Buderim Library
Top 50 Books You Can’t Put Down – Get Reading is back with the ultimate guide to the best Australian reads.
Max Brand
An exciting collection of stories, centering around the Old West, features such unforgettable characters as Skinny, a young teen who can outsmart any man in the West; Sleeper, who is searching for the man who saved his life; and Snoozer Mell who desperately wants to reconciled with his son.
John Sanford
An off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family in the Atlantic just off south Florida when he sees, and then calls in, some suspicious behavior in a nearby boat. It’s a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and is zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver . . . a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean.
None of it makes sense unless there’s something hinky going on, and his hunch is proven correct when all three Guardsmen who come out to investigate are shot and killed.
They’re federal officers killed on the job, which means the case is the FBI’s turf. When the FBI’s investigation stalls out, Lucas Davenport of the U.S. Marshals Service gets a call. The case turns even more lethal and Davenport needs to bring in every asset he can find, including a detective with a fundamentally criminal mind: Virgil Flowers.
Librarian’s note: as of 2021, there are 31 volumes in John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport “Prey” series and 13 in his “Virgil Flowers” series. The latest for each, “Ocean Prey,” was published in April 2021. It is part of the “Prey” series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing; it is considered the most recent in both series.
Jeffery Deaver
Just hours after the harrowing events of The Goodbye Man, Colter Shaw is hot on the trail of a missing person whose disappearance he desperately hopes to explain: his own father.
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw explores one site after another, seeing clearly for the first time what strange business his father was up to–and what dangerous people he was working against. But when Shaw is caught by these same people, he’s rescued by an intruder: his own older brother Russell, from whom he’s been estranged for more than a decade.
After saving Shaw, Russell stays on, and the brothers–both very different and oddly similar–join forces to identify the family.
This novel is a race against time to both find the family and to pursue leads to solve a decades-old mystery.
Nev March
In 1892, Bombay is the center of British India. Nearby, Captain Jim Agnihotri lies in Poona military hospital recovering from a skirmish on the wild northern frontier, with little to do but re-read the tales of his idol, Sherlock Holmes, and browse the daily papers.
The case that catches Captain Jim’s attention is being called the crime of the century: Two women fell from the busy university’s clock tower in broad daylight. Moved by Adi, the widower of one of the victims — his certainty that his wife and sister did not commit suicide — Captain Jim approaches the Parsee family and is hired to investigate what happened that terrible afternoon.
But in a land of divided loyalties, asking questions is dangerous. Captain Jim’s investigation disturbs the shadows that seem to follow the Framji family and triggers an ominous chain of events. And when lively Lady Diana Framji joins the hunt for her sisters’ attackers, Captain Jim’s heart isn’t safe, either.
Based on a true story, and set against the vibrant backdrop of colonial India.
Clive Cussler
Kurt Austin races to Antarctica to stop a chilling plot that imperils the entire planet in the latest novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling Grand Master of Adventure.
After a former NUMA colleague disappears while researching the icebergs of Antarctica, Kurt Austin and his assistant Joe Zavala embark for the freezing edge of the world to investigate. Even as they confront perilous waters and frigid temperatures, they are also are up against a terrifying man-made weapon–a fast-growing ice that could usher in a new Ice Age.
Pitted against a determined madman and a monstrous storm, Kurt and the NUMA team must unravel a Nazi-era plot in order to save the globe from a freeze that would bury it once and for all.
Dan Morain
A revelatory biography of the first Black woman to stand for Vice President, charting how the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California became one of this country’s most effective power players. There’s very little that’s conventional about Kamala Harris, and yet her personal story also represents the best of America. She grew up the eldest daughter of a single mother, a no-nonsense cancer researcher who emigrated from India at the age of nineteen in search of a better education. She and her husband, an accomplished economist from Jamaica, split up when Kamala was only five.
The Kamala Harris the public knows today is tough, smart, quick-witted, and demanding. She’s a prosecutor—her one-liners are legendary—but she’s more reticent when it comes to sharing much about herself, even in her memoirs. Fortunately, former Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain has been there from the start.
In Kamala’s Way, he charts her career from its beginnings handling child molestation cases and homicides for the Alameda County District Attorney’s office and her relationship as a twenty-nine-year-old with the most powerful man in the state: married Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a relationship that would prove life-changing.
Morain takes readers through Harris’s years in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, explores her audacious embrace of the little-known Barack Obama, and shows the sharp elbows she deployed to make it to the US Senate. He analyzes her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign she waged to land the Vice President spot.
Along the way, he paints a vivid picture of her values and priorities, the kind of people she brings into her orbit, the sorts of problems she’s good at solving, and the missteps, risks, and bold moves she’s made on her way to the top.
Michael Newton
Orrin Porter Rockwell is more than just a deputy United States marshal and a deadly gunfighter. He’s a member of the Mormon Danites, the group of enforcers known as the Avenging Angels, and he’s the personal troubleshooter for Governor Brigham Young.
And when Young sends Rockwell to the rough-and-tumble mining town of Tartarus, there’ll be plenty of trouble for him to shoot. A group of Mormon miners has vanished, and before Rockwell uncovers the secret of their disappearance he’ll face deadly danger from all sides. What his adversaries don’t know is just how dangerous the Avenging Angel is . . .
Johnny Boggs
The Civil War is over. The future of the American West is up for grabs. Any man crazy enough to lead a herd of Texas longhorns to the north stands to make a fortune–and make history. That man would be Nelson Story. A bold entrepreneur and miner, he knows a golden opportunity when he sees one. But it won’t be easy.
Cowboys and bandits have guns, farmers have sick livestock, and the Army’s have their own reasons to stop the drive. Even worse, Story’s top hand is an ornery Confederate veteran who used to be his enemy. But all that is nothing compared to the punishing weather, the deadly stampedes–and the bloodthirsty wrath of the Sioux…
This is the incredible saga of a man named Story. A true legend of the Old West. And the ever-beating heart of the American Dream.
Anders Roslund
He thought she was safe. Then the past came knocking. Seventeen years ago, Criminal Inspector Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family had been murdered, and the only survivor–and witness–was the five-year-old daughter.
The girl was placed in the witness protection program, and the case went cold, but years later, Grens is still haunted by the seemingly random slaying, and the little girl who was spared. So when he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a mysterious break-in, Grens immediately fears that someone is intent on silencing the only witness. He races to find her…before they do.
Meanwhile, someone in the city’s criminal underworld is executing weapons smugglers, and has placed former police informant Piet Hoffman’s family in grave danger. He must unravel the secret threat to his family, all while keeping secrets of his own. Soon his hunt for answers intertwines with Ewert’s, and the two men find themselves in the middle of a criminal conspiracy that is more complicated–and dangerous–than they could have imagined.
Candice Fox
A convicted killer. A gifted thief. A vicious ganglord. A disillusioned cop. Together they’re a missing girl’s only hope. Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son.
But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line.
Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one.
It’s been ten years since Jessica arrested Blair for cold-blooded murder. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor late one night she expects abuse, maybe even violence. What comes next is a plea for help…