Crime Stack is off to a flying start for 2026 thanks to HQ Fiction, an imprint of HarperCollins Australia,generously donating ten copies of The Drowning, and ten copies of What the Bones Know. Both focus on family disputes with fatal consequences.
Families may be related by blood – but they can also involve blood-letting, sometimes with fatal consequences. It’s no coincidence that Christmas Day and Boxing Day see huge spikes in family violence. Three Victorian authors – Tanya Scott, Fiona Lowe, and Kirstyn McDermott – dissect the institution of the family and its criminal complexity in different ways. They will reveal all to fellow author, Lyn Yeowart.
Since her first true crime book, The Phillip Island Murder, 32 years ago, Vikki Petraitis has notched up 18 true crime books, several podcasts that have reached millions of people, and she now has two novels under her belt. The first, The Unbelieved, is being made into a TV series, Dustfall, to screen on the ABC next year – and Anna Torv stars.
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 …
A ‘confession’ by a friend about being an unmarried mother in the sixties implanted the idea behind Lyn Yeowart’s latest thriller, The Hollow Girl.
For Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to acclaimed Adelaide author, Lainie Anderson. Her two crime books are The Death of Dora Black and Murder on North Terrace, both published by Hachette Australia, and both featuring the real-life character, Kate Cocks, who, in 1915, became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary and with the same powers of arrest as men.
Grabbing a copy of Scarlet Stiletto: The Seventeenth Cut (ed. Phyllis King), the e-book collection of winning stories in the recent 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards, is the perfect answer to holiday reading. Fourteen ripper reads for only $5.
Winning first prize and the coveted trophy in Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards is a victory, according to Sandra Thom-Jones, was always told that “autistic people can’t write fiction because we’re not imaginative or creative.”
Entries are now open for the 26th Annual Davitt Awards for the best Australian women’s crime and mystery books of 2025.
Every month Sisters in Crime brings you new reviews from women who write criminally good books.