Looking for some great holiday reading for the summer?
Relax. Sisters in Crime has once again invited convenors, author members, Davitt Award judges and winners, and others to nominate their favourite holiday books for your reading pleasure over the summer.
It was great to see the breadth of the books selected, which covered a wide range of themes, views, and values, an array of settings, and characters that readers could engage with. All of which would not be achieved without the fantastic writing of the women authors selected this year, who enable readers to go on a journey with them into the worlds they have created and crafted. In addition, it was great to see the inclusion of not only ‘traditional’ crime fiction, but also true crime stories and Young Adult and children’s fiction.
You will also note that several of the novels received multiple recommendations – Kay Schubach’s Perfect Stranger; Laura McCluskey’s The Wolf Tree; Tanya Scott’s Stillwater, and Judith Rossell’s children’s novel, The Midwatch – which only serves to highlight how these authors and novels have captured the imaginations of their audience and have left a strong and lasting impression upon them.
Reading continues to provide an ‘escape’ from our reality, where we can enter a world full of possibilities, where, in the end, truth will prevail, and justice will be served. The women authors selected below have created worlds for their readers which entertain, thrill, captivate, and, in some cases, having readings returning time and again.
Hopefully, the best holiday reads 2025-2026 provide you with a much-needed escape or adventure this holiday season.
Happy reading!!
Lidia Kathrine
Holiday reading recommendations
#1 KD ALDYN (AUTHOR) recommends:
Elise Janes, The Canvas Killings (Jett Books, 2025)
The Canvas Killings is urban noir (authentically set in a highly recognisable Melbourne), which sets it apart from many other modern Australian crime thrillers. The premise is original: Who would have thought the art world could be so sinister? Action-packed with exceptional dialogue, a literary lyricism, and a very satisfying ending.
#2 ANDREA BARTON (AUTHOR) recommends:
Bella Ellwood-Clayton, The Swimming Group (Joffe Books, 2025)
The Swimming Group is a twisty psychological thriller that kept me guessing throughout. A member of a cold-water swimming group disappears, leaving the rest of the group wondering what happened to her and whether one of them played a hand in her disappearance. I particularly enjoyed the vividly painted characters and the side dish of romance.
#3 ANNE BUIST (AUTHOR)
Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel (Pan Macmillian, 2025)
I am drawn strongly to books with mental health themes – and put off by labels of ’mad’, so I was somewhat dismayed by the book’s title. But if Hepworth’s book is about labels, it’s also about breaking them down. She shows Mabel as wonderfully human, and the story is easy reading, page-turning, and ultimately feel–good with a main character that stays with you long after the book is finished.
#4 DONNA M CAMERON (AUTHOR)
Liz Moore, The God of the Woods(Riverhead – Penguin, 2024)
This is the best who-done-it, page-turning thriller I’ve read in a long while. I read it last year, but it has stayed with me. I recently saw that even Stephen King gave it a shout-out. Deservedly so. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to move this gem of a book to the top of your TBR pile. You won’t regret it. Beautiful setting, atmospheric, full of vividly drawn characters, and political in that it shines a light on privilege and class. (And writers – check out the craft in her use of plotting and split timeline.)
#5 LINDY CAMERON (AUTHOR & CONVENOR)
Kelly Gardiner & Sharmini Kumar, Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective (HarperCollins Australia 2025)
A fabulous addition to the Jane Austen expanded litverse in which Caroline Bingley utilises her unique and newfound investigative skills while on a secret quest to track down a missing maid. Caroline’s desire for a life worth living within the constrained world and manners of the Regency period is a rip-snorting and often funny, mystery adventure. It’s a pleasure from start to finish, and I can’t wait for the sequel.
#6 TANIA CHANDLER (AUTHOR)
Donna M Cameron, The Rewilding (Transit Lounge, 2024)
I was initially drawn to The Rewilding by its cover – it’s gorgeous; I can’t stop looking at it! But I kept reading because I’m a sucker for a love story, especially with two seemingly incompatible people. The climate change element is done well, and it leaves the reader with hope rather than despair – a perfect holiday read. And for readers who love crimey twists and turns, there are plenty of those too.
#7 SHERRYL CLARK (AUTHOR)
Belinda Bauer, The Impossible Thing (Penguin UK, 2025)
This is a novel about, of all things, egg trafficking. It starts in 1926 with a very small girl being lowered down a cliff to steal guillemot eggs, and the discovery of an extremely rare red egg that becomes the basis of a series of crimes. The story moves to the present day, with theft, greed, double-crossing, murder, and revenge involved. The novel is based on fact (the Metland eggs are real) and the two characters who are determined to get ‘their’ egg back are both funny and sad! Not your usual crime novel, but I loved it.
#8 NATALIE CONYER (AUTHOR)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Velvet was the Night, (Hachette Australia, 2021)
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a ‘delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir’. Set in the 1970s, it’s about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman they’re both desperate to find. It’s a holiday treat.
#9 VICKY DADDO (AUTHOR)
Jessie Q Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice (Berkley Books and HarperCollins Australia, 2023)
This delightful cosy crime book features tea expert Vera Wong, an anxious Chinese mother with too much time on her hands, who finds a dead man in her tea shop one morning. Vera decides to investigate the crime herself and, along the way, invites her suspects for tea and some soul-searching. It’s funny, warm, and the first in a series, so you can get your fix of even more Vera and even more tea.
#10 AMY DOAK (AUTHOR)
Carla Salmon, We Saw What You Started (Pan Macmillan, 2025)
For teen and tween readers looking for an action-packed mystery set in a balmy Queensland surf town, this book is the perfect holiday read. With main characters, Otto and Milly, each providing a point of view and trying to solve the escalating crimes in Red Sands, this is a page-turner that also speaks to friendship dynamics, making good choices, and growing up.
#11 LISA ELLERY (AUTHOR & CONVENOR)
Dawn Farnham, Tokyo Time (Brash Books, 2023)
The story is a gritty police procedural set in Japanese-occupied Singapore during the Second World War. The reader is thrown into a time and place of turmoil, tension, and fear, with the setting vividly and accurately portrayed, and the police drama is thoroughly satisfying. I was hooked from the start by the two main characters from two different worlds. One has the power to execute the other on the spot for any perceived affront, but when a beautiful and well-connected young woman’s body is found they must work together to unravel an intricate multicultural mystery. I would love to see this amazing work published in Australia, but, for now, you can still buy it from Amazon.
#12 ILSA EVANS (AUTHOR)
Kay Schubach, Perfect Stranger (Penguin 2012)
The book overview: Perfect Stranger is one of those books that stays with you for a long time after you’ve read it. A brutally honest cautionary tale of obsession and desire that, in various iterations, happens to far too many women. When Kay Schubach fell in love, she thought she had everything. She could not have been more wrong. Instead, her heady, all-encompassing romance turned into Beauty and the Beast but in reverse, where the prince becomes the monster – and escape is almost impossible.
#13 DAWN FARNHAM (AUTHOR & CONVENOR)
Lisa Ellery, Hot Ground (Fremantle Press, 2024)
It’s a great summer read! The sweltering ‘hot ground’ in Ellery’s terrific outback thriller is not just the relentless heat of the day and the night of WA’s Goldfields, the hope of fortunes waiting in the ground for desperate prospectors, but also young detective Jessy Parkin’s punishment for involvement in a tainted investigation in Perth. Tasked with the job of finding a missing veteran prospector, as her investigation progresses, it reveals a series of much older crimes. Ellery has written a strong female character who is not afraid to stand up to pressure from senior officers as she tries to untangle the twisted web of events.
#14 STELLA FORDHAM (AUTHOR)
Pamela Nathan, Pain Bleeds Crime (Big Sky Publishing, 2025)
Very insightful and confronting perspective on some of the most violent criminals in Australia’s prison system, written by a forensic psychologist. Offers a new perspective than that typically presented in true crime writing, whereby the reader is invited into the internal worlds of these criminals and provided with a wider understanding of crime and its perpetrators.
#15 SUSAN FRANCIS (AUTHOR)
Wendy James The Accusation (Harper Collins, 2019)
I adored this book because I was an English teacher in a small country town for many years, and Wendy James captures the setting, the politics, the prejudice, and the landscape so very well. At times, it was as if she’d lived my experience. I also believe the three female protagonists were well-developed and highly nuanced characters. And the denouement was completely unexpected. It was a really satisfying read.
#16 KELLY GARDINER (AUTHOR & CONVENOR)
Nilima Rao, A Shipwreck in Fiji (Echo Publishing, 2025)
Fiji is associated in many Australian minds with lazy holidays by the beach. So, what better holiday reading than a novel set in Fiji? But this is not the Fiji you know – or, rather, it is, but during the First World War, where Police Sergeant Akal Singh is trying to stay out of trouble with the colonial authorities, and the ladies. While investigating reports of German ships in the area, Akal stumbles across a murder. With a delightful cast of characters and deepening mysteries, this is a compelling summer read.
#17 POPPY GEE (AUTHOR & CONVENOR)
Zeynab Gamieldien, Learned Behaviours (Ultimo Press, 2025)
The Sydney settings in this excellent novel – the Canterbury-Bankstown area, the business district of Martin Place, and the eastern and northern beach suburbs – collectively illuminate a collision of worlds that are not frequently portrayed in crime fiction. Barrister-in-training Zaid Saban grew up in ‘The Area’ in western Sydney and is struggling to fit into a Martin Place law firm. I really liked this book for many reasons. Zaid is an observant and compelling narrator, and combined with Amira’s sharp, heartfelt, and funny perspective, Learned Behaviours is a great literary mystery and a thoughtful commentary on race and class in contemporary Australia.
#18 ERIN GOUGH (AUTHOR)
Judith Rossell, The Midwatch (Hardie Grant, 2024)
The Midwatch is apparently for younger readers, but it’s one of those special books that feels like an instant classic, and which will appeal to readers of any age who enjoy mystery, adventure, and imaginative other worlds. It follows Maggie Fishbone, who is banished to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways, and Unwanted Girls, only to discover that the place is a cover for something far more exciting. Luckily for us, Rossell is not just a stellar storyteller; she is also an incredible illustrator. Her stunning pictures on every page help bring this whimsical, thoroughly enjoyable tale to life.
#19 AMANDA HAMPSON (AUTHOR)
Dinuka McKenzie, The Torrent (HarperCollins, 2022)
Australian fiction that is beautifully descriptive with a gripping plot and a sympathetic main character in Detective Kate Miles. I finished this one and went straight on to read the next in the series, Taken, which was equally enthralling. Top-tier crime fiction and a perfect summer read.
#20 NARRELLE M. HARRIS (AUTHOR)
KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers (Poisoned Pen Press, 2025)
KJ Charles writes brilliant historical queer fiction, with complex characters and realistic personal and emotional conflicts, even in the depths of a gothic mystery, which makes their resolutions all the more satisfying. The connections, motivations, and secrets in All of Us Murderers unfold with excellent pacing and a terrific finale. It’s also a great introduction to Charles’ splendid body of work.
#21 KATE HORAN (AUTHOR)
Angie Faye Martin, Melaleuca (HQ HarperCollins, 2025)
Set in an outback Queensland town, Indigenous detective Renee Taylor investigates a brutal murder that leads her to the unsolved disappearance of two Aboriginal girls 30 years before. Compelling, thought-provoking, and twisty, Melaleuca is an unflinching exploration of the dark underbelly of institutionalised racism and corruption in Australia, as well as a tightly plotted mystery that will have you gripped.
#22 SARAH JACKSON (AUTHOR)
Laraine Stephens, The Death Mask Murders (Level Best Books – Historia, 2021)
Cosy mysteries are made for the holidays, and the Reggie Decosta series really hits the spot. The Death Mask Murders, the first in the series, introduces us to the Argus newspaper crime reporter, Reggie Decosta – a hard-nosed, single-minded, fashionista who guides the reader through a twisted series of murders set in 1920s’ Brighton. An easy-to-read page-turner with lots of shocks, laughs, surprises, and insight into 1920s Melbourne. Once you get started, you’ll want to read the whole series.
#23 RILEY JAMES (AUTHOR)
Laura McCluskey, The Wolf Tree (HarperCollins, 2025)
Think Shetland, but with colder weather and woollier jumpers. Think The Wicker Man, but with a troubled female detective. Then add large waves, gloomy skies, and frosty locals. That should give you a sense of The Wolf Tree, Laura McCluskey’s wonderfully sinister debut. If you can’t get to a real-life island this summer, try this one—it’ll be a blast (from the North Atlantic!)
#24 LISA KENWAY (AUTHOR)
Tanya Scott, Stillwater (Allen & Unwin, 2025)
Stillwater is the thinking person’s action thriller. Set in Melbourne, it’s about a young man who’s trying to build a quiet, law-abiding life until he gets drawn back into the violent underworld that he thought he’d left behind. With top-class prose, great characterisation, and real heart, this twisty, gritty debut is the perfect summer read – I couldn’t put it down.
#25 MORAIG KISLER (CONVENOR & 2025 DAVITT JUDGE))
Sujata Massey, The Bombay Prince (Allen & Unwin, 2021)
Amidst rising anti-British feeling, the Prince of Wales’s 1921 tour of India is marred by the horrific death of a young student who falls to her death from her college balcony as the prince’s entourage passes. The death is deemed a murder, and Perveen Mistry, India’s first female lawyer, is determined to seek justice. I romped through this novel: Perveen is whip-smart and gutsy, pushing the boundaries of female norms of that time. The perfectly crafted snapshot of 1920s’ India is bursting with colour, memorable characters, and is the perfect historical/murder mystery. Perveen flies from the page like a whirlwind sari-clad sleuth.
#26 SONYA LEEDING (AUTHOR)
Kay Schubach, Perfect Stranger: A True Story (Penguin, 2012)
Kay’s book shows that coercive control and intimate partner violence can happen to anyone, in any social demographic, in any suburb. ‘What happens when the man of your dreams makes your life a nightmare?’ Trapped in a terrifying relationship, isolated from friends and family, Kay must decide what she values most and fight for it. A brutally honest cautionary tale, this is a true story of obsession and desire.
#27 ASHLEIGH MEIKLE (BOOK BLOGGER & 2025 DAVITT JUDGE)
Judith Rossell, The Midwatch (Hardie Grant Egmont, 2024)
Maggie Fishbone is being sent to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways and Unwanted Girls, where things are not as she expected. Instead of a life of drudgery, she’s being trained in spy craft, solving mysteries, and finding her place in the world. I recommend this one because it has all the hallmarks of a classic, and it was one that I got into from the first page when I read it for review purposes. Highly recommend this one.
#28 ROW MURRAY (AUTHOR)
Charlotte McConaghy, Wild, Dark Shore (Penguin, 2025)
A gorgeous book that transported me into the wild, and I felt the chill, harsh breeze, dark history, and current dramas. Reading this book, you’ll dwell in a fresh, unique setting, and you know you’re being carried on a wild current of secrets and lies. A late-night page-turner.
#29 MELISSA POULIOT MP (AUTHOR)
Kay Schubach, Perfect Stranger: A True Story (Penguin, Michael Joseph), 2012)
Kay’s book shows that coercive control and intimate partner violence can happen to anyone, in any social demographic, in any suburb. It also inspires hope and a way out for those who find themselves in this situation. What happens when the man of your dreams makes your life a nightmare? Trapped in a terrifying relationship, isolated from friends and family, Kay must decide what she values most and fight for it. A brutally honest cautionary tale, this is a true story of obsession and desire.
#30 ERINA REDDAN (AUTHOR)
Alison Goodman, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (HarperCollins, 2023)
This series is the pitch-perfect beach read for those who like a little tart intelligence in their page-turning immersive reading experience.
It’s a witty Regency historical crime series, featuring twin spinster sisters, whose family name and money give them status but are increasingly sidelined by society. They fall into daring adventures to rescue women in terrible Regency-style danger. Gritty, smart, fun, and compelling.
#31 RONNI SALT (AUTHOR)
Bronwyn Rivers, The Reunion (Hachette Australia, 2025)
I enjoyed The Reunion because it was tense and atmospheric with a level of pacing that matched the slowly unravelling tale. It tells the story of a group of old school friends who travel back to the place where something terrible once happened to them and how they are all dealing with confronting the truth. I loved the realistic depiction, too, of women and their friendships over time.
#32 ANGELA SAVAGE (AUTHOR)
Laura McCluskey,The Wolf Tree (Harper Collins, 2025)
The Wolf Tree is a tense, atmospheric thriller with folk horror vibes, set on a remote Scottish island – think Broadchurch meets The Wicker Man. McCluskey’s evocations of character and place are so powerful, you’ll feel DI Georgina Lennox’s seasickness as she and DI Richard Stewart head to the island to investigate an apparent suicide, only to encounter suspicion, misdirection, and malevolence. A perfect hot weather read, guaranteed to give you chills.
#33 KAY SCHUBACH (AUTHOR)
Melissa Pouliot, Rhiannon’s Last Look: Rhiannon Series, #5 (Self-published, 2024)
Australian author Melissa Pouliot’s books are inspired by the 30-year cold case mystery of her missing cousin Ursula Barwick. Although fiction, her ability to draw you into the depths of the real experience of missing people is unparalleled. Rhiannon’s Last Look (Pouliot’s seventh novel) finds Detective Rhiannon McVee struggling to choose between committing to her cowboy Mac and her growing number of missing persons cases. When her young prodigy Constable Zoe Chesney disappears in the remote outback, Rhiannon is faced with the biggest ‘if only’ of her career.
#34 CECILE SHANAHAN (EDITOR & 2025 DAVITT JUDGE)
Jessica Townsend, Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow, Nevermoor #4 (Lothian Children’s Books, Hachette, 2025)
In the fourth Nevermoor instalment, Jessica Townsend once again creates a gripping tale where a whole new district of Nevermoor is explored and with it comes an invitation for readers to meet new characters, while also discovering more about those we already know and love. The addition of a murder mystery element provides another layer of intrigue and adventure. Fantasy meets cosy crime – a genre blend I didn’t know I needed until Silverborn came along!
#35 CARMEL SHUTE (CONVENOR)
Riley James, The Chilling (Allen & Unwin, 2024)
I read this at the height of the Queensland summer last year and was so thrilled that I emailed Ruth Wykes, Sisters in Crime’s review editor, at midnight. The Chilling might be is Riley James’ debut novel but it’s masterful in every respect. Set against the harsh backdrop of an isolated research station in Antarctica, it follows two separate groups of people. The protagonist, Kit Bitterfeld, is part of a research team that has come to work for the season at a base at Antarctica. The second group has fled their ship after it caught fire, and are trying to survive in impossible elements out in the open as they search for the base. There’s a storm approaching. There’s nowhere to run. But so much to hide. A ripper read.
#36 ALICIA THOMPSON (AUTHOR)
Lucie Whitehouse, Keep You Close (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2016)
I thought this was going to be another chewing gum read but I was wrong. Whitehouse is a writer of a very high standard. I was constantly marvelling at how her fresh descriptions, and what she chose to describe, encapsulated a mood, an atmosphere or a key psychological detail. This woman needs no lessons in creating subtext. Whitehouse has the full toolkit of skills and this story has tension galore. . . Flickers of Patricia Highsmith came to mind. A rich and dense story with a great deal of emotional and psychological complexity. A page-turner in the very best sense.
#37 JEM TYLEY-MILLER (AUTHOR)
Jess Kidd, Himself (Allen & Unwin, 2016)
Against a backdrop of 1970s’ Ireland (with flashbacks to 1950), charismatic Dubliner Mahony returns to the remote village of his birth seeking answers. For years, its inhabitants have kept secrets about his teenage mother who is said to have left him on the steps of the orphanage. But, as Mahony enlists the help of the village’s most aberrant residents, what begins as an investigation leads to a revolt against those enforcing moral purity in a rapidly modernising Ireland. Full of bold characters who leap from the page, expect murder and mayhem, along with letter bombs and poisonous scones, flares that cause moral outrage, and a village of garrulous locals (both dead and alive) itching to give up its ghosts.
#38 ELISE WACKETT (AUTHOR)
KD Aldyn, Sister Butcher Sister (Poisoned Pen Press, 2025)
Three sisters who share a traumatic past have adopted differing false memories to overcome a childhood horror. One of them is now a killer, but which one is she? From the brilliant cover to the very last page, as each sister narrates her own recollections, Sister Butcher Sister misdirects at every turn, leaving readers to keep guessing until the very end.
#39 LISA WALKER (AUTHOR)
Kayte Nunn,The Palazzo (HarperCollins, 2025)
This is a twisty and atmospheric destination murder mystery. Friends, food, jealousy, and obsession collide in an Italian palazzo when a recently widowed beauty entrepreneur hosts a birthday reunion. I love how Kayte evoked the smells, tastes, and vibrant landscape of the Italian countryside in this immersive read. I felt like I was poolside sipping my Aperol Spritz with this bunch of deviously fascinating characters.
#40 ROBYN WALTON (REVIEWER & AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEWER)
Annie Hauxwell, In Her Blood (Penguin, 2012)
I’d heard of English-Australian author Annie Hauxwell’s four Catherine Berlin novels (published 2012-16), but it wasn’t until this year that I started on the first in the series, In Her Blood. It introduced me to a tough-minded heroin-dependent investigator in the grimy shadows of East London in winter during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09; definitely the stuff of a black-and-white noir film. The terse dialogue, sometimes witty prose, and tension and pace drew me in. And they kept me going through a confusing stage when I wasn’t sure which violent, corrupt man was with the police, the regulatory authority, or a loan shark’s crew. Recommended for noir fans.
#41 MARYANNE VAGG (CONVENOR)
Tanya Scott, Stillwater (Allen & Unwin)
Tanya Scott’s Stillwater is a gripping, assured, and refreshingly original debut that can confidently stand its ground in the Australian crime-fiction landscape. Luke Harris, formerly Jack Quinlan, is, to the casual observer, a calm, empathetic disability support worker, studying and working hard to secure a future. The novel moves seamlessly between Luke’s traumatic past and his precarious present, and each shift adds emotional weight, gradually revealing the forces, human, systemic, and circumstantial, that hold Luke fast to a world of violence even as he claws desperately for a way out. This is a story as interested in redemption and resilience as it is in high-stakes action.
So, with so many amazing crime books to choose from, what will you read first?