AustLit

'Brad has fallen into the lion enclosure, and the big cats are hungry! Charith takes the wheel of an out of control bus after an explosion. Iresha hears strange noises . . . from beneath the seabed. Daniel crawls into a waste crusher after a building collapse–and then it gets switched on. Tak's class goes on excursion to an army base and now an experimental military robot is hunting them.

'Jack Heath’s ten more nail-bitingly dangerous short stories will fascinate and terrify during each full 40-minute count down, as the dangerous situations play out right down to the last crucial moment. Who will live and who will die? ' (Publication summary)

'You are strapped tightly into your seat on the bullet train. The mountain track is so steep, the aisle is a staircase. As the train accelerates at top speed, a passenger slips out of his seat and begins to fall to the back of the train. He will probably die. Do you unstrap yourself to save him, or do you stay in your seat?

'Countdown the minutes in Jack Heath’s terrifying story of your survival — or your demise! You decide.' (Publication summary)

'George is trapped in a falling aeroplane with no engine and no pilot. Milla is covered with radioactive waste and her hazard suit is running out of air. Otto is in the darkest depths of the ocean, where something hungry is circling . . . 10 dangerous situations. 10 brave kids. 30 minutes to escape. ' (Publication summary)

'Big girls in 19th-century England don't cry in Graeme-Evans's light tale about a plucky heroine who endures a series of harsh trials on her way to becoming London's leading dressmaker.

'Things start to go south for curate's daughter Ellen Gowan on her 13th birthday, when the dress Connie, her mother, makes her, entices one of her father's students to steal a kiss. Scandal and ruination seem imminent when her father dies, forcing mother and daughter to seek refuge with Connie's sister, who lives in terror of her baronet husband. There, Ellen's friendship with her cousin, Oriana, blossoms, until once again a young man stirs trouble, and Connie and Ellen land in London, where Connie succumbs to illness and Ellen marries a cad who leaves her pregnant and alone.

'But with a little help from friends, family, and unlikely sources, Ellen becomes the go-to creator of "all manner of finery" for England's most prominent families.' (Trove)

In all his years on the force, Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon had never seen a corpse like this one. After the initial horror, he recognised the reference to the surrealist painter, Magritte. But that made the crime even more sickening - accomplished, as it had been, with a sickening ferocity which placed it in another league from common or garden homicide.

In the Whitechapel area of London in the 1880s, a person, who remains unidentified to this day, committed a series of sadistic murders of local prostitutes, which involved elaborate mutilation of the victims' bodies.

Although the contemporary crimes are not directed exclusively at female targets, there is grotesque similarity in the mindset of the two perpetrators - divided, as they are, by more than a century. But Pendragon is determined that his pathologically brilliant killer will not escape detection.

Source: Author's Blurb

'A teenage girl stumbles across the body of her classmate, Tim Pieters, hidden amongst the bushes. His family is devastated, the killer is never found.

'Eighteen years later, political pressure sees the murder investigation reopened. Detective Ella Marconi tracks down Georgie Riley, the student who found the body, and who is now a paramedic. Georgie seems to be telling the truth, so then why does Ella receive an anonymous phone call insisting that Georgie knows more? And is it mere coincidence that her ambulance partner, Freya, also went to the same high school?

'Ella's confusion increases when Tim's mother, once so willing to get the police involved, suddenly turns her back on the investigation. Meanwhile, Tim's cousin, the MP whose influence reopened the case, can't seem to do enough to help.

'The more Ella digs into the past, the more the buried secrets and lies are brought to light. Can she track down the killer before more people are hurt?' (From the publisher's website.)

'Paramedic Lauren Yates stumbles into a world of trouble the night she discovers a body in an inner city alley - the killer still lurks nearby. When the murderer threatens to make her life hell if she tells the police, she believes him - he's Thomas Werner, her sister's ex-and father to Lauren's niece... and not a man to mess with. But when a stabbing victim tells her with his dying breath that Werner attacked him too, she finds herself with blood on her hands and Detective Ella Marconi on her back.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Before his death in 1609, Queen Elizabeth’s spiritual consultant, astrologer, and scientific advisor John Dee hid many of his most astonishing written works, believing that the world was not yet prepared to face the shocking truths that they revealed. For seventeen generations, his female descendants have carefully guarded the secret of his hiding place, waiting for the right moment to bring Dee’s ideas to light. That time is now. In The Rose Labyrinth, popular British author Titania Hardie masterfully blends historical fact and fiction as she introduces readers to Lucy King, a beautiful, young documentary producer based in London. With the help of a brilliant group of friends, Lucy races through London, France, and New York to decipher the clues that will eventually lead her to the hidden treasure of the Rose Labyrinth. Along the way she finds true love with Alex Stafford, the doctor who saw her through a life-threatening heart condition and transplant. A sweeping adventure for readers who loved The Da Vinci Code and The Expected One, The Rose Labyrinth is a decadent, romantic novel with a historical twist. It features a wonderful mix of literary references, from Shakespeare, to the Romantic poets, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the folklore and history of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism; and of course, astrology and numerology, of which Titania Hardie is an expert. As the Rose Labyrinth tells us, the world we think we know is not all that it appears to be.' (Publication summary)

When a blackened skeleton is unearthed on a building site in the City of London, no one can have the slightest idea of its extraordinary link to a plot to assassinate the Queen of Englandover 500 years ago.

But there is one very conspicuous clue. On the index finger of the body's right hand is a gold ring topped with a brilliant, round emerald.

DCI Jack Pendragon has just transferred from Oxford to Brick Lane Police Station - in part to escape his own past. Immediately, he finds himself investigating three particularly gruesome murders. And he will need all the experience he has acquired from two decades on the force to track down a killer for whom an eerie obsession has become total madness. A killer who draws his murderous inspiration from a Renaissance family whose power and cruelty remain a living legend.

Source: Publisher's Blurb

'At high noon on a hot summers day, a beautiful young woman shoots the mayor dead.

'So begins a story of passion and betrayal in a Quiet Tuscan village, leading to a sensational trial. The defence team, headed by the brilliant but unhappy Carlo Rienzi, uncovers a sinister conspiracy of silence that threatens to split the community.

'Can Carlo persuade the judge to grant clemency in what appears to be an open-and-shut case? Can the law intervene in the brutal tradition of vendetta?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'The Pope receives a private revelation that the world is about to end—the second title in the Vatican Trilogy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'No one had talked about fuel; what was the use of talking, anyway? But they all knew that engines which run on fuel have to run out of fuel sometime, and that the Egret just couldn’t keep on going for ever. They seemed to have been sitting in this plane, imprisoned, for days, waiting to die. Gerald just flew on and on as though he wanted to fly away to another world, almost as though he didn’t want to go down, almost as though he didn’t know how to go down.

When the Egret’s pilot dies suddenly mid-flight six teenagers, the only passengers on board, face a terrifying situation. Gerald has had some flying lessons, but he has never flown alone, and he has never landed a plane. Lost and afraid, they fly on as the fuel gauge drops and night closes in. Will they find a clear landing place? Could they land in the sea? If they do somehow land safely how will they find their way back to civilisation?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Text Publishing edition).

Handicapped by cerebral palsy and overprotected by his parents, a twelve-year-old, left alone for the first time, in a desperate need to exert his independence, does precisely what he has been forbidden to do.

(Source: Trove)