Updates - Week Ending 22nd March

Jack Harris, the disgraced son of Australia’s most powerful business tycoon, has just been exiled to Byron Bay as a junior journalist at his father’s smallest regional newspaper, The Beacon. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of the newspaper’s editor, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, while out on his morning surf. When Patrick’s body is discovered in the ocean, with a severed leg, it appears certain that he’s fallen victim to a shark attack.

But when rumours emerge that Patrick was about to publish an explosive article – its subject unknown – Jack begins to suspect his death is not what it seems.

Although police aren’t buying his murder theory, Jack joins forces with Patrick’s daughter and investigates anyway, taking a sometimes less than lawful dive into the newspaperman’s past. Together they discover plenty of Byron locals with a motive to kill, including a bioholistic dentist with a secret, a naturist with an undisguised grudge, and even the mayor of Northern Rivers Shire. But has Jack bitten off more than he can chew?

TWO HOURS TO VANISH
Ten people have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter, FUSION can track anyone wherever they are on earth. But does it work?

ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE
Each participant is given two hours to 'Go Zero' – to go off-grid and disappear - and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3million in cash. If Cy's system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar contract with the CIA to develop FUSION and revolutionize surveillance forever.

ZERO ALTERNATIVES
For contestant Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than Cy could have ever imagined. Kaitlyn needs to win to get what she wants, and Cy will stop at nothing to realize his ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner…

Man. Made. is the fifth book in a crime thriller series which features Dan Calder.

Calder is an ex-cop who specialised in covert surveillance and undercover operations during his career in the UK Police. Dan's very unique set of skills have enabled him to investigate crimes and criminals in the UK and also in his new home country of New Zealand. On opposite sides of the world, the two countries could not be more different in many ways and yet when it comes to the good guys up against the bad, some things never change.

Man. Made. is set against the backdrop of the hottest weekend of Summer 2000 and it's a public holiday to boot. Dan Calder’s at home with his girlfriend and she is packing up to leave when a call-out from Headquarters comes as a blessed relief. A run-of-the-mill job like a hundred the team’s done before. Once he and his surveillance colleagues are all in position, all they can do is wait for the target to move.

Fortunately for Dan, this job calls for the Obs Van which is his happy place. It’s mechanical idiosyncrasies make them kindred spirits in many ways. Plus double time for just sitting and watching the target’s front door. ‘Money for jam.’ As his best friend Nick would say.

To take his mind off the end of his latest domestic disaster, what could be better than whiling away the solitary hours by listening to all of his favourite songs, freshly installed on his brand-new iPod.

But Dan’s life is about to be turned upside down and ripped apart to the soundtrack of his past and present-day life.

The result could destroy him completely… or it could just be the making of him.

There's a world of difference between a mother and a psychopath. But sometimes, it's hard to tell them apart...

When a young mother abandons her baby in a crowded park, Nora steps in to take her place. Little does Nora know that this act of kindness will plunge her into a chilling and twisted journey.

As Nora becomes deeply entangled in the life of the abandoned child, a series of dark secrets about the mother’s haunting past gradually come to light. The more Nora uncovers, the more she realises she has unwittingly entered a manipulative web of lies and deceit.

With complex characters, a narcissistic psychopath at the heart of it all, and a relentless plot filled with shocking twists and turns, The Foster Mother, is a heart-pounding, fast-paced psychological thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Prepare for an exhilarating rollercoaster ride that challenges your perceptions of trust, love, and the depths of human darkness.
 

Seeing something you shouldn't have makes life on the margins a whole lot scarier.

Ranger Cal Nyx works alone in the vast NSW bushland reserves but is pulled away from the quiet and solitude by a coded message that only one other person could understand.

Dif, the only remaining link to her family, is in danger. He’s also the last person the police are going to take seriously.

No stranger to the complications of Dif’s life, and with her femme MIA interstate, Cal burns rubber up and down a lonely coastline, calling in favors from her unique contacts to intercept a relentless killer.

Are Cal's skills, badass bravado and risky schemes enough to bring a single-minded murderer out of the shadows?

Can she save the one and only person who truly gets her?

As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8 pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew begins, they must live for four weeks and stay within five kilometres of. When Lou's son, Samuel, doesn't arrive home by nightfall, she begins to panic.

He doesn't answer his phone. He doesn't message. His social media channels are inactive. Lou is out of her mind with worry, but she can't go to the police, because she has secrets of her own. Secrets that Samuel just can't find out about. Lou must find her son herself and bring him home.

When a distinguished New Zealand businessman is murdered in London, Detective Inspector O'Rorke is once again called in by Scotland Yard to help find the killer. But O'Rorke is soon enmeshed in the secrets of the past involving the chaos of the Crimean War thirty-four years previously and the murderous activities of the young revolutionaries who called themselves the Society of the White Rose. The dramatic events of those days shaped the lives and determined the fates of all who survived and now, the Society of the White Rose, more powerful than ever, is led by two of O'Rorke's most unforgiving and ruthless enemies. Bogdan Lynskey and Count Zoltan Bathory have returned to London not only to assassinate the Austrian General Carl-Heinz Lorenz but to finally destroy O'Rorke himself. As O'Rorke tries to focus on the task at hand, whispers from the past grow louder, the circles of intrigue continue to swirl and alliances splinter, leading him to distrust even those who seem to be his closest colleagues. With danger now threatening his very household, O'Rorke's longed-for return to New Zealand becomes increasingly urgent.

Four teenage boys invent a sex game based on rolling dice and doing what the numbers say.

They are charged with multiple sexual offences against three teenage girls.

Twelve random jurors are brought together in a trial to work out what actually happened.

Only they can say whether crimes have been committed and who should be punished.

How does the jury find?

Dice is a stunning courtroom drama told from the perspective of a diverse group of ordinary people - the jury. How will twelve women and men, aged from eighteen to seventy-two with hugely disparate backgrounds, beliefs and experience, decide whether consent was given or crimes were committed?

How can they possibly arrive at a unanimous verdict? How will justice be properly served?

Child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney with one goal in mind: locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn’t anticipating is an unexpected attraction to her colleague’s younger brother, Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud. When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish and a police task force discovers an increase in drug trafficking across the border, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden’s disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run. To complicate matters further, torrential rain causes the Condamine River to break its banks, and the town gets cut off.

As Dana continues to ask questions, tensions peak with the rising flood waters and she soon realises that the tight-knit community is not all that it seems. Long-held secrets start to unravel and loyalties are questioned, forcing Dana to make a decision about who she can trust and how much she is willing to fight for what she believes in.

An imposition. An insult. And a dead poet.

When the Literary and Historical Society decide to hold their end of year event at Wingate Hall, it's the last thing Emma needs.

With her husband missing in action and the weather worsening, she's forced to face the group alone. They arrive with all their airs and prejudice, a rotten cohort determined to feast on the rumours of her former life.But an unexpected blizzard traps them at the Hall, and one of the guests will not survive the night.

With no way to summon help, and no one able to leave, it seems the killer is still in the house.

Someone disconnected the internet and cut off their remaining communication.

Others are keeping damaging secrets.

One is burning with fury, another plotting revenge.

Three are not who they pretend to be, and one is a stealer of dreams.

Emma must find the killer.Because they haven't finished yet.

Elias Dunn hates his life. At only 26, he’s the youngest Head of IT for Network 4 and appears to be doing okay. He’s not. He’s living at home with a bipolar mother who uses medication and alcohol to get by. Eli loses himself in fantasy and obsession, stalking targets and colleagues to cope. He blames himself for the death of his sister, cutting the guilt from his body as a boy before covering his mistakes in tattoos. Eli finds solace in The Ellipse, a virtual club accessed through a world he’s created where he becomes someone else. Ink, a black-suited avatar that trades the spoils of the film momentos he steals in the real world for crypto in another. Stalker follows one man’s feeling of loss and his need to reconcile the pain of wanting a future.

Is Cassidy Turpin a crooked cop?

When Tomcat’s secret crush is arrested for murdering a co-worker, Ella and Tom only have 24 hours to clear Cassidy’s name before she is shipped off to the notorious Nottingham prison.

But with Tomcat determined to call the shots, will the cat save the day or trip up Ella’s every step?

Ella Charming is a suspended Fairy Godmother . Tom April was a rookie henchman working for the wicked queen until a magical accident turned him into a cat. Together they solve crime in the frozen fairy-tale kingdom of Wyld Enchantment Woods.

In the best traditions of the murder mystery genre, The Death of Father Ryan has all the twists and turns of a page turning whodunnit.

There is the usual gallery of engaging characters we have come to expect from this author. Be it the hasty Police investigator, the diligent private detective, the former IRA operative on the run or the recruiter for the child-sex tourism industry in Thailand, they all offer insights into worlds beyond most readers’ experience. There are also familiar characters from the ranks of the ordinary New Zealander, there on the fringes only too happy to offer their thoughts on what lies behind the death of Father Ryan.

What lies behind the gates of the Sanctuary?

'Urgent. Come tomorrow. Can't wait any longer.'

Charli Trenthan plans to leave her hometown of Stone Lake. But when she receives a cryptic message from a member of the Sanctuary, a conservative closed community nestled in the forest, she is determined to find answers.

A gruesome discovery soon lands Charli in hot water with the police, but how is the Sanctuary connected? As she digs deeper, dark secrets are uncovered and the fight to prove her innocence turns into a fight for her life.

A gripping thriller with a shocking conclusion that will leave you spellbound, Deep in the Forest raises questions about who we trust and why.

Populist political parties are increasing their influence across the world. It couldn’t happen in New Zealand, could it?

Journalist Grace Marks is investigating two unrelated stories – New Zealand’s alt-right, and the emergence of a new organisation, ProtectNZ. When she finds ‘dead man’s hand’ stuck to her front door with a knife, it’s obvious she’s ruffling some feathers.

Hiding in New Zealand after a mission went sour, former US agent Marla Simmons learns Grace is in danger and wants to help, but finding out who’s orchestrating the threats won’t be easy.

The two stories collide as Grace and Marla’s investigations deepen. When a body is found, the question is not only who killed them and why, but who
was the victim?

As the ProtectNZ juggernaut steamrolls towards the election, Grace and Marla race to expose those pulling the strings. The voting public need to know the truth. 

Following on from 'A Kind of Catharsis' and 'The Push', this book is the end of the trilogy when justice finally prevails. The main character with a new sidekick continue their drug dealing murderous ways until finally their past catches up with them.

Two spies and a private eye are asked to protect a social media influencer. What could possibly go wrong? Crockett, Ben, and Ronnie reluctantly accept an off-book mission from the Australians. They’re tasked with protecting a young social media influencer with an exceptional memory and to escort her safely to court to testify. Crockett has an extra job on his list; he’s supposed to recruit the woman for his intelligence agency but he’s not sure that is wise, or that the woman will be able to transition from ‘social media influencer’ to a career within the intelligence community. The more time they spend with ‘Alex the influencer’ the less she seems suited to anything except taking selfies and tantrums. The more time they spend with ‘Alex the influencer’ the more they suspect something is off about Alex. If that isn’t enough, Ronnie’s cousin Donald suspects something dreadful has happened to their neighbours and manages to drag Nana and the Cronies of Doom into his conspiracy theory, despite Ronnie’s many misgivings. Meanwhile, the team navigates through dangerous situations arising from an unknown number of assailants, raising the stakes with each passing moment. Will they be able to protect Alex and uncover the truth before it's too late?

Sarah’s life is about to be turned upside down. As the blossoming fashion designer’s best friend suddenly disappears, nobody is able or willing to provide any answers. Completely out of her depth she turns to the Neon Lights, an underground resistance group, but will the price for their assistance prove too high for Sarah to pay?

Will Sarah end up paying with her own life to save her friend’s? Where the Rooks Flock is a stand-alone psychological thriller set in 2038 Europa, that proves that true heroes can be found where we least expect them.

Remember those people that destroyed the economy and then cruised off on their yachts? Well guess what – someone is killing them.

Dublin is in the middle of a heat wave and tempers are running high. The Celtic Tiger is well and truly dead, activists have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank, the trial of three unscrupulous property developers teeters on the brink of collapse, and in the midst of all this, along comes a mysterious organisation hell-bent on exacting bloody vengeance in the name of the little guy.

Paul Mulchrone doesn’t care about any of this; he has problems of his own. His newly established detective agency is about to be DOA. One of his partners won’t talk to him for very good reasons and the other has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for no reason at all. Can he hold it together long enough to figure out what Bunny McGarry’s colourful past has to do with his present absence?

When the law and justice no longer mean the same thing, on which side will you stand?
 

A suicide. A shooting. And a reckoning, decades in the making.

Weeks from Christmas in the sweltering heat of summer, Detective Kate Miles' estranged brother, Luke Grayling, returns home to Esserton to farewell a childhood friend - Ant Reed, dead by suicide. Within days of the funeral, another young man, Marcus Rowntree, is found shot dead in the back paddock of his property.

Almost twenty years ago, Luke, Ant and Marcus were best mates in high school and now two of the three friends are dead. A tragic coincidence? Or is there something more sinister connecting the three men?

When Luke is identified as a person of interest in Marcus's death, Kate once again finds herself in the middle of a media storm, sidelined from the case and battling accusations of conflict of interest. As press attention deepens, and uncomfortable truths about Luke's personal life and past events come to light, Kate is forced to contend between loyalty to the police force, and the bonds of friendship and blood.

Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is back from maternity leave and struggling on multiple fronts - the pressures of a second child, financial strain from her husband losing his job, and a corruption scandal that may involve her father.

When an infant goes missing, Kate finds herself fronting a high-profile and emotionally fraught case. Was baby Sienna removed from her bassinet by an unknown abductor or is the answer much closer to home?

Amidst a frenzied media demanding answers, and a station chief looking for any reason to remove her from the investigation, Kate is pushed to her limits, pulled between the competing demands of the family at the centre of the case and her own spiralling personal life.

There's no such thing as safety in numbers ...

Rachel and Rory Sullivan decide to celebrate making it through a difficult year by taking their teenagers, Emmet and Bridie, to their first stadium concert. By the end of the night, one of the four has vanished without a trace.

As the police investigation intensifies, suspicion is cast on the remaining family members. Everyone has been deceiving one another, but who is to blame for what went wrong? The passing of each hour amplifies their terror that life will never be the same again.

One of Us is Missing is a dark domestic thriller about the dangers lurking right in plain sight.

With no role in sight and nothing to lose, actor Lou Galloway leaves Los Angeles and heads to Mexico to drown his sorrows in cheap mezcal. But, after a round too many, he soon ends up at a grandiose wedding in the mansion of internationally wanted crime lord, Diego Flores, where Lou is mistaken for a rogue assassin known simply as El Flamingo. Before he can escape, he meets Maria-Carla, an enigmatic beauty with incredible perfume, and he inconveniently falls in love at first sight. When it becomes too late to turn back, Lou is swept into the dangerous world of Latin-American espionage, embarking on a journey that will take him from the desert fiestas of Mexico to the jungle-clad salsa bars of Colombia. To survive, Lou is forced to do the one thing he swore he would never do again-act.

However, as Lou assumes the identity of El Flamingo, he realizes that this may be what he was searching for all along. Maybe this was fate? Maybe this will be the role of his life!

Following their release from prison, ex-convicts seek to recover their ill-gotten gains from a financier, Peter Lee. Both Alex West and Peter Lee disappear. Richard West does not know if Alex is alive or dead. Richard and business partner Derek Poulton hire Claire Bishop but is Claire genuine? Or is she with Sir Thomas Sadler, who issues a deadly ultimatum.