Nusantara

After dropping out of university, getting a job as a storeman, doing drugs and then splitting up with his wife, Jack, in a fit of depression, joins the Australian Army and is sent to East Timor at the height of the troubles. He “volunteers” for a mission in Indonesia, where the United Nations, with help from the US Navy and the Royal Marines, are trying to rescue a group of foreigners, mostly Europeans, being held hostage by the local rebels. Jack completes his mission only to become the victim of misdirected revenge.

Older

A sociopath managing an aged care facility: What could go wrong?

Precocious and pretty Maxine Gilbert is a clever and talented nine-year-old, adored by a doting father. She is also cruel, sadistic and without remorse, delighting in manipulating others and torturing small animals. When her mother is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, Maxine is disgusted, not just by her mother’s disability, but by the inconvenience it brings. Watching a nurse care for her mother, Maxine learns that nurses can hurt or heal. Maxine decides to be a nurse when she grows up.

Forty years on, after countless complaints against her nursing in various clinical care settings, Maxine scams a job as Managing Director of an aged care facility, Treetops, and the residents are in for a rough time.

Under Maxine’s management, physical and medical restraint of residents is encouraged, and neglect, poor hygiene, and restrictions of residents’ liberty, nourishment and medical support are exhorted. Frightened, depressed, and malnourished residents are left isolated, locked away, and laying in their own waste. They develop excruciating infections, suffer illness, and even die. Maxine faces rising antagonism from Treetops’ residents, and their friends and family. 

A new carer at Treetops, Seleena, who recently escaped an abusive marriage, cannot stay silent. Along with warning residents, and others, Seleena writes a letter of complaint. After finding a suspicious lump in her breast, could Maxine, who always hated illness and vulnerability in others, finally learn compassion? Or will she continue her ruthless ways?

On One Normal Night

When life takes a cruel turn and everything you knew becomes the unknown.

Macy Reynolds was an ordinary girl with an ordinary life, until one day that life was shattered by a cruel attack on her.

People’s lives spiral out of control as a number of suspects are interviewed and secrets and lies are unravelled.

But will Macy’s attacker ever be exposed?

Orvil: Trial and Error

Orvil sits alone in a diner to celebrate his 21^st birthday. He feels lonely and abandoned...his new girlfriend just dumped him and his mother recently died. He has no idea who his father is. He hates his first name, lives in a rundown trailer, had sacrificed his studies at City College to care for his ailing parent, and drives trucks just to scrape by. Totally lost since his mother’s death, his free time revolves around eating junk food and chugging beers in front of the tube. As he’s feeling sorry for himself, he perceives a gunman entering the diner and firing his AR-15 at everyone in sight. This experience forever changes Orvil’s life. Powerful and insightful, humourous and tragic, through trial and error, Orvil Smith’s story takes us on a tour of modern America from the rural to the urban, from the poor to the rich, and from the righteous to the corrupt.

Parallax

Fatal accidents are rarely caused by a single mistake but are often the result of a series of errors. A chain of poor decisions leaves Ian White – golf professional and happily married father of two teenage daughters – with a hellish choice. Should he report the death of Katerina Wysklow, a hitchhiker whom he accidentally kills while having sex with her? If his shame becomes public, it will destroy his family. If he conceals the truth, he must find a way to deal with the horror and his guilt.

In parallel to White’s unravelling, the police investigation of Katerina’s disappearance uncovers sex videos of Katerina with different men and unexplained cash deposits into her bank account. The mounting evidence points to her boyfriend’s father – a close friend of White’s – and Katerina’s last known contact on the day she vanished. Will the wrong man be charged? Will White be exposed? Will his conscience intervene? Or will the reckoning come from another direction entirely? 

Particular Moments in a Night Time

As far as nightmares go, this one was with me for many years. Coming back from time to time to haunt my nights. Getting into the dark side of my conscious thought, twisting, turning. Then you give the dog a bone and try to remove it from him with force. A fun trip they said. A walk in the park. A couple of weeks work utilise your special talents. You’ll be back home, back to your own way of life. They say everyone has a dark side that needs that special person to extract from you the energy to ignite it. Well, these buggers did just that…

A thriller that will leave you shaking.

Pass the Parcel

It’s 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis is upon the World … The Establishment turns a blind eye as banks shuffle toxic financial packages around the system to unsuspecting victims…

A hedge fund manager has just placed the biggest bet of his investment career. Market manipulation is suspected, but can he discover who is trying to destroy him before it’s too late?

A hard-working Mexican couple are fighting foreclosure to save their house in San Francisco.

In London, a banker discovers his employer is about to embezzle assets from his brother’s property business.

And, a rising star of British politics is being blackmailed by an ex-professional footballer. When the former player is murdered as well, the politician and his wife become key suspects.

Pass the Parcel is a financial thriller that explores the human psychology around financial decisions and how the lives of a group of people were changed beyond recognition by the financial crash.

Passcodes to Peril

Len Gorski’s new assignment has taken him to Sydney’s heartland to coach the UNSW football team in the State League. On the eve of the grand final, he is embroiled in the aftermath of theft of world-first technology from the team captain, a post-graduate research student.

The search to recover a prototype device and learn the identity of the thieves leads to violence and life-changing adventures for the team captain, his girlfriend, and her former high school sports teacher. Survival skills learned in Len’s earlier life are stretched.

Payback

In the aftermath of the Horizon Life Settlement Fund scandal, Justin Kell is waiting for the trials of the Lebanese organised crime syndicate to end and for justice to be served. When unexpected events disrupt the proceedings, Kell’s world is turned upside down as he returns to face some old adversaries.

Recently established as a private investigator, his refusal to take on the case of a missing person leads to events from his past returning to haunt him, culminating in a race against time as he tries to stop a serial killer with a taste for blood.

As the two cases converge into a dramatic finale, Kell is faced with some life-changing choices.

Peter

Peter is a special boy with an all-consuming passion for aviation, and it is his dream to fly as a career. We follow his journey from school and his exam results through starting work, and eventually obtaining a place as a pilot cadet with an international airline. We share the highs and lows of his training, of being away from his close family for the first time, and the efforts of his elder brother to thwart his chances.

Post Mortem

This new collection of pieces by Alan Blackwood can hardly be called short stories; they are gem-like concentrations or distillations of a series of images erotic, sad, darkly humorous, that Alan calls ‘vignettes.’ They will have the reader turning compulsively from page to page to find out what on earth he’s going to come up with next. It’s literature in a world of its own.

Red Front Connection

WWI veteran Spicer leaves his native New York to join a Soviet spy service to combat fascists in Weimar Germany during the late 1920s. Despite his loyalty to the cause and successful exploits on its behalf, his moral principles and his devotion to a woman compel him to flee his spymasters and become the potential quarry of fascists and communists alike. Stacy John Haigney has created a thought-provoking thriller which should be enjoyed by anyone intrigued by the demimonde of espionage in the Europe of the 1920s.