2003

Tensions between elements of the Indonesian military spill over into a hair-raising plot against Australia. Lots of the action takes place after an Australian passenger plane is shot down in the Indonesian jungle.

Gemma Lincoln is trying to discover who has been raping and murdering girls from Kings Cross. Her own business is being sabotaged and her boyfriend is getting up close and personal with a beautiful woman. Gemma struggles to pull her life together in increasingly sinister circumstances.

Do you believe in love? Do you trust your partner?

Nick Souter did, with good reason - he and Anne had something special. He didn't make a habit of going through her pockets but what's a man supposed to do when he's got a rotten cold and a wife who helps herself to his handkerchiefs? You can't blow your nose on an adulterous love note but it certainly took Nick's mind off his sniffles.

A world-famous and wealthy Australian film director, Roderick Lily, lingers on through the unfashionable off-season in beautiful Amalfi near Capri. He has become melancholic. He has left a disquieting mystery behind him in the Gold Coast Studios because he has left his greatest and his final film incomplete. Lily, uncharacteristically, sells an exclusive interview to an illustrated gossip magazine in London for a huge fee. What are his motives? There are scandalous rumours about the bizarre death of his wife on a fashionable Sydney beach decades ago.

The contentious relatives living on the remote Forst sheep station are united against an interloper from Sydney who was hired to nurse old Mrs. Forst in her last illness. Now the heir, Gregory Forst, has become engaged to marry her and the others fear that they will be turned out of the valley. A bushfire rages, threatening all of their homesteads. And then, the charred body of a swagman is found. How did he die? Could he have been murdered? By the outsider, the nurse?

Who, really, is Linda Condrick?

When her father is arrested for murder, Samantha Bretton takes over as skipper of his fishing trawler, the Sea Mistress, determined to clear his name. Brisbane cop Chayse Jarrett, guilt-ridden by the death of a young woman on his last assignment, goes undercover on the vessel, and soon realises that Samantha is hiding something.

Secrets that could implicate her father in more than murder.

Secrets that Chayse becomes reluctant to uncover.

Meet Sam Chauvel, private investigator. He's tough. He's perceptive. He's sometimes easily confused.

Mickey Franklin was funny and clever and dangerous. Not anymore, now that a mysterious and beautiful sculptor named Sarah Longmore is accused of shooting him five times.

Jack Irish - gambler, cook and cabinet-maker, finder of people who don't want to be found - gets the job of hunting for clues that might save her.

Scarecrow is Matthew Reilly's fifth novel. It once again throws Captain Shane M Schofield into the spotlight as he is hunted relentlessly by enemy unknown. The why and the how has yet to be revealed, but when a man like Schofield has a price on his head, you know he will do anything within his power to make sure that the head-hunters don't make off with their prize: His Life.

Joshua and his cousin Zoe see two men fighting and hear a gunshot. The police believe the murder is linked to armed robberies in the area. The cousins decide to investigate, which will be exciting, but are they safe from harm?

Dangerous Waters was a Children's Book Council Notable Book in 2004.