This Thursday temptations post is upcoming releases, or books that are out now.
Choppy Water
A woman's body is found in a laundry cart aboard the Silver Lady cruise ship. Management says it was a freak accident and her death is quickly covered up, so as not to spoil the voyage for the passengers.
Cesar Cain doesn't want to get involved. He boarded the Silver Lady to disappear. If the cops find him, he's in a cell. If the Hell's Hounds catch him, he's in a grave.
But it's March 2020, and the borders are slamming shut. Cesar soon discovers that the woman wasn't the first victim - and with the ship suddenly quarantined and unable to dock anywhere, she won't be the last ...
River City
A missing kingpin. A reluctant son. Enemies on all sides - and one explosive underworld war.
The 2025 Australian Fiction Prize winner is an unputdownable, take-no-prisoners thriller for all fans of Animal Kingdom, Gabriel Bergmoser and Jack Reacher.
In Brisbane's criminal underbelly, chaos is the only constant.
When feared crime boss Jack Cavarly mysteriously vanishes, his reluctant son Rain is dragged into a world he's spent years avoiding. Between a volatile brother, a dysfunctional crew, and enemies circling like vultures, Rain is barely keeping everything together when a case of mistaken identity threatens to bring everything crashing down.
A disgraced cop chasing redemption becomes entangled in the Cavarlys' bloody turf war. A ruthless rival sees her chance to strike. And a wildcard with a killer vendetta is ready to burn it all to the ground.
Darkly funny, razor sharp, and drenched in tension, River City is a gritty Australian crime thriller where loyalty is fragile, violence is inevitable, and survival is never guaranteed.
The Cruise
The revenge fantasy novel that every woman secretly wishes for: that her closest, most loyal group of female friends would do anything to take down the man who hurt her.
I HAVE A MISSION.
They're the four words every member of the Squad has pledged never to ignore. Bonded by a bone-deep understanding that healing from trauma takes more than meditation and positive self-talk, this group of ride-or-die sisters-for-life survivors will stop at nothing to secure justice for one of their own.
It's thanks to the Squad that Bailey Collins is not defined by what Eli Murphy did to her in high school. Ten years on, she's changed her name and overhauled her appearance, and she's just been promoted to senior producer for the reality TV show The Cruise.
When Eli's audition tape lands in Bailey's inbox, it's an opportunity too good to miss. She's perfectly positioned to cast him and her undercover Squad sisters as contestants on the show.
As the new season of The Cruise sets sail, Bailey plays her own game for the ultimate prize: revenge.
The Switch
The final Jack Harris mystery from the author of The Beacon and The Sunbaker. A grandmother vanishes from her own coffin, replaced by a stranger.
The third and final instalment in the entrancing Byron Bay-set series featuring newspaper editor Jack Harris and his lawyer-turned-partner Caitlin O'Shaughnessy.
Lisa Delaney is not having a good day. She has flown to Byron Bay to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother, Mildred, but is running late and just manages to make it on time. After the service has finished, she asks for a chance to say her final goodbyes to the woman who raised her like a mother. But when the coffin is opened, Lisa is shocked and horrified to find that it is not actually Mildred in the coffin. The body is of a man – someone that nobody seems to recognise.
When the police make slow progress identifying the mystery man and no progress at all finding the missing Mildred, Jack Harris, journalist at the local newspaper in Byron Bay, becomes intrigued by the story, especially since the unidentified man was wearing a T-shirt from one of his favourite bands from the 80s. He decides to start his own investigation into the man's identity and to locate the missing Mildred. When another person goes missing and heavily armed gang land figures from interstate appear on the scene, the pressure begins to escalate.
Can Jack find the missing Mildred and work out how and why a mystery man was placed in her coffin before others find themselves in harm's way?
Another page-turning murder mystery full of humour by the author of The Beacon and The Sunbaker.
The Girl in the Story
Only she knows the truth. But does she want to believe it?
Matilda Andrew is just trying to survive.
She was only fourteen when she climbed the stairs out of the basement she'd been locked in by her father. It's been fifteen years since she walked across to her neighbour's house, knocked on the door and asked them to call emergency services. Fifteen years and at least, by now, the media has well and truly lost interest in telling stories about her family.
Only - it turns out they haven't.
Because there's a journalist who won't leave Mattie alone. A journalist who claims she has uncovered something groundbreaking about the time Mattie spent trapped in her own house, something that everyone else missed. Who insists there is more to this story, and will stop at nothing to be the one to tell it.
With her life thrust once more into the spotlight, and the precarious stability of her existence again shaky beneath her feet, Mattie finds herself forced to examine the stories surrounding those dark years of her life - both those told by others, and those she's told herself. What is truth? What is fiction? And what do we do when the two have become so entangled it's impossible to tell which is which?
In My Next Life
Leah’s life is unravelling.
Recently fired from her job in the art world, estranged from her ex-husband (for sleeping with her best friend), and facing a custody battle, she’s struggling to prove she’s stable. Then there’s four-year-old Chloe, who has never called Leah ‘mum’. Instead, Chloe speaks with haunting precision of a life she has never lived: a house with a yellow door, a backyard swing, and a horse named Patches. When a news report revisits the disappearance of a mother and child from the coastal town of Denmark, Western Australia five years ago, Leah is chilled to the core. Chloe’s ‘memories’ mirror the cold case with eerie precision.
Driven to debunk the impossible, Leah takes Chloe to the remote shores, only to find a community suspended in grief and suspicion. As she draws closer to the missing woman’s husband—a man still living under a cloud of local blame—Leah’s own grip on reality is called into question. But as Chloe begins to recognise the hidden corners of a house she has never entered, the past presses dangerously into the present. Beneath the town’s picturesque surface lie betrayals that someone is still desperate to protect, and the closer Leah gets to the truth, the real question isn’t whether Chloe lived another life, it’s what or who really ended it.
Leah ignores the dangers to expose the culprit, but will it be too late to reunite with her daughter in this life?
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