Updates - Week Ending 19th January 2024

When 25-year-old Emelie is found murdered in her Stockholm apartment the same week her ex-partner is released from prison, it feels like an open and shut case for Detective Vanessa Frank. Who else would launch such a frenzied attack on the young woman?

But Frank suspects there is something they’re missing. Could the killing be linked to the rising online movement of men who want to punish women, the so-called ‘incels’? When a survivor of brutal sexual assault comes forward, Frank uncovers more about this shadowy group who, in their own words, have weaponised the gender war and will stop at nothing to make themselves heard.

Desperate to stop any further attacks, Frank escalates the investigation when a music festival intended to be a safe space for women becomes a potential target.

Bob Mortimer’s life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his hilarious and moving memoir, And Away…

Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.

Strange things are happening at the Grand Hotel...

A hotel as a work of art in little ol' Mangowak? It was about as unlikely as an indoor creek.'

Robbed of his zest for life by the absurd innovations of his local council, including knocking down the only pub in his beloved home town and roofing over a section of the creek to protect swimmers from the rain, artist Noel Lea exiles himself in the hills above Mangowak, on the southwest Victorian coast. He returns to find an unexpected destiny awaits. At a turning point in the town's history it seems he has a crucial role to play, as the unlikely publican of an even unlikelier hotel.

This is a novel about an Australian pub twenty-first-century style, where the toilets play automated Dadaist recordings, Happy Hour comes with a blessing from the Pope and the patrons' libidos are as voracious as their thirst for the local ale. As events in the hotel take a twist that not even its inventive publican could have imagined, a long-held local mystery begins finally to unravel. Noel and his friends find themselves in uncharted territory, and, to make matters worse, the local authorities are hell-bent on closing them down.

From the award-winning author of THE PATRON SAINT OF EELS and RON MCCOY’S SEA OF DIAMONDS, Gregory Day's third novel is a witty, earthy and lyrical tour de force that takes some well-aimed swipes at the aspirations and absurdities of contemporary life.

Meet the roommates from hell

On her first shift at a halfway house for violent offenders in Edinburgh – the only job she could get – rebounding Australian expat Lou is taken hostage. For nine long hours, the only people who can help her are the residents. But who can Lou trust? The mum-and-dad-killer, the elderly legless rockstar paedophile, the stammering suicide chat room guy, or the Armani-suited conman?

Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder: never corner a desperate woman.
 

Two missing girls, two decades apart. Only one person knows the truth ...

Jac Morgan never planned on going back to her hometown. Seven years after the fatal house fire that killed her mother and branded Jac a killer she's back - but for only one reason. Her sister, Charlie, has gone missing. Charlie's the only good thing in Jac's life, and she doesn't believe she would ever run away. Jac is certain the answer to her sister's disappearance is somewhere in the town.

Because twenty years ago, another teenage girl went missing. Paige Gilmore, beautiful and talented daughter of eccentric matriarch, Iris Gilmore, disappeared on the annual Gilmore Hotel Open Day. As Jac starts the search for Charlie, she is drawn to the Gilmore Hotel - the haunted house of her childhood, a place that holds its own secrets and mysteries and is still home to the enigmatic Iris and her long-suffering daughter, Lisa.

Meanwhile, as Jac desperately hunts for answers to Charlie's disappearance, another Open Day looms, and Jac begins to realise everyone at the hotel has a secret - and that someone is willing to kill to keep the truth from coming out.

A missing student. A gunned-down detective. A woman in fear for her life. All three are connected. Detective Inspector Carl Sant and his team get on the case. But what links the disappearance of a university student, the death of an off-duty police sergeant, and a professor reluctant to help them solve the case? Their only clue is a sequence of numbers, etched on a misty window. Soon, both the past and the present are on a collision course with the very heart of Sant’s profession. Racing against time, D.I. Sant must find out what's behind the mysterious events - before the bodies start piling up.

A narcotics pick-up at sea goes horribly wrong. A man is lost overboard. A dangerous series of events sends shockwaves through the local community.

On a wintery day a young woman is found dead at a local beach. Sergeant Bill Granger, the local policeman, is called in to investigate. He had hoped for a quiet off-season. Instead, what seems to be a straightforward case of an unfortunate death turns into a complex web of small town secrets and desire for revenge that will soon place Bill's family in danger.

With Niko Sopoaga, a young South Auckland constable working alongside him, Bill falls into the dark and dangerous world of drug distribution and a hardened motorcycle gang wreaking havoc, while they chase a clever killer.

As Bill and Niko search for clues to uncover the killers identity, Annika Granger prepares for an art exhibition. She is befriended by Crystal, a young woman new to the close-knit community. Crystal overhears a conversation and ultimately discovers her partner, Andrei, is not the person she believed him to be.

Everyone discovers that secrets run deep, even in the best of communities.

In a grimy graffiti-covered recess in one of Melbourne tangled inner city laneways, a woman is found murdered. ‘Why would anyone want to kill her? She was so ordinary,’ was the oft-repeated phrase DI Robbie Gray heard when the name of the deceased was revealed.

So why, then, she asked herself, was the body found propped up in such an extraordinary position, almost as if she was intimate with the portrait on the wall. Was this death intended to be symbolic, or was the placement merely a device to deceive?

Set against a background of civil unrest and rising white extremism, a government tainted by corruption and a family desperate to hide secrets, DI Robbie Gray, along with her Indigenous officer Mac must also grapple with their own demons of guilt and failure. When an arrest is made, they realise that not all killers hold a weapon, masks don’t always disguise, and the legacy of long-held secrets can have tragic consequences.

A seemingly foolproof plan to make some quick money turns into a race for their lives…

It’s the mid-nineties and methamphetamine casts its shadow over the Californian city of Santa Lucía. Nathan, happy running a small marijuana grow operation with his two best friends, takes advantage of meth’s rise in popularity and makes a lucrative one-time deal.

Betrayed, beaten, and desperate…

But a devastating betrayal leaves him entangled with the city’s merciless crime boss. Risking everything, Nathan and his friends embark on a wild plan to steal millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds to settle the debt.

Caught in the crosshairs of corrupt cops, a relentless Russian henchman and his temptress partner, they face setbacks at every turn as they pursue the diamonds across the city.

As the death toll rises, can Nathan save them all before the real bad guys find them?

She needs to write the ending ... before she meets hers.

Theo has one dream – to become a bestselling author. Determined to make her mark in the literary world, she heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar – and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect.

As Theo grapples with the shocking turn of events, she realizes that Dan may not have been the person he seemed to be, and there is something sinister going on in the world of publishing. Desperate to clear her name and uncover the truth, Theo sets out on a quest to find out who killed Dan and why.

As she digs deeper, Theo uncovers a web of deceit, conspiracy, and hidden motives, with clues leading her to a shadowy online platform called The Shield. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.