Rest Days are good

The basin was brimful of a dark red fluid.  He lifted his eye a little and looked at the bed.  A woman was lying on it, half-naked.  Her nightdress, delicately wrought with lacework all over, was drawn back and folded tight, wrapped around her stiffened limbs and body.  Her ankles, firmly lashed together with a thin cord that cut into the flesh, were attached to the near bedpost.  Her right arm, drawn out at full stretch, was attached by the wrist in the same way to the bedpost opposite...

First published as: Madeline Brown's murderer. Melbourne: Kemp & Boyce, 1887.

A murder mystery and a social comedy by one of Australia's best-known authors. You don't usually get prizes for posthumous novels... Brooke Anderson never had a chance to finish her novel; now Rudolph is writing it for her. the brutally murdered Brooke was just one of Quill's lovers - that's William Quinlan, Director of the College of Creative and Professional Writing. He's married to Juliana, former student at the College. Juliana Quinlan knows what happened (or so she says) but who really killed Brooke? Courteney Frome, girl journalist, is out of her depth with this cast of slightly mad, if glamorous murder suspects. Will the beautiful Courteney join the list of mutilated corpses?

Based on a story-line by playwright and author Bill Garner, this crime thriller features Detective Ray Crawley and his investigation of the murder of a South African nationalist in Australia.

You're never too old, says Mavis Levack.  If only she could remember what it is you're never too old for.  Oh yes, that's right - a career, adventure.  It's important for a woman to have a career.  Heavens above, you can only play bowls so many days a week.

Private investigating is what Mavis Levack has in mind, but unlike private investigators in those TV shows, Mavis doesn't have people conveniently dropping dead at her feet.  Also, there's her husband, Eddy, calling her a busybody when really she is just an acute observer of human nature.

Mavis Levack is desperate to give a career in crime-solving a go - before it's too late.  A lack of clients is not enough to thwart Mavis.  Armed with binoculars and a sturdy pair of walking shoes Mavis Levack, P.I. goes looking for trouble in this entertaining collection of short stories by award-winning author Marele Day.

Australian poet and academic Rick Harding has a good life, until he discovers someone is stealing his poems and publishing them under another name. Who is Jason Schwartze and why has he selected Rick as his victim? Unable to get anyone to take his distress seriously, Rick determines to track down the plagiarist poet himself. Then someone starts stalking him and his wife Mandy, and things get out of control. Suddenly a happy marriage is plunged into suspicion and paranoia - and who can you trust if not the person you love most?

Clever, witty and challenging, this is a story about the bloodshed that can ensue when literary theory and reality collide.

Still recovering from his gunshot wound, Inspector Montalbano is feeling the weight of his years, and of his solitude.  He's getting softer, more introspective, and critical of his life choices.  But if withdrawing from society has become natural of late, he'll soon be forced to interact with others, compelled to intervene as a web of hatred and secrets threaten to squeeze its victims to death.  This is Montalbano's most unusual and challenging case yet - and the one that will either change him or break him.