The Secrets of the Dragonfly Lodge by Rachel Hore

Nancy Foster has harboured a devastating secret that shattered her professional and personal life. On meeting her, journalist Stef Lansdown realizes that she has the power to restore Nancy’s reputation and to heal the wounds, if only Nancy will trust her. But someone else wants to get to the bottom of the story first, someone who doesn’t want it to be told.

Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Ashraf is an academic whose career and personal life are in freefall. Hannah is a young journalist struggling to honour the voices of her community. When a Year 12 student from a local Islamic college is arrested for protesting a university's ties to an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Ashraf sees an opportunity to exploit his personal connection to the situation for professional redemption. Meanwhile Hannah, who is juggling the demands of new motherhood and family trauma, fights racism in the newsroom. As Israel's bombardment of Gaza intensifies into the final weeks of Ramadan, Ashraf and Hannah must reckon with their choices, values and places in their communities. Will they be prepared to make sacrifices in the pursuit of what is right?

The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall

When Lou sees an ad for a long-abandoned mining town up for sale, it doesn’t take her long to convince her sister and their oldest friends to go in on the idyllic property buried in the bush - a place where the four families can hide away on weekends, get back to nature and unstick the kids from their screens. But things start to go wrong before they even arrive for their first weekend away - a rogue deer sends a trailer off the road, a neighbour complains about the fence line and squatters have set up camp down by the river. Soon none of that will matter, though, because by the end of the first night someone will be dead. At first it seems that hiding a body is easier than keeping other sorts of secrets: a lost job, an illegal crop, an outrageous affair, a little embezzlement. But what’s buried has a way of coming to the surface, and even in the bush, it’s hard to remain unseen.

Kill Your Boss by Jack Heath

Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui has just broken up a loud brawl between two blokes in front of the Warrigal Public Library. But just as she's about to leave the scene, a man inexplicably plummets from the sky and slams into the bike rack right in front of her, dead. Neville Adams was the head of library services, hated by staff, borrowers, and in fact anybody who had ever met him. Kiara quickly seals the building, trapping everyone who might have pushed him off the roof. She expects to have someone in custody within minutes. Instead, the investigation becomes the most challenging and dangerous of her career as it spirals outward, ensnaring half the town. It seems that Neville was connected to the disappearance of Emmylou Chisholm - a case that Kiara could never solve, and that has haunted her ever since. If the killer isn't found fast, the first two victims won't be the last...

Pilbara by Judy Nunn

The Pilbara, late 1800s: Frontier country, the wild west of Australia - a lawless, violent place where treachery is a way of life. Widower Charles Burton arrives in this forbidding corner of the world with his three young children. They've travelled half the globe, from the lush rolling hills and dales of Yorkshire, on a mission to save their family's sheep and cattle property. Rebuilding the fortunes of Burton Station will ask everything of Charles and his children, particularly daughter Victoria, who will at times threaten to bring about their downfall. Here in the oldest landscape on earth, survival has always proved a battle. And when greed takes over, the battle only intensifies. Aboriginal people are robbed of their lands and their very way of life as every new arrival fights for the riches on offer - the grazing territory, the pearls and the gold. Amid all this brutality, the Burtons and their allies must fight to conquer the savagery that surrounds them.

The Mushroom Murders by Greg Haddrick

The shocking story of family lunch laced with the world's most deadly mushroom, and a gripping murder trial. On 29 July 2023, Erin Patterson hosted a lunch at her home in the small regional Victorian town of Leongatha. She had invited her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian. Erin made beef Wellington for her guests, individual beef eye fillets covered in mushroom paste, wrapped in pastry. The following day, all four guests were taken to the hospital, and Heather, Gail and Don died. Ian Wilkinson barely survived. A toxicologist found traces of the poisonous death cap mushroom in the remains of the meal. At first, it appeared to be a dreadful accident. As the police investigation continued, the evidence mounted, seeming to point one way. Yet Erin Patterson steadfastly claimed she did not intend to harm her relatives. But after a gruelling 10 week trial, the jury found her guilty of three counts of murder, and one count of attempted murder.

The Man Next Door by Sheila Roberts

Zona never thought her life was headed this way, but here she is, newly divorced and moving back in with her mom, Louise. After her gambling addicted ex-husband lost all of their savings, including their daughter's college fund, she doesn't really have a choice. She's cutting every coupon she can and she's going to help put her daughter through nursing school, even if it kills her. This wasn't Louise's plan, either, laid up at home with a broken leg after one unfortunate tumble on the senior singles cruise she'd been looking forward to for months. But if she's going to spend all her time at home, at least she's got her daughter there with her. And there's some hot new eye candy next door to distract them both from their troubles. He appears to be single and just around Zona's age. Could his arrival be the universe making amends for everything it's put her through? Maybe the universe isn't feeling as generous as Louise hoped. There's something lurking under that mans surface charm, something ... dangerous? And who's the woman they can hear him in all-out shouting matches with on the other side of the fence? When the woman seems to disappear without a trace, imaginations run wild. Or at least, Zona hopes it's just her mother's imagination ...

Sweet Nothings by Madison Griffiths

Sweet Nothings is a gripping account of four women's interwoven stories in the wake of having once been students who embarked on romantic relationships with their university professors. Through the stories of Rose, Blaine, Cara and Elsie, Griffiths explores what these relationships tell us about power and interrogates how class and gender are expressed and exploited in our academic institutions. By tackling sex, desire and its consequences in a university setting, Griffiths looks keenly at the gender imbalances that inform these affairs, and how thorny betrayal becomes when a woman is made to believe she is the 'exception to the rule' only to find out she is one of many. Griffiths' portrayal reveals, with searing candidness, the labyrinth of ego, ambition, and abuse that can begin in the classroom. It's an unflinching critique of the hierarchies that distort relationships and can leave lasting scars

Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet

On the ninth day of July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a twenty-five-year-old labourer from the remote Hebridean island of Benbecula, bludgeoned to death his father, mother and aunt. Five years later, Angus's brother, Malcolm, ostracised by the community and haunted by the past, gives his version of the events leading up to the murders - while trying to keep a grip on his own fragile sanity.

The Australian Wars by Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds

It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars. This is the first book to tell the story of the continental sweep of massacres, guerilla warfare, resistance and the contests of firearms and traditional Aboriginal weaponry as Indigenous nations resisted colonial occupation of their lands, territory by territory.

The Butterfly Thief by Walter March

In January 1947, a chance discovery rocked the world of natural science: over 3,000 rare and precious specimens of butterflies had vanished from Australia's most prestigious museums in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Alarmingly, the missing insects included many priceless 'holotypes' - the first specimen of a given species to be identified, against which all others are compared. On the other side of the world, New Scotland Yard descended on a country house in Surrey, where they found a trove of over 40,000 butterfly specimens. The culprit was Colin Wyatt, a Cambridge-educated ski champion, mountaineer, wartime camouflager, artist, and amateur naturalist whose high-flying exploits cut a path from the Alps of Europe to a London court room to a final expedition to the jungles of Guatemala. Drawing on unpublished case files, dossiers, and private archives, The Butterfly Thief pieces together Wyatt's enigmatic life story and his decades-long impact on the world of natural history. 

Lost & Found by Liz Byrski

Rose Walters has never taken a leap of faith quite like this one - she is flying home to England for the first time in decades to search for her first love. But what she finds there is far from what she expected. When Rose turns up at her door, Dora Stutchbury is not sure she's willing to rake over the coals of the past - especially those she has taken care to let lie for so long. But both women are about to be surprised as an unlikely friendship shows them a way forward - and finally unearths some answers to questions about the past, an absent son and lover, and the women themselves.

The Last Death of the Year by Sophie Hannah

New Year's Eve, 1932. Hercule Poirot and his good friend Inspector Edward Catchpool arrive on the Greek island of Lamperos for a little holiday...or is it? Catchpool suspects Poirot has a different reason for being there — one he won't reveal. As the clock ticks towards the New Year and a festive guessing game takes a sinister turn, can Poirot stop a murderer who is determined to strike before midnight?

Coyote Hills by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy investigating calm, low-stakes embezzlement cases - that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a case only he can solve. Adam Valois, the missing son of a wealthy Los Gatos couple, was found floating dead in the Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police have lost interest, ruling it a likely overdose. But as Clay digs deeper into Adam’s mysterious death, he begins to suspect darker forces are at play...

The Hidden by Bryan Brown

The Heads was once a small village on the NSW north coast. Now it's a large village with a lot of action below the surface. A shipment of coke, a crime squad investigation and a drug overdose keep the local sergeant pretty busy. Someone is preying on the women of The Heads. And what does the discovery of buried roosters in the forest mean to a young boy? Will Sergeant William Jarrett uncover what is really going on or will it all remain hidden?