eBook Listing

Bare Bones

Pixie Silvester looks on her psychic powers as a curse. She sees things, senses things - usually dead things - and sometimes she manages to solve crimes. When a child unearths human bones at a summer barbeque, Pixie experiences sensory overload and gets pitch-forked into a macabre case of missing women, some of whom have been buried alive.

Killing Kindness

When Cuddles, a wannabe fashion designer and bakery shop assistant, trips over a dead hit-and-run victim at midnight she unwittingly becomes embroiled in a dangerous scam. She shares iced buns with a crippled drugs dealer known as Al Capone and meets a sexy undercover cop with attitude, but she also has a run in with a couple of nutters who want to kill her as she gets close to solving the murder.

Frank and Milo were introduced in Fly By Night (1999), where they got caught up in crime for the first time - smuggling, murder and assault.

Five years later, on the verge of The Big Time, Frank and Milo were tangled up in murder and kidnapping again in Sacrifice (2004). The first consequence of Milo’s experiences was to out himself and Frank as a couple on national television.

In 2009, Number One Fan explores the full consequences of the events of Sacrifice - anxiety disorders and the derailing of their music career - as well as the new directions Frank and Milo are taking now. Crime still loiters in the wings, however, or a type more often seen in the music industry: a stalker.

So here we are in 2014, and Frank and Milo are still together, still in love, and with new challenges. They’d very much like to not be involved in any more violent crime, thanks. However, crime seems not to be quite done with them.

Rome's Burning is a five-piece band with its roots in the 13th century; a line of musicians gifted with the magic-wielding Minstrel Tongue. For hundreds of years, Rome's Burning and its forebears have used music to protect the world from vampires, trolls, zombies, ghosts, banshees, dragons, water demons and other denizens of the dark.

 

But after one hellish night in the suburbs of Budapest, Rome's Burning defeated a nest of vampires at a terrible cost; their lead singer and the love of his life are dead, Rome's Burning is no more.

 

The survivors retreat as far as they can - to Melbourne, Australia - to deal with their grief, decide on their future, find a new leader and, as tradition demands, a new name. Before any of that happens, however, these minstrel-warriors have to find out why the dead keep rising everywhere they go.

 

Everyone has secrets and some of them might explain what's going on.

 

Perhaps the key is in the hands of Kitty Carrasco, the Melbourne funeral home beautician who doesn't know the secrets of her own past.

 

Kitty and Cadaver is a story of grief, love, vampires, music, magic, secrets and the restless dead.

IT ALL STARTED ON THE EVE OF MY 43RD BIRTHDAY...

With two young boys, a new lecturer position and all the commitments of an active life, Ros Ben-Moshe had no plans for a tumour to take over her life. Yet after the news came on her 43rd birthday, medical appointments turned into hours of surgery, casual conversations disappeared, and even her children started asking questions.

In recovery rooms, as the clock slowly ticks, Ros Ben-Moshe starts writing. Through ups and downs, she tells it all, in an honest account of fighting the Big C, or should we say the small c?

Brimming with humour, insight and sensitivity, this series of journals, written at the time, explores how we talk about and view illness, and how changing your mindset can do wonders on the journey to health.

Through explanations of mindful healing techniques and the power of laughter, Laughing at cancer will inspire you to take a deep breath and start laughing.

"Comment diable sommes-nous ainsi passes, a l'etourdie, a cote des aventures de Napoleon Bonaparte, dit Bony?"
Jean-Luc Porquet, Canard Enchaine

Le roman classique de Joan Lindsay, Pique-Nique à Hanging Rock, est un mélange subtil d'événements mystérieux et effrayants qui se déroulent à une certaine période de la société australienne, décrite avec une nostalgie affectueuse. Le dernier chapitre du roman a été enlevé à la demande de ses éditeurs, créant ainsi un mystère dont des milliers de personnes ont demandé à connaître la solution. Le chapitre manquant révèle ce qui est arrivé aux écolières qui ont disparu de Hanging Rock après un pique-nique le jour de la Saint-Valentin en 1900.

Avec des commentaires de John Taylor et d'Yvonne Rousseau, ce livre est publié pour la première fois en France, dans une traduction de Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan.

Nous trouvons ici une sorte de réponse au mystère qui se situe au coeur de Pique-Nique à Hanging Rock. Nous découvrons pourquoi, une semaine après sa disparition, Irma Leopold, l'héritière aux boucles noires rebondies, est retrouvée avec des doigts ensanglantés mais des pieds nus "parfaitement propres" qui ne présentent "aucune égratignure ni ecchymose". Nous voyons la manifestation de l'obsession de Lindsay pour le temps - il est dit qu'elle ne pouvait pas porter de montre parce qu'elles s'arrêtaient toujours, comme c'est le cas dans le livre. Nous assistons à la disparition de Miranda et de Marion. Nous voyons des corsets suspendus dans les airs. Nous assistons à une fin aussi insolite que Lindsay le laisse supposer tout au long de Pique-nique à Hanging Rock. - Rony Ash, Literary Hub

Jade Green has done what she had previously thought impossible. The infamous madam has emerged from obscurity and dared to use her legendary videos to sway Toby Brown's court case in his favour.

Prime Minister Foster knows reputations will be ruined and his government could fall if those tapes were to be released. So too, do other foreign governments as well as far more sinister organisations.

John Thorpe and his agents at Inland Security are ordered to recover the tapes, intact, and at all costs. But they are not the only ones in the desperate and bloody hunt for Jade Green's secrets.

The quiet rural life in Walton Village will never be the same again for the elderly Mrs Green and her friends.

This novel centres on the lifelong passion of a man to own his own country property. Clive Patterson finally achieves his dream and becomes obsessed with developing his 145 square miles (37554.8 hectares) of land in the Australian Outback. His wife, Jane, begins to realise Clive is obsessed with his land and has lost interest in her. The tension between them develops when Clive hires a stockman, Robert, to help on the property. Will Jane, feeling neglected, switch her allegiance to Robert?

 

Author Jacques Horringa brings his four years' experience working in the Outback to this novel. Like Another Woman, his second published book, following Saskia, published in 2019.

Families can be thorny, especially when the closet's full of skeletons.

It's 2019, and Frank and Milo are fulfilling a dream they only recently realised they had - fatherhood. But they're not only gaining a daughter - they're inheriting a some serious issues from little Lyra's extended family. Milo is also discovering his own family history isn't quite what he's been told. Parenthood. Always full of surprises...

With all this going on, they'd very much like to not be involved in any more violent crime, thanks.

However, crime is not quite done with them in the fifth and final book of the Duo Ex Machina series.

Little Star is the fifth and last book in Narrelle M Harris' Duo Ex Machina series, which includes Fly By Night and Sacrifice (nominees for the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel) and Number One Fan and Kiss and Cry.

Sue and Roger attempt to resolve family conflicts and improve their living standards by migrating with their two small children from England to the warmer Great Southern Land to become 'fair dinkum Aussies'.

 

Set from the 1970s, buckle up for a bittersweet roller-coast ride as they encounter the British Australia House, a homicidal charter flight to Australia, an immigration hostel, and befriend true blue Aussies who are suspicious of 'ten pound poms' and anyone who whinges or drinks tea, rather than coffee or beer! Their adventure takes an unexpected right turn as they experience life in a Pacific Archipelago for a while.

 

This is an inspirational, laugh-out-loud story of one small family's triumph over unbelievable odds. Their adventures and challenges of job satisfaction, fishing, family, cultural differences, and death is told with a self-deprecating humour - as Roger and Sue inherit the Aussie witticism.

Quiet, unassuming Meg Thorne is practically invisible. But this retired philosophy professor has plenty of opinions - like, why do people dismiss little old ladies as harmless?
Meg and her two friends, the tough-as-nails Dorothy Arden and the boisterous Lila Gatti, have decided to be a Force for Good with their Grey Ghosts Agency: because little old ladies can go undercover where other detectives can't.
Their new case is the infiltration of Sunnyvale Residential and Care Home to learn why their client's mother, Sara, is suddenly so afraid but won't talk. It's Meg's job to check into Sunnyvale for 'a short rest' and uncover the truth.
Meg will have to confront her own fears of ageing while also investigating why Sara's friend Jenny is being held in isolation, why an old enemy is popping up, what one of the other residents knows about the fate of Lila Gatti's disabled son, and whether the other residents are truly prepared for Meg's timely lecture on philosophy and responsibility.
Dangers lurk in Sunnyvale, but nobody counted on an unfolding global pandemic being one of them.
Will Meg be able to leave with the truth, or will she be trapped in a lockdown with those who mean her harm?

From the author of Wild Cat Falling and Balga Boy Jackson comes this novel from 1979:

 

Every revolution needs a leader and there is no question in Alan’s mind that he is that leader. For inspiration he goes to Noorak, the law holder of his people, and hears the heroic tales of Sandawara, the last of the warriors, who died defending his land and his people against the white man in the Kimberleys. So Alan names himself and becomes the new Sandawara and the rest of the unemployed teenage Aborigines of his mob take the names of Sandawara’s followers. In his crash pad, a broken-down old house, the new Sandawara plots and schemes the revolution.

 

The story of this mob of anti-heroes, of a farcical inefficient revolution, gives a vivid portrayal of the new and frightening world of rootless youth, who lack identity and purpose and shoot as easily as they love because neither act has meaning.

Peach Avenel is a broken woman. She thought she had a loving marriage. She thought she would be starting a family. She thought she had a successful career... Peach was wrong. She has a life that no longer fits, filled with broken dreams. When a tumbled down house with a neglected garden comes into her life by serendipitous circumstances, Peach feels something stir within her and although she prefers Jimmy Choo shoes to gum boots, she is drawn to the house and the garden. What unfolds is a story of humour and love. Of cupcakes and cactus. And of a young woman learning about herself and finding out sometimes you need to break open to find who you really are.

If any man was ever born to be murdered, it was William Lush - a hated drunk who disappeared after beating his wife to death. Plenty of men had the opportunity to murder Lush, some the means, none the motive. Jill Madden, his pretty step-daughter, had all three... When Lush disappears, Inspector Bonaparte must look for a body - and the murderer - before the Darling River rises to flood level…

 

This novel is one of Upfield's major accomplishments... Bony's determined search no matter where guilt falls is fascinating... This book is Upfield at his best. - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

The Cape York Peninsula, 1920... as the three ex-diggers talked across the bar at the West Coast, swapping stories of the War and goings-on in Cooktown and along the coast, the pioneer vision would have still been fresh and sustained by hope and dreams. All that was needed was a little luck - which might come from the Chinese gambling den across the way, or at the races, or a tip on a 'sure thing', be it trepang, trochus, timber or the treasures of the earth. So that day Idriess signed up for a sure thing with George Tritton - or perhaps not such a sure thing; Dick Welsh, Idriess's best mate, chose not to go. Even so, a few days later Jack (Idriess's frontier name) and George set sail for Howick Island. Before the end of the decade Idriess had renamed both the Island and his companion - he wrote that he had gone to Madman's Island with his mate, Charlie...

 

Madman's Island; Idriess as character and author - fact or fiction. Fifty books later the seam he struck after returning from the War was mined out. There was nothing left that could be said about frontier life as Idriess saw and said it. It required and still needs to be understood from other perspectives. But Ion Idriess - as Jack Idriess along the Bloomfield, in the Tablelands back of Cairns, and along the coast of north Queensland - gives us a participant's view. It's a voice we should attend to - it's our voice from a fading past.