Author: Dr Samantha Battams Publisher/Year: Samantha Battams/2019 Reviewer: Dr Pamela Schulz[1] This intriguing and well researched book is a tour de force for lovers of murder mysteries, courtroom dramas, history, sociology and intellectual rigour. It considers in detail the trials and tribulations of one Martha Needle who was accused of the murders of her husband, …
Author: Alice Clark-Platts Publisher/Year: Raven 2019 Publisher Blurb THREE CHILDREN WENT OUT TO PLAY. ONLY TWO CAME BACK. The Flower Girls. Laurel and Primrose. One convicted of murder, the other given a new identity. Now, nineteen years later, another child has gone missing. And the Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over …
Author: Sulari Gentill Publisher/Year: Pantera Press 2019 Publisher Blurb Shanghai in 1935 is a twentieth-century Babylon, an expatriate playground where fortunes are made and lost, where East and West collide, and the stakes include life itself. Into this, Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. Rowland is under strict …
Author: Robin Bowles Publisher/Year: Scribe/2019 Publisher Synopsis Don’t fool yourself that the innocent never go to jail. When Bob Chappell disappeared from his yacht, moored in the Derwent Estuary near the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania’s marina, on the night of 26 January 2009, he left behind his pipe and tobacco — something that his …
Author: Dervla McTiernan Publisher/Year: HarperCollins/2019 Two reviews below by Robyn Walton and Sandra Nicholson Publisher Synopsis Being brilliant has never been this dangerous … When Dr Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit and run outside Galway University late one evening, she calls her partner, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the …
Author: Caroline de Costa Publisher/Year: Wild Dingo Press/2018 Publisher Synopsis In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz went missing from a rainforest picnic spot near Cairns. No trace of her has ever been found. Yet in 2012 Andrew Todd, a wealthy businessman and former mayor of Cairns, dies, and leaves in his will directions for a search …
Author: BM Allsopp Publisher/Year: Coconut Press 2018 Publisher Synopsis Must DI Joe Horseman sacrifice his chance at love to catch a killer? Only five more days… Horseman can’t wait for Melissa, his American girlfriend, to join him in Fiji. This time, he wants love to last. So, when a young activist is murdered at Tanoa …
Author: Chloe Hooper Publisher/Year: Penguin Australia/2018 Publisher Synopsis On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the …
Author: Susi Fox Publisher/Year: Penguin /2018 Publisher Synopsis You wake up alone after an emergency caesarean, desperate to see your child. And when you are shown the small infant in the nursery, a terrible thought takes root: this baby is not your baby. No one believes you. Not the nurses, your father or even your own …
Author: Jane Harper Publisher/Year: Macmillan Australia/2018 Reviewer: Robyn Walton In The Lost Man Jane Harper surpasses her achievement in The Dry, her multi award-winning first novel. A broad range of Australian and international readers will find The Lost Man’s strong setting and mystery storyline engaging, not least grey nomads and backpacking travellers. As in The …