Outback Cop


Book Description

Birdsville is one of the most remote police postings in Australia. It can be lonely and uneventful for weeks, then the dramas come thick and fast: from desert rescues to rising floods, venomous vipers to visiting VIPs. Throw in heat, dust and flies and it’s not a job for the faint-hearted, unless you’re Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of a beat the size of Victoria for the past ten years. Recently retired from this ‘hardship posting’, Neale and his family thrived on the adventures and colourful times that come with the territory in the furthest corner of our country. Yarning with friend and bestselling author Evan McHugh, Neale’s experiences are humorous and heartfelt. How do you feed 4000 unexpected dinner guests? Where do you find a Chinook helicopter when you need one? Who’s your backup when the population explodes for the famous Birdsville Races? And what do you do when you’re the person the Flying Doctor is flying out? Among these inspiring tales of danger and death, dreamers and ‘dumb tourists’, you’ll encounter a little community with a big heart that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with a larger-than-life policeman who’s become part of Australia’s outback legend.




Outback Conflict


Book Description

Mick Mathews has enviable outback skills, and when international criminals invade his personal space, it forces him to outwit nefarious, highly trained drug runners. Alexandra Beaumont, a university biology student, drives to Pilbara in Western Australia to study unique flora and fauna. Alex finds out all too soon that the outback is not for the fainthearted. Initially, Mick and she collide. Mick sees Alex as a potential hazard, a worrying liability. However, Alex has some unique skills of her own, which Mick begins to admire. Together, they use their combined expertise to thwart six hardened and sadistic killers intent on making millions of dollars out of illegally imported heroin. Helped by Mick’s red dog—Bess, a well-trained dingo cross—Mick and Alex have further advantage as Bess has the wild dog instincts no man can ever possess. A flooded river, capture, torture, and bitter fighting to endure—all seems impossible to overcome. However, with ingenuity, outback skills, and masterful maneuverability, Mick and Alex begin their reluctant fight for survival. During a brief interlude, they have a welcome reprieve, a blissful night spent on top of an escarpment where they bathe with warm water from a shallow gnamma hole. After capturing two of the brutal thugs and imprisoning them in a large gnamma hole, Mick, Alex, and Bess head for the abandoned airstrip where the remaining drug runners await the plane’s arrival with its illicit cargo. Mick disables the plane, renders their vehicles out of action, and wounds two criminals. Alex is captured. Mick and Bess free her. After a deadly fight with the remaining two thugs, they capture and incarcerate them with their fellow criminals and radio the authorities. Mick and Alex are rewarded by the government and have found love in the most unlikely place—the rugged Australian outback.




Outback Shimmer


Book Description




Heart of the Outback


Book Description

A woman's journey to find a special place in the world.Fiery and ambitious, brilliant architect Francey Spinetti is a young woman on her way to the top. When wealthy magnate CJ Ambrose introduces her to his vast North Queensland business empire and a career-scarred local cop, Steve Parish - everything seems to be falling into place, including her love life.But the harsh outback landscape holds more secrets than Francey could possibly have imagined, and more enemies too. CJ's family seem determined to eliminate Francey from the picture - whatever the cost.As CJ's cattle empire becomes embroiled in murder, and Steve puts his life on the line to clear the name of the woman he loves, Francey will need to call on all her strength and determination to survive ...Lynne Wilding captures the bold beauty of the Australian landscape and the strength of its people in Heart of the Outback.




Surviving the Evacuation


Book Description

The outbreak changed everything, but there are some bonds even the undead can't break.It's been six years since Pete Guinn last saw his sister, Corrie. He always hoped to see her again, but feared she was dead. When an elusive billionaire reveals Corrie is living under an assumed name in the Australian outback, Pete unquestioningly jumps at the chance of a reunion. But you can't win the lottery without buying a ticket, and billionaires don't do favours for free. Corrie is in hiding from her old employer, and from the Rosewood Cartel. Now that they've both found her, only a miracle can save the two siblings, and what happens in Manhattan can't be described as miraculous.What begins as a viral outbreak soon turns into an impossible horror. People are infected and die, only to rise up and continue transmitting the infection. Even as the army is mobilised, the virus spreads beyond the borders of the United States. Nowhere is safe from the living dead.As Australia is quarantined, the mining town of Broken Hill becomes a transit hub for the relief effort. Tourists are evacuated while civilians are conscripted, Pete and Corrie among them. Together with a bush pilot, a flying doctor, and an outback cop, the struggle to maintain civilisation begins. Supplies run low. Looting is rampant. Laws are forgotten, especially by the cartel who haven't abandoned their search for Corrie and their quest for revenge.Set in Broken Hill and beyond as the Australian quarantine begins.As this book returns to the beginning of the outbreak, it can be considered a good entry point for readers new to the series.




Birdsville


Book Description

For a town with seventy residents (on a good day), Birdsville is remarkably well known - the Birdsville Track, the rodeo, the pub, the infamous races. With its ruggedness, inaccessibility and larrikin charm, this small town on the edge of the Simpson Desert has become a symbol of the great Australian outback. What is it about Birdsville that has...




Hell to Pay


Book Description

A modern western set in an isolated Australian bush town with a soaring crime rate, where a local constable with a troubled past must investigate the death of a teenage girl whose murder threatens to set the dusty streets ablaze. Constable Paul Hirschhausen—”Hirsch”—is a recently demoted detective sent from Adelaide, Australia’s southernmost booming metropolis, to Tiverton, a one-road town in rustic, backwater “wool and wheat” country three hours north. Hirsch isn’t just a disgraced cop; the internal investigations bureau is still trying to convict him of something, even if it means planting evidence. When someone leaves a pistol cartridge in his mailbox, Hirsch suspects that his career isn't the only thing on the line. But the tiny town of Tiverton has more crime than one lone cop should have to handle. The stagnant economy, rural isolation, and entrenched racism and misogyny mean every case Hirsch investigates is a new basket of snakes. When the body of a 16-year-old local girl is found on the side of the highway, the situation in Tiverton gets even more sinister, and whether or not he finds her killer, there’s going to be hell to pay. Paperback edition found under the title Bitter Wash Road. From the Hardcover edition.




Someone Else's Country


Book Description

Large Print.




Birdsville


Book Description

For a town with seventy residents (on a good day), Birdsville is remarkably well known the Birdsville Track, the rodeo, the pub, the infamous races. With its ruggedness, inaccessibility and larrikin charm, this small town on the edge of the Simpson Desert has become a symbol of the great Australian outback. What is it about Birdsville that has made it stand so large in our legends? And what's it like to live there amongst the floods and the heat and the dust storms? To find out, Evan McHugh packed up his Sydney home, bought a four-wheel drive and headed off with his wife for a year in the back of beyond. Here, he tells us of the large adventures midnight desert rescues, aerial mustering on vast cattle stations, relentless heat and massive floods but also the small details of life in one of Australia's most isolated towns like driving 700 kilometres to go shopping. As the month fly by, Evan learns about an ancient culture, sees dunes carpeted in millions of tiny wildflowers, and meets the members of an outback community facing extraordinary challenges with quiet determination and buckets of good humour. Birdsville is about breathtaking beauty and harshness of this country, the generosity of its salt-of-the-earth people, and one man's discovery of his own reserves of courage and resilience. 'McHugh is a clever mixture of curious outsider and eager participant... Written in a simple but elegant style where honesty and thoughtfulness build an accurate picture of the richness of life in one of Australia's most famous outback towns.' The Age




Before It Breaks


Book Description

Winner: 2016 Australian Crime Writers Association, Ned Kelly Award, Best Crime Novel Detective Inspector Daniel Clement is back in Broome, the tropical town where he grew up, licking his wounds from a busted marriage and struggling to be impressed by his new team of small-town, inexperienced cops. But stagnation and lethargy soon give way to a case with urgent purpose. On the edge of the desert, a man is found dead in a crocodile-infested watering hole. And he is only the first. The connection between the victims is elusive, but Clement must pursue it as a decades-old mystery begins to unravel and a monster cyclone brews on the horizon.