The Outback cover art

The Outback

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Outback

By: Sara Ochs
Narrated by: Suzy Jackson, Leah Horowitz
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

It was supposed to be paradise.

A group of friends are studying abroad in Australia, having the time of their lives. Sun-kissed skin, whirlwind romances, all-night parties – they think it will never end, that nothing bad will ever happen to them.

But not all of them came home.
Accepted onto the exclusive Adventure Abroad Programme, they travel the country, swim with sharks, hike in the national park. But it isn’t long before their trip of a lifetime ends in violence and betrayal.

And now they have to go back...
Years pass, but none of the surviving friends forget what happened that night. So when the remains of a girl are found in the outback, they know it’s time to face up to the past. All of them are guilty of something, but who is really to blame?

© Sara Ochs 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Crime Thrillers International Mystery & Crime Mystery Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women Sleuths

Listeners also enjoyed...

Scrublands cover art
The Serial Killer's Party cover art
A Schooling in Murder cover art
Missing Person: Alice cover art
Cut Short cover art
A Killing in November cover art
The American Boy cover art
The Lost cover art
Hermit cover art

Critic reviews

A group of American students on what’s euphemistically described as a “study trip” in Australia behave exactly as anyone would expect in Sara Ochs’s raucous new novel...The novel has two time frames, ten years apart, allowing Ochs to indulge in some sly misdirection.
Incredible pace, terrifically intriguing plot, wonderfully flawed characters and a searing hot setting to ramp up the tension. A masterclass in crime fiction, I loved it!
A total page-turner. Compelling, immersive, and highly entertaining. Destination fiction at it's best! It brought back memories of backpacking down Australia's East Coast years ago and perfectly captures what it's like to be a young person far from home, thrown together with strangers: the madcap late nights, romantic entanglements and close escapes from danger.
If you like to have your pulse raised while chilling out, this one’s for you.
A ripper of a thriller. Studying abroad forever changes eight young lives—in all the wrong ways...a story about secrets and how they change who we are and who we become; a tale of friendship and betrayal and those exhilarating years when our friends are our universe. It’s atmospheric, emotional, and twisty, and destined to be one of the best thrillers of the year. Ace!
A compelling and addictive thriller that grabs you from the first chapter and never lets go! With an atmospheric and isolated setting that increases the already palpable tension between the characters, [The Outback] is a must-read.
I sped through this twisty tale of friendship, discovery and betrayal. Ochs’s writing is rich with vividly-conjured landscapes, effortlessly distinguishable characters, and a rising sense of claustrophobia as the story weaves its way to an ending that you won’t see coming. A summer thriller so evocative that you can almost feel the Australian summer heat.
Once again, Ochs proves herself a master of that heady time of youthful independence, away from home without a safety net. I devoured [The Outback] inhaling one shocking revelation after another until the jaw-dropping epilogue. This novel reinvents the unreliable narrator.
This suspenseful psychological thriller will keep you turning pages with its intriguing clues and gradual reveals.
Gripping from start to finish – impossible to put down. It keeps you guessing, constantly questioning everyone’s intentions, and just when you think you’ve figured it out, it all shifts. A masterclass in the destination thriller!
All stars
Most relevant
I don’t normally write reviews but this book was just awful. Totally unbelievable characters, unrealistic storyline but the narration was what made it worse!

Awful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.