Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Suspense

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic suburb of Camp Hill in Australia. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, schoolteacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won’t listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl’s father and a local neighbourhood watch group. But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it.

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

When 25-year-old journalist Zara Ellison receives her mother's ominous text message, 'Call me when you can', Zara knows it's not good news. Two weeks later, Zara has left her much-loved city life to relocate to Barker, the sleepy country town in which she grew up. For Zara, family comes first. But she needs to work too, and the town's police force is a rural journalist's best source of information. Meeting Detective Dave Burrows and Dave's second-in-charge, Senior Constable Jack Higgins, is a priority.

In the desolate outback town of Finnigans Gap, police struggle to maintain law and order. Thieves pillage opal mines, religious fanatics recruit vulnerable young people, and billionaires do as they please. Then an opal miner is found crucified and left to rot down his mine. Nothing about the miner's death is straightforward, not even who found the body. Sydney homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate, assisted by inexperienced young investigator Nell Buchanan.

In the sleepy, scenic Southern Highlands of New South Wales, a beautiful young woman goes missing. Six years later, recently divorced historian Rose McHugh leaves the city to start a new life in the Highlands and finds a roll of film buried in her back garden. On it are photos of the missing woman. Against the advice of an enigmatic detective, she uses her powers of persuasion and her knack for deciphering clues to pursue the case. As Rose searches through tangled secrets and hidden places haunted by the past, she realises there is a killer at large.

On her lunch break in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home 28 years earlier. He believes Kim is that girl. At first she brushes it off but soon finds herself questioning her family history and begins to unravel an unexpectedly dark past.

When a mysterious invitation arrives for Miss Phryne Fisher from an unknown Captain Herbert Spencer, Phryne's curiosity is excited. Spencer runs a retreat in Victoria's spa country for shell-shocked soldiers of the First World War. It's a cause after Phryne's own heart but what could Spencer want from her? Phryne and the faithful Dot view their spa sojourn as a short holiday but are quickly thrown in the midst of disturbing Highland gatherings, disappearing women, murder and the mystery of the Temperance Hotel.

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.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women’s underwear and Hirsch knows enough about that kind of crime - how it can escalate - not to take it lightly. But the more immediate concerns are a call from the high school, a teacher worried about a student who may be in danger at home. Another call, a different school: a man enraged about the principal’s treatment of his daughter.

Emma Cameron, a recently divorced farmer and a local in Barker, runs Deception Creek, the farm that three generations of her family have owned before her. Every day, Emma pushes herself hard on the land, hoping to make 10-year-old memories of a terrible car accident disappear. And now, there are more recent nightmares of an ex-husband who refuses to understand how much the farm means to Emma. When Joel Hammond is released from jail and heads home to Barker, Detective Dave Burrows and his officer, Senior Sergeant Jack Higgins, are on high alert.

Mia Morgan doesn't let anything get to her. After freeing herself from an obsessive boss and saving loved ones from a serial killer, she feels like she can handle anything life throws at her. But now that killer—a deranged hunter who preys on women for sport—is coming for her. And if she runs, others will pay the price. As if that's not enough, Ben Bowden, the brilliant detective who has made her life hell for the past four years, has some insane plan to protect her.

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?

After a traumatic assault, Hannah Novak returns to her home-town hoping for a fresh start. However, when strange gifts turn up on her doorstep, and a stalker fixates on her, she discovers that Blackbridge isn’t the safe haven it once was. With no family left to turn to, she’s forced to seek help from the broody new cop in town. Ryan Kilpatrick has travelled across the country to create a stable home for his young son, but being a police officer makes that hard. He doesn’t need Hannah’s problems added to his own, yet her courage and vulnerability awakens the protector in him.

Gavin Jones is dead at thirty-nine. As a lawyer who controlled millions of dollars in fees per year, he was legal firm Howard Greene's biggest client and wielded that power with manipulative contempt. But he saved his worst behaviour for women, at work and at home. The partners of Howard Greene relied on his favour to fund their lavish lifestyles. If sycophantic admiration of the man was all it took to secure work from Gavin, that's what they delivered. But no one liked Gavin.

Most police duos run on trust and their shared desire to see killers standing up in court. But Detective Frank Bennett's partner, the enigmatic Eden Archer, offers him darkness and danger. She doesn't mind catching killers - but it's not the courthouse where her justice is served. As Eden heads undercover to work on a remote farm - a place linked to three missing girls - Frank's priority is to monitor her 24-7, but is it for Eden's protection or to protect their suspects from her?

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is a mystery-thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she’s forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

When Sassi Stapleton receives a middle-of-the-night phone call to tell her that her beloved grandmother is unwell, she quickly puts her job on hold, packs her ute and sets off on the long drive home, knowing her grandfather will need her. Less than an hour away from Sassi's hometown, Barker, she swerves to miss a roo and her car rolls down an embankment. By the time Sassi is found, her grandmother has already passed away.

Some people just work better alone. Wyatt’s one of them. He’s been getting by on nice quiet little burglaries - one-man jobs - when he gets wind of something bigger. A corporate crook, notorious Ponzi schemer, set to face court and certain jail time. He’s about to skip bail the old-fashioned way: on a luxury yacht with a million dollars in cash. Wyatt thinks it sounds like something he should get into. He’s not alone.

John Bailey has a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The veteran war reporter has been kidnapped and tortured - twice. Finally he’s living something that resembles a normal life. But all that changes when a terrorist murders a woman in front of Bailey in London. The mastermind behind the attack is Mustafa al-Baghdadi - number one on the FBI’s most wanted list - and the man who tortured Bailey in Fallujah a decade ago.

Busy parents Mia and Ryan were devastated when their former nanny, Irish backpacker Tara, tragically disappeared. But that was two years ago. Now they want to move on and focus on their son … so why are the police questioning them again? When single mom Beth wakes up to a house burglary, she immediately suspects her abusive ex-husband. But when bad things continue to happen to Beth, her fear is overtaken by desperation and anger. A dark secret binds these families together. How far will they go to protect their own?