It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.But if Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.

    It always has been so, but it's still just a building. It's your family - you and Adam and old Tiger - who animate it, keep the heart beating, so to speak.' In the abandoned railhead town of Tewinga, now almost a ghost town, Lyn and Adam Portman struggle to keep the Heartwood Hotel afloat. Lyn loves her husband and longs to be a mother. But she's kept busy caring for her elderly father, her community, and Max, the young worker who reminds her of the brother she's lost and dearly misses.When he fails to return from a day trip, Lyn's concern deepens as the length of his absence grows, the more so with rumours of criminal activity at a nearby station. Meanwhile, a chance meeting uncovers a family bombshell that leaves Lyn reeling. The community must pull together as never before, proving that sometimes the smallest towns have the biggest hearts - and hide the darkest secrets.From the bestselling author of Secrets of the Springs, this is the new outback mystery from Australia's authentic rural writer and beloved voice of the bush.

    Some of these people want to disappear; other times they meet with misadventure or murder.Missing You features some of Australia’s most disturbing missing persons cases and invites you to play armchair detective. With rare, privileged access to police around the country, and in moving interviews with the families of missing people, Missing You tells the intimate stories of Australia’s Missing, revealing clues that police hope will ultimately bring them home.In an insightful, mysterious, and often emotional journey, Missing You features more than 20 of this country’s most baffling cases, as well as stories of unidentified remains, abductions and suspected homicides.Here you’ll find the true, in-depth stories behind this country’s most worrying disappearances, with fresh insights into recent and historic cases. Missing You promises to be an investigative tool and a page-turning bestseller.

    But why does she still feel trapped. A gripping psychological drama by the author of Mothers and Daughters and Into My Arms.Charlie Johnson is 13 and in her first year of high school. She loves her family, netball and Liam, the cute guy who sits next to her in Science - but most of all she loves horses and horse-riding. Charlie's parents have leased her a horse, Tic Tac, from the local pony club, but one day they go out for a ride in the national park and only Tic Tac returns...Four months later, long after the police and the SES have called off the search, Charlie is found wandering injured and filthy, miles from where she was last seen. Her family rejoice in her return, but can anyone truly recover from what Charlie's been through? When a life has been shattered, how do you put the pieces back together?

    Their lives are shadowed by the infamous actions of her Granddad Les in his yellow weatherboard house, just over the fence.Although Les died twelve years ago, his notoriety has grown in Cub’s lifetime and the local community have ostracised the whole family. When Cub’s estranged aunt Helena and cousin Tilly move next door into the yellow house, the secrets the family want to keep buried begin to bubble to the surface. And having been kept in the dark about her grandfather’s crimes, Cub is now forced to come to terms with her family’s murky history.The Yellow House is a powerful novel about loyalty and betrayal; about the legacies of violence and the possibilities of redemption."Such energy and precision in the writing, not to mention originality." - Tegan Bennett Daylight

    Not after he hit his wife and ended up in gaol. A lifetime of careful parental love wiped out in a moment.But when retired teacher Vernon hears that Caleb is being regularly visited and savagely bashed by a local criminal as the police stand by, he knows he has to act. What has his life been as a father if he turns his back on his son in his hour of desperate need? He realises with shame that he has failed Caleb. But no longer.The father of the man bashing Caleb is head of a violent crime family. The town lives in fear of him but Vernon is determined to fix things in a civilised way, father to father. If he shows respect, he reasons, it will be reciprocated. But how wrong he is. And what hell has he brought down on his family?Reading like a morality tale Western but in a starkly beautiful Australian setting, Snake Island is a propulsive literary thriller written with great clarity and power. It will take you to the edge and keep you there long after the final page is turned.

    Did her beloved boy really stab her in the back? Over chocolate cake?! Or is there something even more disturbing going on? Help Lulu sort the dead herrings from the clues in the latest, stand-alone mystery from the best-selling author of The Agatha Christie Book Club and Ghostwriter Mystery series, C.A. Larmer.A quick, fun read with Aussie colloquialisms and some mild adult language.

    It’s a job for the second son, Ivan’s younger brother Johnny.But Johnny loves his wife Amy and their son Sasha. And she’s about to deliver her ultimatum: either the three of them escape this wave of killing or she’ll leave, taking Sasha.Torn between loyalty to his family and love for his wife, Johnny plans the heist of a lifetime and takes a huge risk. Is he prepared to pay the price? And what choice will Amy make?The Second Son is a brilliant action-packed crime debut that creates a world where honour is everything, violence is its own language, and love means breaking all the rules.

    But when Ana returns to look for it, the body is gone.Death Leaves the Station brings the cosy country-house intrigue of crime fiction's golden age to the Australian wheatbelt, and was written for fans of classic mystery and crime fiction.

    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 of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Not long ago, six young girls went missing in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legends of ‘the Hungry Man’ still haunt locals to this day. Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, father of missing student Jasmine and the town’s local dealer, instantly becomes prime suspect, but Detective Con Badenhorst knows that in a town this size – with corrupt cops, small-town politics, and a teenage YouTube sensation – anyone could be hiding something, and bluffing comes second nature.When a body is found, mauled, at the bottom of a cliff, suspicion turns to a wild animal – but that can’t explain why she, like all victims past and present, was discovered barefoot, with her shoes found nearby, laces neatly tied. What happened up there on the bluffs? Somebody knows… unless the local legends are true…

    But as each interview spirals with fevered intensity, Dana must reckon with her own traumatic past to reveal the shocking truth...

    She heard a voice, far below, calling her name. She tried to answer, but her throat was parched and no sound came. They had heard the stone, clattering down the cliff to the sea, and now they knew where she was.On a cliff-face in New Zealand, two men fall to their deaths carrying the secret of a horrifying betrayal. Four years before, the bright and beautiful Luce, another member of the same close-knit group of friends, had also died tragically while climbing. As the circle of friends dwindles, Luce's best friend, Anna, persuades Josh, Luce's ex-lover, to help in her own investigation, as she's convinced that the original verdict of accidental death was wrong. Had detail been overlooked, or, worse, ignored? In an attempt to uncover the truth, Josh and Anna follow Luce's last days to Lord Howe Island, but the long-cold trail and conspiratorial islanders seem certain to defeat them. After all, who could possibly have a reason to murder Luce?A nail-biting page-turner, Bright Air is the compelling new mystery from the master of crime writing, Barry Maitland.

    While backpacking, she is struck down by a tropical disease and suffers cardiac failure. But at the eleventh hour, Casey receives a life-saving heart transplant - and a rare second chance to begin again. Three years later, Casey has become a withdrawn shell of her former self: she is estranged from her loved ones, afraid of open spaces and rides the line between legitimate and criminal work. The worst of her troubles come in the form of violent night terrors; so frightening that she resorts to extreme measures to keep herself from sleeping. When she can take no more, she embarks on a desperate search for the source of her dreams. ​In so doing, she makes a shocking discovery surrounding the tragic fate of the donor whose heart now beats inside her chest. As she delves deeper into the mystery of her donor, she realizes her dreams are not a figment of her imagination, but a real life nightmare.

    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?

    Tasmania. The green, rolling hills of the dairy town Mole Creek have a dark underside -- a labyrinthine underworld of tunnels that stretch for countless miles, caverns the size of cathedrals and underground rivers that flood after heavy rain. The caves are dangerous places, forbidden to children. But this is Tasmania -- an island at the end of the earth. Here, rules are made to be broken.For two young brothers, a hidden cave a short walk from the family farm seems the perfect escape from their abusive, shell-shocked father -- until the older brother goes missing. Fearful of his father, nine-year-old Kip lies about what happened. It is a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Fifty years later, Kip -- now an award-winning scientist -- has a young son of his own, but cannot look at him without seeing his lost brother, Tommy. On a mission of atonement, he returns to the cave they called Kubla to discover if it's ever too late to set things right. To have a second chance. To be the father he never had.The Better Son is a richly imaginative and universal story about the danger of secrets, the beauty in forgiveness and the enthralling power of Tasmania's unique natural landscapes.