2004

Running a pub in the outback town of Wollegudgerie doesn't offer much fun or future for knockabout Aussie dyke Kylie Kendall, so when the father she never knew dies and leaves her 51% of his Los Angeles-based private-eye agency, it's bright lights, big city for America-bound Kylie. Not so happy about her arrival is her father's former business partner, the beautiful, enigmatic Ariana Creeling, who wants to buy Kylie out and gives her a decidedly chilly reception.

To know Milton Royce is to loathe him. Now in his mid-forties, the practical joker enjoys embarrassing others, and he delights in coming up with elaborate schemes for setting up his "friends" as fall guys. When he plunges to his death while sky diving, no one seems particularly surprised to find he was murdered.

When an elaborate practical joke is played out at Milton's funeral by his son, Ted, Detective Inspector Carol Ashton must act quickly to find out if Ted is indeed his father's killer-- or if he is simply being set up as yet another "fall guy".

Former Australian Army officer Mike Williams is a man with a troubled past. A run-in with ruthless ivory hunters in Mozambique a year before ended in tragedy and left Mike's life in tatters.

Devastated, Mike forgets all plans for the future and takes a job as an overland tour guide in Africa. But then one day he receives word from the South African police that they are finally on the poachers' trail and they need his help to catch them.

Amongst the various tourists in his group is the tenacious English journalist Sarah Thatcher who seems determined to become involved.

Detective Briony Williams is a rookie appointed to an all-male team investigating a bizarre murder at the Anatomy School of Gresham College in Bloomsbury, and her superiors constantly make her feel left out. But a killer obsessed with following Jack the Ripper soon changes that.

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Set between 1965 and the 1980s, first in the heart of workaday Brisbane and later in the subtropical surroundings of the Gold Coast hinterland, "The Groundsman" is a story of family violence, suppressed sexual tension, rage and greed.

Melbourne, 1871: John King is dying far from the deserts he traversed with the legendary Burke and Wills.

From Australia's hottest talents, this dazzling collection of stories will make you think of icy-poles, holidays at the beach, thrumming cicadas, New Year's resolutions, water restrictions, and scorching heat . . .

Here too are tales of sudden death, abandonment, abduction, betrayal, family feuds, and murder. Dip into Scorched for some perfect summer reading.

'She had felt a sad pulling feeling in her stomach that day as the car had driven off, like there was a bit of elastic tied around her insides, sort of joining her to those brothers like it went right through that door, and as the car had driven further up the road, that elastic got pulled so tight, it hurt.'