Pretty Dead Ordinary

Nearly two years after a serial killer let loose with havoc in Brumby Flat, intrigue, unexpressed desires and murder ride back into town.

A long-awaited wedding celebration turns sinister when a bridesmaid nearly drowns in the local dam. Once again, Senior Detective Phillip Duncan is drawn into the initial investigations, but quickly becomes the prime suspect. Gradually the small South Australian town starts to believe he fits the profile of their new deadly threat.

Some familiar characters return from The Big Dead Dry. Raquel Willaston is still living with the charismatic silo painter Phil Proctor and Anabella Williams has returned after serving time in a correctional centre for the accidental death of the local Mayor. Raquel’s son Steve is now the local rookie cop, quickly learning how to cope with the evil circumstances unfolding around him. Then there are the new folks in town, the crafty Tanaka family with their rebellious beautiful daughter ‘Yankee’ who Steve becomes obsessed with.

Pretty Dead Ordinary sums up the order of things to come. Detective Duncan is forced to work harder than ever to prove his own innocence and hopefully bring the real killer to justice.

Pretty Eyes

After PI Agnes Trout repels a vicious attack by an intruder in her New York City apartment, she discovers that other women have been attacked by the same perpetrator. Even though the attacker is known, none of the women attempt to bring him to justice. Agnes’s own quest uncovers a brutal murder and brings her into contact with the glacial matriarch of a wealthy family, an enigmatic, charming fixer and a cold-blooded killer. At the same time, she is asked by a close friend to look into the checkered life of the friend’s secretive and menacing husband.

Determined attempts on her life and malicious threats will not slow Agnes down as, along with help from unexpected quarters, she goes after a killer and a scheming husband.

Prunes

Old spies don’t retire, they just sit on the sidelines until needed. This is what Mr Eggington and Violet believed until they uncovered a plot that would reshape the financial world. Mr Eggington was counting toilet rolls and paperclips until he reached retirement, and his best former operative, Violet, had ended up as a tea lady.

Events unfold with surprising speed after she tries to buy a packet of biscuits to go home with Mr Eggington’s tea. She is set up and ‘roofied’ ending up in an old person’s home after this dastardly attack and Mr Eggington is ridiculed when he tried to bring his fears to the attention of his boss.

Rallying the most unlikely people they engineer a plot to save the country. Hidden depths are uncovered in their new friends and they pool all their skills to overthrow the evil megalomaniac, after trying to break all the codes and riddles of course!

Raising the Dead

Emeline Upswatch, a naive 20-year-old bride, is grief-stricken after the deaths of both of her beloved parents. Now, Emeline believes she has made a grave error in moving with her husband, Randy, from her California Delta childhood home to unknown Charles Town, Virginia. She questions her marriage and herself. Marooned in grief in an unfamiliar world and intimidated by her mother-in-law, Emeline is rescued by the appearance of a mysterious older woman, Felicity, who becomes her dearest friend, mentor, and “other mother” with whom she can share her innermost feelings. Unlike Emeline, Felicity divulges nothing about her history or personal life. When Felicity disappears as mysteriously as she arrived, Emeline is determined to unearth her older friend’s whereabouts. What she ultimately discovers forces her to question her sanity, world, memories, and newfound joy.

In her second book, Jayne Lisbeth cements her reputation as a “sensitive, entertaining and deeply moving writer.” In Raising the Dead her quirky, mysterious, home-spun and loveable characters keep the reader engaged and entertained from the first page to the last.

Early reviews praise Raising the Dead as “a deep and emotional account of Emeline’s introspective journey with a wholesome, spiritual, supernatural angle ... Inspirational ... A poignant plot, with a well-structured, assured writing style, sure to appeal to a wide audience.”

Rippleswade Hall

Taking the form of a legal witness statement in a civil action in the High Court and an expert report from a psychologist, Rippleswade Hall is the story of Barrington Whibley, who is appointed to investigate a suspicious fire at a grand family house. Whibley makes three separate visits to Rippleswade Hall, each recounted in detail in the witness statement. His last visit is to attend a special and lavish dinner on the summer solstice, hosted by Natalie Trelewyn-Digby, the heiress and sole occupant of Rippleswade Hall. Whibley begins to fall in love with both her and the hall. Some very strange events occur at the dinner party and Whibley becomes obsessed to know whether his recollections were real, drug-induced or a psychotic episode. An investigation into love and madness – Remains of the Day meets Twin Peaks.

Seasons of Freedom

Robert Allen ‘Bubba’ Armentrout is an adventurous youngster, experiencing everything life has to offer in the 1960s’ rural community of Freedom, Virginia. His life is rich with loyal companions, exploits, carefree days and a burgeoning sexual awareness.

This tranquil normality crumbles when what begins as an innocent childhood predicament of Bubba’s own making transforms into his witnessing of a salacious encounter between two of Freedom’s most revered citizens. A chain of events that results in multiple homicides exposes him to the dark underbelly of his hometown and shatters his sense of safety and serenity in Freedom.

Only Bubba knows the truth behind these murders, and that truth is deadly. Seasons of Freedom is a coming-of-age mystery set in a politically fragile rural Southern community in the culturally volatile 1960s.

Settlement

Former undercover police officer Justin Kell has settled into life as a financial journalist in the City of London. When he comes across a suspicious case of accidental death, his investigation leads him to Henry Gray, an unfulfilled soul whose life is dramatically changed by a series of coincidental events. Driven by his desire to establish the truth, Kell finds himself thrust into the world of organised crime whose cynical and ruthless exploitation of the lives of innocent people reawakens his nightmares from his time in the force.

Shadows of the Missing

Are you a ‘sneaker’ – meaning, do you immediately flip to the back page, sneak a peek and surreptitiously read the ending before you read the whole story? Just a suggestion – don’t do it! Don’t rob yourself of the mystery, suspense and surprises that tumble around in the pages of this book. This second book of the trilogy, Shadows of the Missing (Whatever Happened to Lloyd?), is certainly worth the wait and promises to keep you hooked from beginning to end, the same way that Not Another Word! reeled you in and kept you guessing. At long last, dear readers, you are going to find out what happened to Lloyd!

Shallow Water

Private Investigator Agnes Trout once again finds herself investigating intriguing and dangerous cases. After she saves the life of an unconscious truck driver by dragging him out of his burning cab, he decides to engage her services, leading to her coming face to face with a cool, unbalanced protagonist who simply kills to resolve his problems. Agnes needs to use all of her resources to survive a violent encounter with this determined killer.
At the same time, through the designs of a cunning schemer, she emerges as the central suspect in the possible kidnapping and murder of the wife of a client. She mounts her own investigation, which leads her to a surprising and compelling resolution.

That Afternoon

Michael Talbot has spent the last twenty-five years working at the tax office, where he is known ironically to his colleagues as Old Sunbeam. Behind the mask of surly efficiency, Michael is in fact a highly sensitive person who was once a charming and lively little boy of six, until the terrible day when his mother unaccountably disappeared, leaving him to the mercies of his father, Eric, a bully of a man with little sympathy for children who indulges his boisterous sense of fun at his son’s expense. Despite this profoundly unsatisfactory relationship, Michael remains attached to Eric in a dutiful slavish sort of way, continuing to meet him occasionally for lugubrious drinks. And so life might have continued indefinitely until early one morning the phone shrills with a frightening message from the local hospital, galvanising him into frenzied and panic-stricken action and launching him into an extraordinary and terrifying adventure. Michael freely admits that his description of this adventure beggars belief, but however real or unreal it may have been, it has freed him from the stranglehold of the past, so that at last he can move forward into fulfilment in a future full of promise.

The Devil's Sandbags

The aftermath of leading a double life; Dorothea was for many years an undercover agent for M16 infiltrating a commune of revolutionary activists linked with the Baader-Meinhof Group in the 1970s. After leaving that work which caused her great distress, she tried to lead a normal life with her family who never knew what she had done. She discovered decades later that the past events and her own actions during those years would return to haunt her. She and her fellow agents learn to find healing, recovery and hope for the future. Dorothea has a second chance at love and happiness.

The Double Edged Sword

Rhia Bryant’s partnership with Jimmy Grant is an explosive affair. Considering their union to be the key to everything her adolescent heart had desired she was mortified when her lover told her he was moving to Germany to unearth a stolen painting. Unhappy with Jimmy’s wish to seek her father’s aid in his search Rhia looks to the past to help with the future.

As the pathway to uncovering the painting grows darker, and her father’s own past comes to light, danger stalks her journey. To keep one step ahead of the challenges she faces, Rhia once more brings deception into the equation.

The twists and turns of her personal life, forged by one Hans Parker, lead her into a year of deceit, lies, and a secret that threatens her very existence.

A rollercoaster of a read that questions the fabric of life.

Can a deceiver be deceived?

When is the moral high ground destroyed?