Words by Alison Erdos

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The Detective

Matthew Reilly

Crime/Thriller

For 150 years, women have been going missing. And all the investigators who went in search of them - from 1877 to the present day - have disappeared, too. Now Sam Speedman, a most unique private detective, is on the case. Brilliant, direct and disarming, Sam is ... different. He's not your average private detective. But then again, this isn't your average case.

 

The Last Bear & Finding Bear

Hannah Gold

Young Reader

There are no polar bears left on Bear Island. At least, that's what April's father tells her when his scientific research takes them to this remote Arctic outpost for six months. But one endless summer night, April meets one. He is starving, lonely and a long way from home. Determined to save him, April begins the most important journey of her life...

 

 

The Mushroom Tapes

Helen Garner/Hooper/Krasnostien

True Crime

The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises including love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

 

 

The Animal and The Thinker

John Duncan

Mind, Body & Spirit

Pioneering, prize-winning neuroscientist who has led research programmes at Oxford and Cambridge, with a dazzling new story of human behaviour and how we find meaning, for fans of Thinking Fast and Slow and Steven Pinker. Why are we so often in conflict-arguing with ourselves and with others, uncertain over who we are and what we need from our lives?

 

 

Mad Mabel

Sally Hepworth

Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and Darling Girls comes the story of Mad Mabel. They called it murder. She called it justice. 'In 1954, at just fourteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.' In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne Lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past.

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