Jo Nesbo
The Redbreast is a fabulous introduction to Nesbø’s tough-as-nails series protagonist, Oslo police detective Harry Hole. A brilliant and epic novel, breathtaking in its scope and design—winner of The Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel and selected as the best Norwegian crime novel ever written by members of Norway’s book clubs.

The Redbreast is a chilling tale of murder and betrayal that ranges from the battlefields of World War Two to the streets of modern-day Oslo. Follow Hole as he races to stop a killer and disarm a ticking time-bomb from his nation’s shadowy past.

Deborah Rodriguez
Kabul, August 2021
Sunny Tedder is back in her beloved coffee shop. After eight years away, she’s thrilled to reunite with her Kabul ‘family’: Yazmina now runs a pair of women’s shelters from the old cafe, and dreams of a bright future for her two young daughters.

Her sister Layla has become an outspoken women’s rights activist and, thanks to social media, is quite the celebrity.

Kat , Sunny’s friend from America, is wrapping up her year-long stay in the land of her birth, but is facing some unfinished business.

And finally there’s elderly den mother Halajan , whose secret new hobby is itself an act of rebellion.

Then the US troops begin to withdraw – and the women watch in horror as the Taliban advance on the capital at ferocious speed…

Set against the terrifying fall of Kabul in 2021, Deborah Rodriguez concludes her bestselling Little Coffee Shop trilogy with a heart-stopping story of resilience, courage and, most importantly, hope.

Lesley Pearse
Eve should never have married Don Hathaway. Yes, he gave her two beautiful children – Olly and Tabitha – but he is a bully. Worse than that, he hurts her.

But, after one drunken rage too many, she has the courage to leave him. Eve is warned that it’s a difficult path, yet she needs to give her children hope for the future.

Don, however, is bitter. And getting away entirely from him proves impossible.

Until the day, Eve tries to teach him a lesson – and it all goes horribly wrong.

Eve loves her children but now she carries a terrible burden that she dares not share. Has she betrayed her and her children’s futures?

Suzanne Leal
Raised by her severe parents in a punitive and authoritarian church, Ellen’s narrow world is upended when she meets Gordon, a fellow teacher. Responding to his interest with curiosity and, before long, pleasure, Ellen is both transformed and beguiled by the connection, love and laughter he brings into her life.

Three years later, a knock on the door changes everything. Two police officers have come to accuse Gordon of a shocking crime. Abandoned and reviled by those around her, Ellen steadfastly refuses to believe Gordon has done anything wrong. In a world of swirling suspicion, however, she will have to fight to protect him.

But what will that cost her? And what will she discover about him along the way?

Brianna Labuskes
Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm.

Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts–and herself.

Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live–or die–for.

New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives–including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator’s propaganda with a story of her own–at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn.

As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever.

Brian Freeman
Around the world, Treadstone agents are being hunted down and murdered. Someone high up in the U.S. government is erasing all evidence of a shocking mission from Jason Bourne’s past known as Defiance–including Bourne himself.

Staying one step ahead of a team of killers, Bourne follows a global trail that leads him to one of the government’s darkest secrets. But exposing the truth about the Defiance mission will also bring Bourne face-to-face with his archenemy, the assassin known as Lennon, for a final deadly confrontation.

Nick McKenzie
‘There is no doubt the truth would have been concealed and our concerns buried without Nick McKenzie’s relentless pursuit of justice.’ SAS Afghanistan veteran. War is brutal. But there are lines that should never be crossed. In mid-2017, whispers of executions, and cover-ups within Australia’s most secretive and elite military unit, the SAS, reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. He and Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only reveal shocking truths about Ben Roberts-Smith VC but plunge the reporters into the defamation trial of the century.

For five years, McKenzie led the investigation, waging an epic battle for the truth to be acknowledged. His fight to reveal the real face of Australia’s most famous and revered SAS soldier and examine evidence of bullying, intimidation, war crimes and murder would take him across Australia and to Afghanistan.

As he unearthed the secrets Ben Roberts-Smith had thought he’d long ago buried, McKenzie had to deal with death threats, powerful forces intent on destroying his career and attempts to silence brave SAS soldiers, who had witnessed their famous comrade commit unspeakable acts. McKenzie would break the stories that proved the man idolised by the public, politicians, the media and leading business leaders was a myth. His efforts would help deliver justice to Roberts-Smith’s victims and their families.

Explosive and meticulously researched, Crossing the Line shares the powerful untold story of how a small group of brave soldiers and two determined reporters overcame a plot to suppress one of the greatest military scandals in Australian history.

Peter Brune
Between 1946 and 1966 large numbers of displaced persons (DPs) came to Australia to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe. Peter Brune’s latest work had its genesis in more than 40 interviews he conducted with DPs in the period 2001—2022. He spoke to migrants from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Hungary.

Inspired by their resilience, their enterprise and their determination to make a new life for themselves in Australia, the author has written about their harrowing war experiences-—drawing largely on their own words—-their reception in Australia and their first responses to an alien culture. Their subsequent reflections on the journeys they undertook and how they fared here are both moving and revelatory.
Peter also analyses the Chifley government’s immigration policies, which were driven by Arthur Calwell, and the selection criteria that were applied to assess applicants. Both Chifley and Calwell saw the need for a greater population for economic and security reasons; but they also felt an obligation to alleviate the deprivations suffered by millions of Europeans.
Suffering, Redemption and Triumph is an extraordinary exposition of how mass postwar immigration created the modern, multicultural society in which we now live. Peter makes the case that it is one of the most significant periods in the Australian story.

Joanne Harris
Bernie Moon is feeling invisible. She’s given her life to other people – her husband, her son, her mother, her friends (not that she has any of them left). At 16, she was full of promise and power. Now, facing 50, she’s a fading light.

But when a young woman is killed in her local area, it sparks childhood memories of a talent she used to have, one long since hidden.

She said she’d never use it again.

She knows it could destroy not only her, but everyone around her.

Bernie Moon is no longer invisible, but is everyone else ready for what she’s about to become?

Lucy Campbell
1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they’re saying. It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions.

2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery. As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished and was never missed because no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight. Her trail could lead right to Katherine’s door.

In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten.