Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

When Meredith Penvale and her writer brother, Joe, step aboard the iconic Orient Express, they're embarking on a journey steeped in both luxury and mystery. The train, a literary legend, is a bucket-list destination for detectives and writers alike. But as the train winds through the Italian Alps, a sinister undercurrent begins to emerge.

Three brothers, one death, a fenceline stretching to the horizon. Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland. They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cam. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn't, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects....

A novel of searing emotional truth, told with the relentless pull of a thriller, from the award-winning creator of Offspring. Paula is a dedicated suburban GP who is devastated by the murder of a friend and her children by their estranged husband and father. Stacey and the children had been staying with her after fleeing his control, and Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn't protect them when they most needed it. How had she missed the warning signs? How had she failed to keep them safe?

In Pain Bleeds Crime, she shares twenty-three gripping true stories from her decades working in maximum-security prisons, courts, and forensic hospitals. The crimes are shocking—murder, rape, paedophilia, assault, fetishism, bestiality, and more—but what lies beneath is often even more confronting.

Without any warning, Justin Kowalski drives his vehicle across a line of traffic and through the front wall of Cafe 64, killing himself and three other people—and taking the reasons for this shocking act to the grave. Unable to locate any evidence of criminal behaviour or mental illness in Justin's past, and with no one left to prosecute, the police have no choice but to label it "an isolated incident".

People like Dash didn't die. He was only what? Mid-thirties? Well off. Adored. By some anyway. World at his feet. Well, Myddle at his feet, which was his world. Ruth Dawson has taken a break from big city law to fill in for a few months for an old mate in Myddle. How hard can it be? she thinks. Turns out, very hard.

The First Friend is a novel in a time of autocrats, where reality is a fiction created by those who rule. Reflecting on Putin's Russia, Trump's America, Xi's China and Murdoch's planet Earth, it is at once a satire and a thriller, a survivor's tale in which a father has to walk a tightrope every day to save his family from a monster and a monstrous society. Where safety lies in following official fictions, is a truthful life the ultimate risk?

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He’s still new in town but the community work - welfare checks and working bees - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch’s life has been peaceful. Until he’s called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. Suddenly, it doesn’t look like a season of goodwill at all.

Once you're online, there's nowhere to hide. Is it paranoia – or is someone watching? For years, Reagan Carsen has kept her life offline. No socials. No internet presence. No photos. Safe. Until the day she stumbles on a shocking murder in a Sydney laneway. The victim looks just like her. Coincidence? As more murders shake the city and she's increasingly drawn out from hiding, Reagan is forced to confront her greatest fear. She's been found.

When Justice Maurice Tempest is murdered in the Glenrock State Conservation Area in Newcastle, local detective Senior Sergeant Callan O'Connor is the first on the scene. News of a second body, found in the same location days later, makes what had looked like a revenge killing into so much more.

An unidentified man is fished out of the sea with an anchor strapped to his waist. And for DI Hal Challis, this sparks the beginning of a chilling series of shotgun killings. As Challis investigates, a farmer on the peninsula erupts into violence and is the target of a massive manhunt. And then Challis finds some aerial photographs in the possession of his friend Kitty that link her to the murders....

The body of a local teenage boy is found on the beach of a sleepy northern New South Wales town. David went for an evening swim and got into trouble . . . at least, that's what it looks like. Three weeks before, Leila, a young backpacker, didn't turn up for her shift at the local cafe. Benny, the owner, isn't worried. It happens—backpackers are always on the move. There'll be another one.

Mia, a newly graduated constable, on her first post is assigned to Broad River, a small country town. And as certain as she is about her ability to do the job, on day one she's already in conflict with colleagues who believe that women shouldn't be coppers. It takes the shine off coming home, where her grandmother, Clara, is in the early stages of dementia.

With the sickening realisation that his cover has been blown, Detective Dave Burrows knows his family is in serious danger from the vicious stock thieves and murderers, Bulldust and his brother, Scotty. Devastating news brings Dave back to Barrabine, where circumstances force him to question his determination to stay in the police force. How could he live with himself if anything happened to Mel and the kids?

Summer on the Peninsula. The heat’s ramping up, the usual holiday madness building. D.I. Hal Challis is already recycling his shower water and starting to dread Christmas. But this year there’s something more. Women abducted and murdered on the Old Highway. A pall of fear over the scorched paddocks. The media are demanding answers - and Challis’s sleepy beat is set to explode.

Hal and his little brother have just come to live in Moorabool. They're exploring the creek near their new home when they find the body of a dog. Not just dead, but killed. Not just killed, but horribly maimed. Constable Mick Goodenough, recently demoted from his big-city job as a detective, is also new in town—and one of his dogs has gone missing. Like other pets around the town. He knows what it means when someone tortures animals to death. They're practicing. When Hal's mother starts getting late-night phone calls, Goodenough, alone among the Moorabool cops, takes her seriously.

When gentleman farmer Harold Crow dies after routine surgery in rural Tasmania, his death exposes a web of forbidden love, secret offspring, and devastating betrayals that will tear two families apart. Local GP Dr David Boyd fears his secret affair with Harold will surface at the inquest. His wife Morven hides her own hurtful truth…Nurse Nathan Wentworth fears his malpractice may have killed Harold. But he's not the only one with blood on his hands.

Hannah Tigone, bestselling Australian crime author, is crafting a new novel that begins in the Boston Public Library: four strangers; Winifred, Cain, Marigold and Whit are sitting at the same table when a bloodcurdling scream breaks the silence. A woman has been murdered. They are all suspects, and, as it turns out, each character has their own secrets and motivations—and one of them is a murderer.

Australian jewel thief Wyatt has a bounty of stolen jewels and a yacht, but nothing can stop him from returning to his life of crime. He drugs his lover, police officer Liz Redding, and escapes into the night only to discover the gems he lifted are fakes. With his luck and his resources rapidly running out, Wyatt begrudgingly joins forces with Raymond, his estranged nephew and an established criminal himself, to lift some expensive artwork.

Shanghai in 1935 is a 20th-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 instructions to commit to nothing...but a brutal murder makes that impossible. As suspicion falls on him, Rowland enters a desperate bid to find answers in a city as glitzy as it is dangerous, where tai-pans and tycoons rule, and politics and vice are entwined with commerce.