# Rosemary’s Book Previews 2023

Source: https://ballaratmi.org.au/rosemarys-book-previews-2023/

## February 2023

***1. Starvation Lake* | John Carson**

A killer on the loose.

A killer behind bars.

And a detective caught between them…

Ailsa Connolly was a brilliant psychologist and a respected criminologist.

She was also a serial killer.

Six years ago, DCI Sean Bracken caught her just before he was about to become her seventh victim. Every year on the anniversary of her incarceration, she taunts him with a phone call, giving him one message; when I get out, I’ll kill you.

Now, Bracken has transferred back to Edinburgh from Fife and is thrown into the deep end on his first day back on duty.

There’s a killer who is emulating Ailsa, threatening to surpass her body count.

Bracken knows he needs her on board to help him track the killer down, but she’s reluctant to get involved.

Then the case takes an unexpected twist, and she agrees to help. But this new killer is taking them down a dark, twisted path, where nobody sees the outcome.

Until it’s too late.

***2. Last Girls Alive* | Jennifer Chase**

Half-buried in the muddy earth and surrounded by puddles of water lies the naked body of a beautiful young girl. Her pale skin looks like porcelain in the early morning light. Her fragile arms bent and crooked like a broken doll.

When Detective Katie Scott is called to the discovery of a young girl buried on the grounds of a former children’s home in Pine Valley, California, she’s hopeful it’s the end to a devastating cold case she’s been working on. No one has seen Candace Harlan since she ran away from Elm Hill Manor five years ago. Her death will be a tragedy, but it will also bring peace to those who miss her most. But the girl in the ground is not Candace.

The victim is almost identical to Candace in every way, but fear grips Katie as she takes in the black ink that decorates the girl’s back—a terrifying message tattooed on her skin after she drew her last breath.

Forcing down traumatic memories of losing her own parents, Katie is certain someone mistook this poor soul for Candace, and that this crumbling home for lost girls is at the heart of this terrible crime. She sets to work digging into the tragic history of the owners who lost so many children of their own and tracking down the last six residents and the staff who cared for them—but no one wants to talk, let alone remember.

The next day, a second girl’s body is found down by the creek at high water, the same words etched into her skin. Katie’s worst fear is confirmed: someone is picking off the last of the Elm Hill girls one by one. But what does the tattoo mean? And what monster would target these innocent girls who have already been through so much?

Katie must dig deep to confront her own fears and protect the vulnerable—but as the body count rises further, will there be anyone left to save?

***3. Flowers on her Grave* | Jennifer Chase**

On the floor, amongst the piles of freshly pressed laundry, lay the woman’s lifeless body, her pale yellow nightdress soaked in blood.
“I didn’t do it…” came a whisper from the corner of the room.

Detective Katie Scott has never seen two people more in love than her aunt and uncle as they danced on the decking the night of their wedding anniversary party. But the next morning, when Katie finds her aunt’s body sprawled across the floor, that perfect image is shattered forever.

All fingers point to Katie’s uncle, Pine Valley’s beloved sheriff and protector – after all, his prints are all over the antique knife found at the scene. Grieving, but certain of her uncle’s innocence, Katie is consigned to the cold case division after she’s discovered searching the house for clues. Doessomeone want to keep her as far away from this investigation as possible?

Ignoring warnings from her team, Katie digs into her uncle’s old case files and discovers photographs of the body of a young girl found tied to a tree after a hike in search of a rare flower. Her body is covered with the same unusual lacerations her aunt suffered. Katie knows it can’t be a coincidence, but every lead she follows takes her to a dead end.

Moments before the sheriff is arrested, Katie realises that a single piece of thread she found at the crime scene could be the missing link that will stitch old crimes to new. But how can she prove her uncle’s innocence without throwing herself directly into the line of fire? She doesn’t have a choice, he’s the only family she has left…

***4. No Plan B* | Lee Child**

Gerrardsville, Colorado. One tragic event. Two witnesses. Two conflicting accounts. One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus – clearly suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened – a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushing the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and sauntering away.

Reacher follows the killer, not knowing that this was no random act of violence. It is part of something much bigger…a sinister, secret conspiracy, with powerful people on the take, enmeshed in an elaborate plot that leaves no room for error. If any step is compromised, the threat will have to be quickly and permanently removed.

Because when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B…

***5. Desert Star* | Michael Connelly**

SOME CRIMES YOU CAN’T FORGET.
Detective Renée Ballard is given the chance of a lifetime: revive the LAPD’s cold case unit and find justice for the families of the forgotten. The only catch is they must first crack the unsolved murder of the sister of the city councilman who is sponsoring the department – or lose everything…

OTHERS YOU CAN’T FORGIVE.
Harry Bosch is top of the list of investigators Ballard wants to recruit. The former homicide detective is a living legend – but for how long? Because Bosch has his own agenda: a crime that has haunted him for years – the murder of a whole family, buried out in the desert – which he vowed to close.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU KNEW WHO DID IT?
With the killer still out there and evidence elusive – Bosch is on a collision course with a choice he hoped never to make…

***6. Racing the Light* | Robert Crais**

Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, are back on the case in this brilliant new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.

Adele Schumacher isn’t a typical worried mom. When she hires Elvis to find her missing son, a controversial podcaster named Josh Shoe, she brings a bag filled with cash, bizarre tales of government conspiracies, and a squad of professional bodyguards. Finding Josh should be simple, but Elvis quickly learns he isn’t alone in the hunt—a deadly team of mysterious strangers are determined to find Josh and his adult film star girlfriend first.
With dangerous secrets lurking behind every lead, Elvis needs his friend Joe Pike more than ever to uncover the truth about Josh, corrupt politicians, and the vicious business cartels rotting the heart of Los Angeles from within. And when Elvis’s estranged girlfriend, Lucy Chenier, and her son, Ben, return, he learns just how much he has to lose…if he survives.

***7. Ice Cold Malice* | Rhys Dylan**

Revenge is a dish best served… ice cold.

While beach combing on MOD property, two young boys stumble across a reeking mound of tangled kelp. But it isn’t the seaweed that stinks. It’s the decomposing corpse beneath it.

Called in to investigate, DCI Evan Warlow’s team are faced with finding out how and why the body of a struck-off doctor ended up on a lonely beach within sight of Laugharne’s famous Boathouse.

But this is no innocent victim. This is a man with more enemies than friends. A fact that muddies the waters no end as Warlow unearths more and more of the dead man’s sordid history. Not to mention a long line of suspects.

With a killer in their midst hell bent on achieving a deadly goal and determined to let nothing and no one stand in their way, the team need to be on their guard.

Unless they want to end up as victims, too.

***8. A Killer’s Heart* | Thomas Fincham**

A serial killer’s heart beats inside her chest.

FBI Agent Jo Pullinger arrives in Seattle, Washington. She is grateful to leave behind her old life. One that involved having a transplant of a killer’s heart.

When a wealthy family is murdered in their mansion, the daughter’s boyfriend is taken into custody. He was found at the scene of the crime, cradling the daughter’s body, with the murder weapon at his side.

Jo’s instincts tell her the boyfriend is not guilty, even though, all the evidence is stacked against him. It’s an uphill battle for Jo, to not only convince her superiors but also to convince her new partner, Seattle PD Detective Bryan Ford.

As Jo digs deeper into the case, she quickly finds herself on a collision course with a disturbed killer.

***9. Bleeding Heart Yard* | Elly Griffiths**

DS Cassie Fitzherbert has a secret – but it’s one she’s deleted from her memory. In the 1990s when she was at school, she and her friends killed a fellow pupil. Thirty years later, Cassie is happily married and loves her job as a police officer.

One day her husband persuades her to go to a school reunion and another ex-pupil, Garfield Rice, is found dead, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent MP and the investigation is high profile, it’s headed by Cassie’s new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur. The trouble is, Cassie can’t shake the feeling that one of her old friends has killed again.

Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It’s in Cassie’s interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like the latter and she seems to be succeeding.

Until someone else is killed…

***10. The Boys from Biloxi* | John Grisham**

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, drugs . . . even contract killings. The vice was controlled by a small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumoured to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to ‘clean up the Coast.’ Hugh’s father became the ‘Boss’ of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.

Rich with history and with a large cast of unforgettable characters, The Boys from Biloxi is a sweeping saga of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends, but ultimately find themselves in a knife-edge legal confrontation in which life itself hangs in the balance.

In this novel, Grisham takes his powerful storytelling to the next level, his trademark twists and turns will keep you tearing through the pages until the stunning conclusion.

‘It’s a story that spans half a century and ends inevitably in a courtroom showdown. A morally complex, compelling and illuminating read’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘Invites comparisons with the Godfather trilogy – it spans two generations and several postwar decades – and has a vast cast and a winning energy’ SUNDAY TIMES

***11. Gone to Ground* | Bronwyn Hall**

HUNTED. ALONE. AFRAID… A heart-in-the-mouth and utterly addictive adventure thriller from a phenomenal debut Australian talent.

UN surgeon Rachel Forester is posted at a remote medical clinic deep in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With violence escalating in the region, Dr Forester risks her life by remaining to tend an injured child while the rest of her team evacuates. On the cusp of her final desperate chance to leave, a soldier is carried into the camp by three other members of his unit, his condition so critical, his airlift must take priority over hers.

With no help coming, and in the path of warring militias, this small unit must flee through the heart of the jungle to reach the safety of the province capital. But in the dark wilderness lies a strangling web of crime and corruption. As they get deeper, they discover a sinister mining operation and stolen children with evidence indicating shadowy ties to the UN. But aren’t those the people Dr Forester works for? The only people who know she’s still lost out there? And now, the people who want her dead?

The further they delve, the more the web closes around them. Will they make it out alive?

***12. Know no Evil* | Graeme Hampton**

Old crimes don’t stay buried forever…

It’s high summer, and London sizzles in the grip of a heatwave. But when the body of young mother, Leanne Wyatt, is discovered in an East London park, the heat rises to boiling point for D.I. Matthew Denning. Under pressure to solve the case, and fast, he delves into Leanne’s history and finds that she was close to some dangerous individuals – could one of them have taken her life in an angry rage? But when another woman is found dead in similar circumstances, Denning is forced to consider that a killer stalks the capital’s streets.

But when young, ambitious, D.S. Molly Fisher, discovers a horrifying link to these deaths and a killing spree in South London a decade ago – a terrifying summer where young women died at the hands of a psychopath the press dubbed ‘The Bermondsey Ripper’, the case is blown wide open. Anthony Ferguson is serving a life sentence for the crimes, so are these new deaths the result of a copycat killer – or did the police convict the wrong man? Whatever the case, Denning and Fisher need to stop a killer in his tracks – before he sets his sights on them.

***13. The Soulmate* | Sally Hepworth**

There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t.

When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral…Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?

And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate…lie? As the perfect facade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel.

***14. The Blood Tide* | Neil Lancaster**

You make people disappear.
A young man jumps from a bridge in Glasgow and falls to his death in the water below. DS Max Craigie uncovers evidence that links both victims. But if he can’t find out what cost them their lives, it won’t be long before more bodies turn up at the morgue…

You come back for revenge.
Soon cracks start to appear in the investigation, and Max’s past hurtles back to haunt him. When his loved ones are threatened, he faces a terrifying choice: let the only man he ever feared walk free, or watch his closest friend die…

***15. Hidden Scars* | Angela Marsons**

While Jamie’s cold, lifeless body lay in the morgue, Detective Kim Stone stared at the empty board in the incident room and felt her anger boil. Why were there no photos, details, or lines of enquiry?

When a nineteen-year-old boy, Jamie Mills, is found hanging from a tree in a local park, his death is ruled a suicide. Detective Kim Stone’s instincts tell her something isn’t right – but it’s not her investigation and her temporary replacement is too busy waiting for the next big case to be asking the right questions.

Why would a seemingly healthy boy choose to end his life?
Why does his mother show no sign of emotional distress at the loss of her son?

Still mending her broken mind and body from her last harrowing case, Kim is supposed to be easing back into work gently. But then she finds a crucial, overlooked detail: Jamie had a recent injury that would have made it impossible for him to climb the tree. He must have been murdered.

Quickly taking back charge of her team and the case, Kim visits Jamie’s parents and is shocked to hear that they had sent him to a clinic to ‘cure’ him of his sexuality. According to his mother, Jamie was introverted and prone to mood swings. Yet his friend speaks of a vibrant, outgoing boy.

The clues to smashing open this disturbing case lie behind the old Victorian walls of the clinic, run by the Gardner family. They claim that patients come of their own accord and are free to leave at any time. But why are those that attended the clinic so afraid to speak of what happens there? And where did the faded restraint marks identified on Jamie’s wrists come from?

Then the body of a young woman is found dead by suffocation and Kim makes two chilling discoveries. The victim spent time at the clinic too, and her death was also staged to look like a suicide.

Scarred from an ordeal that nearly took her life, is Kim strong enough to stop a terrifying killer from silencing the clinic’s previous patients one by one?

***16. The Girl in the Castle* | James Patterson**

My name is Hannah Dory and I need you to believe me

NOW: Hannah Doe is brought to Belman Psych, kicking and screaming, told she is suffering from hallucinations and delusions.

1347: Hannah Dory and her village are starving to death in a brutal winter. Hannah seeks out food and salvation in the baron’s castle. If she is caught stealing, she will surely hang.

NOW: Hannah knows the truth: she is Hannah Doe and Hannah Dory, and she must return to the past before it’s too late to save her sister. Can Jordan, the Abnormal-Psych student who seems to truly care, be the one to finally help her?

Jordan isn’t sure what to believe, and Hannah has even bigger problems: if she doesn’t make it back, her sister will die, but if she keeps going back, she might never escape.

***17. Find Me in the Dark* | Dea Poirier**

She’d been running for so long, it felt like her legs were on fire. Her heart was pounding so hard, she was sure it would give out. Around her, the snow was falling, casting an eerie silence over the town. A crack behind her, a foot snapping a branch, it warned her that he was still coming. She whipped around and saw the knife gleaming in his hand…

As the snow begins to melt across Plattsburgh, New York, the body of a young woman is found buried in a snowbank. When Detective Harlow Durant arrives at the scene she discovers that the victim has lain there for months: her arresting beauty, brightly-coloured nails and a distinctive gold bracelet perfectly preserved in the ice.

Searching missing person reports, Harlow soon identifies the victim as college student Alyssa Trent. Her grieving family describe her as someone who had no enemies and was a dedicated student. But Alyssa’s tutor has a different view: they claim Alyssa had another life that she kept hidden. But who would want her dead?

Harlow knows all about secret lives. She has spent years running from her past and from her father, a convicted serial killer. As the only female detective at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Harlow has vowed to bring killers to justice. Now she needs to find justice for Alyssa.

When another female student is found in the thawing snow, Harlow knows that she is hunting a twisted killer. The victims knew each other but what dark secret connects them? With the small-town reeling in shock and more snow coming, Harlow knows she needs to stop a killer dead in their tracks before another innocent life is lost.

***18. The Killing Parade* | T. G. Reid**

Who will be next?

When the body of a local talent show winner is discovered, on the eve of headlining Kilwinnoch’s annual Civic Week celebrations, it throws the festivities into chaos and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart.

For DCI Bone, the death is personal. Days earlier, he’d received a call from the victim, warning that she was about to be killed. He’d dismissed it as a hoax.

With threats of more to come, a town on edge, and a ruthless killer evading detection with ease, Bone knows from hard -worn experience that, in a case like this, one kill is never enough

***19. The It Girl* | Ruth Ware**

April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.

Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead.

Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder.

***20. In the Deep* | Loreth Anne White**

I hope you don’t find him. And if you do, I hope he’s dead and that he suffered…

Real-estate mogul Martin Cresswell-Smith is the best thing that has ever happened to Ellie. After her daughter’s devastating death, a divorce, and an emotional breakdown, he’s helped her move as far as possible from the grief, the rage, and the monsters of her past. Ellie imagines her new home with Martin in an Australian coastal town will be like living a fairy tale. But behind closed doors is another story—one that ends in Martin’s brutal murder. And Ellie seems almost relieved…

Naturally, everyone thinks Mrs. Cresswell-Smith is guilty.

Senior Constable Lozza Bianchi has reasonable doubt. She sees evidence of a twisted psychological battle and a couple who seemed to bring out the worst in each other—adultery, abuse, betrayal, and revenge. If anything Ellie says can be believed, that is. As the case takes twist after spiraling twist, Lozza can’t shake the gut instinct that she’s being manipulated. That Ellie is hiding something. That there are secrets yet to surface. Lozza has no idea.

***21. When we Fall* | Aoife Clifford**

‘It isn’t strangers you need to worry about here. Blood lines run deep and in unexpected places. Every victim, every accused, we’ll know. The past runs alongside us all the time. Some days it spills into the open.’

In the wild, coastal town of Merritt, Alex Tillerson and her mother make a shocking find on the beach. The police claim it’s an accidental death but there are whispers of murder and that it is not the first.

Bella Greggs was found dead at the bottom of a ravine but drowned in salt water. Maxine McFarlane was pulled from the ocean but with no water in her lungs. Black feathers were found with both bodies but what do they mean?

As Alex fights for answers to honour the dead, and to discover why her mother fled town as a teenager, good people keep looking the other way, memories become unreliable and secrets threaten to reveal the past.

Alex discovers the truth never dies but it can kill…

***22. Day’s End* | Garry Disher**

WHEN HATE RUNS DEEP, THE INNOCENT SUFFER

Constable Paul Hirschausen’s rural beat in the low hills of South Australia is wide. Daybreak to day’s end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson.

But now, just as Hirsch has begun to feel he knows the fragile communities under his care, the isolation and fear of the pandemic have warped them into something angry and unrecognisable. Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge.

Today he’s driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They’re checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don’t quite add up.

Then a call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much – a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight – but two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son’s.

***23. Keeping Up Appearances* | Tricia Stringer**

As tensions simmer in a small country town, three women are going to need more than CWA sausage rolls and can-do community spirit to put things right. From a bestselling Australian author comes a delightful novel full of practical wisdom and dry humour that examines female friendship, buried secrets and why honesty is (usually) the best policy.

Privacy is hard to maintain in Badara, the kind of small Australian country town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So discovers single mum Paige when she and her three children arrive from the city seeking refuge. Paige’s only respite from child care and loneliness is the Tuesday gym club, where she had feared the judgement of the town matriarchs, but she is met only with generosity and a plethora of baked goods. Besides, both the brusque Marion and her polished sister-in-law Briony are too busy dealing with their own dramas to examine hers.

Well-to-do farmer’s wife and proud mother Briony is in full denial of her family’s troubles. Even with her eldest daughter’s marriage in ruins and her son Blake’s recent bombshell. Suddenly Briony and husband Vince have a full house again – and the piles of laundry aren’t the only dirty linen that’s about to be aired.

For Marion, the unearthing of a time capsule – its contents to be read at the Celebrate Badara weekend – is a disaster. She was only a teenager when she wrote down those poisonous words, but that doesn’t mean she won’t lose friends and family if they hear what she really thinks of them – especially as the letter reveals their darkest secrets to the world.

***24. Murder in Williamstown* | Kerry Greenwood**

When the redoubtable Miss Phryne Fisher receives threatening letters at her home, she enlists her unflappable apprentice Tinker to investigate. But as the harassment of Phryne threatens to spin out of control, her lover Lin Chung is also targeted.

Meanwhile, Dot begins to fear that her fiancé, newly promoted Sergeant Hugh Collins, has gone cold on their wedding. And Phryne’s clever daughters Ruth and Jane begin their own investigation into suspiciously dwindling funds when they are sent to help at the Blind Institute.

None of this is quite enough to prevent Phryne from accepting an invitation to a magnificent party at the house of the mysterious Hong. When the party is interrupted by shocking tragedy, Phryne gathers all of her unerring brilliance to track down the miscreants.

With some unlikely assistance, Phryne is in a race against time to save a pair of young lovers from disgrace and death

***25. Broad River Station* | Fleur McDonald**

A young constable faces prejudice in a small country town, but the search for a missing child changes everything. A breathtaking novel of rural suspense from the bestselling Voice of the Outback.

Mia, a newly graduated constable, is assigned to the small country town of Broad River. And as certain as she is about her ability to do the job, on day one she’s already in conflict with colleagues who believe that women shouldn’t be coppers.

It takes the shine off coming home, where her grandmother, Clara, is in the early stages of dementia. Mia is accustomed to their conversations often not quite making sense, but when Clara gives Mia a mysterious key and hints of veiled family secrets, Mia isn’t sure what she should believe.

In the midst of all this, a local child goes missing and Mia is confined to barracks. When Detective Dave Burrows realises she has skills that could be put to use, Mia’s career takes a new turn, and she must decide down which road to walk.

***26. Call of Empire* | Peter Watt**

It is 1885. After a decade spent fighting for Queen and Country across the globe, Colonel Ian Steele is enjoying the quiet life in the colony of New South Wales, reunited with his friend Conan Curry and watching over his children and numerous business enterprises.

But the British Empire’s pursuits are ceaseless, and when the colony’s soldiers are required to assist a campaign in Sudan, North Africa, Ian’s son Lieutenant Josiah Steele heeds the call, despite an ultimatum from the love of his life, Marian.

Meanwhile, Ian’s younger son Samuel is learning the family business in the Pacific islands with his friend and colleague Ling Lee. However, Lee has become embroiled in a scheme to smuggle guns for the Chinese, which sees the pair sailing directly into danger in Singapore.

As the reign of Queen Victoria draws to a close and new battles loom on several frontiers, the Steele family must face loss and heartbreak like never before.

2**7. *One Woman’s War* | Christine Wells**