Want something to sink your teeth into this weekend? Curl up on the couch with one of these great reads you won’t be able to put down, and maybe have to leave a light on to go to sleep at night…..
The Deep, by Alma Katsu
Set against a broad and brilliantly evoked historical backdrop, The Deep is the thrilling, chilling new historical thriller from the author of the astonishing and acclaimed The Hunger.
The Temple House Vanishing, by Rachel Donohue
Under the repressive gaze of nuns in an elite Catholic girls’ boarding school, two students, Louisa and Victoria, become infatuated with their young art teacher. That is, until he and Louisa disappear. Years later, a journalist determined to resolve the mystery of the missing pair uncovers tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets that will shatter lives. The Temple House Vanishing is a stunning, intensely atmospheric novel of unrequited longing, dark obsession and uneasy consequences.
The Boy from the Woods, by Harlan Coben
A child has gone missing. With her family suspecting she’s just playing a disappearing game, nobody seems concerned except for criminal attorney Hester Crimstein. She contacts Wilde, asking him to use his unique skills to find the girl. But even he can find no trace of her. One day passes, then a second, then a third. On the fourth, a human finger shows up in the mail. And now Wilde knows this is no game. It’s a race against time to save the girl’s life and expose the town’s dark trove of secrets.
Takes One to Know One, by Susan Isaacs
Corie Geller, a retired FBI agent turned Long Island housewife taps into her investigative past when she begins to suspect that her neighbour Pete Delaney is harbouring criminal secrets. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence? She decides the only way to find out is to dust off her FBI toolkit and take a deep dive into Pete’s affairs. This whip-smart suburban mystery is wickedly witty, bitingly wry and ominously thrilling.
A Testament of Character, by Sulari Gentill
A suspicious death
A missing person
A journey across America in search of answers
When his friend Daniel Cartwright dies and names Rowland as his executor, Rowland must divert his plans to return home to Australia from Shanghai and travel to America.
Daniel was vastly wealthy but appears to have disinherited his family in favour of a man called James Meredith, whom no one can find. In the aftermath of Daniel’s death, the Cartwrights challenge Daniel’s will, alleging that he was not of sound mind.
After Rowland and his troupe of friends take suites at the Copley Plaza in Boston, they then embark on a journey that takes them through New York, Warwick and Baltimore as they track down answers to the questions that surround Daniel’s death and the mysterious disappearance of James Meredith.
The Second Wife, by Rebecca Fleet
Everyone brings baggage to a new relationship. When Alex met Natalie, she changed his life. After the tragic death of his first wife, which left him a single parent to teenage daughter Jade, he’s determined to build a happy family.
But his new-found happiness is shattered when the family home is gutted by fire and his loyalties are unexpectedly tested. Jade insists she saw a man in the house on the night of the fire: Natalie denies any knowledge of such an intruder.
Alex is faced with an impossible choice: to believe his wife or his daughter? And as Natalie’s story unravels, Alex realises that his wife has a past he had no idea about, a past that might yet catch up with her. But this time, the past could be deadly.
You Are Not Alone, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Shay Miller has three strikes against her: no job, no apartment, no love in her life. But when she witnesses a perfectly normal looking young woman about her age make the chilling decision to leap in front of an ongoing subway train, Shay realises she could end up in the same spiral. She is intrigued by a group of women who seem to have it all together, and they invite her with the promise: ‘You are not alone’. Why not align herself with the glamorous and seductive Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane? They seem to have beaten back their demons, and made a life on their own terms – a life most people can only ever envy. They are everything Shay aspires to be, and they seem to have the keys to getting exactly what they want.
As Shay is pulled deeper and deeper under the spell of the Moore sisters, she finds her life getting better and better. But what price does she have to pay? What do Cassandra and Jane want from her? And what secrets do they, and Shay, have that will come to a deadly confrontation?
You are not alone: Is it a promise? Or a threat?
The Recovery of Rose Gold, by Stephanie Wrobel
A chilling exploration into obsession, reconciliation and revenge.
Rose Gold Watts believed she was sick for eighteen years. She thought she needed the feeding tube, the surgeries, the wheelchair.
Turns out her mum, Patty, is a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she’s forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling. And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
Saint X, by Alexis Schaitkin
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister Alison vanishes from the luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X on the last night of her family’s vacation. Several days later Alison’s naked body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men, employees at the resort, are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. It’s national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved, but for Claire’s family there is only the sad return home to broken lives.
Years later, riding in a New York City taxicab, Claire recognises the name on the cabbie’s licence, Clive Richardson – her driver is one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. The fateful encounter sets her on an obsessive pursuit of the truth, not only what happened on the night of Alison’s death, but the no less elusive question of exactly who was this sister she was barely old enough to know: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation. As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will uncover the truth, an unlikely intimacy develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by a tragedy. Alexis Schaitkin’s Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that hurtles to a devastating end.
The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan
Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl’s silence – three unconnected events that will prove to be linked by one small town. Even this village on the edge of the sea isn’t far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.
‘With her third novel Dervla McTiernan confirms she’s a born storyteller’, said Val McDermid.
Amnesty, by Aravind Adiga
Danny – Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, denied refugee status after he has fled from his native Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal Australian life.
But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. When Danny recognises a jacket left at the murder scene, he believes it belongs to another of his clients – a doctor with whom he knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported, or say nothing and let justice go undone?
Over the course of a single day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.
The Treadstone Resurrection, by Joshua Hood
The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum’s Bourne universe. Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. It cost him his family and any chance at a normal life, which is why he was determined to get out.
Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site. Now Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him – lightning reflexes and a cold conscience – in order to discover who the would-be killers are, and why they have come after him now.
Where the Truth Lies, by Karina Kilmore
When investigative journalist Chrissie O’Brian lands a senior job at The Argus, she is desperate to escape the nightmares of her past. Her life has become a daily battle to resist numbing the pain. But her job is something she can do better than anyone else – and the only thing that keeps the memories at bay. But after a dockworker who confided in her turns up dead, Chrissie becomes obsessed with unravelling the truth.
Guest List, by Lucy Foley
On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped.
Torched, by Kimberley Starr
A small Yarra Valley town has been devastated by a bushfire, and Reefton Primary School Principal Phoebe Warton can’t sleep. She’s the single mother of eighteen-year-old Caleb who is accused of starting the fire – on purpose. Phoebe will be forced to confront the nature of guilt and redemption, and decide what boundaries she is willing to cross to save the son she loves. Torched is an explosive, haunting and compelling crime novel about mothers and sons and the ties that bind them.
Before She Knew Him, by Peter Swanson
From the hugely talented author of The Kind Worth Killing comes an exquisitely chilling tale of a young suburban wife with a history of psychological instability whose fears about her new neighbour could lead them both to murder.
Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.
But when they meet the neighbours next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.
Could her neighbour, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?
The more Hen observes Matthew, the more she suspects he’s planning something truly terrifying. Yet no one will believe her. Then one night, when she comes face to face with Matthew in a dark parking lot, she realizes that he knows she’s been watching him, that she’s really on to him. And that this is the beginning of a horrifying nightmare she may not live to escape.
A Famished Heart, by Nicola White
The first in a powerful new crime trilogy set in 1980s Dublin, exploring the power of the Catholic church and the powerlessness of unmarried women.
Her head was bowed, and the hands braced on the chair arms were not like hands at all, but the dry dark claws of a bird…
The Macnamara sisters hadn’t been seen for months before anyone noticed. It was Father Timoney who finally broke down the door. One woman was sitting in her armchair, surrounded by religious tracts, the other was crouched under her own bed. Both had starved themselves to death.
Francesca Macnamara returns to Dublin after decades in the US, to find her family in ruins. Meanwhile, Detectives Vincent Swan and Gina Considine are convinced that there is more to the deaths than suicide. Because what little evidence there is, shows that someone was watching the sisters die.
Without a Doubt, by Fleur McDonald
Detective Dave Burrows finds himself on the wrong side of the law as he searches for the link between a murdered man and illegal stock trading in this suspenseful rural crime novel.
‘Another engaging read that shine a light on rural Australia and captivated me start to finish.’ – Beauty and Lace
‘Nobody does rural fiction quite like Fleur McDonald.’ The Weekly Times
Detective Dave Burrows returns in the most compelling and exciting case of his early career.
In Barrabine, as Dave’s workload skyrockets, Melinda, Dave’s wife, is unhappy about being left alone so much to raise their eighteen-month-old daughter, Bec. It’s not how Dave wants it either, but complaints, leads and crimes all have to be investigated – it’s what he joined the force for.
Melinda’s interfering father isn’t helping. He’s never thought that Dave was right for his daughter and he’s not shy about telling Dave what he’s doing wrong. When things come to a head at home, Dave’s policing mate, Spencer, comes up with a plan.
In the most dangerous mission of his life, Dave knows what he’s risking. If he’s found out, he’ll never see Melinda or Bec again. Of that he’s sure.
Trace Elements, by Donna Leon
A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon’s haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti novel.
