Book picks similar to
The River Mouth by Karen Herbert


australian
crime
australian-author
australia

Dead Letters


Michael Brissenden - 2021
    Politician Dan LeRoi, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, has been shot. Four bullets to the head. The crime scene is chaotic. Homicide. Counter Terrorism. Media. And for Sid, hunting the killer is going to get complicated.Journalist Zephyr Wilde is complicated. She's tenacious and she's got Sid's number. Sid knows the gossip: how Zephyr's mother was murdered when Zephyr was a kid. He doesn't know that Zephyr is still getting letters from her long-dead mother. But when he learns that Dan LeRoi was helping Zephyr look into her mother's death, he realises that lines are going to be crossed. A cop should not be talking to a journalist.As they both ask too many questions, Sid and Zephyr stir up a hornet's nest of corruption. Knowing who to trust is going to mean the difference between solving a crime and being a victim. The question is, which side will they end up on.

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.

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 Currency Lass


Tea Cooper - 2017
    What she doesn't understand is why her father is trying to push her into a marriage to the pompous and repulsive Sydney businessman Henry W. Bartholomew.When the will is read it becomes clear money, or the lack of it, lay behind her father's plans. Catherine is mortified — as a married woman all her possessions will pass to her husband, the overbearing Bartholomew. Her only alternative is to wait until her twenty-first birthday and inherit the property in her own right, but can she elude such a determined man until then?A chance encounter with a travelling circus and its fiery lead performer, Sergey Petrov, offers the perfect solution and Catherine escapes to the goldfields. But there is more to the circus than spangles and sawdust and Catherine finds herself drawn into a far-reaching web of fraud and forgery...A stunning new novel from the bestselling author of The Horse Thief and The Cedar Cutter

Sticks and Stones


Katherine Firkin - 2020
    He just had to pretend.'It's winter in Melbourne and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk.So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he's convinced this is the big case he's been waiting for - the woman's husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched.But things aren't all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.Just as the net seems to be tightening, the investigation is turned on its head. The body of a woman is found . . . then another.What had seemed like a standard missing person's case has turned into a frightening hunt for a serial killer, and time is running out.But to really understand these shocking crimes, Emmett and his team will need to delve back through decades of neglect - back to a squalid inner-city flat, where a young boy is left huddling over his mother's body . . .

Out of the Silence


Wendy James - 2005
    And we come together – right there in the darkness. And even though there is no way to be certain of any other thing in the world, I am certain that I would risk anything to keep what is between the two of us. For love, I would risk anything, lose everything.Out of the Silence is a stunning debut novel about three Australian women from very different worlds: Maggie Heffernan, a spirited working-class country girl; Elizabeth Hamilton, whose own disappointment in love has served only to strengthen her humanity; and Vida Goldstein, a charismatic suffragist from Melbourne and the first woman to stand for Parliament in Australia.When Maggie’s life descends into darkness after a terrible betrayal, the three women’s lives collide. Around this tragedy Wendy James has constructed a masterfully drawn and gripping fiction. Based on a true story, it unfolds at the dawn of the twentieth century against the compelling backdrop of the women’s suffrage movement and a world on the brink of enormous change.The novel powerfully evokes the plight of women in the early 1900s – not least their limited options, whatever their class and education. However, at its heart this is a story of love – of love gone wrong; of its compromises and disappointments; but ultimately of its extraordinary transformative power.WINNER OF THE BEST FIRST AUSTRALIAN CRIME NOVEL, NED KELLY CRIME AWARDS 2006SHORTLISTED FOR THE DOBBIE LITERARY AWARD 2006 FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL BY A FEMALE AUTHOR

Confessions of a Once Fashionable Mum


Georgia Madden - 2015
    Facebook-worthy baby? Tick. Bikini-body six weeks after giving birth? Um … not so much.Fashion PR exec Ally Bloom got her happy ending. Okay, her marriage might be showing the odd crack, her battleaxe mother-in-law might have come to stay, and she might not be the yummy mummy she'd imagined, but it's nothing a decent night's sleep and a firm commitment to a no-carb diet won't fix.But when Ally returns to work and finds she'll be reporting to a 22-year-old airhead, she decides to turn her back on life as a professional fashionista and embrace her inner earth mama instead.So it's out with the Louboutins and champagne and in with the sensible flats and coffee mornings with the Mummy Mafia. From attending her first grown-up dinner party only to discover that placenta is top of the menu to controlling her monster crush on local playgroup hottie Cameron, Ally must find her feet in the brave new world of the stay-at-home mum.

Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club


Julian Leatherdale - 2020
    It's not some bloody game.'In the murky world of Kings Cross in 1932, aspiring crime writer Joan Linderman and her friend and flatmate Bernice Becker live the wild bohemian life, a carnival of parties and fancy-dress artists' balls.One Saturday night, Joan is thrown headfirst into a real crime when she finds Ellie, her neighbour, murdered. To prove her worth as a crime writer and bring Ellie's killer to justice, Joan secretly investigates the case in the footsteps of Sergeant Lillian Armfield.But as Joan digs deeper, her list of suspects grows from the luxury apartment blocks of Sydney's rich to the brothels and nightclubs of the Cross's underclass.Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club is a riveting noir crime thriller with more surprises than even novelist Joan bargained for: blackmail, kidnapping, drug-peddling, a pagan sex cult, undercover cops, and a shocking confession.

Death Leaves the Station


Alexander Thorpe - 2020
    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.

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.

Cruelty's Daughter


Anna Willett - 2018
     Mina is struggling to come to terms with her past. Having led a reclusive life, shunning human contact, she decides to take on a local college course to help get her life back on track. However, when a young girl who tries to befriend her is abducted by a serial killer, Mina feels responsible. She refused to wait with the girl for her mother to pick her up. And she shrugged off the youngster’s fears. Now Mina cannot rest until she finds out what happened. But as she probes into the events of that evening, her own nightmares start to return. She has put herself in danger, one that leads to an increasingly tense standoff with a cruel and vicious man who will stop at nothing. Can she find the strength to stand up to her demons, past and present? And will she do so, even if it means risking everything?

The Governor's House


J.H. Fletcher - 2015
    From convict, bushranger and accused pirate, Cat transforms herself into an entrepreneur and pillar of colonial Tasmanian society. But how is she connected to a missing ship? And could she be involved in the disappearance of a priceless treasure that, one hundred and three years after her death, will be claimed not only by a foreign government but by unscrupulous men determined to use it for their own ends?Joanne, dean of history at the university and Cat’s descendant, is assigned the task of locating the missing artefact. Joanne believes the key may lie in a coded notebook she has inherited along with Cat’s other mysteries. But will she be able to decipher the message and put a century-old secret to rest? And will she survive to join her true love in the Governor’s House – a house that has come to mean as much to her as it did to her long-dead ancestor?

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.

Missing William Tyrrell


Caroline Overington - 2020
    How can a three year old child simply disappear?On Friday 12 September 2014, William Tyrrell - a playful three-year-old boy dressed in a fire-engine red Spider-Man suit - disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. It's assumed he's lost in the nearby bushland, but despite an intensive search, he's not found, and police start to suspect he's been abducted. No trace of William - not a shoe, not a hair - has ever been found, but now is not the time to surrender. How can a little boy just vanish? We have to find him.From best-selling author and Walkley Award-winning journalist, Caroline Overington, Missing William Tyrrell is a moving and compelling exploration of one of Australia's most baffling and heartbreaking mysteries.

An Isolated Incident


Emily Maguire - 2016
    But as the days tick by with no arrest, Chris's suspicion of those around her grows.