Sorted on book title (not in series order)
From bogan to boned and beyond - a full-frontal 'femoir' by one of Australia's best-loved journalists
Tracey Spicer was always the good girl. Inspired by Jana Wendt, this bogan from the Brisbane backwaters waded through the 'cruel and shallow money trench' of television to land a...Read more
Twelve remarkable, gritty stories starring Detective Inspector John Rebus in his home city of Edinburgh, as only Ian Rankin can portray it: not just the tearooms and cobbled streets of the tourist brochures, but a modern urban metropolis with a full range of criminals and their victims--...Read more
As winter turns to spring across Botswana's red earth and slow green rivers, all is not well on Zebra Drive. Mma Ramotswe has plenty of work, ranging from thefts at the printing works to suspicious deaths at the Mochudi hospital. Meanwhile Mma Makutsi's forthcoming marriage appears to...Read more
Like father like son! But heredity seems to have gone a gene too far when Pal Maciver's suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father ten years earlier. In each case accusing fingers point towards Pal's stepmother, the beautiful enigmatic Kay Kafka. But she turns out to have a...Read more
Justine lives alone in a house by a lake, where she has lived all her life. It is the house in which her mother died when she was small, the house to which her father brought the narcissistic and cruel Flora to be her stepmother. In this gripping psychological novel, stories of those who...Read more
County Kerry, Ireland, 1825.
The fires on the hills smouldered orange as the women left, pockets charged with ashes to guard them from the night. Watching them fade into the grey fall of snow, Nance thought she could hear Maggie's voice. A
...Read more
Charlie Howard doesn't just write books about a career thief, he also happens to be one.
In Amsterdam working on his latest novel, Charlie is approached by a mysterious American who asks him to steal two apparently worthless monkey figurines from two separate addresses on the...Read more
The moment I’d scanned the outside of the building, I turned to Bruno and said, “First impressions, it looks straightforward.” Looking back, I can’t help but wonder what I was thinking. I mean, put that line at the opening of a crime novel and it’s practically a guarantee that everything is...Read more
During a trip to Vegas, Charlie Howard - mystery writer and professional thief - is nonplussed to find his agent being charmed by a stage illusionist at a roulette table. Making off with a pile of the conjurer's casino chips would be adequate compensation, but matters are complicated when...Read more
Goodwood is a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone. It's a place where it's impossible to keep a secret.
In 1992, when Jean Brown is seventeen, a terrible thing happens. Two terrible things. Rosie White, the coolest girl in town, vanishes overnight. One...Read more
Some relevant facts about Grace Molloy. Apart from being named after a 100 000-year- old skeleton, she was twenty-nine and for much of the past three years she'd been hiding from an erotomaniac.
Physically and emotionally besieged, Grace attempts to claw back her personal...Read more
In another Epicurean journey in France, renowned wine critic Benjamin Cooker’s world gets turned upside down one night in Paris. He retreats to the region around Tours to recover. There a flamboyant British dandy, a spectacular blue-eyed blond, a zealous concierge and touchy local police...Read more
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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...Read more
‘Listen to who’s talking. I’m not the one who goes hobnobbing with gunmen and such.’ Such is Bunty Felse’s light-hearted reply to her husband’s parting words of caution, as George is called away to London on urgent police business.
But left alone in the house, Bunty begins to...Read more
Sheer chance put Oxford don Patrick Grant on the Acropolis in Greece when the first victim, elderly Miss Amelia Brinton, suffered a fatal fall. Curiosity, however, sent him to the English village of Meldsmead to visit the charming 17th-century cottage Miss Amelia had left to her niece....Read more
Despite two husbands being dead and a daughter marrying the wrong man, no one believed Sybil Foster was the type to commit suicide, especially Superintenent Roderick Alleyn. For the field was ripe with unfortunate engagements - one of them a very grave mistake.Read more
Montezuma County Sheriff's detective, Jude Devine doesn't face too many challenges based in remote Paradox Valley, where most of the crime involves hiker assaults, campsite thefts, and cattle rustling. However, when the body of local teenager, Darlene Huntsberger shows up with a stake...Read more
It's a time-honoured tradition that the best crime writers begin to chafe at the constraints of their area of the genre and feel a need to stretch their literary muscles. With The Grave Tattoo, the estimable Val McDermid demonstrates that she, too, has felt the need of a change...Read more
Garner Quinn writes true crime - and very successfully. Her story of the moment involves a madman known as the Holy Ghost, a deranged serial killer who disfigures his victims. When Susan Trevett lives to tell about her encounter with the Holy Ghost, she picks a young farmboy out of a police...Read more
In the rural Tasmanian town of Dunton, the body of a former headmistress of a children’s home is discovered, revealing a tortured life and death.
Detective Jake Hunter, newly-arrived, searches for her killer among past residents of the home. He unearths pain, secrets and broken...Read more
There are no dead bodies in this story.
Listen, we're kids. Murders don't come our way all that often. This is about a missing violin. Okay, not so exciting, but take it from me, it's a pretty good whodunit all the same.
Angelo Martinelli, also known as The Angel,...Read more
Set in a military hospital during the blitz, this novel is one of Brand's most intricately plotted detection puzzles, executed with her characteristic cleverness and gusto. When a patient dies under the anesthetic and later the presiding nurse is murdered, Inspector Cockrill finds himself...Read more
Scientist Dr Chen Du is poisoned in his lab at the Badeker Institute, where he is researching wheat. There have been protests from Green groups outside the Institute demonstrating about GM or "frankenfoods".
Investigating the death are Detective Inspector John "Winner" Nguyen...Read more
In a jazzy 1920s Melbourne, the Green Mill is the hottest dancehall in town. But the glamorous Miss Phryne Fisher finds there are hidden perils in dancing the night away - like murder, blackmail and young men who vanish.Read more
Sequel to The Thirty-nine Steps, this classic adventure is set in war-torn Europe. Richard Hannay, South African mining engineer and hero, is sent on a top-secret mission across German-occupied Europe. The result could alter the outcome of World War I. Other well-known characters make a...Read more
Cassie still has nightmares about that day in 1975 when she and her cousin Suzie took a short cut through The Greenway. For somewhere along this path Suzie simply vanished. Also haunted is John Tyson, the retired detective once in charge of Suzie's unsolved case.Read more
Is brilliant young filmmaker Carmel Wise the innocent victim of gangland violence or is she enmeshed in a pornography racket as the press and the police imply Carmel's businessman father hires Cliff Hardy to find the real reason 'the video girl' was shot dead outside the Greenwich...Read more
After Charles was jilted at the altar by Margaret, he discovers that she is mixed up in a vicious kidnapping plot masterminded by a sinister figure in a grey mask. Charles turns to Miss Silver to uncover the strange truth behind Margaret's complicity, and the identity of the terrifying and...Read more
The old crowd had gathered at Aunt Alice's once again - to pick apples against a chilly orchard setting. Beneath the surface were the usual boiling jealousies, frustrations and uneasy gaps between the generations and in-laws. Or was there something different about this year?Read more
When the ghost of murdered mule driver Hiram Jellaby appears in the kitchen of widow Zilla Trott's house, Sergeant McVicar investigates the century-old crime.Read more