A young woman is hiding out in a sleepy North Queensland tourist town, trying to stay under the radar, when she stumbles across a dangerous drug cartel. Anyone else might back away, pretend they haven't seen anything, keep quiet, but Maggie is no ordinary girl. She has to get out of town - fast. She heads towards Melbourne, where she just might find the answers she needs: about her mother, her past and the sins of her father. With a dubious cop as her ally, the police tracking her and a dangerous biker gang on their trail, Maggie's troubles are doubling down fast.

In the desolate outback town of Finnigans Gap, police struggle to maintain law and order. Thieves pillage opal mines, religious fanatics recruit vulnerable youngsters and billionaires do as they please. Then an opal miner is found crucified and left to rot down his mine. Nothing about the miner's death is straight-forward, not even who found the body. Homicide Detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate, assisted by inexperienced young investigator Nell Buchanan.

Ordshaw’s not like other cities. But don’t tell them you know that. Pax is one rent cheque and six days away from the rough streets of Ordshaw. A big poker score should’ve settled that - if a vagrant hadn’t mugged her and been promptly abducted by spooks. She’s got connections with the Ordshaw underworld who know how to track people down. But all Pax finds is otherworldly technology and a book of fiercely imagined monsters.

Mina McCreery's sister Evelyn disappeared 19 years ago. Her life has been defined by the intense public interest in the case. Now an anxious and reclusive adult, she lives alone on her family's destocked sheep farm. When Lane, a private investigator, approaches her with an offer to reinvestigate the case, she rejects him. The attention has had nothing but negative consequences for her and her family, and never brought them closer to an answer. 

Wyatt robs banks and payroll vans. Most men like him are dead or in jail, but Wyatt stamps a cold, pitiless style on his heists and has never been caught. Now his funds are low and his luck is running out - until the day Anna Reid explains about the kickback in her partner’s safe. But other players are involved. In Wyatt’s world, there is no yielding, no redemption, and when he’s crossed, the outcome is inevitable.

Compiled by Xtina Marie, this heart-stopping conglomeration of terror represents the coming together of a whole bunch of the finest independent horror authors writing today.

Paxton Bale wants nothing more than to lead his youth group and get home to his wife, but when a cosmic event causes people to turn into soulless monsters, he finds himself fighting for his life against the teens he was supposed to keep safe. Trapped at the church, only a miracle can save him. A miracle named Danny, but Danny isn’t exactly who he says he is. Fresh off his last kill, Danny is what people define as a serial killer, and he is finding out that the rules from the old world don’t apply anymore.

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they're deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom. When they discover a remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.

On a bright sunny day in Port Silver, ex-Journalist Martin Scarsden misses a call from his girlfriend, Mandy. Checking his voicemail later, all he hears is her terrified scream before the phone cuts off. Back at the house, he finds a policeman unconscious on the floor and Mandy gone. So starts a twisting tale of intrigue and danger, as Martin probes the past of the woman he loves, a woman who has buried her former life deep. And for the first time, Mandy finds denial impossible, now that the body of a man has been discovered - a man to whom she was engaged to marry.

Twenty years ago, Cyrus Haven's family was murdered and only he and his brother survived. Cyrus because he hid. Elias because he was the killer. Now Elias is being released from a secure psychiatric hospital and Cyrus, a forensic psychologist, must decide if he can forgive the man who destroyed his childhood. As he prepares for the homecoming, Cyrus is called to a crime scene in Nottingham. A man is dead, and his daughter, Maya, is missing. Then a second woman is abducted. The only witness is Evie Cormac, a troubled teenager with a gift for knowing when people are lying.

Providence, RI, 1986. Twenty-nine-year-old Danny Ryan is a hard-working longshoreman, loving husband, loyal friend and occasional 'muscle' for the Irish crime syndicate that oversees much of the city. He yearns for something more and dreams of starting over fresh, someplace far away. But when a modern-day Helen of Troy triggers a war between rival mob factions, Danny is embroiled in a conflict he can’t escape. Now it is up to him to step into the breach to protect his family, the friends who are closer to him than brothers and the only home he’s ever known.

Beauregard 'Bug' Montage: honest mechanic, loving husband, devoted parent. He's no longer the criminal he once was - the sharpest wheelman on the east coast, infamous from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida. But when his respectable life begins to crumble, a shady associate comes calling with a clean, one-time job: a diamond heist promising a get-rich payout. Inexorably drawn to the driver's seat - and haunted by the ghost of his outlaw father - Bug is yanked back into a savage world of bullets and betrayal, which soon endangers all he holds dear.

You're walking down the street in the early hours of the morning, in one of the most densely populated cities in the world, when you see something that makes the rational side of your brain itch. It has mortal wounds and shouldn't be walking, but it is, and if you hang around for too long, it will be heading towards you. How would you react? You survive the initial throes of civil unrest and the collapse of law and order. The world has become your playground. What kind of person do you become?

When Cornish Nurse Eliza Hamilton is mugged on her way home from work late one evening, it is the mysterious Roman Holbrook who appears from the darkness and fights off her strange attacker. Then he disappears into the night before the police arrive, leaving a semi-conscious Eliza questioning if he was, in fact, a figment of her imagination. That is until he shows up on her doorstep one rainy night - and all hell breaks loose again. But is this man her hero, or does he have a more sinister motive for wanting her kept alive?

Winter in Tiverton, and Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women's underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls come in: a child abandoned in a caravan, filthy and starving. And a man on the rampage at the primary school. Hirsch knows how things like that can escalate, too. An absent father who isn't where he's supposed to be; another who flees to the back country armed with a rifle. Families under pressure can break. But it's always a surprise when the killing starts.