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Australia’s most bizarre crimes

Peter Cobman
True tales of crimes so bizarre you might not believe them. The mysterious disappearance of thousands of false teeth, international travel via the postal system, doughnut delivery heists, clowns terrorising a neighbourhood, the theft of a three-storey-high replica mango, criminal clairvoyants making off with haunted cash: could crime get any weirder, and could people get any stupider?

In Australia’s Most Bizarre Crimes, Peter Coleman explores the archives and recent records to produce this astounding collection of criminal mishaps that will have you laughing even as you shake your head in disbelief.

The devil you know

Neil Lancaster
A CASE GONE COLD
Six years ago, Beata Dabrowski arranged to meet her lover in Glasgow and was never seen again. There were no leads. . . until now.

AN UNRELIABLE WITNESS
Imprisoned gang boss Davie Hardie wants to talk in exchange for his freedom. He knows exactly where Beata is buried, and he’s prepared to take the police to her grave.

A KILLER DESPERATE TO ESCAPE
But when the mission to locate Beata’s body is hijacked, DS Max Craigie is drafted on to the case. Someone is selling secrets.

Max will stop at nothing to expose police corruption and uncover Beata’s murderer. . . but can you ever really trust a killer to catch a killer?

Clive Hussler’s Ghost soldier

Mike Maden
A deadly war game. An adversary as hard to find as he is to kill. Weapons so sophisticated, none have seen the like before. Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon have finally met their match in this pulse-pounding new adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

When African jihadis attack a Nigerian regiment using American weapons, Cabrillo and the Oregon crew are on the case, investigating from Afghanistan to Kuala Lumpur to track a mysterious arms dealer—a genius, or perhaps a devil—known only as the Vendor.

Cabrillo goes undercover to find the Vendor’s base, but his adversary isn’t just an arms smuggler. He’s an arms maker, and Cabrillo just walked into a lethal military game alongside the most dangerous mercenaries in the world, designed to test the Vendor’s cutting-edge AI arsenal.

And yet, surviving an arena full of flame-throwing robots isn’t even his biggest problem. The Vendor has an army of high-speed drones headed for a pivotal military site, and if the Oregon crew can’t stop them from releasing a deadly neurotoxin, the entire globe will erupt in conflict.

Opal

Patricia Wolf
DS Lucas Walker is off duty. He’s supposed to be showing his little sister Grace the Australian outback, on her visit from Boston, but instead they’re headed out bush- where Walker’s cousin has been mining for boulder opal. Something seemed off when Walker heard that Blair wanted to get out of Kanpara, so he and Grace are en route to bring him home to Caloodie.

But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and a major flood is on the way.

The atmosphere in the isolated mining town is already tense with rumours of a big opal find, and whenWalker, Grace and Blair wake up the next day they find themselves completely cut off. A deluge far north has run off into the rivers that make up this unique ecosystem, and the roads will be impassable for days. As they take in their predicament, Blair receives a shocking phone call.

Two bodies have been found, brutally murdered.

The husband is an immediate suspect, but Walker is not convinced. And when Blair is taken in for questioning, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Before the water recedes, he must work with local police to uncover the killer in their midst. Can Walker act fast enough to save his cousin, and keep Grace safe?

The valley

Chris Hammer
A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan and Nell are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers.

But it’s when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative, that the past begins to take on a looming significance.

What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell’s mother doing there, and what was her connection to troubled young police officer Simmons Burnside? And why do the police hierarchy insist Ivan and Nell stay with the case despite an obvious conflict of interest?

The fallen woman

Fiona McIntosh
Botanical artist Jane Saville is devastated when her manipulative mother banishes her to the countryside to protect someone else’s honour. Isolated far from home, she is forced to live an impoverished, secretive life to save the family from public shame.

Guy Attwood is heir to a fortune, but prefers his quiet passion for rare-apple hunting on behalf of Royal Kew Gardens to building the family’s business empire. He sets out to find a critically endangered apple species that he dreams of gifting and re-naming for his friend, the soon-to-be coronated George V.

When the paths of these people from two very different worlds collide, Jane begins to hope for a different future, but their new friendship is shattered by jealousy, misunderstanding, duty and treachery. A young boy will inspire Jane to defy the powers working against her and prove she is no woman to be outcast.

Juice

Tim Winton
An epic novel of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. This is Tim Winton as you’ve never read him before. Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash.

They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.

Inheritance

Genevieve Gannon
From the author of The Mothers comes a propulsive family drama that explores the possibilities and dangers of designing the perfect child. In 2027, Emily is deciding whether to take advantage of a new health service that promises a healthier, stronger baby through gene editing. There’s plenty in her family tree that she would like to protect her unborn child against.

But not everybody loves the so-called designer baby technology.

Decades later, Adelaide is an ambitious political staffer trying to make a difference. Adelaide and her husband are working towards a goal they’ve called The Cyprus Project, but their plans risk being derailed when an unexpected threat looms.

Told across two generations, and two continents, Inheritance is about the legacies we leave our children, the bonds between mothers and daughters, and how it’s never too late to fix our mistakes.

A lesson in dying

Ann Cleaves
Heppleburn, once a Northumberland pit village, has always been close-knit, friendly and safe – until the murder of headmaster Harold Medburn. Suddenly, the village seems unfamiliar, uncomfortable.

The school caretaker and his daughter pursue their own route of investigation, which should have made Inspector Ramsay’s job a little easier. But hampered by false leads, powerless to pre-empt the killer’s next move, and overshadowed by the evil atmosphere of All Hallow’s Eve, Ramsay finds his own reputation is on the line…

Murder in my backyard

Ann Cleaves
No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry . . .
. . . But here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David’s Eve. And when detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins to emerge. Yes, old Mrs. Parry was loved by everyone, but sometimes her kindness had caused trouble.

Yes, her two nephews were devoted to her, but they didn’t really want her interfering in their rather complicated personal lives. Even among her neighbours, Alice Parry’s helpfulness had sometimes misfired; and after her death, tension tight as a clenched fist grips the uneasy village.

Meanwhile, the suspects keep rolling in, and Heppleburn’s friendly neighbourhood killer continues his nasty piece of work . . .

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