Showing results by publisher "Penguin Random House Australia Audio" in Thriller & Suspense

Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth of Scotland Yard has headed up three major serial operations, and in each of these cases, it seems he has lost a part of himself. He is burnt out and taken a shift sideways for a while, taking on a low-profile role of desk investigator out of London that's looking into whether a global crime scam exists. But when a number of young women start returning home ill and dying after travels in Europe, Jack uncovers a shocking black-market operation, with links that lead him all the way to a crime syndicate in South Australia.

Police are baffled by several deaths, each unique and bizarre in their own way - and shockingly brutal. Scotland Yard sends in its crack DCI, the enigmatic Jack Hawksworth, who wastes no time in setting up Operation Mirror. His chief wants him to dismiss any plausibility of a serial killer before the media gets on the trail. With his best investigative team around him, Jack resorts to some unconventional methods to disprove or find a link to the gruesome deaths.

High on a hill above the small Victorian town of Carrabeen, 300 wind turbines constantly spin. Except one is now deadly still - a body hanging from its huge white blade. Detective Sergeants Belinda Burney and Will Lovell are shocked to discover the dead man is Geordie Pritchard, a rich local philanthropist and owner of the wind energy farm. Suicide at first seems the likely explanation, until Geordie's widow Lucinda insists her husband was murdered - and she has the death threats to prove it.

Meg Morrissey has just lost her job and her partner to an overseas assignment, when she is called back to the family home of Hunters Reach in the picturesque Adelaide Hills. Her ailing grandmother, who raised her when she was orphaned as a child, has always been a formidable figure in her life and this is hardly a welcome summons. When Meg arrives at the ramshackle old homestead, she learns that the place is up for sale. She is expected to care for the property with its extensive garden, while packing up the contents of the house.

Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti has taken a few days' holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time. The small fishing town on South Australia's Limestone Coast is now the scene of a terrible tragedy. Renowned cave-diver Mya Rennik has drowned while exploring a sinkhole on the land of wealthy farmer Frank Doyle. As the press descends, Mark's boss orders him to stay put and assist the police operation. But when they retrieve Mya's body, a whole new mystery is opened up, around the disappearance of a young local woman twenty years before.

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the 'Wire' crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile phone blackspots. Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride. And then their nightmare begins. The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew - and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions - or be blown to smithereens.

Superstar footballer Luca Bruni is being blackmailed for a night of lust he swears he didn't participate in...except the ransom photo denies that. A media darling on and off the field, he has powerful charisma, a perfect home life he'll do anything to protect, and more money than he knows what to do with. He's determined to defy the extortion racket. When Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth learns that the cunning mastermind behind this crime has already swindled a dozen of the world's most highly prized male athletes, he is instructed to keep the situation from escalating.

Ryan and Elsie Delaney don't accept the official line that their young daughter drowned on Santa Monica beach. Her body has never been found and their pleas for a proper investigation are rejected. So now the desperate pair are raining hellfire on the police. Taking three hostages at the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, they give law enforcement an ultimatum: if Tilly isn't located in the next 24 hours, they will destroy evidence in several major cases. Detective Charlie Hoskins only just survived five years embedded with the ruthless gang known as the Death Machines.

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime-writing royalty. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Or commit one.

Terry Drage is not the first amateur gold prospector to rock up to the Murchison Hotel, brag about an exciting discovery - and then vanish into thin air. But Gabe Ahern is determined he will be the last. No one knows the land around the remote Western Australian town of Cue better than Gabe - a wild dog trapper who's in his element in the bush. Feeling responsible for his friend's fate, he races there to join the search. But it won't be an easy ride. For a start the local cops seem sure Terry going missing is nothing more than a tragic accident.

When 650 of the world's most violent human beings pour out from Pronghorn Correctional Facility into the Nevada Desert, the biggest manhunt in US history begins. But for John Kradle, this is his one chance to prove his innocence, 26 years after the murder of his wife and child. He just needs to stay one step ahead of the teams of law enforcement officers he knows will be chasing the escapees down.

It's January 1983. During his university summer break, Ryan Bradley returns to the remote town of Nashville in New Zealand's rugged King Country. It's a bittersweet trip: he's working long, punishing hours as a woolpresser, he needs to sell his late mother's house, and he's increasingly feeling like an outcast in his childhood town. But mostly he's haunted by memories of Sanna Sovernen, a Finnish backpacker and his secret lover, who worked with him in the shearing shed the summer before - then vanished without trace.

I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder. Before the storm stranded us at the mountain resort, snow and bodies piling up. The thing is, us Cunninghams don't really get along. We've only got one thing in common: we've all killed someone.

Lenny Marks is good at not remembering. She has spent the last twenty years not thinking about the day her mother left her when she was still a child. Her stepfather's parting words, however, remain annoyingly unforgettable: 'You did this.' Now thirty-seven, Lenny prefers contentment and order over the unreliability of happiness and the messiness of relationships. She fills her days teaching at the local primary school, and her nights playing Scrabble with her pretend housemate, watching reruns of Friends and rearranging her thirty-six copies of The Hobbit.

In the drought-ridden rangelands of Western Australia, Gabe Ahern makes his living trapping wild dogs for local station owners. Still coming to terms with his wife's death - and the part he played in it - the old bushman leads a solitary life. Until one morning, when he rescues a young Afghan man, Altair, from certain execution. Now, with a gang of people smugglers on his tail and the lives of Altair's family on the line, Gabe is drawn into a ruthless game of cat and mouse. His main opponent is Chase Hunter, a kangaroo hunter with bush skills as wily and sharp as his own.

New Year's Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend, Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End. July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300 kilometres south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people - including a high-profile celebrity - are convinced it was murder.

Detective Rebecca Giles has just finished interviewing aging petty crim Sticky Pete over a spate of break-and-enters when a disturbing new report comes in. Twelve-year-old Kayleen Ellis has vanished from her home in Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter Valley. Hours later, Giles is a local hero, having apparently solved Kayleen's case and the spate of jewellery thefts. Yet the hangover from her celebrations has barely kicked in when the body of young jillaroo Ava Emmerson is discovered in gruesome circumstances on a nearby farm.

For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria's high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge. Also found dead near the scene was Bill 'Creeper' Durant, a bushland loner, expert deer-hunter, and a man with a known reputation for stalking campers . . .Conclusion: murder-suicide. Case closed. But as the ten-year anniversary of the massacre draws near, Detective Constable Sally White - the only officer at Edenville's modest police station - finds herself drawn into the dark world of the notorious Durant family.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town's golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three of her true-crime podcast a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating - but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won't stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister 25 years ago.

For years the firefighters of New York's Engine 99 have rushed fearlessly into hot zones, saving countless lives and stopping devastating blazes in their tracks. They've also stolen millions from banks, jewellery stores and art galleries. With their inside knowledge and specialist equipment they've become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast. Their newest member, Andrea 'Andy' Nearland, is not what she seems either. She's an undercover operative, hunting the men of Engine 99 for a host of crimes - including the murder of an off-duty cop and the disappearance of a mother and child.