Juan Gomez-Jurado

Red Queen is the first book in a trilogy that has sold over 2 million copies in Spain, sold to seventeen countries, and is the basis of an Amazon streaming series to debut in 2023. Antonia Scott—the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother—has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she’s refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.

Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao—disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges—is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case.

The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder—a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again…is Antonia Scott.

Tim Aylife

Someone wants Russian millionaire Dmitry Lebedev dead. After years flying under the radar in Sydney, he’s just had a narrow escape when a sex worker is poisoned in his hotel room. In desperation he contacts his former CIA case officer, Ronnie Johnson, offering to expose a traitor inside the Australian government in return for protection.

John Bailey has spent decades risking his life to break news stories. Along the way he’s made some interesting friends, including Ronnie — who saved his life in Iraq — and Scarlett Merriman, whose night with Lebedev left her in a coma. And now they both need Bailey’s help.

While Bailey investigates what happened to Scarlett, Ronnie Johnson is calling in an old debt. Because the same people going after Lebedev have framed Ronnie for murder.

Sophie Green

Noosa Heads, 1987: Newly-divorced Cynthia has returned to her hometown from Los Angeles to reconnect with her 19-year-old daughter, who is pregnant and determined not listen to her mother’s advice. Cynthia’s former best friend Lorraine has been stuck mowing lawns as part of a business she shares with her husband – his dream, not hers. When Cynthia convinces Lorraine to join the local Sunshine Gardening Society, they meet young widow Elizabeth , and rootless, heartbroken Kathy.

The four women soon discover the society is much more than an opportunity to chat about flowers. Rather, it offers them the chance to lend a helping hand to people whose lives need a bit of care and attention right along with their gardens.

Between pulling up weeds and planting sweet wattle, strelitzias and bromeliads, the women learn from each other that some roots go deep, and others, shallow; that seeds can lie dormant for a long time before they spring to life, and that careful tending is the key to lives and friendships that reach their full potential.

Alison Goodman

A high society amateur detective at the heart of Regency London uses her wits and invisibility as an ‘old maid’ to protect other women in a new and fiercely feminist historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman. Lady Augusta Colebrook, “Gus,” is determinedly unmarried, bored by society life, and tired of being dismissed at the age of forty-two. She and her twin sister, Julia, who is grieving her dead betrothed, need a distraction. One soon presents to rescue their friend’s goddaughter, Caroline, from her violent husband.

The sisters set out to Caroline’s country estate with a plan, but their carriage is accosted by a highwayman. In the scuffle, Gus accidentally shoots and injures the ruffian, only to discover he is Lord Evan Belford, an acquaintance from their past who was charged with murder and exiled to Australia twenty years ago. What follows is a high adventure full of danger, clever improvisation, heart-racing near misses, and a little help from a revived and rather charming Lord Evan.

Back in London, Gus can’t stop thinking about her unlikely (not to mention handsome) comrade-in-arms. She is convinced Lord Evan was falsely accused of murder, and she is going to prove it. She persuades Julia to join her in a quest to help Lord Evan, and others in need—society be damned! And so begins the beguiling secret life and adventures of the Colebrook twins.

Naima Brown

How much would you sacrifice for another shot at the perfect life? Producer Mara Bolt is the queen of reality TV. Ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, Mara will do anything for ratings. When she meets Kristy Shaw, Mara is certain she’s found the star of her newest series, The Shot.

Kristy is languishing in her small hometown and a dead-end job, pining for her first love, Max Irving. The Shot offers her a Total Body Transformation – extreme plastic surgery to render her unrecognisable – as a way to recapture Max’s affections under a new identity. But there’s a if she doesn’t secure his heart in thirty days, she must have her surgeries reversed, and go back to her previous life.

As the cameras start rolling, Mara and Kristy both feel there is something happening behind the scenes – something that threatens to reveal old wounds and create new secrets. If they are going to keep the show on track, they must repress the truths and desires that lie just beneath the surface.

Lamisse Hamouda

An incredible true tale of overcoming injustice and ode to the fierce love within one family, The Shape of Dust is a haunting appraisal of the way Australia treats its citizens, both at home and abroad. In 2018, on his way to a family holiday in Cairo, Australian-Egyptian citizen Hazem Hamouda disappears without warning, going missing somewhere between landing and customs. His eldest daughter, Lamisse, has recently moved to Egypt armed with a scholarship to the American University of Cairo, and overnight her world is turned upside down.

With little Arabic and even less legal knowledge, she finds out her father has been arbitrarily arrested. Going up against the notorious Egyptian prison system, Lamisse discovers that the Australian embassy provides shockingly little support to dual citizens arrested abroad. Shouldering the responsibility of her father’s welfare, Lamisse learns to navigate both deeply flawed systems, and freeing Hazem involves a reckoning with the two countries she’s called home – coming to terms with the prejudice and racism of the country she grew up in and the corruption in the country she was hoping to reconnect with. Told with exquisite intimacy by both father and daughter, The Shape of Dust is an Australian story unlike any other, and the striking debut of a writer of incredible nuance, insight and talent.

Craig Semple

Before eighteen-year-old Craig Semple joined the New South Wales Police Force in 1988, he was someone who preferred to steer clear of trouble. But like so many young police officers, he gradually built resilience to fear through a process of selflessly, and often recklessly, turning towards danger. By the time he started locking horns with some of Australia’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle gangs, Craig believed himself to be bulletproof.

After his brother, a rookie police officer, was near-fatally stabbed by a drug dealer in 1998, Craig’s life suddenly jumped the track, his fight against drug crime becoming an obsession that took him to the brink of personal, professional and marital destruction. Attempting to give his family and career a new start, he moved to the New South Wales north coast, where he too became the victim of a violent crime, at the hands of outlaw bikies.

Trained and shaped in an era of alcohol abuse and maverick culture within the force, Craig saw just about everything in a career spanning a quarter of a murder, suicide, armed robbery, organised crime and much more. This unforgiving environment would eventually take its toll. After many years struggling with his deteriorating mental health, Craig retired with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Ahead of him was a challenging journey that would take him to the lowest point of his life and provide him with an opportunity to find a new purpose inspiring others as a mental health educator.

Brendan Watkins
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church. Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties, he started searching for his birth parents and eventually discovered the identity of his birth he was told she was a Catholic nun. And she wanted nothing to do with him. For the next thirty years Brendan had no clues as to the identity of his birth father.

In 2018, a DNA test proved that he was the son of a priest. His father had studied in a Trappist monastery in Ireland, returned to Australia and become a celebrated outback missionary.

After decades of searching and obstruction from the Catholic church, the whole truth was finally exposed. Brendan Watkins’ birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun. Tell No One reveals the moving story of that incredible discovery, and explores the questions, anxieties and reflections arising from his hidden past.

Colin Burgess
During those perilous years surviving in squalid conditions, Sister Jeffrey kept a secret diary of day-to-day events which, after the war, was turned into a book and radio serial: White Coolies. She would often write of the powerful sisterhood that evolved as the POWs took strength from each other, even forming an ‘orchestra’. White Coolies was a major inspiration for the 1997 Bruce Beresford film Paradise Road, starring Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and Cate Blanchett amongst others.

Sisters in Captivity builds on those diaries to not only re-live the years the nurses spent as POWs but also learn of the early life and influences that encouraged Betty Jeffrey into a life of nursing, and the outstanding work she carried out for the rest of her life. Featuring personal photos of Betty courtesy of her family and her drawings from the prison camps.

Melissa Levi
Do you get the sense that something’s just not quite right with yourself, Mum or Grandpa? Does your family avoid having the big conversations about ageing? Are you confused and overwhelmed?
You are not alone.

Clinical psychologist Melissa Levi has helped more than a thousand older people, and their families, navigate the ageing journey. While every family’s story is unique, Melissa has come to know that we all share common fears and questions about ageing – the same questions her own family had when her grandfather was diagnosed with dementia.

In We Need to Talk About Ageing, Melissa encourages us to understand that while getting older is inevitable, our journeys don’t need to be overwhelming, or clouded with uncertainty or confusion. She provides expert information on what to expect as you get older, what’s ‘normal’, how to identify symptoms of common medical and psychiatric conditions in later life, and, most importantly, what you can do and where to go for help.

Melissa shares practical, actionable strategies, tips and discussion prompts, so you are equipped to have the big conversations about ageing, to maintain connection, to find your way through the aged-care maze, to make informed, values-aligned decisions and so much more.

We Need to Talk About Ageing is a comprehensive guide that will empower your family to plan for the future, experience greater meaning, joy and connection, and navigate the ageing journey with confidence and grace.

Melissa Levi has specialised in older people’s mental health and dementia for over a decade. She is committed to educating and empowering families to better understand ageing, have the big conversations and plan for the future, so they can take control of their ageing journeys. Her mission inspired We Need to Talk About Ageing and her website Talking Ageing – resources she wishes had been available for her own family when her grandfather was diagnosed with dementia.