Australian Fiction Mysteries

Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical and many continue to perplex us today—and will probably continue to do so tomorrow. More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing—somewhere. Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

In 1998, the American Jorgenson family had been on a year-long road trip in Australia. One humid, storming night, the mother - Elsa Jorgenson - vanished in an isolated stretch of Australian everglades. Elsa was never seen again. That night, twelve-year-old Lily Jorgenson was left alone and terrified in the family camper—even her teenage sister Iris is missing. When Iris comes racing back through the rain, she refuses to tell where she’s been. Lily is certain her sister is hiding a dark secret.

When a simple mix-up leaves their father Joe’s estate to Eden, their long-absent mother, Clare and Aaron decide it’s finally time to track Eden down. But it’s been over thirty years since she left their remote outback mining town, and they’ve never heard from her again. Aaron is dealing with a new marriage that’s currently trapped in immigration limbo, and his teenage daughter Cady is clearly going through a personal crisis of her own.

Jackie and Pete King have lived in Dunmore for years, running one of the two local pubs in the sleepy little town. Money has been tight after the bushfires, and it’s about to get tighter if they can’t find a way to pay their suppliers to keep their business going and keep the bank from foreclosing on their property. So when Jackie receives a mysterious phone call offering them $100,000 to let someone bury a body on their land, the answer isn’t as simple as they thought it would be.

Stan Weir is mourning a tragic loss when he meets a mysterious nine-year-old girl, who claims to be the reincarnated spirit of his late wife. Marcy Keef is a single mother trying to make ends meet when her daughter Erin starts describing ‘past life memories’. Neither wants to believe Erin, but as violent secrets are revealed, the truth becomes harder to deny.

On the eve of the global lockdown, Don Barlow opens the door of his old beachside cottage to find a pretty girl with pink-tipped hair, claiming to have nowhere to go. He allows her entry, and so begins a mystery set in unprecedented times: with the virus raging outside their home, the girl cannot be asked to leave, but what does he risk by having her stay?

Lenny has always known that his wife, Claire, is the love of his life. But somehow his marriage is in shambles, he’s struggling with the kids, and a string of anonymous text messages are tormenting him, insisting that Claire is a liar. Claire knows Lenny is a good man, but there’s a lot she hasn’t told him about her past. Now she’s terrified that the horrors that haunt her are about to put her entire family in danger. Strange new neighbours, insidious clients and schoolyard scandal begin to fracture Claire and Lenny’s happy families façade.

When Sassi Stapleton receives a middle-of-the-night phone call to tell her that her beloved grandmother is unwell, she quickly puts her job on hold, packs her ute and sets off on the long drive home, knowing her grandfather will need her. Less than an hour away from Sassi's hometown, Barker, she swerves to miss a roo and her car rolls down an embankment. By the time Sassi is found, her grandmother has already passed away.

As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew hits, they must live for four weeks and stay within a 5km radius. When Lou’s son Samuel doesn’t arrive home by nightfall she begins to panic. He doesn’t answer his phone. He doesn’t message. His social media channels are inactive. Lou is out of her mind with worry, but she can’t go to the police, because she has secrets of her own. Secrets that Samuel just can’t find out about. Lou must find her son herself and bring him home.

Frank is a service station owner on a little-used highway who just wants a quiet life. His granddaughter has been sent to stay with him to fix her attitude, but they don't talk a lot. When a badly injured young woman arrives at Frank's service station with several cars in pursuit, Frank and a handful of unsuspecting customers are thrust into a life or death standoff.

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the 'Wire' crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile phone blackspots. Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride. And then their nightmare begins. The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew - and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions - or be blown to smithereens.

Emma and Ariella, neighbours in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs, appear to have it all—perfect homes, perfect husbands, perfect lives. But they both know dark secrets lurk beneath the surface and shallow waters can’t hide Ariella’s. Now she has been found murdered. Her daughter filmed the killing. Not knowing what she’s filmed, Emma’s daughter Kiki innocently uploads footage of Ariella’s brutal death. Emma fears the worst—the killer will know what she and Kiki have seen. Their safe suburban lives no longer exist.

Seven strangers are invited to compete to win a clifftop mansion. The rules are simple: each contestant must have at least one hand in contact with one part of the house at all times. The last one to take their hand off, wins the house.

Elise Glyk is a disgraced athlete. Her brother, Callum, is a well-liked teacher who has gone missing. In Elise’s search for her brother, they both become captured in a remote, abandoned farm. Their captor hates Callum, and refuses to explain why, but she has little interest in Elise. So she offers a gruesome bargain: she'll let Elise go - if Elise kills Callum. That way, Elise can't talk to the police, not without getting arrested for murder.

Stacey and Laney are twins—mirror images of each other—and yet they’re as different as the sun and the moon. Stacey works hard at school, determined to get out of their small town. Laney skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend. But when Laney disappears one night, Stacey can’t believe she’s just run off without telling her. As the days pass and Laney doesn’t return, Stacey starts dreaming of her twin. The dreams are dark and terrifying, difficult to understand and hard to shake, but at least they tell Stacey one key thing—Laney is alive.

My name's Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I'd hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti has taken a few days' holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time. The small fishing town on South Australia's Limestone Coast is now the scene of a terrible tragedy. Renowned cave-diver Mya Rennik has drowned while exploring a sinkhole on the land of wealthy farmer Frank Doyle. As the press descends, Mark's boss orders him to stay put and assist the police operation. But when they retrieve Mya's body, a whole new mystery is opened up, around the disappearance of a young local woman twenty years before.

Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth of Scotland Yard has headed up three major serial operations, and in each of these cases, it seems he has lost a part of himself. He is burnt out and taken a shift sideways for a while, taking on a low-profile role of desk investigator out of London that's looking into whether a global crime scam exists. But when a number of young women start returning home ill and dying after travels in Europe, Jack uncovers a shocking black-market operation, with links that lead him all the way to a crime syndicate in South Australia.

A spate of seemingly unconnected murders in southern England prompt a high-profile task force to be formed and led by DCI Jack Hawksworth, one of the Force's new rising stars who combines modern methods with old-school instincts. The victims appear as disparate as their style of death; the only link that Hawk and his team can pull together is that the murdered are all men of an identical age. The task force has nothing but cold cases of decades past to comb through in the hope that they might find a clue to who is behind the savagery.