Australian & New Zealand crime/mystery/espionage authors free and bargain

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Kobo Aus has got Charlotte Jay's

Beat Not the Bones
$7.69 and discountable (at time of posting unlimited50 works)

Suicide, or murder? Newly arrived in Papua, where even the luscious vegetation conspires with the bureaucrats to bewilder her, Stella Warwick is determined to prove her husband did not take his own life. Defying the patronising concern of officials, she ventures deep into the jungle, striding ever closer to the horrifying heart of the mystery.

'This might easily scare you out of your wits. Extremely well-handled mystery, authentic horror and atmosphere that closes in like jungle heat.' - 'San Francisco Chronicle'

'Charlotte Jay works you up to the revelation of a horrible secret, and the secret turns out to be the horrible surprise you hoped it would be.' - 'New York Times' Book Review

'The Wakefield Crime Classics series revives forgotten or neglected gems of crime and mystery fiction by Australian authors. Many of the writers have established international reputations but are little known in Australia.'

'The Wakefield Crime Classics series is marvellous ... a wonderful collection of writing that should not have been overlooked in this country in the first place.' - Terry O'Connor, 'Courier Mail'

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Free on Amazon Aus

Chasing the Demons (A Robert Doyle Mystery #1)
Eamon Moroney

How well do you know your friends? How well do you know yourself?

Robert Doyle is doubting himself, escaping his past in Australia he fleas to London.

A chance encounter with a childhood friend draws him into a dark world of secrets. In a city captivated by the adbuction of a teenage girl, Robert’s friend also disappears. As Robert searches for his friend he soon discovers he is not the only one looking. Someone else is searching too, someone willing to kill.

With a killer on his tail, Robert is finds himself on the run. Can a beautiful woman he hardly knows be his only hope? Together can they find his friend before the killer does? The more they dig up, the darker the world around them becomes. What secrets will be unearthed?

A fast paced ride through the streets of London, Chasing The Demons is page turning suspense thriller.

Read the first novel in the Robert Doyle series.

[Lynx-lynx]

Free on Amazon Aus

Bali and Oates
Paul Greenway

The Prime Minister wants to snorkel in Bali with the tasty new 'Minister of Sustain-Novation and In-Ability', but his maniacal Private Secretary reminds him that the purpose of the visit is to sign the Bali Oil & Gas Access Negotiations (BOGAN) agreement.

Meanwhile, the Australian Consul on Bali, Samantha Oates, is warned by Australia's top intelligence and police agencies that the PM's visit is under threat from Balinese terrorist groups. Her dismay is compounded by the sudden disappearance of her second-in-charge, Ryan 'Bloody' Blake, who is responsible for organising the visit.

The terrorists lead Australia's finest diplomats, politicians and spies on wild goose chases around the temples, golf courses and art galleries of Bali before the farce is finally exposed by Samantha, with the masterful assistance of a 60-year-old, digital-whiz Granny Geek, and a schoolgirl on work experience.

Written in a satirical vein similar to Ben Elton by a former intelligence officer and author for Lonely Planet guidebooks, this racy and engaging action-comedy-political-satire is based almost entirely in Bali. The Oates Trilogy continues in Vietnam and Malaysia.

[ClareK]

I have just bought this, using bookriot50. According to Wikipedia, this book "won the then newly created Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers' Association of America for Best Novel of the Year in 1954".

I am really enjoying this thread - it may be a bit insular, but it's good to read mysteries set in our part of the world for a change! I'll look up some more of the Wakefield Crime Classics.

[Lynx-lynx]

Thank you Clare, I also think it's great to find out which of our authors and ebooks are cheapish or free

There are so many authors that I'd like to be able to include but can't because they don't seem to have price fluctuations.

For example:

Shane Moloney

Robert Gott

Katherine Howell

Geoffrey McGeachin

and the list goes on and on .....

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Kobo Norfolk Island has Shane Maloney's

The Brush Off
USD 3.49 and discountable

Murray Whelan book 2

Murray Whelan, political adviser to the newly appointed minister of culture, is hanging on to his job by his toenails after the most recent ministerial shakeup. His learning curve is forced quickly upward when, on his first day, the disgruntled young artist Marcus Taylor is found dead, drowned in the ornamental moat outside the National Art Gallery.

A born detective despite himself, Murray digs, and the deeper he goes, the more puzzling the mystery becomes. Who is this other painter, Victor Szabo, unknown in his lifetime and now the darling of the art world, his paintings fetching crazy prices?

And what about art maven Lloyd Eastlake, who seems like the chess master moving his art-world pieces...but toward what sinister end?

Don't forget that Kobo has decided that Norfolk Island is not part of Australia (yeah, right!), given it it's own site and USD. So, it's an individual decision as to whether you choose to change your country code to Norfolk Island in order to buy or not .....

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Amazon Aus has got Steven Bannister's

Fade to Black (The Black Series Book 1)
0.99 cents

Some bonds can never be broken.

Without him, she cannot catch a possessed killer.
Without her he cannot bring down an ancient evil.

The good news: Allie St Clair is the youngest woman ever to be promoted to detective chief inspector at New Scotland Yard. She's smart, Cambridge-educated and her family has serious money. The bad news: Evil has come to town.

A brutal crucifixion-style murder rocks London on her first day as a DCI. Within twenty-four hours her superiors are calling for her head and the media is crawling all over her.
The murders continue and she has no choice but to accept incredible revelations about herself and her famous family that stretch back a thousand years.

Can the tall stranger standing in the dark rain really be the Archangel Michael?
What the hell is the force that is creating havoc on London streets?

She must break all the rules and learn to use the talents that only she possesses or people close to her will meet horrible deaths. And she can't tell her police colleagues a damn thing about it.
The ancient Game is on...and Allie St Clair is hurled into a frantic race to mystical Glastonbury Tor where all the answers wait...along with her worst nightmare..

Fade to Black is a roller-coaster ride through the darkness. Readers of David Leadbeater, Mark Sennen, Leigh Russell and Scott Mariani will find and ally in Steven Bannister.

Sequel: Back to Black and just released, the third in the Black Series, The Black Net

Edit
Bannister has 4 books on Amazon Aus and they are all 0.99 cents.

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Amazon Aus Deal of the Day is:

Getting Warmer
Alan Carter
$1.59

Cato Kwong book 2.

Cato Kwong is back. Back in Boom Town and back on a real case – the unsolved mystery of a missing fifteen-year-old girl. But it’s midsummer in the city of millionaires and it’s not just the heat that stinks. A pig corpse, peppered with nails, is uncovered in a shallow grave and a body, with its throat cut, turns up in the local nightclub. As a series of blunders by Cato’s colleague brings the squad under intense scrutiny, Cato’s own sympathy for a suspect threatens to derail his case and his career.

Can't find this author on Kobo Aus.

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Kobo Aus has David Coombe's true crime

Deaths at Josephine's Gasworks Hotel
$4.01 and discountable (bookriot50 worked at time of posting)

Immerse yourself in Victorian intrigue and the world of publican Josephine. A story never before told. A suspicious death, a coroner’s inquest, a Supreme Court verdict of fraud and a family cut out of a last minute will. Did Josephine kill this man and three others? Climb aboard the investigative journey. Includes readers’ guide for book groups. Follow on Twitter for added colour.

The author brings together, for the first time, the case that Josephine may have murdered four men at her Victorian era Gasworks Hotel – two of them husbands.

This is a story highly evocative of the times – the language; the social norms. It is mostly a story about ordinary people, although some of the characters rose to great heights in South Australia as premier, police commissioner and city coroner. But the conclusion is anything but ordinary.

This is the story of Josephine. From 1863 to 1874 she was the publican at the Gasworks Hotel in Brompton, an inner suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. Was she also a man killer?

"The research is incredible. It gives great insight into ... Adelaide at that time… like ‘The Mayne Inheritance’ did for Brisbane." Simon, 6 June
"A great read, drew me in. Very well written and researched." Kat, 11 May

[Lynx-lynx]

Kobo's got Garry Disher's

Bitter Wash Road
$4.99 and discountable (50dec)

When Hirsch heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate the gunfire he finds himself cut off without back-up. A pair of thrill killers has been targeting isolated farmhouses on lonely backroads, but Hirsch's first thought is that 'back-up' is nearby - and about to put a bullet in him.

That's because Hirsch is a whistleblower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now demoted and exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Called a dog by his brother officers. Threats; pistol cartridge in the mailbox.

But the shots on Bitter Wash Road don't tally with Hirsch's assumptions. The truth turns out to be a lot more mundane. And the events that unfold subsequently, a hell of a lot more sinister.

Garry Disher has published almost fifty titles - fiction, children's books, anthologies, textbooks, the Wyatt thrillers and the Mornington Peninsula mysteries. He has won numerous awards, including the German Crime Prize (twice) and two Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel awards, for Chain of Evidence (2007) and Wyatt (2010). Garry lives on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.

textpublishing.com.au

'Disher's writing is lean, cold and spare - right to the point and never a word too many. The story starts flat-out and never lets up.' Herald Sun

'Smooth, assured mastery.' New York Times Book Review

'Disher is a fine writer about place and also people.' Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

'Exceptional crime fiction.' Courier-Mail

'Disher's writing is as lean and relentless as his hero. No one does dryly poetic evocations of paranoia and human folly more seductively.' Australian

'Disher writes so clearly about the physical environment, the social atmosphere, the impact of change and the interaction between the people...that it is easy to overlook the depths of analysis that he provides.' Australian Book Review

'Easily the equal of those by John Harvey, Ian Rankin and other leaders of this form of crime-writing.' Canberra Times

'Disher is definitely not to be missed.' Globe and Mai

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[Lynx-lynx]

Kobo Aus has Peter Corris'

Comeback
$4.99 and discountable (bookriot50 works if you can't get a better code from the Discounts thread)

Cliff Hardy has his PI licence back - but does he still have what it takes to cut it on the mean streets of Sydney?

Cliff reckons the skills are still there, if a little rusty, and actor Bobby Forrest's case looks promising. Bobby's a nice-enough guy, but why is he being stalked by a red-hot brunette? And why did he have to go online to find a date?

When Bobby is murdered, it comes as a shock. Cliff's only solid lead is a white Commodore, the most ubiquitous car around. When a surprising connection with his own past surfaces, Cliff is forced to put some of his skills to the test. But is he heading in the wrong direction?

Somehow he has to put it all together without losing his licence again, but in true Hardy fashion he's managing to find his way into trouble, not out of it.

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Kobo Aus has Kerry Greenwood's true crime

Tamam Shud
$4.39 and discountable (bookriot50 works if you can't get a better code from the Discounts thread)

In 1948 a man was found dead on an Adelaide beach. Well-dressed and unmarked, he had a half-smoked cigarette by his side, but no identity documents. Six decades on we dont know who he was, how he got there or how he died. Somerton Man remains one of Australias most mysterious cold cases. Yet it is the bizarre details of this case that make it the stuff of a spy novel. The missing labels from all his clothing. The tiny piece of paper with the words 'Tamam Shud' found sewn into the lining of the dead mans coat. A mysterious code found etched inside the very book of Persian poetry from which this note was torn. Brimming with facts that are stranger than fiction, the case has intrigued novelist Kerry Greenwood for almost her whole life. She goes on a journey into her own past to try to solve this crime, uncovering a new way of writing about true crime and herself as she goes.

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Kobo Aus has Maurilia Meehan's

Madame Bovary's Haberdasher
$4.39 and discountable (use bookriot50 if you can't get a better one from the Discounts thread)

Zac, a translator of Flaubert, cant believe his luck. He ends up sleeping with Odette, a beautiful but capricious ceramic artist, and her best friend, Cicely, a talented knitter and author of an erotic novel.

As well as an interest in Madame Bovary the three share a brief ménage à trois. That is, until things unravel in unexpected ways, Cicely adopts the logical detection methods of a Miss Marple, and we come to know the delightful Miss Ball and her haberdashery.

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Amazon Aus Deal of the Day - Kerry Greenwood's

Cocaine Blues
$2.19

Phyrne Fisher book 1
Introducing Australia's most elegant and irrepressible sleuth.

The London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but the Honourable Phryne Fisher - she of the green-grey eyes, diamant garters and outfits that should not be sprung suddenly on those of nervous dispositions - is rapidly tiring of the tedium of arranging flowers, making polite conversations with retired colonels, and dancing with weak-chinned men. Instead, Phryne decides it might be rather amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective in Melbourne, Australia.

Almost immediately from the time she books into the Windsor Hotel, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, cocaine smuggling rings, corrupt cops and communism - not to mention erotic encounters with the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse - until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.

'With Phryne Fisher, the indefatigable Greenwood has invented the character-you-fall-in-love-with genre.' The Australian

Amazon Aus Deal of the Day prices for Aus members are appalling, and their selections are mostly second rate non Aus authors (this book however is an Aus gem)!! If you can find this book cheaper somewhere else then buy it elsewhere

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Kobo Aus has Kate Morton's

The Secret Keeper
$5.99 and discountable (bookriot50 works)

1961: On a sweltering summer's day, while her family picnics by the stream on their Suffolk farm, sixteen-year-old Laurel hides out in her childhood tree house dreaming of a boy called Billy, a move to London, and the bright future she can't wait to seize. But before the idyllic afternoon is over, Laurel will have witnessed a shocking crime that changes everything.

2011: Now a much-loved actress, Laurel finds herself overwhelmed by shades of the past. Haunted by memories, and the mystery of what she saw that day, she returns to her family home and begins to piece together a secret history. A tale of three strangers from vastly different worlds - Dorothy, Vivien and Jimmy - who are brought together by chance in wartime London and whose lives become fiercely and fatefully entwined.

Shifting between the 1930s, the 1960s and the present, The Secret Keeper is a spellbinding story of mysteries and secrets, theatre and thievery, murder and enduring love.