The gods love to play with us mere mortals. And every hundred years, we let them...

I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus.

Living as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won't notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus's patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god.

The worst god. Hades.

For the first time ever, the ruthless, mercurial King of the Underworld has entered the Crucible-the deadly contest the gods hold to determine a new ruler to sit on the throne of Olympus. But instead of fighting their own battles, the gods name mortals to compete in their stead.

So why in the Underworld did Hades choose me-a sarcastic nobody with a curse on her shoulders-as his champion? And why does my heart trip every time he says I'm his?

I don't know if I'm a pawn, bait, or something else entirely to this dangerously tempting god. How can I, when he has more secrets than stars in the sky?

Because Hades is playing by his own rules...and Death will win at any cost..

A heartwarming collection of four brand-new festive stories from favourite Australian authors about finding love on the farm this Christmas.

The Christmas Contract by Pamela Cook

Bridie has until Christmas to convince her dad not to pull the loan he gave her to set up her organic produce farm. So when she gets an unexpected offer of assistance from her elderly neighbour's son - the same elderly neighbour who's been actively trying to railroad her into selling - she can't say no. Are all the resulting feels another complication or exactly what she needs?

A Fairytale for Christmas by Penelope Janu

Big-city lawyer Juliette is living a small-town life in Ballimore for one reason only - to save her career by Christmas. Which is why she should say no to helping the town, no to taking over the fairytale cabin in the forest, and no to challenging the impossibly attractive farmer and local-boy-made-good, Beau. A past left behind, a reimagined future. Can there be a happy ending to this fairytale?

The Christmas Kindness Project by Lily Malone

After the break-up of her 26-year marriage, high-flying property manager Rosie returns to Chalk Hill to start over. When she's nominated to represent her new employer in the Christmas Kindness Project, Rosie struggles in the competition spotlight. Then enigmatic real estate valuer Fletcher takes an interest in her ideas. If it's not a hot flush, maybe Rosie's love life is finally heating up.

Christmas at Yindi Creek by Stella Quinn

Angela arrives in Yindi Creek desperate to restore her late mother's opal earring only to discover the opal dealers are closed for the summer. Robbie spends his days with his sheep, determinedly not looking at the white cross planted by the gates of his property. But the meddlesome locals reckon he's grieved long enough, and it doesn't take them long to hatch a devious (but romantic!) plan ...

Sydney, Australia: The body of a young woman is found in Chinatown. She's been beaten, tortured - and tattooed with the image of a sun. Called to the scene, Sergeant Jackie Rose asks herself whether this was a drug murder, or something else. But before her investigation can get under way, she is ordered to hand the case over to the Australian Federal Police.

Cape Town, South Africa: A local girl recruited to study in Australia has fallen off the radar. Veteran detective Schalk Lourens - recently suspended from duty - has already made plans to visit his daughter in Sydney, with emigration in mind. He decides to search for the missing girl while he is there.

Jackie and Schalk join forces, exposing a trail of corruption and crime stretching from the foreshore of the city's iconic harbour, back to South Africa and across the world.

Together the pair must navigate a minefield of deceit and manipulation set by an enemy more powerful and depraved than they can imagine. And failure isn'tan option, because not only their own futures, but those of hundreds of vulnerable young people, hang in the balance.

In a world shrouded in shadows, where doubt is the only weapon, can one spy expose the truth? #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Brad Thor delivers his latest high-octane thriller.

A mysterious cargo plane, flanked by a squadron of Russia’s most lethal fighters, has just taken off from a remote airbase. Closely monitored by the United States, no one inside the Pentagon has any idea where it’s going or what it’s carrying.

A high-level Russian defector, a walking vault of secrets that could shatter the West, seeks asylum in Norway. Across the continent, in the heart of Paris, a lone French agent stumbles upon a conspiracy so explosive it could ignite a global firestorm.

As alarm bells ring in Washington, the CIA’s most lethal weapon, Scot Harvath, is forced to choose between his conscience and his country.

South Africa, 1899 - the smouldering hostility between the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal is about to burst into flame. War is coming and no one can prevent it. Colonel Penrod Ballantyne, hero of Abu Klea and Omdurman, is sent to Mafeking, 'the place of stones', to recruit and train men for the fighting ahead. Amber, his wife, the successful novelist, accompanies him - eager to see more of the country her husband is about to risk his life for. But when war is declared, Amber must flee with their baby son and pray for her husband's survival against impossible odds.

Eight hundred miles to the south, in Cape Town, Ryder Courtney - adventurer, maverick, industrialist - is using his wealth and connections to bankroll the British war effort. His artist wife Saffron, frustrated by stuffy Cairo society, has joined him with their three children. There is peace in the Courtney household, or so Saffron believes, until their eldest son, Leon, stows away on a train to the front line, determined to join his distinguished uncle, Penrod Ballantyne, in changing the course of history. Saffron and Ryder have no choice but to leave the safety of the Cape Colony and follow. Leon is convinced that his parents are without honour and courage. Little does he realise that he has no chance of escaping the people they used to be.

Two families torn apart, caught up in a battle for the heart of a country at war with itself.

Dark magic is unleashed on the streets of Istanbul . . .

When a newborn baby is found drowned in the shallow waters of the Golden Horn, all-out warfare threatens to erupt between rival criminal gangs. Inspector Kerim Gursel is assigned to the case and he must tread carefully when DNA tests reveal that the baby's father is Gorkan Pasahan, Istanbul's most feared Mafia boss.

But the identity of the infant's mother is yet to be discovered . . .

Eve Sylvester is young and broke and needs a job fast. After years of foster homes, backpacking and a sailing trip across the Pacific Ocean, she has lost contact with friends and family. She is alone, desperate—and pregnant.

Then she meets Julia and Christopher Hygate, a charming and glamorous couple, who seem to have the perfect life: loads of money and a breathtakingly beautiful mansion on a remote Tasmanian island. They make her a lucrative offer. Eve can move into their empty summerhouse and take up a very easy job.

Eve thinks she’s fallen on her feet—she has found a home, and her child will grow up in the aptly named Paradise Bay. But some things about the job don’t add up. Why must Eve stay out of sight? Why have the Hygates employed an ex-con to run their yacht-charter business? And what about the mysterious boats sailing in and out of the Hygates’ private marina? Has Eve made a deal with the devil? It’s too late to ask questions. Eve is already in far too deep.

One beautiful Californian evening, a wealthy businessman falls to his death from his secluded cliff-top house onto the rocks below.

A tragic accident? Or murder?

Nora and her half-brother Sam suspect it may be the latter, and team up to uncover the truth of what really happened that night.

But their relationship has never been easy, and it is about to be tested to the limit as they start to question how well either of them really knew their elusive father.

Unravelling his mysterious past takes them back to a world they knew nothing about, to a tangled love affair and a web of relationships that other people would far rather stay buried...

TWO SUSPICIOUS DEATHS

When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that's not the truth?

ONE YOUNG SURVIVOR

Betsy Odom doesn't trust the police but when she finds herself in the FBI's custody after her parents' deaths, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the authorities aren't so sure.

ONE MAN ON THE RUN

Enter Travis Devine. Trying to escape a skilled predator who wants him dead, Devine finds himself as Betsy's bodyguard. But when an informant is found murdered, Devine knows this job is perhaps even more dangerous than the one he's running from . . . and the true enemy may be on his side.

Reacher had no idea where he was. No idea how he had got there. But someone must have brought him. And shackled him. And whoever had done those things was going to rue the day. That was for damn sure.

Jack Reacher wakes up, alone, in the dark, handcuffed to a makeshift bed. His right arm has suffered some major damage. His few possessions are gone. He has no memory of getting there.

The last thing Reacher can recall is the car he hitched a ride in getting run off the road. The driver was killed.

His captors assume Reacher was the driver's accomplice and patch up his wounds as they plan to make him talk.

A plan that will backfire spectacularly . . .

She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiances and no plan. But the way things are going, she might not live long enough to marry anyone.

Stalling for time, Stephanie buries herself in her work as a bounty hunter, tracking down fugitives from justice. There's Eugene Fleck, a seemingly sweet online influencer who might also be YouTube star Robin Hoody, masked hero to the homeless. There's Bruno Jug, a wealthy and connected man who is rumored to traffic young girls alongside wholesale lettuce and tomatoes. Most terrifying of all is Zoran - a laundromat manager by day and self-proclaimed vampire by night with a taste for the blood of pretty girls. When he shows up on Stephanie's doorstep, it's not for the meatloaf dinner.

Stephanie has to use every trick in the book to reel in these men. But she can't decide what to do about Ranger and Morelli - and she's keeping a secret from them that is the biggest bombshell of all. Now or never, she's got to make the decision of a lifetime.

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in the small village of Three Pines in Quebec. Someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide, as he sits with his wife in their back garden.

When he finally answers the call, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF. At first they seem small - a missing coat,

a note for Gamache reading ""this might interest you"", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list - but then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching. A threat unlike anything they've seen before.

Vigilante turned cop Lexi Winter is drawn into the investigation of a chain of apparently random murders. As the bodies pile up, Lexi realises she is a pawn in a psychotic - and deadly - game. A breathtakingly fast-paced and compulsively gripping crime thriller from a rising star.

Lexi Winter is studying for her detective exams but her nemesis Vaughn is out there somewhere and her concentration is fractured. Just as she's wondering if her hypervigilance is tipping over into madness, Vaughn resurfaces and issues a challenge. Five people will be dead by the end of the month. If Lexi can identify and save the last one before the deadline, he'll turn himself in.

As Lexi's colleagues scramble to untangle what it all means, Lexi is implicated deeper and deeper into the murders. On top of this, she begins to see a strange figure everywhere she goes. Branded as suffering from PTSD, Lexi's credibility is in tatters with her colleagues, but Lexi knows it isn't her mind that is the problem. A wicked game is afoot, and Lexi is just a chess piece in play - and she suspects that check mate will mean her death. There is only one thing that Lexi can do - play along, wait for the chance to strike back, and bring about the endgame...

Three women. One Killer. Talking to strangers has never been more dangerous...

When the body of forty-four-year-old Karen Simmons is found abandoned in remote woodland, journalist Kiki Nunn is determined this will be the big break she so desperately needs.

Because she has a head start on all the other reporters. Just a week before Karen was killed, Kiki interviewed her about the highs and lows of mid-life romance. Karen told her all about kissing strangers under the stars, expensive meals, roses. About the scammers and the creeps...

While the police appear to be focusing on local suspects, Kiki sets out to write the definitive piece on one woman's fatal search for love. But she will soon learn that the search for truth can be just as deadly...

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain for his final tour, he's anxious to dispense with his mission - uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency. But then he meets Almaisa, an enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.

When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict, his romance and loyalties upended. In an instant, he's caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. He sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa's love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain's secrets end and America's begin.

You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind.

Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker's childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her.

After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice. A partner in crime who is still active today.

Crossing the globe from New York to New Zealand, Ruth unlocks parts of herself that she hasn't dared to revisit, bringing her perilously close to three different women. The deeper she delves, the more she can't shake the feeling that one of them knows the truth. About her childhood friend. About the missing girl. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, about Ruth herself ...

Late at night . . .

Abi and Ben are driving home down foggy country roads, arguing about having had to cut short their weekend away when they take a wrong turn. Abi's driving, but her eyes leave the road for a moment as she says something to Ben - just as he gasps. A man is in front of the car, waving a torch. Abi swerves to avoid him.

You see a family stranded . . .

Ben tells her they should stop and go back, but Abi refuses. It's dark, the roads are isolated and they don't know this stranger. But, as Abi continues on, they see a broken-down car. Every instinct is still telling Abi to drive by, but then she notices the woman holding a car seat with a baby in it.

Would you stop?

For a moment, Abi hesitates, but they can't leave a mother and baby on the side of the road. Agreeing to give the family a lift, they set off again. But now these strangers are inside their car and it might be the worst mistake they have ever made . . .

An expensive mobile home, abandoned in a new housing development, reveals a fearful secret when finally it is opened by police: the decomposed body of a former colleague. But what became of Sandra Bulloch after she left the police service? What chain of events led to her murder?

DCI Lottie Mann is tasked with finding the killer of her former boss, and investigation that draws Bob Skinner into its web, just as a second mystery develops for him in his new Spanish base..

Seven people wake up in a remote mansion. The doors are all locked. They have no idea where they are. Who brought them there. Or how to escape.

Each knew the victims of a dreadful crime committed four years earlier but that's all that links them.

Then a voice echoes through the house with a terrifying message. They've been poisoned - and have less than 12 hours to live. There's an antidote on hand: but only if someone admits to being a killer. And they all claim to be innocent.

The time for confession is rapidly running out. How many - if any - of them will survive the night?

Slim Parsons is all but burned.

Her last deep cover job for MI5 ended with a life-and-death struggle on a private jet that caused her to go on the run from both the deadly target and her angry bosses in the Security Service. They say that violence comes too easily to her; that she's bordering on delinquent and unsuitable for the roll of an MI5 operative.

Yet she is recalled and asked to infiltrate a news website that's causing alarm in the highest circles. It is staffed by a group descended from wartime codebreakers operating from an unassuming office block near Bletchley Park. Operation Linesman looks like a come down, the curtain on a brilliant career in the shadows. However, she accepts the assignment on condition that the Security Service searches for her missing brother.

Linesman turns out to be anything but simple. Her personal loss, her previous deep cover role, and a threat to MI5 itself from her original target come together in a three-way collision.

And all the while she is watched by someone even deeper in the shadows than she is.

They thought they found heaven on earth. They discover a living hell.

When Brandt 'Doc' Savage and his girlfriend Kira land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts.

But they don't have long to enjoy their new-found peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the earth.

As Doc searches the seas and continents for Kira, he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger than he ever could have imagined.

Can Doc and Kira find each other before one of their many enemies catches them first?

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumour growing in her brain.

As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again - and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children - she begins to recall what's most important to her- long walks with her husband's hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights and always buying that dress when she sees it.

Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This extraordinary novella is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humour - it will both break your heart and put it back together again.

Left alone on the vast cattle station with her baby while her husband, Alex, works the farm, Hallie Donaldson is having trouble adjusting to the flies, dust, snakes and isolation in the Flinders Ranges. 

At least today, Hallie knows that she and their daughter Ruby can watch Alex on the security camera erected at the windmill where he'll be working. But something goes horribly wrong and he suddenly disappears from view. 

Alex is found later, dead at the bottom of the windmill. 

After Alex's death, Hallie discovers an alarming series of phone messages sent to a still-shared link on Alex's phone. A short time later, one of Alex's close friends from agricultural college, Danny Betts, loses his life in another tragic rural accident. 

When Hallie reveals the horrifying information she's been keeping secret to Detective Dave Burrows and his partner, Constable Mia Worth, they quickly realise that all is not what it seems.

It's time to put the guns down, Detective Cross. Even if you knew the way out of this place, we would catch you.

A serial killer is taking out America's finest legal minds, and Alex Cross is called to investigate their brutal murders.

But during a dangerous mission to track down the killer, his wife, Bree, and best friend, John Sampson, go missing.

To save the people he loves most, Cross has only three goals-

Number one- Find Bree and John. Number two- Escape. Number three- Survive.

If he fails, there will be no one left in the House of Cross.

England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II's illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle.

Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth's army is quickly defeated by King James II's superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered.

As Dorset braces for carnage, Lady Jayne Harrier and her enigmatic son, assisted by the reclusive daughter of a local magistrate, contrive ways to save men from the gallows.

Spring 1963, and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall - unconfirmed and a little scandalous - that George Smiley might almost be happy.

But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task - interview Susanna, a Hungarian emigre and employee of the missing man, to sniff out a lead. But in his absence, the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley soon finds himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy...

In one of the most luxurious cities on earth…

A billion-dollar deal is about to go badly wrong. A lavish night out is about to end in murder. And the British government is about to be plunged into crisis.

In the heart of the British establishment…

Lord Hartley, the latest in a line of peers going back over two hundred years, lies dying. But his will triggers an inheritance with explosive consequences.

Two deaths. Continents apart. No obvious connection.

So why are they both at the centre of a master criminal's plot for revenge?

And can Scotland Yard's William Warwick uncover the truth before it's too late…

The ultimate race-against-time is about to begin.

Maitland, 1889

When nineteen-year-old Constance Montague wakes one Wednesday she expects the day to unfold like any other. Breakfast with her grandmother Nell and her mother Faith, a meeting in Maitland with the ladies of the Benevolent Society, perhaps a gentle stroll along the banks of the Hunter River. But this Wednesday is different. Nell has vanished.

Concerned, Connie determines to track Nell down and follows a lead to Old Government House in Parramatta, now a guest house. There, to her astonishment she finds her grandmother holding court.

When Nell introduces her as her companion to a varied cast of colourful guests, including a frail but observant old lady, a travelling salesmen, a bearded lothario, a clever articled clerk, a lively seamstress and an enigmatic housekeeper who is connected with Nell's past, Connie begins to realise that her grandmother is not who she seems. Nell is looking for something and following a thread stitched long ago, a thread that leads from some missing gold, to a damask dress and the attic of Government House. As the story unravels so do the secrets of the past, secrets that surface into the present to threaten not just Nell, but Connie too.

Adam, the teenage runaway, who has just one goal- to stay lost.

Until life offers him a second chance.

Oskar, the elderly Polish immigrant, who to outsiders cuts a lonely figure. But every afternoon, at the giant chessboard in the park, Oskar becomes a star.

The poet Reginald, who claims he just wants to observe. Then he meets young Sally - and the scruffy kelpie who hangs around the bins - and is inspired in ways he'd never imagined.

Johnny, the generous, charismatic, habitual criminal, who is finally determined to turn his life around - if only he can stay out of jail.

Benny, the Big Issue vendor with a heart of gold, who loves nothing more than helping others.

And finally Madge, the much-loved Otto Bin matriarch. Her past has always been shrouded in secrecy, but now she's ready to share her story . . .

The whole world has just watched Neil and Buzz walk on the Moon. Now they are struck by terror- the lunar module's engine has failed. There is no back-up, no other way off the surface. If the astronauts can't fix the problem, they'll slowly run out of oxygen and die.

This Kingdom of Dust explores this harrowing scenario through the intertwined narratives of three distinct voices- Buzz on the Moon, his wife Joan back on Earth, and Aquarius, the journalist compelled to craft a story he doesn't want to write.

Marooned, Buzz confronts his fate with a mix of dread and awe. On Earth, Joan wrestles with grief and sacrifice against the backdrop of 1960s America - a nation riven by war and seismic social change.

Caught between professional duty and personal turmoil, Aquarius soon discovers that he will need all his skill to capture this unfolding drama, and all his courage to follow it through to its breathtaking conclusion.