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The Ned Kelly's will be presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival (we'll be there again this year) on the evening of Wednesday 29th July, 2007.

Best Crime Novel

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher (Text Publishing)

The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham (Little, Brown)

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan (MacMillan)

The Cleaner by Paul Cleave (Random House)

The Undertow by Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin)

Spider Trap by Barry Maitland (Allen and Unwin)

Best First Crime Novel

The Betrayal of Bindi MacKenzie by Jaclyn Moriaty (MacMillan)

Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland (Text Publishing)

Better Dead than Never by Laurent Boulanger (C&C International)

Behind the Night Bazaar by Angela Savage (Text Publishing)

Best True Crime

Justice For The Dead by Malcolm Dodd and Beverly Knight (Hachette Livre)

Overboard: The Stories Cruise Ships Don’t Want Told by Gywn Topham (Random House)

Intractable by Bernie Matthews (MacMillan)

Written On The Skin by Liz Porter (MacMillan)

Silent Death by Karen Kissane (Hachette Livre)

Australian Outlaw by Derek Pedley (Sly Ink)

Killing For Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown Murders by Debi Marshall (Random House)

The Dodger by Duncan McNab (MacMillan)

Things A Killer Would Know by Paula Doneman (Allen & Unwin)

BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
9781847440174
Year of Publication
BLURB

When a murder suspect broke her back across a brick wall, Alisha Barba's dreams of being a detective were shattered.  Now on her feet again, but with her career and private life in limbo, she receives a message from an old schoolfriend Cate, who is eight months pregnant and in trouble.

On the night they arrange to meet, Cate is mown down by a car that kills her husband instantly.  As paramedics fight to save her life they uncover the first in a series of haunting and elaborate deceptions.  This is the trigger for a dangerous quest that will take Alisha from the East End of London to Amsterdam's red-light district and into a murky underworld of sex trafficking, slavery and exploitation that stretches from the desolate hillsides of Afghanistan to the comfortable middle-class suburbs of London.

As the shadows across her landscape deepen, Alisha and her old boss, Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, must confront their own prejudices and will come to question the very laws they have sworn to uphold.

BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
9780330422802
Year of Publication
BLURB

Gina Davies, aka The Doll, is a 26-year-old pole dancer at the Chairman's Lounge in Sydney's Kings Cross. She's a flawed woman, racist, obsessed with money, who finds her life suddenly being destroyed by the things she has up until that moment most firmly believed in.

The evening of the Mardi Gras, 2007. Three unexploded bombs have been found that day at Homebush Stadium, so the country is on high-alert. When wandering through the Mardi Gras' crowds the Doll runs into a good-looking, young dark man. They end up at his place. When she wakes, it's Sunday morning and he has gone. She is getting a coffee in a cafe opposite the apartment block she spent the night in when she sees armed police surround the building she has just left. Later in the day while shopping in the city she sees a story on a big video screen in which the news is of a suspected terrorist entering the same building she had spent the night in.

That night, on television news, the story has altered a little. In an exclusive, the network has security camera footage of the terrorist entering the building the night before with an accomplice, a woman she recognises as herself. And so a case is brought against her by the media, and the hunt for her begins.

From a 26-year-old pole dancer in the Chairman's Lounge, she quickly becomes the most wanted woman in Australia as every truth of her life is turned into a lie!

BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
1405037113
Year of Publication
BLURB

If two people have a conversation heard by only those two, did the conversation actually take place? Following an alleged conversation between respected attorney Rayna Martin and teenager Christina Haynes during a boating trip at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, one of them is dead, the other arrested for murder. Boston lawyer David Cavanaugh faces his toughest case to date as what appears to be a tragic but blameless accident turns into something else entirely. With the victim's father one of the most powerful politicians in the US Senate and the Assistant District Attorney prepared to put his personal ambition ahead of legal justice, David finds that his most dangerous battle is taking place outside the courtroom. Lies, deception, blackmail, threats... and finally the precision of an assassin's bullet combine to create a shocking finale in this exciting debut from Australian author Sydney Bauer.

BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
9780330422383
BLURB

Bindy is the smartest girl at Ashbury High. She ranks in the 99.9th percentile in everything she does (including extra-curricular activities – she is casual Employee of the Month every month at Kmart). She is also the kindest girl at Ashbury High. For example:

• Before each school year begins, she memorises departmental outlines of her subjects. That way, she can gently prompt those teachers who forget or stray from the course.

• She reads up on common teen anxieties, and offers lunch-time advisory sessions in a relaxed, convivial setting (the locker room).

But Bindy suspects that something may be missing – something more than the 0.1 she needs to make the 100th percentile. And, on the first day of Year 11, at the first session of the FAD (Friendship and Development) Project, her worst suspicions are confirmed.

Nobody likes her.

So Bindy makes a decision. Enough of this compassionate Bindy; she has been wasting her time. The real and ruthless Bindy is about to emerge.

BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
0734408447
Year of Publication
BLURB

As an experienced forensic pathologist, Malcolm Dodd thought he had seen everything. But when he arrived in East Timor they told him he would have to "harden up", They were right. Justice for the Dead looks at what goes on behind the scenes of some of the most brutal mass murders of modern history. It's a compelling personal account that takes the reader from East Timor to mass graves in Kosovo and the jungles of the Solomon islands.

BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
9781741665154
Year of Publication
BLURB

A cruise was once the trip of a lifetime: a byword for refinement, luxury, romance, the millionaire lifestyle. No longer. Boats are bigger and brasher, and every year more and more people of all ages and walks of life are clambering aboard to join the party. But are they safe? Out at sea, there are no police. Many cruise ships fly flags of convenience, sailing in murky legal waters. Reports of disappearances, disease, death and debauchery are becoming alarmingly frequent. Can you be sure your dream holiday, or your ship, won't end up on the rocks?

Gwyn Topham, travel editor of Guardian Unlimited, talks to crew and passengers in Australia and around the world to find out what really happens on the high seas. In tales spanning ships from the Fairstar to the QM2, he discovers pirates and pollution, missing persons and mutinies, colourful captains and crew, and passengers whose antics would make your hair curl. You cannot afford to get aboard until you have read Overboard: the stories cruise lines don't want told.

BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
1405037482
Year of Publication
BLURB

This is the relentless and remarkable story of life on the inside of two of Australia's most brutal prisons - Grafton and Katingal - in the '70s, written by a convicted bank robber.

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Submitted by Karen on Thu, 26/07/2007 - 09:07 pm