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A horde of criminally good horror writers took a walk down the mean streets of crime.
Their task: to make your blood run cold, to scare you witless and to make your skin crawl.
The rising dread of a good mystery doesn't need anything supernatural to keep you on the edge of your seat. But put the two together - crime fiction and horror - and all sorts of nasty business can come out of the woodwork. Sometimes literally.
The stories herein include urban monsters, outback ghosts, contemporary lawyers, near-future police, and Victorian era mathematicians.

 

Our Damnation Games are played by 19 Aussie, Kiwi and international authors:

Gemma Amor, Joanne Anderton, J. Ashley-Smith, Alan Baxter, Aaron Dries, Gemma Files, Geneve Flynn, Philip Fracassi, Robert Hood, Gabino Iglesias, Rick Kennett, Maria Lewis, Chris Mason, Lee Murray, Cina Pelayo, Dan Rabarts, John F.D. Taff, Kyla Lee Ward, Kaaron Warren.

A destructive force...

As Emma Randall prepares to bury one man, another enters her life with the force of the cyclone gathering around them.

A man fighting for his life...

Drew Jarrett, his feet and hands torn by nail wounds, stumbles onto Emma's isolated farm, with no clue to the identity of the man who has tried to kill him. Within days the killer strikes again.

An attraction that can't be denied...

Emma fights to deny her feelings for Drew, but the growing danger surrounding her and this mysterious stranger creates an intimacy between them she could never have imagined. As Emma and Drew join forces to find the killer, he holds hostage the most innocent life of all.

In Dance with the Devil, menace and love meet in a story as suspenseful as it is passionate.

Some secrets are worth dying to protect...

Professor John Raymond lies paralysed and unable to speak.

His colleague, brilliant young medical researcher Breeanna Montgomery, is attacked by a shotgun-wielding stranger. Before the night is over, the man is killed, and Breeanna is fleeing from someone even more ruthless... and deadly.

Have those secrets already cost a life?

Rogan McKay's search for his missing brother forces him into a dangerous act of deception as the trail leads him to Breanna. When he confronts her, a shocking chain of events reveals her family's dark secrets.

One man's dream is another's nightmare...

Nothing Rogan discovers about this woman will be as astounding as the truth behind the experiment Professor Raymond was trying to hide...

In Dangerous Deception, survival depends on accepting who you are meant to be.

Blind barrister Tom Challinor's plans for a well-earned week off are dashed by an attempted murder linked to a Sydney escort agency.

Sonya and her sassy friend Avril are workers in that niche-market agency where the workers are all people with disability, amputees, chair users, or people of short stature. Their eager customers style themselves 'devotees'.

Meanwhile, bizarrely-mutilated dolls are turning up on the doorestep of a women's refuge.

As Tom investigates an underworld of desire, entitlement, and exploitation the menace of predatory passion clamps tight around Avril and Sonya, and young women start to disappear.

Here are stories for lovers of chupacabras and hulders, griffins and gargoyles.

Here be darkly cheery tales of ancient creatures beneath still waters, in the attic, or the shadows right by the bed.

Herein an autistic hiker meets a cryptid who wants her camera; a Japanese tanuki seeks his fox daughter; and two women fall in love, never mind one's a swamp monster.

Here be stories of changelings, nix, and demons adopted, of hungry kraken and cryptids we'd see if only, if only we looked into treetops, behind doors, or in our own back gardens.

Here there be monsters.

 

Here be stories of South African grootslang

and bayou grundylow,

tales of elementals, jackelopes,

and flying motels.

 

Within you'll find tiny leviathans and rock whales,

cambion and kelpie,

a girl between time,

and a man who saves a gun's life.

 

These are stories of cryptids who sing or swim or

save us, living side-by-side so often unseen

...and then seen.

 

So very much seen.

 

Set in wintry Tasmania in the early 1990s, with flashbacks to post-war Hobart and Europe during World War II, this story deals with dark secrets, crime and Nazi plots, interwoven with familiar domestic tensions of family life and marriage. Tully creates a fictional world strongly embedded in authentic details of real locations and well-conceived characters.

The earthy, passionate main protagonist, Jack Martin, is richly drawn: 'A typical copper - detective anyway - stressed out most of the time, running on adrenaline, nicotine and coffee. Booze too, but not as much as some of his mates. Running to flab from a diet of meat pipes and sauce, chips and the deep-fried dog's turds they called chicken rolls, gobbled down on the run between cases, ingesting cumulatively lethal doses of salt, sugar and saturated fats.'

In this elaborate web of intrigue the ground shifts, the past intrudes and time and place are vividly realised.

Brooding violence, tangled mysteries... a gripping read.

A vibrant southern constellation of crime writers.

Dark Deeds Down Under features the very best of modern Australian and New Zealand crime and mystery writing.

Spend time with some of your favourite Aussie and Kiwi cops, sleuths and accidental heroes, and meet some edgy new investigators.

A crew of beloved series characters - Corinna Chapman, Hirsch, Sam Shephard, Rowly Sinclair, Nick Chester, Murray Whelan - will lead you down dark alleys to meet our newer heroes - the Nancys, Penny Yee and Matiu, Alex Clayton, Kate Miles - and the stars of some cracking standalone tales.

Travel the criminal trails of two countries. From the dusty Outback to South Island glaciers, from ocean-carved coastlines and craggy mountains to sultry rainforests or Middle Earth valleys, and via sleepy towns to the seething underbellies of our cosmopolitan cities.

 

The 19 dark deeds herein are perpetrated by:

Alan Carter - Nikki Crutchley - Aoife Clifford - Garry Disher - Helen Vivienne Fletcher - Lisa Fuller - Sulari Gentill - Kerry Greenwood - Narrelle M. Harris - Katherine Kovacic - Shane Maloney - R.W.R. McDonald - Dinuka McKenzie - Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray - Renee - Stephen Ross - Fiona Sussman - Vanda Symon - David Whish-Wilson

 

'Punchy plotlines, contemporary themes, and familiar settings - you can't go wrong with this eclectic mix. Dip in and discover some new favourite writers.' - Michael Robotham
'A perfect showcase for the brilliant new wave of Antipodean crime writing.' - Val McDermid

Joan Lindsays klassischer Roman ›Picknick am Valentinstag‹ (Originaltitel ›Picnic At Hanging Rock‹) ist eine subtile Mischung mysteriöser und unheimlicher Ereignisse, die in einer Zeit des australischen Gesellschaftslebens spielt, die von liebevoller Nostalgie geprägt ist. Das letzte Kapitel des Romans wurde auf Wunsch des Verlegers entfernt, was zu einem Rätsel führte, dessen Lösung Tausende von Lesern faszinierten und herbeisehnten. Das fehlende Kapitel achtzehn enthüllt, was mit den Schulmädchen und der Lehrerin geschah, die am Valentinstag im Jahr 1900 nach dem Picknick auf dem Hanging Rock spurlos verschwanden.

 

MIT KOMMENTAREN VON JOHN TAYLOR UND YVONNE ROUSSEAU

 

Hier finden wir mögliche Antworten auf das Geheimnis, das dem Picknick am Hanging Rock zugrunde liegt. Wir erfahren, warum Irma Leopold, die Erbin mit den wallenden schwarzen Locken, eine Woche nach ihrem Verschwinden mit blutigen Fingern, aber ›völlig sauberen‹ nackten Füßen aufgefunden wird, die ›in keiner Weise zerkratzt oder gar verletzt‹ sind. Wir betrachten die Manifestation von Lindsays Besessenheit der Zeit - angeblich konnte sie keine Uhr tragen, weil diese immer wieder stehenblieb, genau wie auch im Buch beschrieben. Wir erfahren, wie Miranda und Marion verschwinden. Wir sehen Korsetts, die in der Luft hängen. Wir beleuchten ein Ende, das bewußt vage gehalten wurde und so mysteriös ist, wie Lindsay es beim Picknick am hängenden Felsen andeutet. - Rony Ash, Literary Hub

»Vor sich sahen sie den ausgetrockneten, völlig platten Grund einer seichten Senke. Die Ufer dieses wasserlosen Sees waren aus weißem, betonhartem Lehm, der sich wie ein helles Band zu Füßen leuchtend grüner Fieberbäume hinzog. Plötzlich stieß Elisabeth einen gellenden Schrei aus, und Nettlefold stieg automatisch auf die Bremse.
In der Mitte des Sees lag ein kleines knallrotes Flugzeug.«
Völlig unbeschädigt, aber mit einer bewußtlosen Pilotin im Cockpit steht ein Flugzeug in der australischen Wüste. Ein spektakulärer Fall für Inspector Bonaparte, denn einige Hinweise deuten auf einen äußerst ungewöhnlichen Mordanschlag hin.
Erstmals in deutscher Sprache.

Her father is accused of murder...

Samantha Bretton takes over as skipper of her father's fishing trawler, the Sea Mistress, determined to clear his name.

His job is to find out the truth...

Brisbane cop Chayse Jarrett, guilt-ridden by the death of a young woman on his last assignment, goes undercover on the vessel, and soon realises that Samantha is hiding something.

Secrets that could implicate her father in more than murder.

Secrets that Chayse becomes reluctant to uncover.

Are friends really what they seem...

The case takes a sinister turn and Samantha is forced to relive the horrors of her past.

In a night as deadly and unpredictable as the ocean that threatens his life, Chayse finds new allies, but now faces danger from old and bitter foes.

Before that night has ended, even enemies will discover that things are not always as they seem...

In Deadly Tide, the truth proves to be a destructive force...

On the eve of a major international AIDS Conference in London, the Conference chair is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Tracking down how he died reveals layers of deception, rivalry and danger for those close to him.

 

'Imagine Agatha Christie parachuting into the heady world of gay saunas and HIV research, and you're getting close to this delicious, camp and tightly-plotted murder mystery.' - BENJAMIN LAW

 

'Dennis Altman is a giant in academia and the gay rights movement, and with Death in the Sauna, he brings his insight and deft hand to a crime story that starts with a bang, so to speak, and leads us from the intrigues of a gay sauna into a tangled web of deception, rivalry and danger set against the backdrop of an international AIDS Conference. There could be no better author to take us into this story of secret lives, sexuality, politics and competing agendas. A searing and enjoyable read.' - TARA MOSS

 

'Altman's novel has a unique setting, a tight plot, and is hugely entertaining. He keeps you guessing right to the end, and you'll learn a lot along the way.' - ROBERT GOTT

Eight hundred kilometres from the sea, Lake Otway is dying. Heat, drought, and thirst-crazed animals take their toll. When Ray Gillen, lucky lottery winner, went for a swim one night and never came back, some thought it was an accident, or was it murder? As the water level drops, five men and two women wait beside the shrinking lake - for the body, the money, or neither. And watching it all, Bony…

 

Death of a Lake is as intense and unremitting story as Upfield ever wrote. It should be, for it is very close to Upfield's personality ... being the real Albermarle Station where Upfield was first hired as a cook in the 1920s and where he began his writing career ... In a hut at Wheeler's Well Upfield was inspired to write his Bony after a visit by Upfield's friend tracker Leon Wood. - from The Spirit of Australia by Ray Browne.

 

Bony - a unique figure among top-flight detectives - BBC

A cypher that looked like a child's game of noughts-and-crosses; a strip of hessian bag; the rhythmic clanging sound of the turning windmill suddenly breaking the silence of the night; the minister who seemed out of place as a churchman: these were some of the more puzzling aspects of the case of the murdered swagman noticed by the keen eyes of Robert Burns, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, alias "Bony".

 

Our distinctive student of violence arrives incognito at Merino, in western New South Wales, and, as a first move, provokes the local sergeant to lock him up. The method in Bony's madness is that while serving a semi-detention sentence and being made to paint the police station, he wears the best of all disguises... Here again is a first-rate Upfield mystery, made warm by humour, by the background characters and his portrayal of the natural background scene. - The Age

 

Upfield at his best. - Adelaide News

Ein neuer Fall für Inspektor Napoleon Bonaparte, genannt Bony. In einem australischen Küstenort herrscht erst Besorgnis, dann blankes Entsetzen, als die Barkasse »Do me« spurlos verschwindet und Tage später der kopf des Kapitäns in einem Fischernetz an Land gezogen wird. Offensichtlich hat sich auf hoher See eine Tragödie abgespielt, für diees weder Zeugen noch irgendwelche Beweise gibt - bis auf die Schußverletzung im Schädel des Toten. Für Napoleon Bonaparte bitet der grausig-mysteriöse Fall nur einen Lichtblick: Bony darf hollen, Arbeit und Vergnügen zu verbinden, da er seine Ermittlungen als Hochseeangler getarnt durchführt.
»Upfields Romane sind für mich bei weitem das interessanteste Produkt australischer Literatur. Und einige von ihnen... mit ihrer Mischung aus Land, Farmern, Eingeborenen, Mythen, Puzzle und »Action« sind absolute Sternstunden des Kriminalromans.« - Gisbert Haefs, Krimijahrbuch 1990