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Lainie Anderson
Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don’t let that fool you. She’s a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley.

When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora’s workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks?

In 1915, Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary as men. This novel is a rich exploration of that little-known chapter of Australian history.

Daisy Wood
Berlin, 1933. The night skies are burning bright with huge bonfires of banned books. The Nazi party is swelling in number, Berlin is no longer a safe place for young Freya. She can only watch on, horrified, as her beloved city falls to fascism – and the usually law-abiding Freya is forced to make a choice: continue being a bystander, or sacrifice herself to save the lives of others…

New York, present day. Maddie commutes home to her family to reset. Struggling to fully turn off from her work, she’s is shocked to come across a pre-war German diary amongst her Grandpa’s things. And when she starts to dig into the diary, Maddie’s shocked by what she finds.

And so begins a journey that will take Maddie beyond America as she searches for the truth about Freya, and how she changed people’s lives across the globe…

Ken Follett
A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT
Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family lives in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers within their herder community.

A PRIESTESS WHO BELIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE
Joia, Neen’s sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.

A MONUMENT THAT WILL DEFINE A CIVILIZATION
Joia’s vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life’s work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders—and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare . . .

Garry Disher
Hirsch is checking firearms. The regular police all weapons secured, ammo stored separately, no unauthorised person with keys to the gun safe. He’s checking people, too. The drought is hitting hard in the mid-north, and Hirsch is responsible for the welfare of his scattered flock of battlers, bluebloods, loners and miscreants.

He isn’t usually called on for emergency roadside assistance. But with all the other services fully stretched, it’s Hirsch who has to grind his way out beyond the Mischance Creek ruins to where some clueless tourist has run into a ditch.

As it turns out, though, Annika Nordrum isn’t exactly a tourist. She’s searching for the body of her mother, who went missing seven years ago. And the only sense in which she’s clueless is the lack of information unearthed by the cops who phoned in the original investigation.

Hirsch owes it to Annika to help, doesn’t he? Not to mention that tackling a cold case beats the hell out of gun audits and admin…

Sally Hepworth
There are two kinds of people no one ever expects to be: little girls and old ladies. Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She’s lived on her idyllic street for sixty years—longer than anyone else.

Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past she’s worked exceedingly hard at concealing—because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

Chris Hammer
The blast hits them, a shock wave … glass smashing … Somewhere a woman screams. A second explosion, and Martin looks towards the hall, what’s left of it, flames roaring and smoke pouring skywards. Someone is targeting Martin Scarsden. They bomb his book launch and shoot up his hometown.

Fleeing for his life, he learns that nowhere is safe, not even the outback. The killers are closing in, and it’s all he can do to survive.

But who wants to kill him and why? Can he discover their deadly motives and turn the tables?

In a dramatic finale, Martin finds his fate linked to the disgraced ex-wife of a football icon, a fugitive wanted for a decades-old murder, and two nineteenth-century explorers from a legendary expedition.

Martin Scarsden’s most perilous, challenging and intriguing assignment yet.

Ann CLeeves
It’s been several years since Detective Jimmy Perez left Shetland. He has settled into his new home in Orkney, the group of islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, with his partner Willow Reeve and their growing family. One stormy winter night, his oldest and closest friend, Archie Stout, goes missing. Ever the detective, Perez catches a boat to the island of Westray, where Archie worked as a farmer and lived with his wife and children.

But when he arrives he finds a shocking Archie’s body, on an archaeological dig site and an ancient Westray story stone with precise spirals carved into it beside him, the clear murder weapon. The artifact, taken from a nearby museum, seems to suggest a premediated murder.

But Perez is so close to the case that he struggles to maintain an objective distance from the potential suspects. He finds it difficult to question Archie’s wife, whom he’s known for years. Rumors swirl about the dead man’s relationship with a young woman new to the island, an artist. With each new lead, the case becomes more twisted and Perez wonders if he will ever find out what happened in his friend’s final days.

Peter Coleman
Envy, gluttony, sloth, lust, pride, wrath and greed are not good, particularly when the ‘sinners’ have huge bank accounts and zero accountability. From Emperor Commodus to Rupert Murdoch, Count Dracula to Kim Kardashian, Genghis Khan to Gina Rinehart, Sins of the Filthy Rich explores how the mega wealthy have exploited, indulged and misbehaved appallingly throughout history.

Accompanied by shocking facts breaking down how wicked wealth is ruining the world, and just how many people that money could help if it was used for good, Sins of the Filthy Rich is a scathing look at the damage done by the insanely affluent.
Get ready to seethe with injustice, but also feel better about not being one of the 1% – because those people are downright awful!

Tom Trumble
On a pitch-black night in September 1943, a daring Australian commando unit launches a covert raid on Singapore Harbour, sinking and damaging numerous Japanese ships. Operation Jaywick – an epic mission that passed into Australia’s national legend – sets in motion a brutal crackdown by Japan’s dreaded military police, the Kempei Tai.

Tasked with finding the culprits of the attack, Major Sumida Haruzo intensifies his hunt for the saboteurs, weaving a deadly web that ensnares dozens of British internees in Changi Jail and countless Chinese Singaporeans. Among those swept up in the aftermath are Elizabeth Choy, a courageous schoolteacher who risks her life to smuggle aid into Changi Prison, and Robert Heatlie Scott, a senior diplomat and propagandist who miraculously survived the sinking of a ship and two days drifting on a dinghy in the open sea only to be recaptured by the Japanese.

Incarcerated in hellish conditions where the lines between fact and fiction blur, and where victims are forced to turn on each other to survive, Elizabeth and Robert must confront starvation, disease and brutal torture. The fate of countless innocent lives hinges on their will to resist unimaginable agonies, maintain their tenuous grasp on reality and hold to the truth even if it costs them their lives.

Ben Holt
From Sergeant Stubby to Antis the radar dog, meet the heroic hounds who put their lives on the line in this inspiring compendium of real-life war dog stories. We all know that a dog is a human’s best friend, but they are even more than that. The truth is that these courageous canines have been a lifeline for us during some of the toughest times in history. In fact, we might not be where we are today without them.

Filled with inspirational tales, this book is a moving tribute to the noble war dogs who supported their human comrades throughout the world’s most challenging conflicts. Whether serving as sentries, messengers or trackers, the dogs within these stories all share three things in bravery, intelligence and unwavering loyalty. Many of their efforts were rewarded with medals and titles at the time, but it is their legacies that will live on forever in our hearts. So, dive in to discover just how special, unique and essential to us our four-legged friends really are.