Cirrus@Austlit

'Rafe's been to the beach and now he's headed to the bush – watch out Australia!

'It's fair to say that Rafe's recent trip Down Under could not easily be called a success: in Australia he and his Mom were forced to flee a pack of bloodthirsty zombies after the ‘performance piece' by Rafe and The Outsiders traumatised Shark Bay (aka ‘Australia's Bravest Town'). Yet, when Rafe receives an offer to attend an all-expenses paid ‘Cultural Campout' in the Northern Territory, Australia, he takes precisely six seconds to say ‘yes'.

'What happens next is full-throttle outback adventure in which Rafe will have to draw on every bit of his new-found ‘Man of Experience' persona to make it out alive.' (Publication summary)

'The Kidds' parents are in trouble once again and the four siblings must traverse the Australian Outback, recover a pair of stolen gems, and defeat treasure hunting pirates to save them!

'The Kidd family is on their way to Australia to find Lasseter's Gold when fellow treasure hunter Charlotte Badger, who challenges them to a race to the gold! But when the Kidds pull into port in Australia, their parents are suddenly arrested – they've been framed! It turns out Charlotte Badger is a pirate, and she's planted a priceless stolen black opal on the Kidds' ship!

'Now Bick, Beck, Storm and Tommy have seven days to traverse the Australian Outback, find Charlotte Badger and her pirate cronies, and bring back the evidence that will prove their parents innocent. If they fail, their parents will be found guilty and thrown in prison . . . for ever!'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A chilling, exhilarating new thriller from the award-winning Candice Fox, described by the Sydney Morning Herald as 'an important new voice in crime fiction'. 'I'm sure every day Eden looked in the mirror and wondered if she should kill me . . .'

'If Detective Frank Bennett tries hard enough, he can sometimes forget that Eden Archer, his partner in the Homicide Department, is also a moonlighting serial killer ...

'Thankfully their latest case is proving a good distraction. Someone is angry at Sydney's beautiful people – and the results are anything but pretty. On the rain-soaked running tracks of Sydney's parks, a predator is lurking, and it's not long before night-time jogs become a race to stay alive.

'While Frank and Eden chase shadows, a different kind of danger grows closer to home. Frank's new girlfriend Imogen Stone is fascinated by cold cases, and her latest project – the disappearance of the two Tanner children more than twenty years ago – is leading her straight to Eden's door.

'And, as Frank knows all too well, asking too many questions about Eden Archer can get you buried as deep as her past … ' (Publication summary)

'Harriet Blue – a detective with nothing more to lose – must decide whether or not to cross the ultimate line in the third explosive thriller in James Patterson's bestselling Australian series.

'Detective Harriet Blue is clear about two things. Regan Banks deserves to die. And she’ll be the one to pull the trigger.

'But Regan – the vicious serial killer responsible for destroying her brother’s life – has gone to ground.

'Suddenly, her phone rings. It’s him. Regan.

'‘Catch me if you can,’ he tells her.

'Harriet needs to find this killing machine fast, even if the cost is her own life. So she follows him down the Australian south coast with only one thing on her mind.

'Revenge is coming, and her name is Harriet Blue …'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The breaktaking new thriller from the author of Hades, winner of the Ned Kelly award for Best Debut Crime Novel. 'I fool myself that Eden has a heart – that she would at least have trouble killing me...'

'Most police duos run on trust, loyalty, and the desire to see killers in court. But Detective Frank Bennett's partner, the enigmatic Eden Archer, has nothing to offer him but darkness and danger. She doesn't mind catching killers – but it's not the courthouse where her justice is served.

'And now Eden is about to head undercover to find three missing girls. The only link between the victims is a remote farm where the desperate go to hide and blood falls more often than rain. For Frank, the priority is to keep his partner monitored 24/7 while she's there – but is it for Eden's protection, or to protect their suspects from her?

Across the city at the Utulla Tip, someone is watching Hades Archer, a man whose criminal reputation is the stuff of legend. Unmasking the stalker for him might be just what Frank needs to stay out of trouble while Eden's away.

'But it's going to take a trip into Hades's past to discover the answers - and what Frank uncovers may well put everyone in danger . . .' (Publication summary)

'#1 New York Times bestselling author Candice Fox delivers a compulsive new crime thriller, which sees Ted Conkaffey once again teaming up with an unlikely partner – this time the father of the girl he was accused of abducting . . .

'When former police detective Ted Conkaffey was wrongly accused of abducting thirteen-year-old Claire Bingley, he hoped the Queensland rainforest town of Crimson Lake would be a good place to disappear. But nowhere is safe from Claire’s devastated father.

'Dale Bingley has a brutal revenge plan all worked out – and if Ted doesn’t help find the real abductor, he’ll be its first casualty.

'Meanwhile, in a dark roadside hovel called the Barking Frog Inn, the bodies of two young bartenders lie on the beer-sodden floor. It’s Detective Inspector Pip Sweeney’s first homicide investigation – complicated by the arrival of private detective Amanda Pharrell to ‘assist’ on the case. Amanda’s conviction for murder a decade ago has left her with some odd behavioural traits, top-to-toe tatts – and a keen eye for killers.

'For Ted and Amanda, the hunt for the truth will draw them into a violent dance with evil. Redemption is certainly on the cards – but it may well cost them their lives . . .' (Publication summary)

'A dark, compelling and original thriller that will have you spellbound from its atmospheric opening pages to its shocking climax. Hades is the debut of a stunning new talent in crime fiction.

'Hades Archer, the man they call the Lord of the Underworld, surrounds himself with the things others leave behind. Their trash becomes the twisted sculptures that line his junkyard. The bodies they want disposed of become his problem – for a fee.

'Then one night a man arrives on his doorstep, clutching a small bundle that he wants ‘lost'. And Hades makes a decision that will change everything...

'Twenty years later, homicide detective Frank Bennett feels like the luckiest man on the force when he meets his new partner, the dark and beautiful Eden Archer. But there's something strange about Eden and her brother, Eric. Something he can't quite put his finger on.

'When the two detectives are called to the scene of an attempted drowning, they find a traumatised victim telling a story that's hard to believe - until the divers start bringing up bodies.

'Frank is now on the hunt for a very different kind of serial killer: one who offers the sick and dying hope at murderous cost. At first, his partner's sharp instincts come in handy. Soon, he's wondering if she's as dangerous as the man they hunt.' (Publisher's blurb)

'12.46: Thirteen-year-old Claire Bingley stands alone at a bus stop

12.47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her

12.52: The girl is missing . . .

'Six minutes – that’s all it took to ruin Detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of Claire’s abduction, he escapes north, to the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.

'Amanda Pharrell knows what it’s like to be public enemy number one. Maybe it’s her murderous past that makes her so good as a private investigator, tracking lost souls in the wilderness. Her latest target, missing author Jake Scully, has a life more shrouded in secrets than her own – so she enlists help from the one person in town more hated than she is: Ted Conkaffey.

'But the residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair’s every move. And for Ted, a man already at breaking point, this town is offering no place to hide . . .' (Publication summary)

1961. In the drawing room of an imposing Hong Kong residence, a British lord brutally assaults a young Chinese boy. His grandson watches, helpless. But he will never forget.

Wapping, London, present day. It’s a warm spring in the capital, and heroin addict Catherine Berlin feels the clammy breath of the past on her neck. Battling to stay clean, and bearing the scars of her most recent case, she is struggling to outpace her demons.

An old contact has offered her a job investigating a violent attack by a seventeen-year-old public schoolboy, a Chinese orphan on a prestigious scholarship. The victim has gone missing, and the boy’s patron, a shadowy peer, claims the case is being manipulated by the Chinese government. Seduced by the boy’s vulnerability and the peer’s allegations, Berlin journeys to Hong Kong, where she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from the Pearl River Delta to the Palace of Westminster…

Source: Publisher's Blurb

'On 11 November 1982, police were called to a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne.

In the lounge room of an otherwise ordinary brick veneer home, they found a five-year-old boy lying on the carpet.

His arms were by his sides, his palms flat. The paramedics could see no obvious signs of trauma other than an almost imperceptible indentation to the boy's skull, but he died the next day. The boy's mother said a man had attacked her son on the way back from the shops but few people were surprised when she and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime.

Police declared themselves satisfied that justice had been done. And yet, for years, rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy's six-year-old sister, Lauren...' Source: www.randomhouse.com.au/ (Sighted 01/10/2009).

'It was four o'clock in the morning. The car park outside Sydney Children's Hospital was quiet. A young woman, dressed only in a dressing gown and slippers, pushed through the front revolving door. Security staff would later say they thought the woman was a new mother, returning to her child's bedside - and in a way, she was. She walked past the nurses' station, into the nursery, where a baby girl - a gorgeous, black baby girl - had kicked herself free of her blankets. The infant was laying face down, the way babies sometimes will: her cheek was flat to the white sheet; and her knees up under her chest. The infant stirred, but did not wake when the woman placed the girl gently in the bottom of the shopping bag she had brought with her. The woman put a toy giraffe from the nursery into the bag with the baby. With the bag hanging heavily from her left hand, and the giraffe's head poking up, through the handles, the woman walked back down the corridor and out to the car park.

'There is CCTV footage of what happened next, and most Australians would have seen it, either on the Internet, or the evening news. The woman walked across the car park, toward an old Corolla. For one long moment, she held the child gently against her breast. She put her nose against the back of the girl's head, and with her eyes closed, she smelled her. She clipped the infant into the baby capsule, and got in the car then drove out, turning left at the lights, toward Parramatta Road. That is where the footage ends. It isn't where the story ends, however. It's not even where the story starts.' (From the publisher's website.)

When journalist Mark Bretton is asked to write an article on Professor Abigail Marchant, who has been denounced by the American Psychology Association for her belief that rebirth is a genuine phenomenon, he's more than a little sceptical about the assignment. An ambitious journalist, Mark would much rather be writing about current affairs but, once he meets the beautiful Professor and hears her theories, he can't help but be won over.

Eventually persuaded to undergo regressive hypnosis himself, Mark is shocked and horrified by what he sees. He is returned to the early ’60s when he worked for the Kennedy administration and not only does he learn the truth about the conspiracy that led to JFK's assassination but also his own murder. Struggling to make sense of it all, Mark turns to Abi for help but someone is watching Mark's every move and will stop at nothing to ensure that the truth about JFK's murder never comes to light...

Source: Author's Blurb

'Born on the rugged Dargo High Plains and raised by her cattleman father, Emily Flanaghan has lost her way in life.

'Locked in an unhappy marriage in the suburbs, Emily misses the high country with a fierce ache. To make matters worse, her heritage is under threat. A government bill to evict the mountain cattlemen is about to be passed, and the Flanaghans could be banned from the mountains their family has looked after for generations.

'When a terrible accident brings Emily to the brink of death, she realises she must return to the high country to seek a way forward in life; healing herself, her daughters and her land. Along the way, she finds herself falling in love with a man who works for the government - the traditional opposition of the cattlemen - new Parks ranger, Luke Bradshaw. But just as she sees that the land and Luke are the keys to regaining her life, Emily faces losing them both in the greatest challenge of all ...

'Set in the beautiful snowgum country of the Victorian Alps, The Cattleman's Daughter is a haunting and unforgettable tale of love, self-discovery and forgiveness from one of Australia's best-loved authors.' (Publisher's blurb)

In all his years on the force, Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon had never seen a corpse like this one. After the initial horror, he recognised the reference to the surrealist painter, Magritte. But that made the crime even more sickening - accomplished, as it had been, with a sickening ferocity which placed it in another league from common or garden homicide.

In the Whitechapel area of London in the 1880s, a person, who remains unidentified to this day, committed a series of sadistic murders of local prostitutes, which involved elaborate mutilation of the victims' bodies.

Although the contemporary crimes are not directed exclusively at female targets, there is grotesque similarity in the mindset of the two perpetrators - divided, as they are, by more than a century. But Pendragon is determined that his pathologically brilliant killer will not escape detection.

Source: Author's Blurb