David Knoff What would you do if you were stranded in the coldest place on earth as the world you knew back home changed forever…? As station leader at the Davis Research Station in Antarctica, David Knoff was leading 24 expeditioners in a standard six-month mission when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, international travel came to a standstill and their ride home was cancelled – indefinitely. What was supposed to be a routine mission became a high-pressure cauldron of uncertainty and anxiety where everyone was pushed to their mental limits. They’d have to draw on every ounce of resilience to ensure a safe return.
Facing unprecedented challenges, including a complex medical evacuation and a fire on board the ship meant to get them out, David would need all his experience as an infantry platoon commander and diplomat to keep the team safe and get them home, albeit to a world that was completely different to the one they’d left.
Sandi Logan The relentlessly fascinating, sometimes hilarious and often jaw-dropping true story of two American women who became unwitting drug mules by driving a hashish-laden campervan from Stuttgart to Bombay, then later to Australia, where they were arrested and jailed. Think of the two most unlikely drug dealers you can imagine and you’ll probably come up with the Drug Grannies: Vera Hays and Florice Bessire, who were 59 and 61 respectively in 1977 when Vera’s nephew, Vern Todd, persuaded them to drive a campervan from Germany to India, then on to Australia.
Little did the women know that Vern and his accomplices had packed two tonnes of hashish into the campervan in what was a creative but ultimately destined-to-fail drug trafficking attempt that would go down in Australian history.
Betrayed is the shocking, real-life inside story of ‘Toddie’ and ‘Beezie’ – as they were known – drawn from journalist Sandi Logan’s experience reporting on the ground at the time, combined with intensive research, including access to the women’s own diaries. It chronicles their wild ride across continents and oceans to our shores, where they were busted by Australian Federal Narcotics Bureau agents, arrested and jailed, including what came after.
Were the Grannies none the wiser to the highly lucrative – and highly illegal – cargo they transported here, as they claimed? Were they set up and betrayed by Vera’s nephew? Or could they have been the unlikely masterminds behind the entire plot?
Now, 45 years after they set out on their ill-fated journey, it’s time to tell their story.
Lisa Jewell Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.
Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.
After fleeing London thirty years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first-ever house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present.
As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they could have never imagined.
Margaret Hickey Stone Town is captivating new rural crime drama from the author of the bestselling Cutters End. With its gold rush history long in the past, Stone Town has definitely seen better days. And it’s now in the headlines for all the wrong reasons . . .
When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti’s hopes for a quiet posting in his old home town are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a local property developer, whose controversial plans to buy up Stone Town land means few are surprised he ended up dead.
However his gruesome murder is overshadowed by the mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted.
Natalie had been investigating the celebrity wife of crime boss Tony ‘The Hook’ Scopelliti when she vanished. What did she uncover? Has it cost her her life? And why are the two Homicide detectives, sent from the city to run the Sleeth case, so obsessed with Natalie’s fate?
But following a late-night call from his former boss, Mark is sure of one thing: he’s now in the middle of a deadly game . . .
Karen Swan Award-winning director Clover Phillips is riding high when she encounters Kit Foley; a surfer and snowboarder as well-known for controversy as he is for winning championships. Involved in an accident that had devastating consequences for a bitter rival, Kit has never spoken about what really happened that day. Determined to find out the truth, Clover heads to the snowy wilderness of the Austrian Alps, sharing a romantic winter wonderland with a man who can’t stand her.
But as she delves deeper, Clover finds herself both drawn to Kit, and even more convinced he’s hiding something. Is Kit Foley really as cold as he seems?
Caroline Petit For fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things and Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Natural History of Love is based upon the true story of 19th century French explorer, naturalist and diplomat the Count de Castelnau and his lover Madame Fonçeca; a sweeping historical narrative set in the wilds of Brazil, salons of Paris and the early days of Melbourne’s settlement.
When Melbourne lawyer Nathan Smithson takes on the case of mad, wealthy Edward Fonçeca’s inheritance trial against his ruthless brother in 1902, he must unearth long-buried family secrets to have any chance of winning.
Brazil, 1852: François, the Count de Castelnau and French Consul to Bahia falls dangerously ill on a naturalist expedition and is delivered by a rainforest tribesman to the Fonçeca household. Carolina Fonçeca is 16 years old and longing to leave the confines of her family’s remote Brazilian sugar plantation. With a head full of Balzac and dreams of Parisian life, she is instantly beguiled by the middle-aged Frenchman. What Carolina doesn’t know is that François has a wife and son back in France. Desperate for a new life, she makes a decision that will haunt her forever.
Heidi Perks The internationally bestselling author of Her One Mistake, hailed by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell as “slick, gripping, and compelling,” explores toxic relationships, dark secrets, and a twisted web of lies in an explosive new novel about a woman searching for her missing best friend.
Anna loves Girls’ Night with her friends. With the kids safely in bed, it’s a chance for the women to let loose, enjoy some wine, and just laugh. But after one lively evening, Anna doesn’t arrive for school drop-off the next morning—or the next, or the next.
Everyone, especially her husband and young son, are frantic with worry but none more so than Grace, her childhood best friend. Grace is certain that someone is hiding the truth about Anna’s unexplained disappearance. As rumors fly and accusations are whispered among neighbors, Grace decides to take matters into her own hands and find out what happened to Anna…or die trying.
Marissa Irvine arrives at 14 Tudor Grove, expecting to pick up her young son Milo from his first playdate with a boy at his new school. But the woman who answers the door isn’t a mother she recognises. She isn’t the nanny. She doesn’t have Milo. And so begins every parent’s worst nightmare.
FOUR GUILTY WOMEN.
As news of the disappearance filters through the quiet Dublin suburb and an unexpected suspect is named, whispers start to spread about the women most closely connected to the shocking event. Because only one of them may have taken Milo – but they could all be blamed . . .
IN A COMMUNITY FULL OF SECRETS, WHO IS REALLY AT FAULT?
Sara McDonald The hand of friendship can span a thousand miles…
Pakistan Among the almond orchards of the Swat Valley, Zamir tends goats with his son, Raza. He must make a heartbreaking decision if he is to protect his youngest child from the Taliban.
Afghanistan On a military base in Lashkar Gah, Ben lives on edge, wondering if his family will be the next to receive life-changing news from the front line.
Cornwall And in a ramshackle house on the Cornish coast, Ben’s mother Delphi, an artist, offers a refuge to her grandson Finn, as he retreats from the changes he senses in his family.
When Raza and Finn, two boys from impossibly different worlds, meet, they are united by their loneliness. But will their unexpected bond be enough to save not just each other, but also their families, just as all their lives are about to change forever?
Andrew Moreton In this entertaining and insightful biography of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, award-winning writer Andrew Morton, author of Diana, Her True Story, takes you behind the scenes to uncover the woman and her world. For years she prayed for her mother to give birth to a son. She longed to be spared her destiny as Britain’s future Queen. Her dream was to live in the country surrounded by children, dogs and horses.
But Elizabeth did her duty, the young princess pledging before her people that she would dedicate her whole life to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth. She hoped that that day would be a long way off. It was not to be. Only twenty-five when she became Queen after the premature death of her father, King George Vl, Elizabeth has become the stuff of superlatives: the longest reigning, most travelled and, for a shy woman, the Queen who has shaken more hands and made more small talk than any other monarch in history. She has been seen and believed by millions, either in person, on television or film.
Elizabeth was set firmly on the road to becoming sovereign because of the D word – divorce. In 1936, her uncle David, King Edward VIII, wanted to marry a twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. When he couldn’t he abdicated. Since that national trauma, divorce and the fall-out from divorce has shaped her reign. She has witnessed her sister Margaret, three of her children and several grandchildren divorce. And she has lived long enough to see the wheel turn full circle, watching as another American divorcee, Meghan Markle, walked down the aisle with her grandson Prince Harry.
While her reign has been defined by divorce, her private life has been moulded by an irascible husband, an extravagant mother and a querulous eldest son. In the winter of her reign she refereed a war between two of her grandsons, brothers William and Harry who were once inseparable friends. As she celebrates her platinum anniversary, the first monarch to reign for seventy years, she has, during a once in a lifetime pandemic, become the reassuring face of hope and optimism, the grandmother to the nation.
