Book picks similar to
The Scoop by Terence J. Quinn


aussie-authors
thriller
australian-author
thriller-suspense

Life Before


Carmel Reilly - 2019
    But what was she to say? Once there had been blame to apportion, rage to hurl. Now she no longer had a sense of that. Who knew what the facts of them being here together like this meant. What was she to make of the situation? Scott lying unconscious here in this bed, unknown to her in almost every way. She now a wife, a mother, but in her mind no longer a sister. Not a sister for a very long time now.Lori Spyker is taking her kids to school one unremarkable day when a policeman delivers the news that her brother, Scott Green, has been injured and hospitalised following a hit and run. Lori hasn't seen Scott in decades. She appears to be his only contact. Should she take responsibility for him? Can she? And, if she does, how will she tell her own family about her hidden history, kept secret for so long? Twenty years before, when she and Scott were teenagers, their lives and futures, and those of their family, had been torn to shreds. Now, as Lori tries to piece together her brother's present, she is forced to confront their shared past-and the terrible and devastating truth buried there that had driven them so far apart.Compassionate, wise and shocking, Life Before tells the gripping story of an ordinary family caught in a terrible situation. What if the worst thing you can imagine isn't the worst thing to happen? How do you go on? And what steps will you take to protect yourself from further pain?

Flight Risk


Michael McGuire - 2019
    Sent to Jakarta to find out as much as he can about the pilot of a vanished Garuda flight, he discovers a flight simulator in the pilot's apartment. When the investigation turns sour, Ted escapes to New York as further disaster strikes.Another plane disappears from the sky. Then another. Three planes and hundreds of passengers and crew, vanished, without a trace. Panic is widespread and the world is teetering on the brink.Still no one has come forward to claim responsibility. At an eerily deserted JFK airport trying to get a flight back home, Ted witnesses a suspicious exchange between an airport cleaner and a nonchalant airline pilot. He follows the pilot to his destination: a Ukraine International Airlines flight, due to leave in an hour. All his instincts tell Ted that this is the next plane to go down. But what on earth can he do? Take the flight and face almost certain death? Or fly back home and wait for the news headlines?He does the unthinkable and gets on the plane.Astoundingly original and utterly gripping, Flight Risk is a white-knuckle ride of nonstop suspense - a high-octane thriller full of pure adrenaline, explosive action and jaw-dropping revelations.

In Darkness Visible


Tony Jones - 2019
    Before the year is out, he has been assaulted, arrested, charged with serious war crimes and locked up in Scheveningen Prison in The Hague, waiting for his case to come before the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.In Sydney, Anna Rosen, a freelance journalist, is emailed photos of a man she knows to be dead - gunned down in a brutal ambush in Bosnia over a decade ago. A man she'd once loved but who had betrayed her. Is it possible that the photos really are of Marin Katich? And if so, what the hell had happened in 1992?From Croatia to The Hague to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Sydney, Anna and Marin's intertwined history fuels her determination to tear apart, piece by piece, his secrets, while continuing to keep her own. In a dangerous pursuit of justice and revenge, navigating the murky world of national and international secret agencies and those who would still be warlords, Anna fights for what she believes in and for those she loves.

The Hunted


Gabriel Bergmoser - 2020
    . .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 dreamer and an idealist, in thrall to the romance of the open road and desperately in search of something.Maggie is the woman who will bring them together, someone whose own personal journey will visit unimaginable terror on them all. . .'With echoes of Deliverance and Battle Royale, the Australian outback-set The Hunted is a truly terrifying, breathlessly exciting novel. It gut-punches you in the first few pages and doesn't let you recover until the final, thrilling climax. An extraordinary book.' M. W. CRAVEN What readers are saying: 'A high octane roller-coaster of a novel, brilliantly written with strong characters to cheer for. Just don't read it before going to sleep like I did.''This type of horror/action thriller isn't my usual thing but boy, did I love this book.''This entire book was just pure, fast-paced tension and I loved every insane page of it.''I'd say it's a hard book to put down, but a couple of times I found the suspense heightened enough that I needed a break. That's how good it was.''Even the squeamish would find it difficult to put this book down for very long.'

The Great Divide


L.J.M. Owen - 2019
    He unearths pain, secrets and broken adults. Pushing aside memories of his own treacherous past, Jake focuses all his energy on the investigation.Why are some of the children untraceable? What caused such damage among the survivors?The identity of the murderer seems hidden from Jake by Dunton’s fog of prejudice and lies, until he is forced to confront not only the town’s history but his own nature…

One Last Child


Anni Taylor - 2020
    The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air....Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one.All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.Speculation grows that the mysterious abductor is enacting a cruel revenge plot due to a murderer that Kate put in jail years before.Kate isn't sure what to believe. But one thing is certain - she's about to begin the battle of her life. When the children were first stolen, she was prevented from investigating the case.But now, Kate will be relentless in uncovering the identity of the abductor and discovering what happened to Ivy.

The Wolf Hour


Sarah Myles - 2018
    Edge-of-your-seat suspense combines with a compelling family drama in this story of power, greed and salvation.A searing contemporary thriller about an Australian family in crisis against the backdrop of war-torn Africa.Thirty-year-old Tessa Lowell has a PhD in psychology and is working in Uganda to research the effects of PTSD and war on child soldiers. She joins a delegation travelling across the Congolese border, deep into the African bush, for peace talks with Joseph Kony, notorious leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.  At the camp Tessa meets thirteen-year-old Francis, already an experienced soldier and survivor of shocking violence. The talks stall, and the camp is attacked by other rebels who take Tessa. Isolated in an increasingly volatile situation, she tries to form a bond with Francis. In Melbourne, Tessa's parents are notified of the kidnapping, but learn there is little that government agencies can do. Desperate, they contact their son Stephen, an astute if manipulative businessman based in Cape Town. He agrees to search for his sister but has other reasons to contact the rebel forces.As Tessa's time runs out, her family begins to fracture. Her parents arrive in Uganda to hear awful news about what she has endured. They also learn the devastating truth about the kind of man their son has become. Only they have the power to stop a terrible injustice. But at what cost to their family?

The Strangers We Know


Pip Drysdale - 2019
    Now imagine that’s the best thing to happen to you all week …When Charlie sees a man who is the spitting image of her husband Oliver on a dating app, her heart stops. Her first desperate instinct is to tell herself she must be mistaken – after all, she only caught a glimpse from a distance as her friends were laughingly swiping through the men on offer. But no matter how much she tries to push her fears aside, she can’t because she took that photo. On their honeymoon. She just can’t let it go.Suddenly other signs of betrayal begin to add up and so Charlie does the only thing she can think of to defend her position – she signs up to the app to catch Oliver in the act.But Charlie soon discovers that infidelity is the least of her problems. Nothing is as it seems and nobody is who she thinks they are ...

The Hope Flower


Joy Dettman - 2021
    Or they were a family, until their father took his own life to escape his bed-bound wife, too obese to leave her room.But for Lori and the remaining brothers, there is no escape from their volatile, mentally unstable mother. They raise themselves away from the gaze of the authorities, realising that though abandoned, they are now in charge. They can control everything, including their mother's food intake.In time, their mother emerges, after losing two-thirds of her body weight. But does she bring with her the seed of hope for a better future, or will all hell break loose?'The texture of the writing as well as the mind-boggling plots give her books a fatally addictive attraction' Saturday Age

When You Are Mine


Michael Robotham - 2021
    When she responds to a domestic violence call, she finds the victim, Tempe Brown, trying to protect her abuser, a married man named Darren Goodall, a decorated Scotland Yard detective afraid of no one. As Philomena pursues the case against him, she not only encounters resistance from her police force colleagues but also becomes dangerously entangled with the victim—who is not at all whom she appears to be—much to the increasing endangerment of herself and Henry, her fiancée. Complicating matters is Philomena’s estranged father Edward McCarthy, a powerful man who has built a criminal empire along with his brothers. Philomena has long tried to pursue her career as a police officer without her father’s involvement, but as she falls under suspicion of stalking and harassing Goodall, her father becomes involved. As the situation escalates, Tempe’s sinister maneuvers further entangle Philomena in a web of secrets, corruption, and murder, putting Philomena’s impending marriage, career, and very survival in jeopardy…​ Spellbinding, suspenseful, and filled with complex characters that could be heroes or villains, Robotham has crafted a smart and propulsive thriller that’s impossible to put down.

The Secret Runners of New York


Matthew Reilly - 2019
    . . No power, no lights, no people . . . It's a parallel New York of some kind. ' THE COMING ENDWhen Skye Rogers and her twin brother Red move to Manhattan, rumours of a coming global apocalypse are building. But this does not stop the young elite of New York from partying without a care.CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?And then suddenly Skye is invited to join an exclusive gang known as the Secret Runners of New York.But this is no ordinary clique - they have access to an underground portal that can transport them into the future. And what Skye discovers in the future is horrifying: the rumours about the coming apocalypse are true . . .RUN! AS FAST AS YOU CAN!As society crumbles and Skye and Red race to figure out how to use their knowledge to survive the impending annihilation, they soon discover that the chaotic end of the world is a fine time for revenge . . .

Blood Witness


Alex Hammond - 2013
    A terminally ill man claims to have witnessed the brutal crime – in a vision.But the looming trial is more than just a media circus: it's Will's first big case since the tragic death of his fiancée.With the pressure mounting, Will's loyalties are split when his fiancée's sister is charged with drug trafficking.The strain of balancing both cases takes its toll and Will finds himself torn between following the law and seeking justice.Blood Witness is a dark powerful thriller from a talented new voice.

Nature Of The Lion


T.M. Clark - 2018
    Clark. Hiding from the law, they never expected to be caught in the crosshairs of a hunter… After relocating to South Africa on the heels of scandal five years ago, Chloe and her invalid father, Mike, once wealthy Zimbabwean landowners, now have little. Away at university, Chloe has had to rely on her father's best friend Enoch and his son Xo to watch over Mike. When a violent confrontation puts Chloe in danger, Enoch steps in to help – with inadvertent fatal results. With increasing pressure from a right–wing group on the police to charge Enoch, this mismatched family have no choice but to flee back to Zimbabwe. But crossing the border will be dangerous and near impossible with their route taking them amid warring dissident armies and landmines, and their every footstep is stalked by a shadowy ring of hunters – whose trophies are taken from more than animals...Only with help from Nick, formerly a soldier under Mike's command, now a professional game ranger, will the fugitives have a chance of making it home. But Nick has long struggled to come to terms with his fellow soldiers' choices before their unit was abandoned. Will his past demons put them all at risk?

Crimson Lake


Candice Fox - 2017
    How do you move on when the world won’t let you?12:46: Claire Bingley stands alone at a bus stop12:47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her12:52: The girl is missing . . .Six minutes in the wrong place at the wrong time—that’s all it took to ruin Sydney detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of a brutal abduction,Ted is now a free man—and public enemy number one. Maintaining his innocence, he flees north to keep a low profile amidst the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.There, Ted’s lawyer introduces him to eccentric private investigator Amanda Pharrell, herself a convicted murderer. Not entirely convinced Amanda is a cold-blooded killer, Ted agrees to help with her investigation, a case full of deception and obsession, while secretly digging into her troubled past. The residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair's every move... and the town offers no place to hide.

Threat Intelligence: The Shatterhand Code Part 1


Aiden L. Bailey - 2016
    THE STRIKE IS IMMINENT. THE ENEMY IS UNKNOWN…Striking from the shadows, cyberterrorists unleash the ultimate digital weapon. Known as ‘Shatterhand’, this insidious program seizes control of the world’s militaries, manipulates the media… and even impersonates the President of the United States. And former intelligence officer Simon Ashcroft may be the only man aware of the sudden global threat…Ashcroft’s investigation leads to Casey Irvine, an innocent tourist on safari in Kenya. The sinister Shatterhand program has targeted Casey for assassination. And the terrified woman has no idea why she is marked for death…Battling deadly terrorists, corrupt police, and even military forces, Ashcroft and Casey struggle to uncover the vast conspiracy. Can they survive long enough to expose the true enemy behind the Shatterhand Code?