eBook Listing

Scarlet Stiletto: The Twelfth Cut - 2020 features thirteen award-winning stories from the 27th annual Scarlet Stiletto Awards.

 

'Crime and mystery short story collections of startling originality; and a grim warning of what evil lurks in Australian suburbia.' - Kerry Greenwood

 

The Scarlet Stiletto series of eBooks – the First to the Twelfth Cuts – feature superb collections of spine-chilling crime and mystery short stories, by Australian women writers, curated from 27 years of the Scarlet Stiletto Awards hosted by Sisters in Crime Australia.

Mike Crowe doesn't believe in ghosts, but it seems there's one ghost that believes in him. Can he escape the attention of a psychopath long enough to help her?

A not-exactly legal PI, Crowe is blackmailed into tracking down a serial killer known as The Scavenger. At the same time, he finds himself increasingly plagued by visions - and eventually visitations - of a young girl he failed to save from being murdered a decade before.

Are these things connected?

Crowe must scavenge through the debris of a world going to pieces around him - at first just to survive and then to find the answers to questions he'd rather hadn't been asked.

 

'Scavengers is smart, dark, riveting crime fiction at its best. This is Hood at the top of his game.' - Kaaron Warren, author of The Grief Hole, Into Bones Like Oil, and Tide of Stone.

What do you do when the love you've been searching for your whole life suddenly disappears? You know you’re loved, but you ask yourself, is your lover crazy? Or is it you?

 

Searching for Sophia is a beautifully composed, wonderfully compassionate, and often laugh-out-loud story about two veterinarians operating their practice in a prestigious eastern suburb of Sydney whose lives are turned upside down when an internationally acclaimed violinist from Romania enters their surgery.

 

This is a love story with a difference, leading the Jewish Dr Joe Franken into a dangerous search for love across the world, while his partner, the Anglo Dr Tim Wilde, finds love at home.

 

Searching for Sophia really stands out for the quality of its writing and that all-too-rare gift for comedy that is both humorous and humane.

Martine Dubois is a disgraced cop whose main sin was to trust a partner she should not have trusted.

When spymaster Philip Marsden, who has a painful past of his own, recruits Martine as an agent, it's her chance to find redemption, and a chance for both of them to find love - unless duty kills them first.

Secret Agent Martine and her spymaster lover, Philip Marsden, are back in action and on the trail of international bad guy Bartos Rigo.

Will they have to compromise their love or their honour to get the job done?

A mission to extradite Thomas Reilly, a dangerous criminal, ends in treachery and a crash landing in the Canadian wilderness for Agent Martine Dubois.

Grizzly bears are the least of Martine's problems as she and Reilly hunt each other through British Columbia's Great Bear Forest.

Whatever the outcome, Martine is determined to survive and return to Phillip Marsden: top spy, the Grey Ghost, her boss who is also her lover.

Third in the 'Secret Agents, Secret Lives' series from Clan Destine Encounters

Follow the adventures of Mr Farmhand as he negotiates a rural existence in New Jersey, staving off the attentions of Mavis Eggwhistle, staying one step ahead of Frank Winkler and steering clear of Farmer Bart Brassica's pitchfork. His is a world full of unexpected dangers, from the odd satirical skirmish to the surprise philosophical poke in the eye, where gossip takes centre stage and life is lived on the margins. It's a tough gig, but somebody has to do it.

Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series is perhaps the first literary work to feature instant polenta and dirty snow in the same sentence. It does not so much occupy a new literary genre as create one - an episodic play of pun-laden prose, each taking a seriously silly photograph as its point of departure. But better than that, it's funny. Carol Jenkins and her collaborating photographer Ingrid Periz have an uncannily absurd and whimsical eye.

Bringing the Select Episodes of Mr Farmhand into the Puncher and Wattmann stable is a coup, possibly even a chicken coup. Carol Jenkins lives in Sydney. She has two books published Fishing in the Devonian (2008) and Xn (2013) both from Puncher & Wattmann and shortlisted for the Premiers' Awards. Her collaborator Ingrid Periz lives in New Jersey and her most recent book is Robert MacPherson, The Painter's Reach (QAGOMA, 2015)

'Garry Willmott asked me to be a preview reader of Serendipity: A Gallipoli Love Story. Having read five of his previous books I agreed immediately. I thought I would read it in a month however once I began reading I couldn't put it down, I completed the manuscript in two days. The story begins in Tasmania and follows the main character to Gallipoli and onto his life in Turkey and beyond. I recommend this book to anybody who enjoys an absorbing story based on historical fact.' - Ian Macintosh

 

'Serendipity had me intrigued from the first page. The story line drifted from 1960s Tasmania, back to 1915 Gallipoli and through the years in between. The story follows the life of an ANZAC Gallipoli veteran, from his landing at ANZAC Cove and subsequent capture and escape. The fall of the Ottoman Empire, the post-WWI rise of Mustafa Kemal Attaturk and the building of the nation of Turkey, and the rise and fall of Hitler and the Third Reich and the genocide during WW2. All interestingly woven together with the backline story of family and the loss of loved ones. This book is a wonderfully interesting history lesson with a personal and heartwarming story of survival and love. I read this draft in five days, which for me is very fast, but such was the grip I was under from Serendipity.' - Ash Hind, Amateur Military Historian

 

'This novel is a poignant blend of Love and War. Garry S. Willmott captures it all in his immensely enjoyable book Serendipity: A Gallipoli Love Story. The Gallipoli campaign, an unlikely love story, Turkish history and politics. This book has it all plus an informative background on Attaturk and the last caliphate. One of those 'hard to put down' books after you have opened the front cover.' - Gary McKay, Battlefield Guide Canada

When organised crime detective Francesca Salucci starts investigating the death of a biker, she comes across shady drug deals and internal power struggles within Australia's various crime gangs. The trail she uncovers leads her from Sydney to Rome, all the way to a small town in the Italian riviera. There, reunited with a past lover, Francesca has no choice but to confront her past and her own origins.

In her search for the connections between the Sicilian mafia, Chinese Triads and Australian bike gangs, she will find herself caught between her personal history and her desire for justice.

With her life in danger, Francesca will find refuge in the outback where she will work to come to terms with her biggest battle yet, her past.

An action-packed thriller that tells a story of love, greed, betrayal and moral conflict.

At first sight, Francesca Salucci has it all: a beautiful house in Fiji, a loving family and a promising new job. Yet, her life is not as tranquil as it seems. Her former career might be a thing of the past, but her affair with the son of a dangerous mafioso is anything but forgotten.

 

The world she worked hard to build is turning on its head, and her son is in danger. But how can she protect him when she can’t tell her allies from her enemies?

 

From an Afghanistan war zone to the stunning Fijian coastline, from the pomp of award ceremonies to secretive Venice, Serpent Sting unravels one family’s desire for revenge and another’s quest for peace.

 

Serpent Sting is the second book in the Serpent series.

In a casino, you don't need luck if you know how to cheat.
Goodbook, the big Aussie and Cliff Door, the suave American, they know how.
An experienced roulette 'crew', they are stealing from casinos across Europe on their way to Malta to hit a new casino due to open in Mdina, the Silent City.
Douglas Browning is a journeyman casino manager with worldwide experience working at the Oceanic, a mega-casino in Atlantic City.
The Oceanic's new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Philip Meadows, asks Browning to take over the new Malta casino as a favour to the local owner, Joe Grima, who is involved in a property development with Meadows.
Browning goes to London to put together a management team for the new casino, before flying out to Malta to review the project.
Goodbook and Door also arrive to prepare for the opening of the new casino.
All three men find themselves in romantic liaisons with demanding women, yet two need to face up to stark reality when their false identities are uncovered.
As the delayed gala opening approaches, another crew turns up to 'take' the new casino, a sinister development that finally brings them all together with electrifying impact - in the Silent City.

In the frosty Melbourne winter, milliner sleuth Catherine Kint looks for distraction in a night at the circus.

When tragedy strikes, she and her barman Boris are drawn into a new mystery.

As they draw back the metaphorical curtain, they're confronted with a troupe in chaos, a culture of secrecy, and a family in crisis.

Add in hula hooping thugs, a desperate suspect, and a nihilistic bully and you have a recipe for carnage even Catherine can't control.

Oh, and then there's Boris' love life - send in the clowns…

In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind.
In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.

Fourteen years ago Michael dazzled the world with Ephesus, a brilliant debut novel that won him the respect of his peers, plenty of easy sex and the coveted Booker Prize. Since then, there's been nothing but false starts and dead ends. He can't even finish a short story. With debt collectors at the door, the cellar empty and the mortgage on the line, it's crunch time. His wife, Tanya, issues an ultimatum: get a job or get a divorce. Forced into assessing his literary agent's slush pile to help make ends meet, Michael discovers a dark gem. He rewrites it to make it his own. His publisher loves it and fame beckons and his literary standing soars... until the real author appears.

Slush Pile is a satire of literary ambition.

Yet another great read from Garry Willmott. Small Farm Warriors is filled with lives and stories of men who contributed, in a special way, to the Australia we all know today. From the war-torn streets of France to emus in the Outback, from Kokoda to sheep farms - Garry tells us how these fellas fought and then worked to create a life for themselves and their new families. In some cases, this appears not to have worked so well and in others ... well, where would we be without their efforts on the land? I enjoyed this book and I learnt stuff I didn't know. Thanks, Garry. - Guy Walton, Singer-Songwriter

 

For those with an interest in Australian Military History, this book not only draws one's interest to the life in the trenches of WW1 and to their sons in WW2 that occurred twenty years later but also the 'larrikinism' of the Aussie digger abroad during these periods in history. This book held my interest for its full length with just the right amount of all the emotions depicted. The ups and downs of the men both when serving and on their return to Australia. A well researched and written book which does not disguise the author's interest in the Soldier Settlers of Australia and Commonwealth countries. Definitely a good read. - G & F Threlfall