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FICTION and MEDIA

CRIME AND MEDIA — TWO PEAS IN A POD

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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.

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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.

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The Talented Mrs. Greenway

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Tea Cooper

In The Talented Mrs. Greenway, readers are invited into the mysterious world of Agatha Greenway, a renowned painter with a shadowy past. As her intricate and captivating artwork takes the art world by storm, whispers of her enigmatic life story begin to spread.

Set against the backdrop of the bustling art scene in New York City, this gripping novel explores the boundaries between art and reality, fame and anonymity, and the price of hidden truths. As Agatha's carefully constructed facade starts to crumble, readers are taken on a journey that blurs the lines between perception and deception.

With masterful storytelling and a keen eye for detail, The Talented Mrs. Greenway is a compelling exploration of artistry, ambition, and the secrets that lie beneath the surface. Dive into this mesmerizing tale and uncover the hidden layers of Agatha Greenway's world.

Discover the truth behind the talent in The Talented Mrs. Greenway.

Australia. HQ fiction. 2023. 378p.

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Force of Nature

USED BOOK-MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Jane Harper

Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along the muddy track. Only four come out the other side.

The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and teach resilience and team building. At least that is what the corporate retreat website advertises.

Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a particularly keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing bushwalker. Alice Russell is the whistleblower in his latest case - and Alice knew secrets. About the company she worked for and the people she worked with.

Far from the hike encouraging teamwork, the women tell Falk a tale of suspicion, violence and disintegrating trust. And as he delves into the disappearance, it seems some dangers may run far deeper than anyone knew.

Pan Macmillan Australia, Sep 26, 2017, 377 pages

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The Fortress

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By S. A. Jones

"The Fortress" by S.A. Jones is a compelling novel that delves into the complexities of power, desire, and relationships. Set against the backdrop of a secluded estate, the story follows the enigmatic Juliet, a woman who exudes strength and mystery in equal measure. As secrets unravel and tensions rise within the fortress walls, readers are drawn into a world where control and submission blur the lines between love and manipulation. Jones weaves a mesmerizing tale that challenges societal norms and explores the depths of human connection, leaving readers questioning where the true power lies in the dynamics of relationships. "The Fortress" is a thought-provoking read that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned.

Richmond, Australia. Bonnier Publishing. 2018. 286p.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Autopsy

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Patricia Cornwell

Forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta has come almost full circle, returning to Virginia, the state where she launched her storied career, as the chief medical examiner. Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she's inherited both an overbearing secretary and a legacy of neglect and potential corruption.

She and her husband, Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria, where she's headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that's been torn apart by civil and political unrest. After just weeks on the job, she's called to a scene by railroad tracks--a woman's body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine--and as Scarpetta begins to follow the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own historic neighborhood.

At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top secret labo-ratory in outer space, endangering at least two scientists aboard. Appointed to the highly classified Doomsday Commission that specializes in sensitive national security cases, Scarpetta is summoned to the White House and tasked with finding out exactly what happened. But even as she remotely works the first potential crime scene in space, an apparent serial killer strikes again very close to home.

This latest novel in the groundbreaking Kay Scarpetta series captivates readers with the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and forensic detail that Patricia Cornwell is famous for, proving once again why she's the world's #1 bestselling crime writer.

NY. Harper Collins. 2021. 413p

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Bodyguard

MAY CONRAIN MARKUP

By Chris Bradford

In a dangerous world, everyone needs protection.

Bodyguard: Hostage is the new thriller from Chris Bradford, bestselling author of Young Samurai. Bodyguard is a bulletproof action-adventure series that fans of Cherub and Alex Rider will love. This is Lee Child for younger readers - a teenage Jason Bourne for the next generation.

With the rise of teen stars, the intense media focus onceleb families and a new wave of billionaires, adults are no longer the only target for hostage-taking, blackmail and assassination - kids are too.

That's why they need a young bodyguard like Connor Reeves to protect them.

Recruited into the ranks of a covert young bodyguard squad, 14-year-old Connor Reeves embarks on a rigorous close protection course. Training in surveillance, anti-ambush exercises, hostage survival and unarmed combat, he's put through his paces and wonders if he will actually survive the course.

But when the US President summons Connor to protect his impulsive teenage daughter, Connor's training is put to the ultimate test. For Connor discovers that the First Daughter, Alicia, doesn't want to be guarded. She just wants to have fun. And with no clue Connor is her bodyguard, Alicia tries to elude her Secret Service agents and lead Connor astray. But unknown to her, a terrorist sleeper cell has been activated.

Its mission: to take the president's daughter HOSTAGE...

Penguin UK, May 2, 2013, 432 pages

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Susan Pulls The Strings

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Jane Shaw

FROM THE COVER FLAP: “It was Imposible for Susan, when she knew someone was needing help, not to do something about it. This incurable habit of hers led her into m any awkward situations when she was staying over Christmas with her cousins, the Carmichaels. Charlotte, Midge and Bill all assured her that they would really prefer her t o stop trying to put everything right, but Susan persisted, and proved, in an exciting climax, that her interference wasmore than justified. Jane Shaw's lively sense of humour makes this a very engaging tale; from Susan herself to the " Plum * and Chang the cat, the characters are real, and your interest in them will be kept and held from the first to the last page…”

London. Children’s Press. 1950. 188p.

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Schoolgirl Reporter

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Constance M. White

From the cover: “With a father who is a well. known newspaper man and an elder sister a junior reporter, it is hardly surprising that Laurel Chester considers that she had definitely inherited the "Chester nose for news" Andno sooner has she decided to edit the Fourth Form magazine, than things begin to happen which exer- cise all her ingenuity. To begin with, there is the empty man- s i o n next door. Why does nobody live there and why does it intrigue Laurel so much? And what are the activities of the strange old man in the long black cloak? As for the mistress, Miss James, her behaviour, to say the least of it, is distinctly odd. Other events complicate Laurel's detective work even further ….”

London. Hutchinson Co. 1950s. 235p.

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The Lost Stradivarius

By John Meade Falkner

Edited with an Introduction by Edward Wilson who notes: “The detailed apparatus to this edition has been demanded not only by Time, which has altered not just the senses of words but a whole cultural hinterland beyond a modern reader's recognition, but by Falkner himself, who delighted in sowing his novel with literary and antiquarian allusions. Indeed, a character, Mr Gaskell, in The Lost Stradivarius itself, when reading an eighteenth-century diary in pursuit of highly sensational matter cannot resist telling us that "the minute details given were often of high antiquarian interest'“

London. Oxford University Press. 1954. (1895). USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

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Biggles Foreign Legionnaire

By Cape. W. E. Johns

Another in the Biggles series glorifying war and vilifying enemies. . “In which Air Detective-Inspector Bigglesworth takes leave from the Special Air Section Scotland Yard to join the Foreign Legion, and has an adventure involving an old friend, an even older enemy and a near fatal trip to the desolate Valley of the Tartars in Kurdistan.”

London. Hodder and Stoughton. 1954. 198p. USED BOOOK

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John Wentley Wins Through

By J. F. C. Westerman

FROM THE COVER: When JohnWentleyunder- took to fly a British Secret Service agent to a forbidden part he little imagined what would result from his escapade. How he foiled an attempt by a dangerous and un- scrupulous enemy to steal the plans of his recently invented aero engine, took part in two thrilling aerial ducls, and fought against terrific odds to regain the safety of the Swiss border--with secrets in his possession on which de-pended the very existence of the British Empireis excitingly told by one of the foremost writers of boys' adventure stories.

London. The Children's Press. 1930s. 211p. USED BOOK

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The Bull Patrol

By Arthur Catherall

Classic how-to book for Boy Scouts conveying all the skills needed for leadership, survival and success in war. Inspired, of course, by the writings of Baden Powell who cut his war teething the Boer war. FROM THE COVER: “ They were an odd gang, Af,l Joe, Dick, and Gyp; but once they got the idea of Scouting they were the staunchest friends that anyone could ask for. Their Patrol Leader set a high standard of courage and endurance, and the others one by one played a loyal part in the many daring rescues and thrilling episodes that were to follow- adventures which will be the envy of every Scout.

London. Butterworth Press. 1949. 120p. USED BOOK

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The Rescue Flight: A Biggles Story

By Captain W. E. Johns. Illustrated By Alfred Sindall

A boys’ book from the classic series heralding World War 2, and highlighting the excitement and attractiveness of war..

FROM CHAPTER 1: “ PETER FORTYMORE RECEIVES BAD NEWS. THERE was a pensive, almost wistful, expression on the face of the Honourable Peter Fortymore as, with his chin cupped in his hands, he sat at his study window and stared out across the deserted, moonlit playing-fields of Rundell School, where for five years he had been a pupil. The door be- hind him opened, but he did not turn, for he knew from the heavy, deliberate footsteps that the new- comer washis friend and room-mate, Dick Ripley, known throughout the upper school as Rip…”

London. Geoffrey Cumberlege Oxford University Press. 1950. 245p

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Biggles Cuts it Fine

By Captain W. E. Johns

The classic boys’ books trumpeting the attraction and excitement of war, especially World War 2.

FROM CHAPTER 1: ““Air-Commodore Raymond, Chief of the Air Section of Scotland Yard, greeted his operational staff from behind a paper-littered desk, as, in obedience to his invitation, they filed into his office.

" Pull up some chairs," he requested. "This is only in the nature of a conference, and, strangely enough, for once there's nothing urgent about it. Help yourselves to cigarettes-we may be some time." He pushed the box forward.

London. Holder and Stoughton. 1954. 162p. USED BOOK

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