Archive | New Releases

L.J. Ross
When the body of a talented photographer is found on the rocks beneath the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, DCI Ryan and his team of detectives immediately suspect the worst. But, since none of their potential suspects seems to have a motive, the case runs cold.

Then, when another body is found dead on a lonely stretch of road near Hadrian’s Wall and their only suspect has an airtight alibi, the team are faced with another crime without a perpetrator.

With the number of unexplained deaths in the area increasing rapidly and only a series of coincidences to work from, Ryan and his team must find the invisible link between them to crack the case—before it’s too late.

Joan Sauers
Who doesn’t want to curl up with this fabulous lead character and a great supporting cast in a setting made for some murder and crime solving? When historian Rose McHugh is left a mysterious bequest after the death of the reclusive heiress of Thornwood Park, she’s excited to visit the estate.

But when Rose realises she may have found evidence of women going missing, she delves deeper. During World War II, the nearby Robertson Hotel housed trainees of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force, who often attended lavish parties thrown by Thornwood’s wealthy owners.

Unearthing a decades-old mystery is a challenge … particularly when it may lead to the unmasking of a serial killer. And it appears that someone in the misty Southern Highlands will do anything to keep the killer’s identity hidden.

James Patterson
One secret could destroy a city… A covert operative is murdered on the streets of Tokyo, hunted down by a masked assassin and silenced before he can expose what he’s stolen. With his final breath, he delivers a message that crosses Get Jack Morgan.

Private detective Morgan arrives in Tokyo to find a city on edge. As the investigation unleashes a chain of deadly events, it’s clear he’s stepped into something far bigger – and far more dangerous – than a single killing.

Peter Grainger
When Caroline Thorpe succeeded in casting doubt on the verdict of the inquest into her brother’s death, she could not have anticipated what would follow. Freddie was Earl Thorpe of Burnham, and as the Kings Lake detectives, headed by DCI Cara Freeman, soon begin to realise, influential people have gone to considerable lengths to cover up a potential scandal surrounding the young man’s death.

Their investigation will take them from Norfolk into the capital, and from idealistic young campaigners to people at the heart of government. The stakes have never been higher for the detectives from Kings Lake Central.

Kathy Lette
The Sisterhood

Live life to the fullest – girls just wanna have fun. Never let a man come between you. Share all your secrets. For twin sisters Isabel and Verity, the sisterhood rules were shattered when Verity had an affair with Izzy’s husband. Unforgivable, right? Devastated by her sister’s betrayal, Izzy casts Verity into social Siberia.

But when their mother goes missing, Verity and Izzy are forced to come together again to find her. And then the estranged sisters’ problems only get bigger. Their mother has a new younger lover and where there’s a will… he’d clearly like to be in it.

Can they stop their mother making a dreadful mistake? And in doing so find a way to bury the pain of the past? Full of laugh-out-loud humour and devastating pathos, Kathy Lette’s brilliant new novel takes us on a roller-coaster ride which proves that from pain comes healing, from honesty comes forgiveness, and that nothing is more important than your sisters.

Helen Pitt
For decades, the young and the young at heart have loved the Luna Park face and its promise of laughs and thrills – and a whiff of danger. Helen Pitt has uncovered Australia’s intriguing Luna Park story. It’s filled with con men and criminals, crooked cops, failed politicians and movie moguls. Like the circuses, from which amusement parks evolved, this is a tale with elephants, performing snakes and many ringmasters.

The story starts in late 19th-century America, and follows the eight fun parks that opened—and closed—across Australia. The most famous of them all, Sydney’s Luna Park, has a history that’s truly a roller-coaster ride like its trademark Big Dipper, which was shipped piece by piece from South Australia for its 1935 opening.

From the engineering feats of its construction in the dark days of the Depression to the tragic deaths of six boys and a father in the 1979 Ghost Train fire – one of Sydney’s most heartbreaking unsolved mysteries – and despite financial disasters, legal battles and closures, Luna Park survives, glittering by the water.

Debbbie Whitmont
Could the conviction of Vietnamese refugee Phuong Ngo for the 1994 assassination of Cabramatta MP John Newman be one of Australia’s greatest miscarriages of justice? ‘I think that every now and again our wonderful system cocks up and this was one of those times.’ Former ALP Senator Graham Richardson.

Cabramatta was embroiled in a heroin epidemic, gang wars and demands to deport Vietnamese gangsters when local member John Newman was gunned down in the driveway of his home. Newman’s murder was billed as Australia’s first political assassination and the killer was identified within hours as the politically ambitious Vietnamese refugee and Deputy Mayor, Phuong Ngo.

Ngo was accused of killing Newman to take his seat in parliament and sentenced to die in gaol. But there have always been questions about his conviction. Why did it take seven years and three trials to find Phuong Ngo guilty? Why was so much evidence and the names of so many witnesses kept secret? How could Ngo be the murder mastermind when both of the men accused of shooting Newman were acquitted? Why is the killer still at large? And why do some of the day’s most senior politicians say they never believed Phuong Ngo was guilty?

For the first time, Phuong Ngo tells his story and unpicks one of the country’s longest and most secretive investigations in The Man Who Couldn’t Wait.

Mary Beard
What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book–against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”–Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “twelve Caesars,” from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian.

Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns.