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WAR & CRIME FICTION

VIOLENCE IN ALL ITS SPLENDOR

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The Dry

JANE HARPER

FROM THE PREFACE: ” It wasn’t as though the farm hadn’t seen death before, and the blowflies didn’t discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.

The drought had left the flies spoiled for choice that summer. They sought out unblinking eyes and sticky wounds as the farmers of Kiewarra levelled their rifles at skinny livestock. No rain meant no feed. And no feed made for difficult decisions, as the tiny town shimmered under day after day of burning blue sky…”

Sydney. Pan Macmillan. 2016. 347p.

I Am Pilgrim

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Terry Hayes

"I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes is a gripping thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. This intricately woven tale follows the life of a former intelligence operative known as Pilgrim, who is drawn back into the world of espionage to track down an elusive terrorist known as Saracen. As Pilgrim navigates a web of intrigue, deceit, and danger, the reader is taken on a thrilling journey across the globe, from the bustling streets of New York to the remote deserts of the Middle East. With its complex characters, meticulously researched plot, and heart-pounding suspense, "I Am Pilgrim" is a masterfully crafted novel that will leave readers breathless from start to finish.

London. Bantam. 2013. 707p.

REVENGE

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Mary Stanley

Millicent McHarg, an eccentric and forthright novelist, is adored by her three granddaughters. When the eldest, Prunella, nicknamed Plumpet, is found hurt and bewildered in her own bed on Christmas morning following a party the night before, her family must at once deal with the emotional pain, and try to solve the mystery. With Plumpet's sisters' help, Millicent prepares to take a grandmother's revenge...

London. Headline Book Publishing. 2023. 320p.

SHADOWS IN DEATH

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

J. D. ROBB

While Eve examines a fresh body in Washington Square Park, her husband, Roarke, spots a man among the onlookers he’s known since his younger days on the streets of Dublin. A man who claims to be his half brother. A man who kills for a living—and who burns with hatred for him.

Eve is quick to suspect that the victim’s spouse—resentful over his wife’s affair and poised to inherit her fortune—would have happily paid an assassin to do his dirty work. Roarke is just as quick to warn her that if Lorcan Cobbe is the hitman, she needs to be careful. Law enforcement agencies worldwide have pursued this cold-hearted killer for years, to no avail. And his lazy smirk when he looked Roarke’s way indicates that he will target anyone who matters to Roarke...and is confident he’ll get away with it.

Eve is desperate to protect Roarke. Roarke is desperate to protect Eve. And together, they’re determined to find Cobbe before he finds them—even if it takes them across the Atlantic, far outside Eve’s usual jurisdiction...

PIATKUS First published in the United States i by St Martin's Press. 2020. 348p.

All Systems Red

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Martha Wells

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

NY. Tom Foherty Assoc. 2017. 154p.

The Chimera Secret

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Dean Crawford

Some monsters only exist in nightmares - others exist for real . . .

While hunting in the Nez Pearce National Forest, Idaho, two men are just about to take a prize-winning shot when their prey unexpectedly bolts. From the forest behind them lunges a huge, horrific creature that crushes one man and tears after the other in a loping mass of rage.

Just as he has embarked on a search to find his missing fiancée, Ethan Warner and his partner, Nicola Lopez, are summoned to a meeting with Doug Jarvis of the Defence Intelligence Agency at a research laboratory outside the city. There, they learn that they are being sent north to interview Jesse MacCarthy, a man accused of a double homicide.
But all is not as it seems. Jesse swears blind that the other men were killed by a monster. But as Warner and Lopez dig deeper, they uncover a military secret that has been kept under wraps for generations, an experiment that went terribly wrong, and danger lurking in the highest echelons of the US government.

NY. Simon and Schuster. 2013. 528p.

The Various Haunts of Men

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Susan Hill

A woman vanishes in the fog up on 'the Hill', an area locally known for its tranquility and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man and even a dog disappear no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town. Young policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case, she's new to the job, compassionate, inquisitive, dedicated and needs to know - perhaps too much. She and the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler have the task of unraveling the mystery behind this gruesome sequence of events. From the passages revealing the killer's mind to the final heart-stopping twist, "The Various Haunts of Men" is an astounding and masterly crime debut and is the first in a magnificent series featuring Simon Serrailler.

NY. Vintage. 2004. 557p.

THE LAST THIRTEEN

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

BY JAMES PHELAN

Sam is a Dreamer. One of the 13, whose dreams - and nightmares - can become real. These individuals will not only save the world, but change it forever. They are our last hope in the battle against evil. They just don't know it yet.

Sam is the first of the 13 to be uncovered. He begins his desperate mission in Vancouver, and sets off across the globe to find the other twelve Dreamers and locate the scattered artifacts needed to save the world from the ultimate evil. But will they be strong enough to outmaneuver an army of trained agents, thwart security officials at museums, libraries, government facilities, and archaeological sites, and face the terrifying figure that haunts their dreams?

The adventure continues online at www.thelast13.com, where additional content extends the storyline of each book.

Melbourne. Scholastic. 2013. 214p.

THE SCARECROW

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

MICHAEL CONNELLY

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he’s got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang — a final story that will win the newspaper journalism’s highest honor — a Pulitzer prize.

Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo’s mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son’s innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter’s trick in the book. Jack’s real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer.

But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo’s so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he’s had since The Poet crossed his path years before. He reunites with FBI Agent Rachel Walling to go after a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar — and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. What Jack doesn’t know is that his investigation has inadvertently set off a digital tripwire. The killer knows Jack is coming — and he’s ready.

NSW. Allen and Unwin. 2020. 527p.

Reckless

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Andrew Gross

A breathtaking novel of suspense from the co-author of five No 1 James Patterson bestsellers including Judge and Jury and Lifeguard, and the hit thrillers The Blue Zone and Don't Look Twice

Ty Hauck has left law enforcement for a job with a big-time private security firm. But he quickly learns that life in the private sector can be every bit as dangerous as wearing a badge - if not more so.

When a successful trader at one of Wall Street's largest firms is murdered his suburban home along with his wife and daughter, it seems at first to be a case of burglary gone wrong.

Then another financial executive is found dead in a very suspicious 'suicide'. As Hauck digs deeper he uncovers a horrifying financial conspiracy that stretches from New York to Central Europe to London. And the masterminds behind it will kill anyone who gets in their way...

NY. Harper. 2010. 496p.

BLIND FURY

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Linda La Plante

When the body of a young woman is discovered close to a highway service station, Detective Inspector Anna Travis is brought on to the team of investigators by her former lover and boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Langton. As more evidence is uncovered, the team realizes that they are contending with a triple murder investigation—and no suspect.

But then a murderer Anna helped arrest years ago makes contact from prison. Cameron Welsh insists that he can help track down the killer, but he will divulge his secrets only to Anna herself. Does he really have an insight into another criminal’s mind, or is he merely intent on getting into hers?

The team soon realizes that they are dealing with a killer whose deviousness has enabled him to commit horrific crimes, yet remain undetected for years. As the case draws to a close, Welsh’s obsession for Anna fuels a terrifying rage that will have disastrous consequences for Anna, who finds herself staring into the face of a desperate personal tragedy.

London. by Simon & Schuster. 2011. 490p.

Bones to Ashes

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Kathy Reichs

From bestselling author, forensic anthropologist, and producer of the Fox television hit "Bones" comes Kathy Reichs's most compelling mystery yet, pitting Temperance Brennan against an enigma out of her own past.

Temperance Brennan, like her creator Kathy Reichs, is a brilliant, sexy forensic anthropologist called on tosolve the toughest cases. But for Tempe, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another assignment. vangline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, vangline wasthe most exotic person in Tempe'seight-year-old world. When vangline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous."

Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?

Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Three girls dead. Four missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.

WILLIAM HEINEMANN : LONDON. 2007. 301p.

GEIGER

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

GUSTAF SKÖRDEMAN. Translated by lan Giles

FROM CHAPTER 1: “The Royal Copenhagen coffee cups were still on the table, with just the dregs in the bottom; the cake-dishes were cleaned out and the glasses of juice empty. Blue polka-dot napkins - both fresh and soiled - were lying all over the place. The tablecloth was covered in coffee stains and crumbs, and here and there were red rings left by the glassware. The youngest children had rushed off, leaving the chairs pulled out from the table.”

London Zaffre. 2021. 429p.

DEEP BLACK: DEATH WAVE

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

STEPHEN COONTS AND WILLIAM H. KEITH

Deep within the NSA is Desk Three, a top-secret unit of special operatives inserted into the field when the threat is great and the response demands sensitivity and invisibility.  Charlie Dean, a former Marine sniper, is a senior officer.  With his colleagues Lia DeFrancesca and newcomer Ilya Akulinin, they form the core of a high-tech team known as Deep Black.

Off the coast of Africa lie the beautiful Canary Islands, a resort destination of millionaires. Underneath this idyllic paradise is one of the most volatile fault lines in the world. There, an alliance between radical Islamic terrorists and a rogue element of the Chinese government is planning to unleash an act of unimaginable geological terrorism that could devastate the U.S. East Coast, striking it with waves up to a thousand feet high. They plan to set off nuclear devices to precipitate a gigantic landslide that will send a death-dealing tsunami across the Atlantic.

In the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan twelve nuclear warheads, stolen by the Russian Mafia, are about to be smuggled out of the country and delivered into the hands of the conspirators. Charlie and Ilya go on an intercept mission, but before they can retrieve them, the weapons vanish.

Meanwhile, in a hotel in New Jersey, a bestselling author is assassinated to prevent the release of his stranger-than-fiction story about an Islamic plot to change the course of history. Lia, Charlie’s girlfriend, is sent to Berlin to infiltrate the empire of a ruthless Chinese billionaire whose machinations have come to the attention of the NSA. She risks immediate execution if her true identity is revealed.

Their paths all converge in the Canary Islands. Unless the Deep Black team intervenes, the islands could be the epicenter of an apocalypse, with millions of lives---and the entire world order---at stake.

London. Quercus. 2011. 540p.

Odd Hours

DEAN KOONTZ

FROM CHAPTER 1:

IT'S ONLY LIFE. WE ALL GET THROUGH IT. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in accidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occasional bad-hair day.

I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all of my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph…

London. Harper Collins Publishers. 2008. 359p.

BROKEN SKIN

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

STUART MACBRIDE

A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of 'Cold Granite' and 'Dying Light', set in gritty Aberdeen. In the pale grey light of a chilly February, Aberdeen is not at its best... There's a rapist prowling the city's cold granite streets, leaving a string of tortured women behind. But while DS Logan McRae's girlfriend is out acting as bait, he's dealing with the blood-drenched body of an unidentified male, dumped outside Accident and Emergency. When a stash of explicit films turn up, all featuring the victim, it looks as if someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and Logan gets dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M. To make matters worse, when they finally arrest the Granite City Rapist, Grampian Police are forced by the courts to let him go: Aberdeen Football Club's star striker has an alibi for every attack. Could they really have got it so badly wrong? Logan thinks so, but the trick will be getting anyone to listen before the real rapist strikes again. Especially as his girlfriend, PC Jackie 'Ball Breaker' Watson, is convinced the footballer is guilty and she's hell-bent on a conviction at any cost...

LONDON. HARPER. COLLINS. 2007. 571p

A World of Curiosities

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LOUISE PENNY

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's beloved series.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.

But something has.

As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.

But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.

As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.

London. Hodder & Stoughton L. 2002. 400p.

Bare Bones

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Kathy Reichs

“Down time” is not a phrase in Tempe Brennan’s vocabulary. A string of disturbing cases has put her vacation plans on hold; instead, she heads to the lab to analyze charred remains from a suspicious fire, and a mysterious black residue from a small plane crash. But most troubling of all are the bones. Even more disturbing is the fact that bones turns up on a family picnic in North Carolina—but are they animal or human? X-rays and

London. Arrow Books. 2012. 434p.

DEATH in the LADIES' GODDESS CLUB

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

BY JULIAN LEATHERDALE

In the murky world of Kings Cross in 1932, aspiring crime writer Joan Linderman and her friend and flatmate Bernice Becker live the wild bohemian life, a carnival of parties and fancy-dress artists' balls.

One Saturday night, Joan is thrown headfirst into a real crime when she finds Ellie, her neighbour, murdered. To prove her worth as a crime writer and bring Ellie's killer to justice, Joan secretly investigates the case in the footsteps of Sergeant Lillian Armfield.

But as Joan digs deeper, her list of suspects grows from the luxury apartment blocks of Sydney's rich to the brothels and nightclubs of the Cross's underclass.

Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club is a riveting noir crime thriller with more surprises than even novelist Joan bargained for: blackmail, kidnapping, drug-peddling, a pagan sex cult, undercover cops, and a shocking confession.

From the shadows of bohemian and underworld Kings Cross, who will emerge to tell the real story?

Sydney - Meldourne• Auckland • London. Allen & Unwin.. 2020. 398P.