Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Ngaio Marsh Shortlist Best Novel 2025
The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone

“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with the evil Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders…”
Introducing......Read more
The Call

A brilliant debut crime novel centred on a 501 deportee gang, set in a remote coastal New Zealand town
After surviving a brutal attack, Auckland cop DS Honey Chalmers has returned to her hometown to care for her mother. The remote coastal settlement of Waitutu...Read more
A Divine Fury

Florence. Autumn, 1539.
Cesare Aldo was once an officer for the city’s most feared criminal court. Following a period of exile, he is back – but demoted to night patrol, when only the drunk and the dangerous roam the streets.
Chasing a suspect in the rain, Aldo...Read more
A Fly Under The Radar

Lawyers, drugs, deaths, and sneakiness, in New Zealand.
“A Fly Under the Radar is a ripping yarn. It’s cantankerous and unexpected, with an eccentric cast that includes a millennial side-kick, a conniving landlord, a dangerous accountant, and starring a misanthropic...Read more
Hell's Bells

Eustacia Rose's life is beginning to return to normal: she is back teaching at UCL and her relationship with Matilde is blossoming. But when a man is found dead with a needle in his neck, that fragile peace begins to crumble. Eustacia finds a painting of herself with a syringe next to her...Read more
The Hitchhiker

The Driver:
Ahead he could see only the stretch of unending road, on either side brown-scorched plains of dirt and scrub, above it all a soaring blue sky and blinding sun. Desolation that looked, to him, a hell of a lot like freedom. He wasn’t playing by anyone’s rules anymore....Read more
Home Truths

Livia Denby is on trial for attempted murder. The jury have reached a verdict.
Two years earlier, Livia was a probation officer in Yorkshire, her husband Scott a teacher. Their children, Heidi and Noah, round out a happy family until the day Scott's brother dies.
...Read more
A House Built on Sand

Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files—and her job as a result. Her marbles? ‘Mild cognitive impairment’, according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose.
Rose has her own troubles with...Read more
Leave the Girls Behind

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald...Read more
The Mires

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks...Read more
Ōkiwi Brown

The Burke and Hare anatomy murders of 1828 terrify Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears. Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown, sets up a pub with an...Read more
Prey

On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.
The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it' s...Read more
Return to Blood

After the perils of a case that landed much too close to home, Hana Westerman turned in her badge and abandoned her career as a detective in the Auckland CIB. Hoping that civilian life will offer her the opportunity to rest and recalibrate, she returns to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she...Read more
Woman, Missing

She's the one to turn to when you need saving. But first she has to save herself...
Lou Alcott is turning over a new leaf as a private investigator. Formerly police, she was forced to resign when she attacked a domestic violence perpetrator. She's always vowed to be...Read more
