Вручение 2 сентября 2023 г.
На конкурс поступило 144 произведения.
Страна: Австралия
Место проведения: город Мельбурн, гала-ужин в отеле Rising Sun
Дата проведения: 2 сентября 2023 г.
Лучший криминальный роман для взрослых
Лауреат
Трейси Лиен
0.0
They claim they saw nothing. She knows they’re lying.
1996 – Cabramatta, Sydney
‘Just let him go.’
Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night, Denny – optimistic, guileless Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, and an indifferent police force.
Returning home for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case. Even though several people were present at Denny’s murder, each bystander claims to have seen nothing, and they are all staying silent.
Determined to uncover the truth, Ky tracks down and questions the witnesses herself. But what she learns goes beyond what happened that fateful night. The silence has always been there, threaded through the generations, and Ky begins to expose the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died. As she peels back the layers of the place that shaped her, she must confront more than the reasons her brother is dead. And once those truths have finally been spoken, how can any of them move on?
Люси Кристофер
4.0
A dark, twisted and compulsively readable psychological suspense novel about desire, revenge and coercive control.
Ten years ago, sixteen-year-old Gemma Toombs was kidnapped from Bangkok Airport by an infatuated drifter, Tyler MacFarlane, who took her to a secret den in the Australian desert. Now her name is Kate Stone and it's her turn to confront Ty and try to find answers to the questions that have obsessed her since her ordeal. What is the legacy of this coercive relationship? Who holds the cards now? In the confusion of past and present, will Kate remain trapped in a deranged dance of desire and revenge? Or will she regain control and find release?
Both a courtroom drama set in London and a road trip in the searing heat of the West Australian desert, Release is the story of two people confronting each other, each intent on destruction and survival. A companion to Lucy Christopher's bestselling novel Stolen, this gripping psychological thriller explores a young woman's discovery of the complicated truth about a relationship that once seemed alluring.
For readers of Gillian Flynn, S.J. Watson and Helen Fitzgerald.
Аойф Клиффорд
0.0
‘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…
Маргарет Хики
0.0
Stone Town is captivating new rural crime drama from the author of the bestselling Cutters End.
With its gold rush history long in the past, Stone Town has definitely seen better days. And it’s now in the headlines for all the wrong reasons . . .
When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti’s hopes for a quiet posting in his old home town are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a local property developer, whose controversial plans to buy up Stone Town land means few are surprised he ended up dead.
However his gruesome murder is overshadowed by the mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted.
Natalie had been investigating the celebrity wife of crime boss Tony ‘The Hook’ Scopelliti when she vanished. What did she uncover? Has it cost her her life? And why are the two Homicide detectives, sent from the city to run the Sleeth case, so obsessed with Natalie’s fate?
But following a late-night call from his former boss, Mark is sure of one thing: he’s now in the middle of a deadly game . . .
Dinuka McKenzie
0.0
A loving husband lost to devastating summer floods. A teenage girl injured during a robbery. Two seemingly unconnected cases that will push a detective to the brink.
An atmospheric, compelling new voice in Australian crime fiction.
In Northern New South Wales, heavily pregnant and a week away from maternity leave, Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is exhausted and counting down the days. But a violent hold-up at a local fast-food restaurant with unsettling connections to her own past, means that her final days will be anything but straightforward.
When a second case is dumped on her lap, the closed case of man drowned in recent summer floods, what begins as a simple informal review quickly grows into something more complicated. Kate can either write the report that's expected of her or investigate the case the way she wants to.
As secrets and betrayals pile up, and the needs of her own family intervene, how far is Kate prepared to push to discover the truth?
Vikki Petraitis
0.0
'So you believed the alleged rapists over the alleged victim?' Jane's voice took on an indignant pitch. 'Girls lie sometimes.' I nodded. 'And rapists lie all the time.'
When Senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of Deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong, and to escape the guilt and the haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in.
But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would-be rapist at the pub, and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding district. The male witnesses in the pub back her attacker and even her boss doesn't believe her.
Hers is the first reported case in Deception Bay, but soon there are more. As Antigone searches for answers, she encounters a wall of silence in the town built of secrets and denial and fear. The women of Deception Bay are scared and the law is not on their side. The nightmare has followed her home.
Chilling, timely and gripping, The Unbelieved takes us behind the headlines to a small-town world that is all too real - and introduces us to a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.
Хейли Скривенор
4.0
My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.
On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.
Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.
Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.
Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.
Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered.
What do we owe the girl who isn't there?
Character-rich and propulsive, with a breathtakingly original use of voice and revolving points of view, Hayley Scrivenor delves under the surface, where no one can hide. With emotional depth and sensitivity, this stunning debut shows us how much each person matters in a community that is at once falling apart and coming together.
Esther will always be a Dirt Town child, as we are its children, still.
Эмма Стайлс
0.0
GOLD. THEFT. MURDER. A ROAD TRIP TO DIE FOR.
Shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award
Longlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize
Longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award
'An unrelenting page-turner' CHRIS WHITAKER, author of WE BEGIN AT THE END
'Perfectly paced' SCOTSMAN
'A breathless outback chase' THE AGE
'It's not exactly how I imagined the week starting. An accessory to murder. On the run in the victim's vehicle . . .'
Charlie and Nao are strangers from different sides of the tracks. They should never have met, but one devastating incident binds them together forever.
A man is dead and now they are unwilling accomplices in his murder there's only one thing to do: hit the road in the victim's twin cab ute, with a bag of stolen gold stashed under the passenger seat.
Suddenly outlaws, Nao and Charlie must make their way across Australia's remote outback using only their wits to survive. They'll do whatever it takes to evade capture and escape with their lives . . .
Thelma & Louise for a new generation, No Country for Girls is a gritty, twisty road-trip thriller that follows two young women on the run across the harsh, unforgiving landscape of Australia.
Лучший криминальный роман для молодежи
Лауреат
Fleur Ferris
0.0
Seven days to solve a century-old crime. Seven days to unearth the treasure. Seven days to survive...
The countdown is on.
A fast-paced, action-packed story of how the past catches up to us, from bestselling and award-winning author Fleur Ferris.
Louise Bassett
0.0
**eBook Only** Mel has everything to lose – but how can she stand back when she knows something’s not right?
Within the pages of a stolen diary, Melati discovers a coded cry for help – the diary belongs to Devi, an Indonesian teenager who is being held by traffickers. Mel races across the island of Java and against the clock to work out Devi’s identity and where she's being held. Before long the pieces fall into place and Mel must put her own life on the line to save a girl she’s never met.
Сара Эпштейн
0.0
A remote cabin. A family on edge. They are not alone.
It was meant to be a family bonding exercise: two weeks in a mountain cabin on the outskirts of a former gold-mining town. These days, Wooralla’s only claim to fame is a retro diner called The Flying Saucer and a dusty museum dedicated to the area’s history of UFO sightings. Sixteen-year-old Owen knows it’s all bogus, but at least it gives him something to do.
Half a day into their holiday, Owen’s family is already bickering. By day two, his little sister is sick. On the third night, they witness peculiar lights in the sky.
By day nine they are fleeing, too panicked to grab their phones, belongings, even the family dog. Owen doesn’t know what they’re running from, he only knows he needs to keep his little sister safe. But how can he tell anyone about his dad’s erratic behaviour? Weird howling from deep in the bush? Strange entities hiding in the trees? How does he explain what was real and what wasn’t when he doesn’t even know himself?
In Owen’s search for answers, nothing is as it seems. And what he’ll uncover is beyond anything he imagined.
Элли Марни
0.0
A historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer, for fans of The Enigma Game and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signals Intelligence facility in Virginia. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: Government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall—gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships—and romance—that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them…and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.
Лучший детский криминальный роман
Deborah Abela
0.0
Arlo Goodman lives with his Uncle Avery in a run-down flat above their bookshop. He has no friends, except for his pet mouse, Herbert.
But when a girl called Lisette bursts into the shop and begs him to hide her from a murderer, Arlo's life changes forever.
He's swept up into an adventure involving kidnappers, car chases and a story in The Book of Wondrous Possibilities, where Arlo and his skymouse battle dragons. But can Arlo find the courage to battle an even greater enemy, who threatens to destroy everything he loves?
A middle grade adventure for 8–12-year-old heroes (even if they don’t know it yet).
Lian Tanner
0.0
'Chasing cows and pigs. Mockery. Rude songs. Piracy, bullying, revenge, warfare and general thuggery.' This is the list of approved duck activities and it does NOT include poetry. The ducks of Little Dismal are angry. A scruffy chicken called Clara has been telling lies about them. They need revenge. Enter Rita - a duck with the soul of a poet. After an embarrassing talent night, Rita sees revenge on Clara as a chance to restore her reputation. But Rita finds more than revenge on her mission. She uncovers a dastardly plan to chook-nap the clever chicken that will take them both a long way from home. Luckily, it's Rita's unlikely friendship with a small human and the help of some street-smart birds that just might save the day and inspire an epic poem!
Лауреат
Charlie Archbold
0.0
Bernie mutters to me. ‘No way. Who’d go into the mangroves at night?’
I swallow. Not me. Not into Sebastian land. No one would head into crocodile heartland in the middle of a dark night. No one, unless they had a very good reason.
Andy and his best friend Eli live in a small coastal town in far north Queensland.
When Eli’s cousin Jacob is arrested for a jewellery theft, Andy and Eli both know he is innocent.
The police have evidence. But something is not right, and Andy and Eli need to work out what, and fast or Jacob will end up in jail. So, with the help of twins Bernice and Fletcher (AKA Bernie and Fletch) and Andy’s trusty sausage dog, Washington, they set out to hunt for clues to what really happened. The trail points to a mysterious red-bottomed boat rumoured to be hidden deep in the mangroves.
Does it hold the evidence they need to prove Jacob’s innocence? Can they find it without getting lost forever? And how will they outwit Sebastian, the legendary gigantic saltwater crocodile?
Charlie Archbold’s action-packed new middle-grade adventure is a fun story of sleuthing, courageous deeds, the triumph of good over evil – and the power of friendship.
Лучший нехудожественная криминальная книга
Лауреат
Меган Норрис
0.0
Out of the Ashes is the inspirational story of an Australian mother’s journey back from hell after the 12 October 2002 Bali bombings. The deadly terrorist attacks on Paddy’s Irish Bar and the Sari Club in Kuta’s party precinct claimed the lives of 202 innocent people, and maimed and injured hundreds more.
The holiday of a lifetime turned into their worst nightmare for Australian nurses Bronwyn Cartwright and Therese Fox. Tragically, Bronwyn, 28, perished in the deadly bomb blast which ripped through Paddy’s Irish Bar. Therese survived, but suffered such horrific burns that doctors believed she would not survive a flight home to Australia.
This is the story of her fight to get home to her children, and her long road to recovery. Therese’s story is interwoven with the tales of others who were there, detailing the horrors of that night and the long journey of healing for all those involved – and their families.
Out of the Ashes is ultimately a story of hope, belief in the power of love, friendships forged in fire, and the extraordinary courage of a woman doctors nicknamed The Miracle of Bali.
Wendy Davis
0.0
In 2020, after the longest and most expensive trial in Western Australian history, Bradley Robert Edwards was convicted of two of the Claremont Serial Killings, a series of unsolved murders that had haunted the state since the mid-1990s. But before he went to trial, before he started killing, Edwards violently assaulted a social worker while he was working on the telephone system at Hollywood Hospital. Not only did Edwards keep his job, but he was convicted only of common assault for the attack, a minor charge that left him off the police radar during their desperate hunt for the sexual predator responsible for the Claremont murders.
Begun as way to deal with the resurgence of trauma after Edwards’ arrest, this memoir looks at the pressure on women to minimise and excuse certain behaviours in others, and demonstrates the devastating consequences of not making a fuss.
Katrina Marson
0.0
Can we promise future generations a life free of sexual violence, in which their sexual wellbeing will be protected? Is this a promise we can keep?
As a sexual offences prosecutor, Katrina Marson works for an institution that can only respond, one case at a time, to sexual violence once the damage is already done. During a decade of looking back, she kept returning to a single question: what could have been done to prevent this?
In 2019 she stepped out of the justice system to travel abroad on a Churchill Fellowship, where she witnessed first-hand the power of comprehensive relationships and sexuality education to safeguard sexual wellbeing and act as a protective factor against sexual violence. Combining her coalface experience in the criminal law with her international research on sex education, Marson’s perspective is unique, looking in two directions at once.
Legitimate Sexpectations exposes the limits of the criminal justice system and the fault lines in our society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and relationships. Through storytelling that moves between heartbreak and hope, Marson makes the case for a cultural shift towards valuing sexual wellbeing and preventing sexual violence in the first place. In doing so, she calls on us all to play our part to ensure that young people’s sexual experiences are not just free from violence, but far from violent.
Лучшая дебютная криминальная книга
Лауреат
Хейли Скривенор
4.0
My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing.
On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home.
Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it.
Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.
Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret.
Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered.
What do we owe the girl who isn't there?
Character-rich and propulsive, with a breathtakingly original use of voice and revolving points of view, Hayley Scrivenor delves under the surface, where no one can hide. With emotional depth and sensitivity, this stunning debut shows us how much each person matters in a community that is at once falling apart and coming together.
Esther will always be a Dirt Town child, as we are its children, still.
Maryrose Cuskelly
0.0
ONE MISSING GIRL.
NO SUSPECTS.
A TOWN ABOUT TO IGNITE.
Quala, a North Queensland sugar town, the 1970s.
Barbara McClymont walks the cane fields searching for Janet, her sixteen-year-old daughter, who has been missing for weeks. The police have no leads. The people of Quala are divided by dread and distrust. But the sugar crush is underway and the cane must be burned.
Meanwhile, children dream of a malevolent presence, a schoolteacher yearns to escape, and history keeps returning to remind Quala that the past is always present.
As the smoke rises and tensions come to a head, the dark heart of Quala will be revealed, affecting the lives of all those who dwell beyond the cane.
The Cane is an evocative and atmospheric thriller, and announces an exciting new voice in Australian crime writing.
'A fine, brave, perceptive writer.' - Mark Dapin, journalist and author of Public Enemies
'A stunning piece of Australian rural noir.' - Mark Brandi, bestselling author of Wimmera and The Rip
Трейси Лиен
0.0
They claim they saw nothing. She knows they’re lying.
1996 – Cabramatta, Sydney
‘Just let him go.’
Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night, Denny – optimistic, guileless Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, and an indifferent police force.
Returning home for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case. Even though several people were present at Denny’s murder, each bystander claims to have seen nothing, and they are all staying silent.
Determined to uncover the truth, Ky tracks down and questions the witnesses herself. But what she learns goes beyond what happened that fateful night. The silence has always been there, threaded through the generations, and Ky begins to expose the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died. As she peels back the layers of the place that shaped her, she must confront more than the reasons her brother is dead. And once those truths have finally been spoken, how can any of them move on?
Dinuka McKenzie
0.0
A loving husband lost to devastating summer floods. A teenage girl injured during a robbery. Two seemingly unconnected cases that will push a detective to the brink.
An atmospheric, compelling new voice in Australian crime fiction.
In Northern New South Wales, heavily pregnant and a week away from maternity leave, Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is exhausted and counting down the days. But a violent hold-up at a local fast-food restaurant with unsettling connections to her own past, means that her final days will be anything but straightforward.
When a second case is dumped on her lap, the closed case of man drowned in recent summer floods, what begins as a simple informal review quickly grows into something more complicated. Kate can either write the report that's expected of her or investigate the case the way she wants to.
As secrets and betrayals pile up, and the needs of her own family intervene, how far is Kate prepared to push to discover the truth?
Vikki Petraitis
0.0
'So you believed the alleged rapists over the alleged victim?' Jane's voice took on an indignant pitch. 'Girls lie sometimes.' I nodded. 'And rapists lie all the time.'
When Senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of Deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong, and to escape the guilt and the haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in.
But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would-be rapist at the pub, and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding district. The male witnesses in the pub back her attacker and even her boss doesn't believe her.
Hers is the first reported case in Deception Bay, but soon there are more. As Antigone searches for answers, she encounters a wall of silence in the town built of secrets and denial and fear. The women of Deception Bay are scared and the law is not on their side. The nightmare has followed her home.
Chilling, timely and gripping, The Unbelieved takes us behind the headlines to a small-town world that is all too real - and introduces us to a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.
Эмма Стайлс
0.0
GOLD. THEFT. MURDER. A ROAD TRIP TO DIE FOR.
Shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award
Longlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize
Longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award
'An unrelenting page-turner' CHRIS WHITAKER, author of WE BEGIN AT THE END
'Perfectly paced' SCOTSMAN
'A breathless outback chase' THE AGE
'It's not exactly how I imagined the week starting. An accessory to murder. On the run in the victim's vehicle . . .'
Charlie and Nao are strangers from different sides of the tracks. They should never have met, but one devastating incident binds them together forever.
A man is dead and now they are unwilling accomplices in his murder there's only one thing to do: hit the road in the victim's twin cab ute, with a bag of stolen gold stashed under the passenger seat.
Suddenly outlaws, Nao and Charlie must make their way across Australia's remote outback using only their wits to survive. They'll do whatever it takes to evade capture and escape with their lives . . .
Thelma & Louise for a new generation, No Country for Girls is a gritty, twisty road-trip thriller that follows two young women on the run across the harsh, unforgiving landscape of Australia.
Выбор читателей
Лауреат
Vikki Petraitis
0.0
'So you believed the alleged rapists over the alleged victim?' Jane's voice took on an indignant pitch. 'Girls lie sometimes.' I nodded. 'And rapists lie all the time.'
When Senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of Deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong, and to escape the guilt and the haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in.
But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would-be rapist at the pub, and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding district. The male witnesses in the pub back her attacker and even her boss doesn't believe her.
Hers is the first reported case in Deception Bay, but soon there are more. As Antigone searches for answers, she encounters a wall of silence in the town built of secrets and denial and fear. The women of Deception Bay are scared and the law is not on their side. The nightmare has followed her home.
Chilling, timely and gripping, The Unbelieved takes us behind the headlines to a small-town world that is all too real - and introduces us to a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.
