on the wharf. Celebrations are in full swing for...Read more
Rising Tide
Nat Spiller, an admired climate change activist, has accidentally drowned. That's the police verdict. But was it an accident? His partner Ellie thinks otherwise.
Pam, Ellie's aunt, draws a reluctant Lauren Fraser into the mystery. The formidable Lloyd, Nat's father, head of...Read more
The Source
One last chance to reveal the truth...
1996. Essex. Thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Carly lives in a disenfranchised town dominated by a military base, struggling to care for her baby sister while her mum sleeps off another binge. When her squaddie brother brings food and treats,...Read more
The Mother
Just like the garden, the fuse box, the bills, bin night and blown light bulbs, this was just something else she'd now have to take care of herself.
Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was...Read more
Wild Dogs
In the drought-ridden rangelands of Western Australia, Gabe Ahern makes his living trapping wild dogs for local station owners.
Still coming to terms with his wife’s death – and the part he played in it – the old bushman leads a solitary life. Until one morning, when he rescues...Read more
Dead Horse Gap
When a light plane crashes at night in the midst of the New South Wales Snowy Mountains, Sydney Homicide's Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder and Detective Constable Mitchell Flowers are sent to investigate what immediately looks like foul play.
As Ryder and Flowers investigate...Read more
Lemon
In the summer of 2002, when Korea is abuzz over hosting the FIFA World Cup, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on is killed in what becomes known as the High School Beauty Murder. Two suspects quickly emerge: rich kid Shin Jeongjun, whose car Hae-on was last seen in, and delivery boy Han Manu, who...Read more
Breathless
When struggling journalist Cecily Wong is invited to join an expedition to climb one of the world's tallest mountains, it seems like the chance of a lifetime.
She doesn't realise how deadly the climb will be.
As their small team starts to climb,...Read more
A Little Bird
Running from a bad relationship, journalist Jo Sharpe heads home to Arthurville, the drought-stricken town she turned her back on years earlier. While some things have changed—her relationship with her ailing, crotchety father, her new job at the community newspaper—Jo finds that her return...Read more
Another Day in the Colony
In this collection of deeply insightful and powerful essays, Chelsea Watego examines the ongoing and daily racism faced by First Nations peoples in so-called Australia. Rather than offer yet another account of ‘the Aboriginal problem’, she theorises a strategy for living in a society that...Read more
Australia Day
Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan...Read more
Second Skin
Stan Weir is mourning a tragic loss when he meets a mysterious nine-year-old girl, who claims to be the reincarnated spirit of his late wife. Marcy Keef is a single mother trying to make ends meet, when her daughter Erin starts describing "past life memories." Neither wants to believe Erin...Read more
Still House
Situated in a beautiful setting abutting the Balarang waterways and located on an acre of natural bushland, this three-bedroom country home is full of promise, character and potential. Featuring private access to the many splendours of Balarang Creek, this idyllic property is perfect for...Read more
The Bluffs
At the bottom of the world, there is an island. It is a land of rugged wilderness, of ice and snow and blistering heat … They say extinct tigers still roam there. They say other things roam, too.
When a school group of teenage girls go missing in the remote wilderness...Read more
The River Mouth
Fifteen-year-old Darren Davies is found facedown in the Weymouth River with a gunshot wound to his chest. The killer is never found. Ten years later, his mother receives a visit from the local police. Sandra’s best friend has been found dead on a remote Pilbara road, and Barbara’s DNA...Read more
The Survivors
A suspenseful, haunting novel about three brothers and their reckoning with the events of one disputed, disastrous summer.
Benjamin sees the shape of his two brothers trying to kill each other. It's no worthy finale, but perhaps it's also no surprise. How...Read more
The Swift and the Harrier
Dorset, 1642. England is on the cusp of civil war.
Jayne Swift, a daughter of the Dorset gentry, has resisted all offers of marriage and instead trained as a physician, using her skills to tend to her Royalist father's tenants and the local population. When civil war sweeps...Read more
The Last Woman in the World
Award-winning novelist and nature writer Inga Simpson terrifies and enthralls with this truly remarkable novel of a woman who must face her worst fears to survive and find beauty in a world under attack.
Fear is her cage. But what's outside is worse...
It's night,...Read more
The Shadow House
When single mother Alex flees her abusive relationship and moves with her teenage son and baby girl to a rural ecovillage, she thinks she’s made the best decision of her life. Pine Ridge is idyllic: the off-grid lifestyle and remote location are perfect, and the community is welcoming –...Read more
The Madness Locker
On Christmas Day, 1986 a seventy-year-old widow’s body was discovered inside a wheelie bin in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Despite a long and intensive investigation, the police fail to unearth a motive or identify a suspect. Lacking any clues, the police file it as a cold case...Read more
The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning
With some 66 hits under his belt, Tomislav Bokšić, or Toxic, has a flawless record as hitman for the Croatian mafia in New York. That is, until he kills the wrong guy and is forced to flee the States, leaving behind the life he knows and loves.
Suddenly, he finds himself on a...Read more
I Shot the Devil
I used to think that I'd escaped Southport . . .
Now I realised, Southport had been coming for me all this time.
Erin Sloane was sixteen when high school senior Andre Villiers was murdered by his friends. They were her friends, too, led by the...Read more
The Plot
When a young writer dies before completing his first novel, his teacher, Jake, (himself a failed novelist) helps himself to its plot. The resulting book is a phenomenal success. But what if somebody out there knows?
Somebody does. And if Jake can't figure out who he's dealing...Read more
Rat in the Ranks
This is a story of one man’s battle against the odds to hold to the truth he knew about police corruption in an era of SP betting suppression that led to three Royal Commissions that rocked the State. It is also a tale of gangsters, murderers and thugs in an era where crime flourished....Read more
The House of Shudders
The daughter of a German mother, and black French soldier, Ingrid has been ostracised all of her life. The rise of Hitler and his barbaric racial cleansing policies has intensified the hatred and prejudice to a frightening new level. When Ingrid is identified as an ”undesirable” she is sent...Read more
The Night She Disappeared
2017: 19 year old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim.
Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.
The next morning, Kim phones...Read more
Seven Bones
‘We have a dead second wife and a missing first wife…we’ve got a huge problem here.’ Detective Peter Seymour
Seven Bones is the story of one of the more bizarre murder investigations in Australia’s history. Two wives die in suspicious circumstances: co-incidence or, as husband...Read more