When the deep dark bush swallows you whole

Geoff Parkes
It’s January 1983. During his university summer break, Ryan Bradley returns to the remote town of Nashville in New Zealand’s rugged King Country. It’s a bittersweet he’s working long, punishing hours as a woolpresser, he needs to sell his late mother’s house, and he’s increasingly feeling like an outcast in his childhood town.

But mostly he’s haunted by memories of Sanna Sovernen, a Finnish backpacker and his secret lover, who worked with him in the shearing shed the summer before – then vanished without trace.

Now Sanna’s sister Emilia has arrived from Finland, determined to get answers – and as he’s the workmate who reported Sanna missing, she wants Ryan’s help. Because Emilia knows her sister was not the first female traveller in the area to disappear . . .

Until thy wrath be past

Asa Larsson
A vivid tale of suspense from one of Sweden’s finest crime writers. As spring arrives in the far north of Sweden, a young woman’s body surfaces through the breaking ice of the River Thorne. At the same time, visions of a shadowy figure haunt the dreams of Rebecka Martinsson, a prosecutor in nearby Karuna. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams? And where is the dead girl’s boyfriend?

Joining forces once again with Police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella, Rebecka finds herself drawn into an investigation that stirs up long-dormant rumors of a German supply plane that went missing in 1943–and of Nazi collaborators in the town, where shame and secrecy shroud the locals’ memories of the war.
And on the windswept shore of a frozen lake lurks a murderer who will kill again to keep the past buried forever beneath half a century’s silent ice and snow

The red coast

Di Morrissey
Di Morrissey returns to the red earth of the Kimberley with a passionate story of resistance and resilience under its soaring blue skies.After the upheaval which separated Jacqui Bouchard from her beloved son, she has finally settled in Broome, a magical remote town on the northwest coast of Australia. But when a proposed mining development is unveiled, the town begins to tear itself apart. Rifts run deep, as friends, families and lovers are faced with a battle that could change their lives irrevocably. As everyone takes sides, Jacqui confronts her own to stay or leave? Who to trust . . . Who to love?


The plantation

Di Morrissey
When Australian Julie Reagan discovers a book written about wild Malaysia in the 1970s, she decides to find out more about the author – her great aunt. Why did her grandmother refuse to speak about her sister who disappeared from the family, 60 years before? What caused such a severe rift?

Julie is invited to stay with her cousins who run the plantation founded by her great grandfather in Malaya a hundred years ago, and she decides to visit in the hope of finding clues to this family mystery. What Julie finds sends her spiralling through generations of loves, deaths, tragedy and the challenges of the present until she discovers her grandmother’s shocking secret.

Splinter the silence

Val McDermid
Splinter the Silence is a novel centered on the mysterious deaths of several women who were the victims of vicious cyberbullying. Is it violence if it’s virtual? The outspoken women targeted by the increasingly cruel internet trolls and bullies would probably say so. For some of them, the torrents of bile and vicious threats prove too much. They begin to silence themselves in a series of high-profile suicides.

Or do they? Tony Hill isn’t convinced. But he’s the only one. Former cop Carol Jordan is too busy messing up her life to care. Until she gets an unexpected second chance. Now it’s game on, and the stakes have never been higher.

The jam maker

Mary-Lou Stephens
Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job as label-paster at the George Peacock and Sons jam factory.

Four years later, the deceit becomes too much to bear and Harriet risks everything on the chance at a future with her ambitious friend and workmate Henry Jones. But this decision forces her into a new deception: play the role of expert jam maker, or else be cast out onto the streets.

As the secrets and lies grow, Harriet is driven to more and more desperate choices. Choices that will end with a dangerous secret which, if discovered, could destroy not only her life but the lives of those she loves and protects.

Intertwined with the fascinating history of the Tasmanian jam industry and the striking historical figure Henry Jones, The Jam Maker is a tale of danger, deceit and the desperate measures one woman will take to succeed in love and life.

It happened on the lake

Lisa Jackson
The huge Victorian house on Lake Twilight belongs to Harper Reed Prescott, as does the private island on which it sits. Harper wants little to do with either. Twenty years ago, Harper’s grandmother died suspiciously while in her care, on the same night that Harper’s boyfriend disappeared. His body was never found, and no charges were filed. But the rumors haven’t faded. There have been other deaths, other accidents. All revolving around Harper and her family.

Now Harper’s marriage is over, her college-age daughter is estranged, and Harper just wants to sell the property and make a fresh start. Except returning to the lake has stirred everything up again. Whispers. Memories. And the persistent feeling that, as she gazes out at the houses across the water, she’s being watched in turn.

The whole town has always thought Harper has something to hide, and they’re right. But she might have even more to fear . .

Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne escape

Brian Freeman
Jason Bourne is on a boat in the Mediterranean moonlight with his lover, Johanna. He’s happy for the first time in years. Then in the next instant, he finds himself floating on wreckage as fire and smoke choke the sky. Johanna is gone. And Bourne finds the darkness of lost memory closing around his mind again.

As he did once before, Bourne must piece together the fragments of who he is, even as assassins hunt him across Europe. He teams up with his spy chief, Shadow, who reveals the shocking secret that Bourne’s surrogate father – David Abbott, the founder of Treadstone – is alive and missing. Together they must find Abbott before his enemies do.

But Shadow is a master of manipulation who won’t hesitate to betray Bourne to get what she wants. With his memory returning in bits and pieces, Jason discovers that the explosion that stole away his identity is part of a deadly game being played among powerful adversaries from Moscow to Washington. It’s a game with no winners – because even if he finds David Abbott, Bourne may still find himself with no way out and everything to lose.

Broke road

Matthew Spencer
In Australia’s bucolic wine country, a homicide detective is on the hunt for a killer with a ruthless agenda in a gripping novel of suspense by the author of Black River. A young woman is found dead in her isolated town house in rural Red Creek, an up-and-coming wine tourism destination outside Sydney. No forced entry. No signs of struggle. And her geologist husband has an alibi, though it’s not exactly solid. While a tabloid journalist is quick to spin her own damning narrative, homicide detective Rose Riley is questioning everything she sees—especially in a rapidly developing community that already seems on edge.

While Riley and her partner, Priya Patel, work the case with a local detective, crime reporter Adam Bowman follows his own leads. Then forensic evidence matches that of a pair of unsolved murders elsewhere in two other married women, murdered months apart yet in the exact same manner. Riley realizes she’s dealing with a serial killer. But one whose victims weren’t random. These women were chosen, watched, and targeted for a purpose.

As the secrets in this small town emerge, the suspects mount. Now Riley must unearth the deadliest secret of all—the true motive behind the murders—before another woman dies.

Liar’s game

Jack Beaumont
While recruiting a Russian human source embedded in the shadows of illicit financial networks, French spy Alec de Payns is abruptly pulled from the field. His new mission: exfiltrate a North Korean walk-in from Beijing who claims to know the details of a massive cyberattack that could destroy the world’s economy. But before the defector can utter a word, he dies in de Payns’ arms on the journey home.

The failure of such a routine job enrages France’s new prime minister, who views the covert actions of the DGSE – the French external spy agency – as a political liability. When de Payns’ next mission mysteriously collapses, the Company has no choice but to disavow him.

Now exposed, hunted across South-East Asia and cut off from official support, de Payns must survive alone, untangle a deadly conspiracy and protect his family. But in a world of deception, who can he trust? And who is truly pulling the strings in this deadly liar’s game?

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