AustLit

'A car crash victim clings to life and is rushed to hospital but can't be saved. Hours later, her corpse is stolen from the morgue. No one knows who the dead woman was or why her body was taken.

'Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is back in her hometown of Smithson on maternity leave when the bizarre incident occurs. She is intrigued by the case but reluctant to get involved, despite the urging of her journalist friend Candy Fyfe. But in the days after the body goes missing, the town is rocked by another shocking crime and Gemma can't resist joining the investigation.

'Candy and Gemma follow the clues the dead woman left behind. As they attempt to discover the identity of the missing woman, Gemma uncovers devastating secrets about the people she thought she knew best. The closer Gemma gets to the truth, the more danger she is in. She desperately needs to confide in someone-but is there anyone she can trust?

'A gripping, white-knuckle thriller from the bestselling author of The Dark Lake and The Housemate.' (Publication summary) 

'Pauly Johnson is a successful surgeon at a Melbourne hospital with a beautiful wife, a loving family and a memory he wishes he could erase.  

'One night, he takes a drive on a lonely road above a steep drop, determined to end it all, but before he can put his plan into action, a woman steps out of the darkness and into the path of his car. In an instant, her life is ended and his is saved.  

'Shattered by the experience, Pauly becomes obsessed with finding out who she was and why she wanted to kill herself. But he soon finds that the answers lie shockingly close to home....'  (Publication summary)

'The new standalone thriller from the award-winning writer of the bestselling Gemma Woodstock trilogy: The Dark Lake, Into the Night and Where the Dead Go.

'Each new twist in the story skilfully balances bombshell revelations and believability, in a crime that feels achingly familiar, yet shocking at the same time. Much like Oli, I couldn't stop until I knew the truth, too.'
JACQUELINE BUBLITZ, author of Before You Knew My Name

'Three housemates. One dead, one missing and one accused of murder.

'Dubbed the Housemate Homicide, it's a mystery that has baffled Australians for almost a decade.

'Melbourne-based journalist Olive Groves worked on the story as a junior reporter and became obsessed by the case. Now, nine years later, the missing housemate turns up dead on a remote property. Olive is once again assigned to the story, this time reluctantly paired with precocious millennial podcaster Cooper Ng.

'As Oli and Cooper unearth new facts about the three housemates, a dark web of secrets is uncovered. The revelations catapult Oli back to the death of the first housemate, forcing her to confront past traumas and insecurities that have risen to the surface again.

'What really happened between the three housemates that night? Will Oli's relentless search for the murderer put her new family in danger? And could her suspicion that the truth lies closer to home threaten her happiness and even her sanity?

'A riveting, provocative thriller from the bestselling author of The Dark Lake, Into the Night and Where the Dead Go.'(Publication summary)

'A fifteen-year-old girl has gone missing after a party in the middle of the night. The following morning her boyfriend is found brutally murdered in his home. Was the girl responsible for the murder, or is she also a victim of the killer? But who would want two teenagers dead?

The aftermath of a personal tragedy finds police detective Gemma Woodstock in the coastal town of Fairhaven with her son Ben in tow. She has begged to be part of a murder investigation so she can bury herself in work rather than taking the time to grieve and figure out how to handle the next stage of her life - she now has serious family responsibilities she can no longer avoid. But Gemma also has ghosts she must lay to rest.

Gemma searches for answers, while navigating her son's grief and trying to overcome the hostility of her new colleagues. As the mystery deepens and old tensions and secrets come to light, Gemma is increasingly haunted by a similar missing persons case she worked on not long before. A case that ended in tragedy and made her question her instincts as a cop. Can she trust herself again?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'‘No moons, no cows, no trees’, wrote Edwin Tanner of his work in a 1962 statement. ‘Not even a burnt stump or the inevitable parrot.’ This slightly pugnacious rejection of parochialism and the lack of easily recognisable Australian motifs in his art may have something to do with Tanner’s relatively low profile. Critics have also overlooked him: he is absent from Robert Hughes’ and Bernard Smith’s Australian art histories. Tanner was Welsh by birth, arriving in Australia as a young child—accounts differ as to whether he was eight or just three when the family left Wales—but the individuality of his style rests on more than merely this, as Anthony Fitzpatrick’s beautifully curated exhibition at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, held earlier this year, demonstrated.'  (Introduction)

'Sarah Bailey's acclaimed debut novel The Dark Lake was a bestseller around the world and Bailey's taut and suspenseful storytelling earned her fitting comparisons with Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins. 

'Into the Night is her stunning new crime novel featuring the troubled and brilliant Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock. This time Gemma finds herself lost and alone in the city, broken-hearted by the decisions she's had to make. Her new workplace is a minefield and the partner she has been assigned is uncommunicative and often hostile. When a homeless man is murdered and Gemma is put on the case, she can't help feeling a connection with the victim and the lonely and isolated life he led despite being in the middle of a bustling city.

'Then a movie star is killed in bizarre circumstances on the set of a major film shoot, and Gemma and her partner Detective Sergeant Nick Fleet have to put aside their differences to unravel the mysteries surrounding the actor's life and death. Who could commit such a brazen crime and who stands to profit from it? Far too many people, she soon discovers - and none of them can be trusted. But it's when Gemma realises that she also can't trust the people closest to her that her world starts closing in...

'Riveting suspense, incisive writing and a fascinating cast of characters make this an utterly addictive crime thriller and a stunning follow-up to The Dark Lake.' (Publication summary)

'There were a few minutes when I was alone with her in the autopsy room. I felt wild. Absent. Before I could stop myself I was leaning close to her, telling her everything. The words draining out of me as she lay there. Her long damp hair hanging off the back of the steel table. Glassy eyes fixed blindly on the ceiling. She was still so beautiful, even in death.

'Our secrets circled madly around the bright white room that morning. Rocking back and forth on my heels as I stood next to her, I knew how far in I was again, how comprehensively her death could undo me. I looked at Rosalind Ryan properly for the last time before breathing deeply, readying myself, letting her pull me back into her world, and I sank down, further and further, until I was completely, utterly under.

'A beautiful young teacher has been murdered, her body found in the lake, strewn with red roses. Local policewoman Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock pushes to be assigned to the case, concealing the fact that she knew the murdered woman in high school years before.

'But that's not all Gemma's trying to hide. As the investigation digs deeper into the victim's past, other secrets threaten to come to light, secrets that were supposed to remain buried. The lake holds the key to solving the murder, but it also has the power to drag Gemma down into its dark depths.

'The Dark Lake is an addictive crime thriller, a mesmerising account of one woman's descent into deceit and madness, and a stunning debut that is already causing a stir around the world.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Two icy blue beads are trained on her every move. If she steps one way and then quickly to the other, the little beads follow. Jess does it now, just to confirm. It’s a little bit like one of those creepy paintings in a horror film. The eyes follow her up to four metres away; she’s measured it several times. She’s always doing little experiments on the baby, recording her findings in the leather bound journal that she keeps in her underwear drawer. She’s never told Brad about the experiments; she hasn't even told her sister. Not that it’s ever anything dangerous, not at all. Usually the outcomes aren't even that interesting, but she notes them all down anyway. Sometimes at night she lies awake thinking about the experiments and wonders whether she’s going crazy.' (Publication summary)