AustLit

'Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.

'The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home.

'Kieran's parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea, that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.

'When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband's secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she's forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.' (Publication summary)

'Three escaped pensioners. One single mother. A road trip to rescue her son. The new emotionally compelling page-turner by Australia's Charlotte Nash

'In their tiny pale green cottage under the trees, Mallory Cook and her five-year-old son, Harry, are a little family unit who weather the storms of life together. Money is tight after Harry's father, Duncan, abandoned them to expand his business in New York. So when Duncan fails to return Harry after a visit, Mallory boards a plane to bring her son home any way she can.

'During the journey, a chance encounter with three retirees on the run from their care home leads Mallory on an unlikely group road trip across the United States. Zadie, Ernie and Jock each have their own reasons for making the journey and along the way the four of them will learn the lengths they will travel to save each other - and themselves.'  (Publication summary)

'A highly adorable and addictive love story that explores whether "the stars" can or should be a guide through life and what happens when one woman tries to give "the stars" a little help. 

'When childhood sweethearts Justine (Sagittarius and serious skeptic) and Nick (Aquarius and true believer) randomly bump into each other as adults, a life-changing love affair seems inevitable. To Justine anyway. True, she hasn't seen Nick in thirteen years, one month and three weeks, but who's counting? She's pined after him all the same, and now that Nick lives in the same town, a struggling actor to her struggling magazine reporter, he'll surely realize his own unchanged feelings, take the reins and jump at the chance to rekindle their relationship. Right? Well, no. Nick, she learns, is an astrological devotee, and his decision-making, romantic and professional, is guided solely by the infallible horoscopes in his favourite magazine. The magazine Justine happens to work at. Perhaps the stars' guiding forces could use a little journalistic reimagining?

'It's only a few tweaks to the Aquarius column, just a little push to get him to realize they're meant for one another. It's nonsense in the first place, what could possibly happen? Aquarians everywhere are about to find out, when the doctored horoscopes, ostensibly published to steer Nick and Nick alone, end up reverberating in the lives of the column's devoted readers, showing the ripple effects of what can happen when one woman decides to take the horoscopes, and Fate itself, into her own hands.

'Spanning exactly one year, as the earth moves through all twelve stars signs, Star-Crossed is a delicious, intelligent and affecting love story about fate, chance and how we all navigate the kinds of choices that are hard to face alone.' (Publication summary)

'WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?

'Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well ...

'When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge.

'And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds are reopened. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret ... A secret Falk thought long-buried ... A secret which Luke's death starts to bring to the surface ...' (Publication summary)

'Born as twins. Raised as enemies.

'One strong Alpha twin and one mutated Omega; the only thing they share is the moment of their death.

'The Omegas live in segregation, cast out by their families as soon as their mutation becomes clear. Forced to live apart, they are ruthlessly oppressed by their Alpha counterparts.

'The Alphas are the elite. Once their weaker twin has been cast aside, they’re free to live in privilege and safety, their Omega twin far from their thoughts.

'Cass and Zach are both perfect on the outside: no missing limbs, no visible Omega mutation. But Cass has a secret: one that Zach will stop at nothing to expose.

'The potential to change the world lies in both their hands. One will have to defeat the other to see their vision of the future come to pass, but if they’re not careful both will die in the struggle for power.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins)

'At a remote ice station in Antarctica, a team of US scientists has made an amazing discovery. They have found something buried deep within a 100-million-year old layer of ice. Something made of METAL.'

Source: Back cover blurb.

'Forensic scientist Jack McCann, an ex-crime scene detective, is separated from his difficult wife and living with his 17-year-old son, Greg. He is also trying to track down his teenage daughter, Jacinta, who ran away two years ago - an event that stirred memories of an earlier tragedy, the abduction of his little sister Rosie from outside the family home in 1975.

'Reluctantly, Jack agrees to help a detective friend investigate a series of grisly pedophile murders. Then an anonymous telephone tip-off about Jacinta's whereabouts leads Jack into an intimate relationship with an enigmatic woman, a relationship that threatens not only to compromise the entire investigation, but also to bring him appallingly close to the mutilator murderer.

'As Jack uncovers the extraordinary link between the old and new crimes, he is forced to confront the destructive patterns within his own family. But before he can fully unravel the mystery, he unwittingly exposes both himself and his son to deadly danger.'

Source : Goodreads.com

'Gemma Lincoln wakes up one morning to find her clothes horribly slashed at the throat and crotch. Similar but increasingly sinister incidents are also reported. As the owner of a security and surveillance business, Gemma joins with the police to track down the psychopath. At the same time she is trying to prove that her father is innocent of a crime he has served 30 years in gaol for - the murder of his wife. Gemma's older sister, Kit, believes their father is guilty. As the violence escalates, Gemma discovers that the past and the present collide in a trap where she must fight for her life.' (Publication summary)

'A woman, living alone in an isolated valley, is plagued by a series of mysterious events and the conviction that she is being watched.'

Source: ABE Books https://bit.ly/38a1cKA

'Forcibly taken from their remote one-room schoolhouse and held captive by three grotesquely masked kidnappers, Sally James and her young charges wage a fierce and violent battle for their lives.' 

Source: ABE Books https://bit.ly/3grE136

'The Hurlingford family have ruled the small town of Byron, nestled in the Blue Mountains, for generations. Wealthy, powerful and cruel, they get what they want, every time.

'Missy Wright lives with her widowed mother and crippled aunt in genteel poverty. Hurlingfords by birth, all three are victim to the family's rule of inheritance: the men take it all. Plain, thin and unforgivably single, it seems Missy's life is destined to be dreary.

'But then a stranger arrives in town. A divorcee from Sydney. And she opens Missy's eyes to the possibility of a happy ending.'

Source : publisher's blurb