If you are anything like me your father probably spent at least half of your teenage years trying to solve the mystery of the missing second work sock. Which may or may not have been gathering dust (and friends) behind your bedroom door, under your bed or in your sports bag. As dad ran out the door with one sock on, hoping his trousers were long enough, I looked on bewildered (fully socked) – how did he not know? Now that I live interstate, it’s probably time I fess up to my crimes, but I will soften the blow by presenting him with a delicious array of far more grievous crimes. What’s a missing sock to a missing child, fortune, town member? Also, he might learn a thing or two about the powers of deduction.

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor

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.

The Hitchhiker by Gerwin van der Werf & David Colmer (trans.)

Tiddo’s marriage to Isa is in trouble. They have drifted apart. They don’t make love anymore. Tiddo even finds their thirteen-year-old son, Jonathan, a stranger: is it simply that he is becoming a teenager, or is there something sinister behind the gruesome images Jonathan scratches in his notebook?

Desperate to keep his family together, Tiddo plans a holiday to Iceland, travelling the tourist circuit in a rented campervan. On their trip, they pick up a hitchhiker named Svein, who is tall, handsome and covered in tattoos of ancient runes. When Svein offers to guide them off the beaten track, Tiddo is conflicted. Does Svein pose a threat or offer salvation?

After the Flood by Dave Warner

A violent death by crucifixion near a remote north-west station has Detective Inspector Dan Clement and his Broome police officers disturbed and baffled. Other local incidents - the theft of explosives from a Halls Creek mine site, social justice protests at an abattoir, a break-in at a child-health care clinic - seem mundane by comparison.

But as Clement starts to make troubling connections between each crime, he finds himself caught in a terrifying race. In a landmass larger than Western Europe, he must identify and protect an unknown target before it is blown to bits by an invisible enemy.

The Carnival Is Over by Greg Woodland

1971 - Hal is seventeen, with dreams of escaping from Moorabool to a life in the city. But right now he’s on a good behaviour bond and stuck in a job he hates. Hal’s packing-room job makes him a target for workplace bullies and the friendship of the older, more worldly Christine is all that makes each day bearable. So when she doesn’t turn up for work, he’s on the alert.

So is Sergeant Mick Goodenough. But he already knows what’s happened to Christine: the same thing that happened to the newly elected deputy mayor. Mick and Hal are both determined to dig up the truth. Before long each of them is going to find himself in mortal danger and running for his life.

Criminals by James O'Loghlin

What makes a criminal? One May 2019 morning, two masked gunmen rob Blacktown Leagues Club. What happens next will change the lives of three people. Twenty-three-year-old Dean Acton is a heroin addict trying to get off the break and enter treadmill by pulling one big job. Sarah Hamilton, also twenty-three, is a police officer on stress leave, working behind the bar, trying to forget the mistake she made that caused the death of her fiancee. Mary Wallace, a forty-five-year-old ex-schoolteacher who lives and drinks alone, feels that her life is already over, and has made plans to formalise that arrangement.

As Dean’s trial approaches, Mary, Dean and Sarah must work out why they have become who they are, and whether they have the courage to change.

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