James Brandt didn’t look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now he has returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge.The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James’s journalistic curiosity – and his anxiety – both of which cropped up during his turbulent journey to adulthood. But it is the unexpected homophobic attack he survives that draws James into a hunt f...

Journalist James Brandt lives in a brittle truce with his partner Dylan and his family, never talking about the homophobic attacks he exposed in his rural hometown, including the brutal death of a beloved cousin twenty years ago.But this illusion of peace is ripped apart by the start of the state’s historical gay-hate crime inquiry, and the reappearance of the Joneses, who waltz back into Kippen professing to be queer allies. Yet when one of that notorious dynasty is found dead at ...

After several careers that went off the rails more times than he cares to acknowledge, author Michael Burge took to journalism at the age of forty and has felt it necessary to look over his shoulder ever since!Taking jobs that nobody else wanted because the pay was crap and the prospects zero, Michael found a lifeboat in an industry that was starting to sink faster than theTitanic.Creating Waves is a collection of his hardest-hitting and most heartfelt artic...

When a middle-aged boy player returns to London's Globe playhouse during a terrible revival of Romeo and Juliet, she sets off a chain of events as great as any of Shakespeare's entertainments, revealing a love story that lay hidden for decades, just beneath the lines of the script. Centuries later, an out-of-work Sydney actor connects the dots of this drama and is inspired to write a play, bringing him face to face with big life lessons in the art and politics of storytelling. The lives of...

Leaving a mark on history is usually the result of courage, but it always starts by simply making a stand.Since 2009, Australian journalist Michael Burge has written about single-minded individuals who faced fear, grief and oppression, yet went through with defiant acts of social and cultural rebellion.Many of them got a very bad name in the process, or had their motives shrouded in mystery.Pluck is Michael’s re-examination of several divas, dilettantes, groundbreakers...

"A rising star of crime fiction" Sunday Times"Outback noir has a new star" The TimesLocated off the coast of South Australia, Kangaroo Island lies surrounded by violent seas harbouring deadly great white sharks and forgotten shipwrecks.Over the centuries the Islanders have cultivated a sense of self-sufficiency, independence and resilience. But times are changing: multimillionaires from the mainlan...

When overworked forensic pathologist Nicola Fox arrives for a long-overdue break at her holiday house in Brunswick Heads, on the NSW north coast, she's shocked to discover someone sunbaking on one of the sun lounges in her backyard. And that the sunbaker has been dead for some time.Rumours soon emerge that the sunbaker took more than a few dark secrets to his grave, secrets many people - and especially the police - were keen to bury. When the arse-covering and finger-pointing begin...

From the intriguing Echo Lake, Rose McHugh, curious historian-turned-detective, returns to solve her next compelling mystery in the moody Southern Highlands.A missing violinist. A rising flood. A race against time. Intrigue, music and danger collide in Whisky Valley.After nearly being murdered last year, Rose McHugh battles anxiety as she uses her investigative skills to find her son's best friend, a famous violinist who i...

"Outback noir has a new star" Mark Sanderson, The TimesWith DS Manolis on leave in Greece, Senior Constable Sparrow receives a phone call from a man who wants to turn himself in.Bob is sixty-five years old, confined to a Perth nursing home. But thirty years ago, he killed a man in the remote northern Kimberley mining region. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, but there's a catch: Sparrow must travel north with him under t...

Shortlisted for the 2024 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime FictionJack Harris, the disgraced son of Australia's most powerful business tycoon, has just been exiled to Byron Bay as a junior journalist at his father's smallest regional newspaper, The Beacon. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of the newspaper's editor, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, while out on his morning surf. When Patrick's body is discovered in the ocean, with a severed leg, it app...

An open road. A dead cop. A killer in the hills …I flicked on the torch, swept the surrounds. Nothing. Then I directed the beam into the trees on the other side of the road.Up on a high, jutting branch, something moved. It may have been a white face, a pale body, a curved leg. Or it may have been none of those things. Was it human? Too quick for me to tell. A ripple, a blink and it was gone. But it seemed to leave an afterglow, an impression up...

From the bestselling author of Wimmera comes a compelling literary thriller that shows we all have secrets, but some are deadlier than others.Big city. Deadly secrets.Cities are tough when you've grown up as a country kid. They're even tougher after nine years inside. Tom Blackburn is fresh out of jail and not sure where his future lies. He knows what he wants. But he's pretty sure she doesn't want him.Tom's left his old li...