Cirrus@Austlit

'Sergeant Nick Chester has dodged the Geordie gangsters he once feared, is out of hiding and looking forward to a quiet life. But gold fever is creating ill-feeling between prospectors, and a new threat lurks in the form of trigger-happy Americans preparing for Doomsday by building a bolthole at the top of the South Island.

'As tensions simmer in the Wakamarina valley, Nick finds himself working on a cold-case murder and investigating a scandal-plagued religious sect. When local and international events reach fever pitch, Chester finds himself up against an evil that knows no borders.' (Publication summary)

'Nick Chester is working as a sergeant for the Havelock police in the Marlborough Sound, at the top of NZ's South Island. If the river isn't flooded and the land hasn't slipped, it's paradise - unless you are also hiding from a ruthless man with a grudge, in which case, remote beauty has its own kind of danger. In the last couple of weeks, two local boys have vanished. Their bodies are found, but the Pied Piper is still at large. Marlborough Man is a gripping story about the hunter and the hunted, and about what happens when evil takes hold of a small town.'

When Brigitte and her family moved from the city, they were supposed to be happier. And safer. But soon her crime-writer ex-boyfriend turns up in town to promote his new novel, in which a woman is found dead - murdered - in a country lake. Hours later, Brigitte watches the police pull a body from the water near her Gippsland home. Her husband, a country cop now, is at the scene, though it's not his investigation; he's only helping the Melbourne Homicide Squad. But there's something he's not telling Brigitte. With her personal life spiralling out of control once more, and fearing her family is in danger, who can Brigitte turn to? And what if she makes the wrong choice? Dead in the Water is about trying to escape the cycle of trauma. It delves into the darkness beneath the surface of fear, betrayal, and revenge, to find a glimmer of hope.

Source: Publisher's blurb

'Is Brigitte a loving wife and mother, or a cold-blooded killer?

Nobody knows why she was in the east of the city so early on the morning she was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. It was the Friday before Christmas 1994 - the same day police discovered the body of a man beaten to death in her apartment.

Fourteen years later, Brigitte is married to the detective who investigated the murder, which she claims to have lost her memory of in the car accident. They have young twins, and seem to be a happy family. Until the reopening of the cold case.

Please Don't Leave Me Here is about loss, love and lies. It is about pain, fear, and memory. And, above all, it is about letting go.' (Scribe)