Book picks similar to
Something For Nothing by Andy Muir
crime
australian
australia
book-club-reads
Quota
Jock Serong - 2014
You know it, don't you? You're known throughout the state as a heartless old prick and a drunk, and seeing I've gone this far, your daughter-in-law's appointment to the court is widely viewed as a grubby political payoff. She's got about as much ability as you have...'CHARLIE JARDIM has just trashed his legal career in a spectacular courtroom meltdown, and his fiancee has finally left him. When an old friend slings him a prosecution brief that will take him to the remote coastal town of Dauphin, Charlie reluctantly agrees that the sea air might be good for him.The case is a murder. The victim was involved in the illegal abalone trade and the even more illegal drug trade. and the witnesses aren't talking.And as Dauphin closes ranks around him, Charlie is about to find his interest in the law powerfully reignited.
After She Wrote Him
Sulari Gentill - 2017
. .Madeleine d'Leon doesn't know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about. His charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel . . .Edward McGinnity can't get Madeleine out of his mind--softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic, and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book.But who is the author and who is the creation? And as the lines start to blur, who is affected when a killer finally takes flesh?After She Wrote Him is a wildly inventive twist on the murder mystery that takes readers on a journey filled with passion, obsession, and the emptiness left behind when the real world starts to fall away.
Small Mercies
Richard Anderson - 2020
Ruthie receives the news every woman dreads. Meanwhile, a wealthy landowner, Wally Oliver, appears on the local radio station, warning small farmers like Dimple and Ruthie that they are doomed, that the sooner they leave the land to large operators like him, the better. Bracing for a fight on all fronts, the couple decide to take a road trip to confront Oliver. Along the way, not only is their resolve tested, but their relationship as well.Desperate not to dwell on the past but to face up to the future, Dimple and Ruthie make a crucial decision they soon regret. And when the storm clouds finally roll in across the land they love, there’s more than the rain to contend with.Told with enormous heart, Small Mercies is a tender love story. It is a story of a couple who feel they must change to endure, and of the land that is as important as their presence on it.
The Ex Girlfriend
Nicola Moriarty - 2019
After everything she's been through, Georgia knows she deserves someone like him, to make her feel loved. Safe.The only problem is his ex-girlfriend. Luke says Cadence is having trouble accepting their break-up, but Georgia thinks there's more to the story. She also has the feeling someone is watching her.When everything starts to go wrong at work, at home, in her old friendships and her happy new relationship with Luke, Georgia starts to feel truly afraid.Cadence wants what she has. What would she do to get it?And can Georgia trust anyone at all?
Praise for Nicola Moriarty
'I devoured it' Marian Keyes
'Accelerates in intensity and sheer originality with every page' Australian Women's Weekly
'Dramatic, mysterious and compelling' Vogue
The North Wind
Bronwyn Parry - 2016
Her life is elsewhere, and the ties that have for decades bound her family to the struggling town and its old hotel may soon be broken.But the arrival of two strangers in town – Owen Caldwell and his grandfather – along with the hot, dry north wind herald a time of challenge and unexpected change.Owen has no idea why his grandfather has quietly insisted on this Christmas visit to Dungirri, a town he's never been to. But the old doctor has a final quest, and as long-held secrets come to light and Owen and Angie use their skills to assist those in need, they both must decide where they belong, and where their future is.
Barrenjoey Road
Neil Mercer - 2021
An idyllic beachside community. A series of abductions and rapes. So what happened to Trudie Adams?Back in the 1970s, Sydney's Northern Beaches felt like a slice of paradise to those lucky enough to live there. Bordered on one side by the glistening blue of the Pacific, and on the other by stunning rugged bushland, it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. No wonder the area was known as 'the Insular Peninsula'. So, when a popular local girl, 18-year-old Trudie Adams, disappeared one night while hitchhiking home from the surf club dance, her family, friends and community were devastated. It just seemed wrong that something so terrible could happen in a place so perfectly picturesque.But as police began to investigate, the dark underbelly of the peninsula was exposed. It was a place where surfers ran drugs home from Bali, teenagers hitchhiked everywhere due to a lack of public transport, predatory men prowled the streets, and countless young women were abducted and raped, crimes rarely reported or, if they were, rarely investigated.Inspired by the Walkley Award-shortlisted #1 podcast and acclaimed ABC TV series, and containing information never previously revealed, Barrenjoey Road is a compelling expose of why the disappearance of Trudie Adams was never solved. It takes us all the way to the top, from a criminal perpetrator with a lifelong record and links to organised crime who was never formally accused, to police corruption at the highest level.
Beyond Bad
Sandra Lee - 2002
Cruel and evil, Katherine Knight showed no mercy when she butchered her lover in a crime that put her behind bars in an Australian prison for a record life sentence.Swinging from a meat-hook, John Price's entire skin was in one piece, including his hair, face, ears, nose, mouth, and genitals. Slashes and stab holes tore through the human pelt, a testimony to the wounds he suffered before dying.Knight, a 44-year-old abattoir worker, had stabbed father-of-three John Price 37 times, skinned his body, cooked his head, and served him up as a meal for his children. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Beyond Bad tells what motivated Knight to commit such a heinous act and how it rocked the small town where she lived. This is a horrifying story of love, lust, revenge, and murder that is all the more shocking because it really happened.©2002 Sandra Lee; (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The River Mouth
Karen Herbert - 2021
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 matches the DNA found under Darren’s fingernails. When the investigation into her son’s murder is reopened, Sandra begins to question what she knew about her best friend. As she digs, she discovers that there are many secrets in her small town, and that her murdered son had secrets too.
Adam's Empire
Evan Green - 1986
Orphaned at age nine, at home under the stars, completely unschooled, Adam uses his fists and his wits to rise from poverty to prosperity. He befriends an aborigine, performs dangerous work in the opal mines, falls in love with a sensual half-caste, has a run-in with a murderous policeman, marries a cold and manipulative beauty and finally treks west to carve himself an empire. This striking first novel tells a colorful and entertaining story, vividly evoking a vigorous, multiethnic society and a beautiful, diverse, often dangerous land. Green is a journalist and the author of Alice to Nowhere. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library JournalNine-year old Adam is orphaned when his father is buried during an Australian desert sandstorm. A childhood of roaming the outback with his father's drilling partner instills in him a fierce determination to have a place of his own. In this fast-paced, gripping saga, the reader follows the hard-working Adam and his mates, Jimmy, the practical aboriginal, and Josef, the impetuous young German immigrant, from the opal mines to the desert. They feint with death in mine disasters, at the hands of Mailey, the revenge-seeking law officer, and in the ravages of flash floods. A more deadly threat for Adam is his beautiful, calculating, near-mad wife, but a seductive half-caste woman lends her own type of danger to all of the men. Essential for most fiction collections. Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P.L., Col.
Sweet Damage
Rebecca James - 2013
In my dreams it's as if the house itself has sinister intentions. But in real life it wasn't the house that was responsible for what happened. It was the people who did the damage ...' When Tim Ellison finds a cheap room to rent in the perfect location in Sydney it looks like a huge stroke of luck. In fact the room comes with a condition, and the owner of the house, the mysterious Anna London, is unfriendly and withdrawn. When strange and terrifying things start happening in the house at night, Tim wonders if taking the room is a mistake. But then his feelings for Anna start to change, and when her past comes back with a vengeance, Tim is caught right in the middle of it.A thrilling rollercoaster of a story - read it with the lights on!
Man in the Corner
Nathan Besser - 2016
But the following night David collapses from a rare brain disease and within a few months his world is turned upside down.It was a perfectly acceptable life – successful business, happy marriage, two children. Why then has David involved himself in an identity-theft crime worth millions of dollars? Why is he taking instructions from the oddly eloquent, handsome criminal, Ben Strbic? David can't quite understand the sequence of events that has led him here, only that he must continue to the very end.As the days and months progress, a scam that was meant to be straightforward becomes a perilous mystery unfolding in David's very own life.
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
Dominic Smith - 2016
In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, he deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth.In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain--a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present.
The Cedar Cutter
Tea Cooper - 2016
When Roisin Ogilvie moves to Wollombi her thoughts are only of protecting her illegitimate son, Ruan, from the grasps of his powerful and dangerous father. Posing as an impoverished widow, she settles into a quiet existence as a local dressmaker. She doesn’t expect to catch the attention of Irish champion cedar cutter Carrick O’Connor, or any other man for that matter.Carrick O’Connor may have won the coveted Wollombi Wood Chop, but his mind is on the beautiful seamstress and her son. Or rather, on who they remind him of. Determined to exact revenge for the horrors of his past, Carrick plans to return to Ireland to seek revenge on the land agent who was responsible for the death of his wife and child, and his transportation. Then, hopefully, he can return to Wollombi to start life afresh.But a murder charge, a kidnapping, a growing attraction, and a past that refuses to stay silent will turn both his and Roisin’s lives upside down and will lead them to a hard choice. Redemption? Or cutters’ justice?
Fracture
Heleyne Hammersley - 2016
She's horrified to see a body on the beach. However the 'body' is the very much alive and enigmatic Alfie. The two women become friends and spend time together in Sydney where Alfie's wild nature becomes apparent. When Alfie is attacked the situation takes a turn for the worse and they decide to leave the city.It's a road trip that ends in murder...Who is Alfie? What is Rosie hiding?Detective Sergeant Pete Norton wants answers to these questions.What he will discover is that this case is a killer.
To The Sea
Christine Dibley - 2016
Surrounded by family and calm waters, seventeen-year-old Zoe Kennett has inexplicably vanished.Four storytellers share their version of what has led to this moment, weaving tales which span centuries and continents. But Tony needs facts, not fiction: how will such fables lead him to Zoe and to the truth?As Tony's investigation deepens, he is drawn into a world where myth and history blur, and where women who risk all for love must pay the price through every generation.