Sweet Jimmy


Bryan Brown - 2021
    More please.' - Michael Robotham'My friend Bryan Brown, quite apart from his other manifold talents, turns out to be an excellent writer. An authentic voice; highly imaginative yet completely believable, with a flair for fully realised characters and a gripping narrative … a great story teller. This is utterly baffling. I'm furious.' - Sam NeillIt was a gentle knock. Agnes had been waiting for it. Hoping he would be on time. Such a lovely fella, she thought...'Come on through. Got a surprise for you,' she said.He had one for her too.Phil and Sweet Jimmy are cousins. Phil grows orchids . . . spider orchids . . . learnt about them in the nick. Jimmy likes orchids, too, but there are other things he likes even more . . .Trish Bennett didn't like her life. Hadn't liked it for a long time. Been on the streets. Bit of this for a bit of that. The 'that' wasn't always nice. Then Ahmed found her.Sam is a tea-leaf, a thief. Likes nickin. . . anything . . . always has . . . until the day he knocked off more than the Volvo.Fell for the sexy and beautiful Sue May from Hong Kong, Frank Testy did. Silly old prick. What price for ego? A huge bloody price it turns out.Taut and crackling with character, these gritty, raw and sometimes very funny stories from Australian great Bryan Brown are Aussie Noir at its best. Crime doesn't discriminate . . . it can happen to anyone . . . it could happen to you . . . in any ordinary suburb . . . at any time.

Beams Falling


P.M. Newton - 2014
    Stitched up after being shot, her brain's taking even longer to heal than her body. On the outside, though, she's perfect, at least as far as the top brass are concerned. Cabramatta is riding high on the new 'Asian crime wave', a nightmare of heroin, home invasions, and hits of all kinds, and the cops need a way into the world of teenaged dealers and assassins.They think Ned's Vietnamese heritage is the right fit but nothing in Cabra can be taken at face value. Ned doesn't speak the language and the ra choi – the lawless kids who have 'gone out to play' – are just running rings around her. The next blow could come from anywhere, or anyone. And beyond the headlines and hysteria, Ned is itching to make a play for the kingpin, the person behind it all with the money and the plan and the power.Beams Falling is the brilliantly compelling and gritty second novel by the rising star of Australian crime writing. A portrait of our recent past, it's also a compulsive and utterly authentic insight into the way both cops and criminals work.

Man at the Window


Robert Jeffreys - 2018
    A lazy and usually drunk detective is sent to write up the report. Cardilini unexpectedly does not cooperate, as he becomes riled by the privileged arrogance of those at the school. He used to have instincts. Perhaps he should follow them now…With no real evidence he declares the shooting a murder and puts himself on a collision course with the powerful and elite of Perth. As he peels back layers, the school’s dark secrets being to emerge. But is his dogged pursuit of justice helpful or harmful to those most affected by the man’s death?Man at the Window is the first in the Detective Cardilini series, set in 1960s Western Australia.

The Windy Season


Sam Carmody - 2016
    There's no trace at all of Elliot, there hasn't been for some weeks and Paul, his younger brother, is the only one who seems to be active in the search. Taking Elliot's place on their antagonistic cousin's boat, Paul soon learns how many opportunities there are to get lost in those many thousands of kilometres of lonely coastline.Fierce, evocative and memorable, this is an Australian story set within an often wild and unforgiving sea, where mysterious influences are brought to bear on the inhospitable town and its residents. Sam Carmody is a real literary talent, with an artist's inquiring mind and a natural feel for the beauty and toughness of language. Charlotte Wood, author of the award-winning The Natural Way of Things

A Few Right Thinking Men


Sulari Gentill - 2010
    In Australia's 1930s the Sinclair name is respectable and influential, yet Rowland has a talent for scandal.Even with thousands of unemployed lining the streets, Rowland's sheltered world is one of exorbitant wealth, culture and impeccable tailoring. He relies on the Sinclair fortune to indulge his artistic passions and friends ... a poet, a painter and a brazen sculptress.Mounting tensions fuelled by the Great Depression take Australia to the brink of revolution.

The One Who Got Away


Caroline Overington - 2016
    The not-to-be-missed new psychological thriller from Caroline Overington.We all keep secrets. Some are deadly. Loren Wynne-Estes appears to have it all: she's the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who's landed a handsome husband, a stunning home, a fleet of shiny cars and two beautiful daughters ... Then one day a fellow parent taps Loren on the shoulder outside the grand school gate, hands her a note ... and suddenly everything's at stake. Loren's Facebook-perfect marriage is spectacularly exposed - revealing an underbelly of lies and betrayal. What is uncovered will scandalise a small town, destroy lives and leave a family divided. But who is to be believed and who is to blame? Will the right person be brought to justice or is there one who got away? An unsettling psychological thriller for fans of Girl on a Train and Gone Girl.

Trust Me When I Lie


Benjamin Stevenson - 2018
    So says Curtis Wade, the subject of Jack’s new true crime docuseries, convicted of a young woman’s murder four years prior. In the eyes of Jack’s viewers, flimsy evidence and police bias influenced the final verdict…even though, off screen, Jack himself has his doubts.But when the series finale is wildly successful, a retrial sees Curtis walk free. And then another victim turns up dead.To set things right, Jack goes back to the sleepy vineyard town where it all began, bent on discovering what really happened. Because behind the many stories he tells, the truth is Jack’s last chance. He may have sprung a killer from jail, but he’s also the one that can send him back.NOTE: This was first published in Australia with the title Greenlight, reissued UK: She Lies in the Vines, US: Trust Me When I Lie.

Medea's Curse


Anne Buist - 2015
    Women with a history of abuse, mainly. She rides a Ducati a size too big and wears a tank top a size too small. Likes men but doesn’t want to keep one. And really needs to stay on her medication.Now she’s being stalked. Anonymous notes, threats, strangers loitering outside her house.A hostile former patient? Or someone connected with a current case? Georgia Latimer — charged with killing her three children. Travis Hardy — deadbeat father of another murdered child, with a second daughter now missing. Maybe the harrassment has something to do with Crown Prosecutor Liam O’Shea — drop-dead sexy, married and trouble in all kinds of ways.Natalie doesn’t know. Question is, will she find out before it’s too late?Anne Buist, herself a leading perinatal psychiatrist, has created an edge-of-the-seat mystery with a hot new heroine — backed up by a lifetime of experience with troubled minds.

Cutters End


Margaret Hickey - 2021
    A mysterious death on New Year’s Eve 1989 leads to a shocking murder investigation 32 years later...A desert highway. A remote town. A murder that won’t stay hidden.New Year’s Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End.July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people - including a high-profile celebrity - are convinced it was murder.When Mark’s interviews with the witnesses in the old case files go nowhere, he has no choice but to make the long journey up the highway to Cutters End.And with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that hangs over the town...

Beautiful Malice


Rebecca James - 2010
    To erase her past, Katherine has moved to a new city, enrolled in a new school, and even changed her name. She’s done the next best thing to disappearing altogether. Now, wary and alone, she seeks nothing more than anonymity. What she finds instead is the last thing she expected: a friend.Even more unlikely, Katherine’s new friend is the most popular and magnetic girl in school. Extroverted, gorgeous, flirtatious, and unpredictable, she is everything that Katherine is not and doesn’t want to be: the center of attention. Yet Alice’s enthusiasm is infectious, her candor sometimes unsettling, and Katherine, in spite of her guarded caution, finds herself drawn into Alice’s private circle. But Alice has secrets, too—darker than anyone can begin to imagine. And when she lets her guard down at last, Katherine discovers the darkest of them all. For there will be no escaping the past for Katherine Patterson—only a descent into a trap far more sinister . . . and infinitely more seductive.

The Night Whistler


Greg Woodland - 2020
    Hal and his little brother, newly arrived in Moorabool with their parents, are exploring the creek near their new home when they find the body of a dog.Not just dead, but recently killed.Not just killed, but mutilated.Constable Mick Goodenough, recently demoted from his city job as a detective, is also new in town—and one of his dogs has gone missing. He’s experienced enough to know what it means when someone tortures an animal to death: it means they’re practising. So when Hal’s mother starts getting anonymous calls—a man whistling, then hanging up—Goodenough, alone among the Moorabool cops, takes her seriously.The question is: will that be enough to keep her safe?Nostalgic yet clear-eyed, simmering with small-town menace, Greg Woodland’s wildly impressive debut populates the rural Australia of the 1960s with memorable characters and almost unbearable tension.

Bruny


Heather Rose - 2019
    Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia's newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.Bruny is a searing, subversive, brilliant novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order.

Second Sight


Aoife Clifford - 2018
    A runaway in the past.Eliza Carmody returns home to the country to work on the biggest law case of her career. The only problem is this time she’s on the ‘wrong side’ – defending a large corporation against a bushfire class action by her hometown of Kinsale.On her first day back Eliza witnesses an old friend, Luke Tyrell, commit an act of lethal violence. As the police investigate that crime and hunt for Luke they uncover bones at The Castle, a historic homestead in the district. Eliza is convinced that they belong to someone from her past.As Eliza becomes more and more entangled in the investigation, she is pulled back into her memories of youthful friendships and begins to question everyone she knows … and everything she once thought was true.

Bluebottle


Belinda Castles - 2018
    But darkness is found both in the iconic setting as well as in the disturbing behaviour of one of the family.As he tilted the blinds she saw her mother in her tennis whites, standing at the kitchen bench, staring out into the dark bushland that bordered their houses. That was what Tricia did these days, looked into the bush as though it would attack one of them.On a sweltering day in a cliff-top beach shack, Jack and Lou Bright grow suspicious about the behaviour of their charismatic, unpredictable father, Charlie. A girl they know has disappeared, and as the day unfolds, Jack's eruptions of panic, Lou's sultry rebellions and their little sister Phoebe's attention-seeking push the family towards revelation.Twenty years later, the Bright children have remained close to the cliff edges, russet sand and moody ocean of their childhood. Behind the beautiful surfaces of their daily lives lies the difficult landscape of their past, always threatening to break through. And then, one night in late summer, they return to the house on the cliff...Gripping and evocative, Bluebottle is a story of a family bound by an inescapable past, from the award-winning author of The River Baptists and Hannah and Emil.

Alice to Nowhere


Evan Green - 1984
    Two vicious murderers, fleeing Alice Springs, hide on a battered truck carrying mail, food and supplies on its fortnightly journey to remote cattle stations.