February 2026 and this is the second newsletter from me this month having sent out the Ngaio's submission list already. Rather than include that very long selection here, you can see it on the site or on Hardcover.app if that's more convenient. (I've moved all activity from Goodreads to Hardcover now).
Coming in two parts again as, even without the Ngaio's there a bit going on. As before - locals first / second part will include the other location books.
Reviews
On the review side of things there's been quite a few this month as I try to keep up with some older books, and some really exciting upcoming releases. A lot of reviews are under embargo and automatically publish on the day the book is released, hence you might see a delay in me mentioning them and the review actually showing up.
In that vein in the newsletter for January / February I said keep an eye out for No Good Deed by Katherine Kovacic, The Shark by Emma Styles, Shellybanks by Louise Milligan and you should now add Redbelly Crossing by Candice Fox to that list.
Of the earlier keep an eye out fors Finders Keepers by Natalie Barelli and The Gambler by J.P. Pomare are now published.
If you're looking at The Gambler, then another set in a small town but with a very different vibe and subject matter that's very much worth reading is Dirt Trap by Michael Burge. For something that is also looking at marginalised people Riley Chance's Weeping Angels is about the dangerous world of women trying to leave violent men, whilst her book Surveillance is a good look at the world of ... well surveillance. Sticking with the New Zealand based stories When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole by Geoff Parkes got shoved up the list in a hurry because the second in the series came out. Whoops. Also The War Photographers by SL Beaumont and Wrongdoings by LA Joye - both very overdue for review.
On the lighter side - to the point of very little mystery / lot of food there was The Menu of Happiness by Hisashi Kashiwai and then the latest in the Thursday Murder Club The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman which was a little bit more sombre than earlier books. Also on the cosier side No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding by Catherine Mack which is very much on the crazy side of things and A Deadly Inheritance by Charlotte Vassell which isn't quite as crazy as the earlier ones and has become quite a favoured series. Other cultures was covered by The Clock House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji a locked room series based on fantastical architecture that, of course, I'm reading out of sequence.
On the true crime side I really can't remember what made me look this book up but Running Amok by Paul E Mullen was an informative and very thought-provoking look at the psychology behind the phenomena of lone mass killers.
Just Finished Pile
Just finished Redbelly Crossing by Candice Fox, Was He a Perfect Gentleman by Pat Backley, Left Behind by Martine Kropkowski and Warrior Pose by Susan Rogers and John Roosan.
Current Reading Pile
This pile (as of last night) is made up of Old Games by Fiona Hardy, What You Don't Know by Sandi Wallace, Dark Desert Road by Tim Ayliffe, The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin, Bang! by Taliyah Stone and The Girl from Sarajevo by Stef Harris.
Recent Arrivals / Upcoming Releases (Australia / NZ)
RELEASE DATE: 1/12/2025
England, 1905. Rebecca Victoria Davies-Australian, bastard, and unrepentant murderess-has spent three decades delivering justice where the law refuses to tread. Now embedded in the Metropolitan Police's covert Special Branch, she is charged with hunting the men abducting and murdering young aristocrats. But Rebecca has her own reasons for pursuing predators, and none of them are written in any statute book.
RELEASE DATE: 30/9/2025
Two couples – Annabelle and Luke, Des and Julianni – embark on a camping trip to K’gari, a picturesque island off Queensland’s coast. Things have been tough lately, but this holiday is just what they need – white sands, clear waters, a chance to decompress and reconnect. But there is an unnerving electricity in the air and Annabelle starts noticing strange occurrences. First, the man digging off a dark beach track in the middle of the night. The moaning in the amenities block: a couple getting their kicks or something more sinister? Then two campers mysteriously disappear,...
RELEASE DATE: 1/11/2025
Bestselling author Marnie Elliott has invited her three oldest friends to a secluded holiday house in Tasmania. On the surface it’s an excuse to catch up and drink champagne — but really, Marnie’s there to escape the fallout from an upcoming exposé. Sure, she’s told some lies over the course of her career... but this time the allegations go further... Did Marnie even write the books that made her millions?
RELEASE DATE: 15/1/2026
BDTH! The Foveaux Fisherman Facebook page posts this acronym to advise Rakiura Stewart Islanders to ‘batten down the hatches’ before severe weather events. New Zealand’s southernmost librarian Maudie Sanderson reckons this warning could be applied to her life in general these days. Haunted by a parrot and falsely accused of soliciting d**k pics, Maudie navigates a minefield of rabbit holes and mental health crises as she struggles to be a fit and proper person in a pandemic-hungover world.
RELEASE DATE: 28/1/2026
When a Hollywood star is killed live on stage, the entire cast falls under suspicion … Can a disgraced journalist and a rule-bending detective with a PhD in AI crack the case? A Sydney Opera House production of The Rocky Horror Show ends in tragedy when a stage prop kills Hollywood star Dane Cooder in a spectacularly gruesome fashion. The whole theatre, including his wife and co-star Angelique Swan, watch in horror.
RELEASE DATE: 29/1/2026
The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen-year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what's left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.
RELEASE DATE: 29/1/2026
Tess enters the prestigious and exclusive Ravensthorpe Writing College with dreams of literary greatness, but soon discovers that ambition comes at a cost. Drawn into a tight-knit group with fellow writers Ethan, Theo, and Jaz, Tess’s world is upended when their charismatic tutor is found dead. Believing someone in their circle is responsible, Tess flees the elite literary world and abandons the future she once craved.
RELEASE DATE: 1/2/2026
What does a pile of clothes left on a deserted beach tell you? It's a cold midwinter Monday. Seaweed and shells litter the flat expanse of sand. There is a light wind, the sea more disgruntled than choppy, the tide out. And there amongst it, the neat pile of clothes. Almost like a coded message waiting to be deciphered.' Queenscliff, Victoria, 1951: A man has disappeared, leaving only a pile of neatly folded clothes on a beach. Missing, presumed drowned. But for Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, newly emigrated from England, it's far from an open-and-shut case....
RELEASE DATE: 24/2/2026
When exhausted new mother Frida attends Baby Rhyme Time at the local library, she feels a sense of purpose that has been lacking in her anxious, apartment-bound, sleep-deprived life. But at the end of the session a piercing scream is heard, followed by the thump of a body, and the library becomes a crime scene. Before long, Frida finds herself part of an unlikely group of sleuths investigating the murder. Between gossip and cups of magic at their local cafe, they are too busy having fun to realise how close they are to danger . . .
RELEASE DATE: 24/2/2026
Corinne Gray’s life is falling apart. When homicide detective Kyle Nazarian unexpectedly knocks on her door on a rainy morning, she knows why. He wants to talk about her son, Ben. An average teen in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Ben is dating his first girlfriend and trying to find an after-school job. But as his luck sours, he’s increasingly drawn into shadowy corners of the internet.
RELEASE DATE: 28/2/2023
At age twenty-eight, Romola Cross is already jaded by her work as a criminal defence lawyer in Sydney. In the aftermath of her father's death, she decides to reinvent herself, and blindly accepts a position at prestigious Melbourne law firm Bassett Brown. She soon finds herself in a place where the clients are household names, and the stakes are higher than she could have possibly imagined.
RELEASE DATE: 1/3/2026
Simon Noone is a serial killer…but he doesn’t know it. Pulled from a river in Guatemala in 1982 with nothing—not even his memories—he returns to America five years later, looking for answers. He finds work at an NYC meatpacking plant and meets rebel ex-cop turned private investigator Nomi Pace. But she has problems all her own.
RELEASE DATE: 3/3/2026
Sydney, 1980 Belle Fitzgerald, young, rich and spirited, lives in Kings Cross, the city's bohemian heart. When she learns of plans to demolish her street and evict its residents, she commits to fighting the development, even though this brings her up against the Cross's crime lords and their servants, the notoriously corrupt local cops. Recklessly, dangerously, against her better judgment, she embarks on a passionate affair with one of those cops, Sergeant Stanton Rose.
RELEASE DATE 3/3/2026
Bruce College, a private school in a leafy Melbourne suburb, is a place for winners. Affectionately known as Bruisers, its boys' football program has a reputation for pumping out superstars. But when its girls' team pushes for glory, sixteen-year-old Grace Dooley is left with a catastrophic brain injury, and her parents want someone held accountable. The school points the finger at the coach, Brick Hannaford, a former professional player who is struggling with the legacy of his lauded, 300-game career.
RELEASE DATE: 31/3/2026
At the age of five, Molly Walker was placed in protective custody after witnessing the murder of her mother, Constable Sammi Walker. Twenty years later, everyone assumes the threat has passed. Then Molly's adoptive parents are killed in a car accident, just after asking about reopening the investigation into Sammi's death. Coincidence or something more sinister?
RELEASE DATE: 31/3/2026
Melbourne is gripped by fear after a backpacker's body is found with a cryptic note, and two more women vanish without trace. When photographs begin to arrive in the inboxes of the media and police, it's clear the killer isn't hiding - they are performing. Journalist Oli Groves, founder of a fledgling digital news site, knows the story could make or break her. Rookie detective Penelope Kibbs, still trying to prove herself, is desperate to stop the violence before more women are lost. But they soon realise the danger runs deeper than one killer - and closer than they want to...
RELEASE DATE: 7/4/2026
Dunblane 1996. Columbine 1999. Utøya 2011. Christchurch 2019. Lewiston 2023. What drives someone to commit the unthinkable? In Running Amok, forensic psychiatrist Paul E. Mullen burrows into the minds of lone wolf mass murderers, exposing the troubling patterns underlying their actions.
RELEASE DATE: 14/4/2026
There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who remembers who you used to be. At a secluded beachfront mansion on Kangaroo Island, three wealthy couples gather for a weekend of partying and luxury indulgence. But beneath the glitter and excess, deep rivalries and explosive secrets fester between the old friends. When they wake to a shocking murder scene, they are gripped first by fear, then by suspicion. With ferry services suspended due to a storm, the survivors and the killer remain trapped on the island together.
RELEASE DATE: 28/4/2026
Alexis Turner walks into the police station to report an assault. By the end of the day, she is nowhere to be found. Soon after she disappears, three identical packages arrive at three very different a respected psychologist's home, a socialite's mansion, and a struggling single father's run-down apartment. Inside, each gift is perfectly tailored to its recipient - and each will tear apart the life of its intended victim.
RELEASE DATE: 28/4/2026
A glamorous historical mystery of murder, fashion, food, secrets, and danger in 1930s Paris. The inimitable Charlotte 'Charlie' James returns in her second exciting mystery. At a glitzy gala in the ballroom of the Hotel Ritz, young American tourist Maisy Bell meets an intriguing man and accepts his charming offer to take her on a day trip.
RELEASE DATE: 28/4/2028
A mother's worst fear, a killer on the loose, a darkness visible... A gripping page-turner for readers of Candice Fox and Karin Slaughter from an award-winning author. Sergeant 'Hex' Rexford is the detective who caught the infamous serial killer Dr. Witcherton. Now, with a series of gruesome murders unfolding inside Coast Sanctuary - a hospital for the criminally insane - Witcherton claims to know who's behind them. Hex takes the case, determined to uncover the truth, even as his own body is failing him.
RELEASE DATE: 29/4/2026
When Elspeth returns from New York to her hometown of Geelong, it's not for a holiday - it's because her mother, Simone, has vanished without a trace. Elspeth moves in with her sister, Aoife, and old wounds reopen as they circle around their father's death years earlier. But Elspeth's own behaviour soon unsettles those around her. She's jittery, secretive - and the police begin to wonder if she's hiding something more than grief.
RELEASE DATE: 2/6/2006
What would you do if someone you knew came back from the dead? Gin is an architect on the brink. LIT, the Auckland-based practice she shares with her girlfriend, Clary, has been precarious since their third partner – Clary’s ex, Billy – disappeared, presumed dead.
RELEASE DATE: 11/6/2026
Lies are poison . . .
. . . but so is truth
Professor Eustacia Rose has been arrested for the possession of poisonous plants without holding the proper licence. Waiting in a grimy police cell, Eustacia's mind starts dredging up forgotten memories from childhood, when her father, a disgraced professor, was accused of murder. Linking all the memories is Marcus Smith, her father's unscrupulous assistant, a man she thought was long dead. (Due out in June this is a preorder - I think it might be the end of the series in which case I'm going to be really sad about that!)