Cirrus@Austlit

'A chilling police thriller set in a small coastal town on the Mornington Peninsula, where the discovery of human bones on an isolated beach has reawakened a twenty-year-old cold case…

'On the evening of September 22, 1998, three teenage girls venture out for a night of mischief in the coastal town of Blairgowrie. But only two return . . .

'For over twenty years the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Cecilia May remains a baffling cold case - until human bones are discovered on an isolated beach.

'Now it’s up to Detective Emmett Corban and his team to dig up decades of trauma, and find the missing piece of an investigation that’s as complex as it is tragic.

'Does the answer lie with the only suspect, a registered sex offender who confessed, then immediately provided a rock-solid alibi? Or with the two teen survivors – neither of whom can keep their story straight?

'But the police aren’t the only ones hunting for the truth: someone else has arrived in the seaside town. And she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to find her own version of justice…' (Publication summary)

''He didn’t have to be normal, the boy realised. He just had to pretend.’

'It’s winter in Melbourne and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk.

'So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he’s convinced this is the big case he’s been waiting for – the woman’s husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched.

'But things aren’t all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

'Just as the net seems to be tightening, the investigation is turned on its head. The body of a woman is found . . . then another.

'What had seemed like a standard missing person's case has turned into a frightening hunt for a serial killer, and time is running out.

'But to really understand these shocking crimes, Emmett and his team will need to delve back through decades of neglect – back to a squalid inner-city flat, where a young boy is left huddling over his mother’s body . . .'

Source: publisher's blurb

'Why are we all so hostile? So quick to take offence? Truly we are living in the age of outrage.

'A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups. Lost in a blizzard of hashtags, his already complex investigation is further impeded by the fact that he simply doesn’t ‘get’ a single thing about anything anymore.

'Meanwhile, each day another public figure confesses to having ‘misspoken’ and prostrates themselves before the judgement of Twitter. Begging for forgiveness, assuring the public “that is not who I am”.

'But if nobody is who they are anymore - then who the f**k are we?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns.

'The boy’s mysterious disappearance from the family’s lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair.

'Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp.

'But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports’ own friends, take sides.

'As the tramp’s kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they’d ever dreamed...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Adapted from Margareta Osborn's bestselling ebook novella A Bush Christmas, Rose River is a gloriously funny romantic comedy set in the beautiful Australian outback.

'Take one city girl - and drop her into the back of beyond ...

'Housesitting in rural Burdekin's Gap, high up in the East Gippsland mountains, is not an obvious career move for a PR executive like Jaime Hanrahan. But, hey, retrenchment is a kicker.

'Plus she's determined not to spend Christmas in Melbourne with her friends, who still have company cars and six-figure salaries, or with her mother, Blanche, who has remarried too soon after her father's death.

'However, it turns out that Burdekin's Gap is a little more remote than Jaime had anticipated, the house is in the middle of a cattle station, and the handsome manager, Stirling McEvoy, doesn't appreciate a new farmhand in Jimmy Choos and Sass & Bide cut-offs.

'Soon Jaime is fending off stampeding cows, town ladies wielding clipboards, sheep who think they are goats, nude sportsmen and one very neurotic cat. So why does she feel like she's falling in love . . . with the life, with the breathtaking landscape, and with one infuriating cowboy …? (Publication summary)

'Run to Me is a non-stop, impossible-to-put-down suspense thriller with riveting twists and turns, as a 'mother and son' go on the run...It's been two years since Shyler O'Neil's beloved son Jesse was killed - but his final moments are as vivid to her now as they were that dreadful day. Suffering from post-traumatic stress, and convinced she did not do enough to protect him, she retreats to an isolated cabin in the woods of northern Maine. Meanwhile, Zack Ballinger - a ten-year-old boy who has never known a mother's love - finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's seen too much and is now running for his life. Fleeing into the woods, Zack soon finds himself at Shyler's cabin. He'll take whatever help she can give - even though, for some reason, she keeps calling him Jesse ...With the pursuers hot on their heels, 'mother' and 'son' go on the run. Protecting Zack may well be Shyler's one chance at redemption. Either that, or she is the child's greatest threat ...'A tight, taut page-turner that romps along from the opening page'. (Synopsis)

Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder - and Pilgrim wrote the book. What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God.

Source: Publisher's Blurb

'For more than a century, Americans and Britons have been arriving hopefully in Paris.We'll Always Have Paris is a personal view of Paris as it appeared to the emotionally and intellectually hungry of the world. It explores the old brothels - temples of sensuality in 18th century Paris - and an erotic bookshop.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Former army interrogator Jay Ryan is enjoying the quiet life after leaving the military far behind - or so he thinks. Because old habits die hard and he's quickly thrust back into the thick of things when a disgruntled scientist, backed by the Australian security industry, develops a weapon of mass destruction - a hybrid strain of Anthrax - to be used to create panic in a population apathetic to crime prevention.

'Only one batch of Anthrax inoculations can resist the deadly new strain, and it was given to five military interrogators. One of them was Jay Ryan. When the other four disappear, Ryan is the last interrogator left with the antibodies to defeat the deadly Anthrax strain.

'Racing against time and hunted by rogue soldiers, mad scientists and an organisation that operates beyond the law, Ryan digs deep into his past for a chance at a future.

'In this heartstopping thriller, Jay Ryan wages a one-man war against enemies both known and unseen. There's only person he can trust - or can he? Winning the war may have devastating consequences for the last interrogator ...' (Publisher's blurb)

'Chrissie and Anthony Foster were like any other young family, raising their three daughters in suburban Melbourne with what they hoped were the right values. Chrissie could not have known that the stranger-danger she feared actually lurked in the presbytery attached to the girls' Catholic primary school. Father Kevin O'Donnell, a long-term paedophile, lived and worked there.

'Two of their young daughters became victims of O'Donnell. And once the truth was revealed, the Fosters began a battle to find out how this could have happened. The Church offered silence, lies, denials and threats. Meanwhile, their daughters tried to piece together their fractured lives.

'This is the chilling true story that made national and international headlines. Chrissie Foster's heartbreaking account of her family's suffering, and their determination to stand up for themselves against the might of the Catholic Church, is testament to the strength of a mother's love, and the resilience of the human spirit.' (From the publisher's website.)