The Mother


Jane Caro - 2022
    She was thrilled when her younger daughter Ally married her true love, but as time goes by Miriam wonders whether all is well with Ally, as she moves to the country and gradually withdraws, finding excuses every time Miriam offers to visit. Their relationship has always had its ups and downs, and Miriam tries to give her daughter the distance she so clearly wants. But is all as it seems?When the truth of her daughter's situation is revealed, Miriam watches in disbelief as Ally and her children find themselves increasingly vulnerable and cut off from the world. As the situation escalates and the law proves incapable of protecting them, Miriam is faced with an unthinkable decision. But she will do anything for the people she loves most in the world. Wouldn't you?A stunning, gripping novel that goes to the heart of a mother's love and asks what any of us might do when faced with a threat to the people we hold most dear.

The Perfect Family


Jacquie Underdown - 2019
    and an astonishing murder plot.Outwardly, The Radcliffes are a typical suburban family. But anyone close enough to them will know that it’s all for show.Matt and Nikki’s life is perfect. They’re happily married, work great jobs, and are raising two loveable teenage sons.Anthony and Belinda have it all—the looks, the big house by the water, and a successful business.Vaughn and Paige couldn’t be more in love, and they can’t wait to start a family of their own.But underneath, each couple is in crisis and there is one cause. Out of options and their backs against the wall, they discover that murder isn’t a tool reserved only for criminals.

One Boy Missing


Stephen Orr - 2014
    He didn't really know whether he'd seen anything at all, though. Maybe an abduction? Maybe just a stressed-out father.Detective Bart Moy, newly returned to the country town where his ailing, cantankerous father still lives, finds nothing. As far as he can tell no one in Guilderton is missing a small boy. Still, he looks deeper into the butcher's story — after all, he had a son of his own once.But when the boy does turn up, silent, apparently traumatised, things are no clearer. Who is he? Where did he come from and what happened to him?For Moy, gaining the boy's trust becomes central not just to the case but to rebuilding his own life. From the wreckage of his grief, his dead marriage and his fractured relationship with his father may yet come a chance for something new.A mystery, a meditation on fatherhood, a harrowing examination of love and loss: a new departure in literary crime from Stephen Orr.

The Sinner


Petra Hammesfahr - 1999
    Why? What would cause this quiet, kind young mother to stab a complete stranger in the throat over and over again, in full view of her family and friends? For the local police, it's an open-and-shut case. Cora quickly confesses and there's no shortage of witnesses, but those questions remain unanswered. Haunted by the case, the police commissioner refuses to close the file and begins his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. A dark, spellbinding novel, where the truth is to be questioned at every turn, The Sinner has been a bestseller around the world, and is poised to be a summer smash with the coming TV adaptation, already hailed as one of the most anticipated shows of the summer."The Sinner is unnerving and weird and guaranteed to stick with you weeks later." -Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives and Women Crime Writers"Hauntingly insightful and sensitive." -The Guardian

Quiet in Her Bones


Nalini Singh - 2021
     My mother vanished ten years ago. So did a quarter of a million dollars in cash. Thief. Bitch. Criminal. Now, she's back. Her bones clothed in scarlet silk. When socialite Nina Rai disappeared without a trace, everyone wrote it off as another trophy wife tired of her wealthy husband. But now her bones have turned up in the shadowed green of the forest that surrounds her elite neighborhood, a haven of privilege and secrets that's housed the same influential families for decades.The rich live here, along with those whose job it is to make their lives easier. And somebody knows what happened to Nina one rainy night ten years ago. Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream that night, and he's determined to uncover the ugly truth that lives beneath the moneyed elegance...but no one is ready for the murderous secrets about to crawl out of the dark.Even the dead aren't allowed to break the rules in this cul-de-sac.

The Cartographer


Peter Twohig - 2012
    An 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder as he spies through the window of a strange house. God, whom he no longer counts as a friend, obviously has a pretty screwed-up sense of humour: just one year before, the boy had looked on helplessly as his twin brother, Tom, suffered a violent death. Now, having been seen by the angry murderer, he is a kid on the run. With only a shady grandfather, a professional standover man and an incongruous local couple as adult mentors, he takes refuge in the dark drains and grimy tunnels beneath the city, transforming himself into a series of superheroes and creating a rather unreliable map to plot out places where he is unlikely to cross paths with the bogeyman.

The Greater Good


Tim Ayliffe - 2018
    Like Michael Connelly’s Bosch, John Bailey will risk everything to get to the truth – and expose a deadly enemy. There’s nothing more dangerous than a man who can fall no further  … ‘Ayliffe delivers a taut, nail-biting page-turner, stamping his mark on the modern day Australian thriller.’ Better ReadingHe had never killed anyone who hadn’t deserved it. The means always justified the end. He didn’t need forgiveness. He needed justification. The greater good. Battered war correspondent John Bailey is a man living on the edge. He’s haunted by nightmares of being kidnapped and tortured in Iraq and he’s drinking too much to drown the memories. As he battles to get his life back together, a story breaks that will force him back into the spotlight – and into the crosshairs of a deadly international player. When a beautiful prostitute is found murdered in her luxury apartment, Bailey is ordered to cover the story by The Journal’s editor and his old friend, Gerald Summers, because he can’t trust anyone else. One of the victim’s clients, a key advisor to the Defence Minister, is chief suspect in her murder and he’s on the run. When he contacts Bailey, claiming to have information that will bring down the government, the stakes become deadly. To complicate matters, the investigating police detective is the woman Bailey walked out on a decade ago. When a ruthless CIA fixer turns up, followed by a murderous Chinese agent hot on his trail, Bailey realises he has stumbled onto the story of a lifetime – one that he may not live to tell. The brilliant first book in Tim Ayliffe's bestselling John Bailey series. Bailey's adventures in The Greater Good, State of Fear and The Enemy Within will be adapted for the screen by CJZ Productions, Australia's largest independently owned production company.Praise for The Greater Good ‘A brilliantly written character starring in cracking crime thriller’ Herald Sun ‘A fun and exhilarating political crime thriller that is guaranteed to electrify and entertain in good measure.’? The Unseen Library    ‘Readers will not fail to enjoy the ride from start to finish.’ Good Reading   ‘A crime thriller with the lot: murder, deceit, corruption and a hint of romance … Ayliffe takes you deep inside the worlds of politics and the media, with a heavy dose of international intrigue thrown in.’ Michael Rowland   Ayliffe delivers a taut, nail-biting page-turner, stamping his mark on the modern day Australian thriller.’ Better Reading ‘If Rake were a journalist, with a talent that equals his capacity to survive being beaten up, Bailey would be him.’ Julia Baird ‘An absolute cracker of a thriller.’ Chris UhlmannPraise for State of Fear ‘Another brilliantly crafted thriller from Ayliffe that fits perfectly in today’s worrying world … Verdict: Get this guy on TV’  Herald Sun Praise for Enemy Within  ‘A breathlessly written book, ripped from today’s headlines, this is a cracking read that blurs the line between fact and fiction. More please.’ Michael Robotham 'A cracking yarn told at breakneck speed. I couldn't put it down.' Chris Hammer ‘Sharp, gritty, sophisticated. Ayliffe’s criminal world is terrifyingly real.’ Candice Fox

Parting Words


Cass Moriarty - 2017
    Who are these people and what was their significance to Daniel?  For his eldest son, Richard, there are hidden motives for his impatience to settle the will. His sister Evonne is still hurting from decades of her parents' disapproval. The youngest sibling, Kelly, believes she knew her father best.  As Daniel's children carry out his last wishes, each of them must confront their entrenched ideas about their father, and reconsider their own lives. What they discover is beyond anything they imagined.

The Dead Beat


Doug Johnstone - 2014
    It's the first day of her new job as intern at Edinburgh'sThe Standard. But all's not well at the ailing newspaper, and Martha is carrying some serious baggage of her own.Put straight onto the obituary page, she takes a call from a former employee who seems to commit suicide while on the phone, something which echoes with her own troubled past.Setting in motion a frantic race around modern-day Edinburgh,The Dead Beat traces Martha's desperate search for answers to the dark mystery of her parents' past. Soundtracked by and interspersed with a series of gigs from the alternative music scene of her parents' generation in the early '90s, Doug Johnstone's latest page-turner is a wild ride of a thriller, and a perfect follow-on to his #1 Kindle bestseller, Hit & Run.

Before She Disappeared


Lisa Gardner - 2021
    But she spends her life doing what no one else will--searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking.A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own--and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

The Boy in the Photo


Nicole Trope - 2019
    A prickling sensation crawls up her arms, her heart rate speeds up. ‘Found who?’ she asks, slowly, carefully, deliberately. ‘They found Daniel.’ Six years ago Megan waits at the school gates for her six-year-old son, Daniel. As children come and go, the playground emptying, panic bubbles inside her. Daniel is nowhere to be found. According to his teacher, Daniel’s father, Greg, has picked up his son. Except Greg and Megan are no longer together. After years of being controlled by her cruel husband, Megan has finally found the courage to divorce him. Hands trembling, she dials his number, but the line is dead. Six years later Megan is feeding baby daughter, Evie, when she gets the call she has dreamt about for years. Daniel has walked into a police station in a remote town just a few miles away. Her son is alive – and he’s coming home. But their joyful family reunion does not go to plan. His room may have been frozen in time, with his Cookie Monster poster and stack of Lego under the bed, but Daniel is no longer the sweet little boy Megan remembers. Cold and distant, Daniel is grieving the death of his father, blaming Megan for his loss and rejecting his family. And as Megan struggles to connect with the son she no longer recognises as her own, she begins to realise that Daniel has a secret. A secret that could destroy their family and put them in terrible danger. A heartbreaking, emotional drama about a family in turmoil, with a jaw-dropping twist that will blow you away. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty and Lisa Wingate – this moving and poignant novel is for you.

Good Money


J.M. Green - 2015
    A young African boy, the son of one of her clients, has been murdered in a dingy back alley. Stella, in her forties and running low on empathy, heads into the night to comfort the grieving mother. But when she gets there, she makes a discovery that has the potential to uncover something terrible from her past — something she thought she'd gotten away with.Then Stella's neighbour Tania mysteriously vanishes. When Stella learns that Tania is the heir to a billion-dollar mining empire, Stella realises her glamorous young friend might have had more up her sleeve than just a perfectly toned arm. Who is behind her disappearance?Enlisting the help of her friend, Senior Constable Phuong Nguyen, Stella's investigation draws her further and further into a dark world of drug dealers, sociopaths, and killers, such as the enigmatic Mr Funsail, whose name makes even hardened criminals run for cover.One thing is clear: Stella needs to find answers fast — before the people she's looking for find her instead.Set in the bustling, multicultural innerwest of Melbourne, Good Money reveals a daring and exciting new voice in Australian crime fiction.

Safe Harbour


Helene Young - 2014
    Having saved his life, can she now rescue him from his dark past? Or will that endanger all she holds most dear? Noah, keeper of the peace and guardian of the Banksia Cove secrets, can’t tell Darcy the real reason this stranger has washed up on their shores. If she understood the links between him and her own dysfunctional family, he’d lose her love for good. As they take refuge in an old whaling station for the night, only one thing is certain – by morning, no one will be the same again. Lies will surface. Hearts will break, and not all will find safe harbour. A heart-stopping novel of high drama and desire by Australia’s award-winning master of romantic suspense.

Not a Sound


Heather Gudenkauf - 2017
    Now, two years later and with the help of her hearing dog, Stitch, she is finally getting back on her feet. But when she discovers the body of a fellow nurse in the dense bush by the river, deep in the woods near her cabin, she is plunged into a disturbing mystery that could shatter the carefully reconstructed pieces of her life all over again.As clues begin to surface, Amelia finds herself swept into an investigation that hits all too close to home. But how much is she willing to risk in order to uncover the truth and bring a killer to justice?

Thick as Thieves


Sandra Brown - 2020
    But by daybreak, their plan had been shot to hell. One of them was in the hospital. One was in jail. One was dead. And one got away with it.Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago -- presumably with the money, after murdering his accomplice -- has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake, and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know, two of her father's co-conspirators -- a war hero and a corrupt district attorney -- are watching her every move.Ledge Burnet, a rebellious teen at the time of the heist, evaded his jail sentence by enlisting in the army. Now he's back in town to care for his ailing father -- and to keep his eye on the county's corrupt district attorney, whom he suspects was the real murderer. Although the two are bound to silence because of the crime they committed together, each has spent years waiting and hoping that the other will make a fatal misstep. But the arrival of their elusive accomplice's daughter, Arden, who may know more about the missing money than she's telling, sets them both on red alert. She ignites Ledge's determination to expose the D.A.'s treachery . . . and sparks a desire he wishes to deny.