Riley James
Riley James lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and two children. She was born and raised in north-west Tasmania and trained as a journalist before becoming an academic. The Chilling is her first novel.
If you like author Riley James here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (29)
-
Minette Walters
Minette Walters (born 26 September 1949) is a British mystery writer. After studying at Trevelyan College, University of Durham, she began writing in 1987 with The Ice House, which was published in 1992. She followed this with The Sculptress (1993), which received the 1994 Edgar Award for Best Novel. She has been published in 35 countries and won many awards.
Buy books on Amazon
The Sculptress has been adapted for television in a BBC series starring Pauline Quirke. Her novels The Ice House, The Echo, The Dark Room, and The Scold's Bridle have also been adapted by the BBC. -
Christine Gregory
Christine Gregory is an Australian writer of crime and general fiction. An earlier version of The Community, was runner up for the 2022 Banjo Prize. Christine has previously been shortlisted in the Sisters in Crime, Scarlett Stiletto Awards.
Buy books on Amazon
Christine is a former international aid worker and now works as a Director in a national-not for-profit, working on the prevention of violence against women and children. She lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband and two children. -
Christine Gregory
Christine Gregory is an Australian writer of crime and general fiction. An earlier version of The Community, was runner up for the 2022 Banjo Prize. Christine has previously been shortlisted in the Sisters in Crime, Scarlett Stiletto Awards.
Buy books on Amazon
Christine is a former international aid worker and now works as a Director in a national-not for-profit, working on the prevention of violence against women and children. She lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband and two children. -
Dave Warner
Dave Warner is the author of fourteen crime novels, including the winner of the 1996 WA Premier’s Award for Fiction (City of Light) and the 2016 Ned Kelly winner of Best Australian Crime Fiction (Before it Breaks). He has also written a children's book series and seven non-fiction titles, and screenwritten for film and TV.
Buy books on Amazon
Dave Warner originally gained national recognition as a musician-songwriter in the late 1970s with Bob Dylan referring to Dave and Richard Clapton as his “favourite Australian artists”.
As early as 1973 Dave had formed Australia’s first punk band, Pus, playing early versions of tracks such as Suburban Boy and Hot Crotch which he was later to record with Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs. In 1975, Dave went to London and wrot -
Joan Sauers
Born in New York and working in film and television in NY, London and Los Angeles, Sauers has lived in Australia for the last twenty-five years. She is the author of twelve books including Mothers & Daughters, Ageing Disgracefully, and Sex Lives of Australian Women. She is a consultant and lecturer in screenwriting in Australia, Europe and Morocco, and lives in Sydney with her talented cat, Blossom.
Buy books on Amazon -
Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is the author of Cutters End and Stone Town.
Buy books on Amazon -
Jane Caro
Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.
Buy books on Amazon -
Maryrose Cuskelly
Maryrose Cuskelly is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
Buy books on Amazon
She is the best-selling author of The Cane (Allen & Uwin 2022), shortlisted for best debut in the 2023 Davitt Awards.
In 2019, her book Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards.
In 2016, she was awarded the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay on the 1972 abduction and murder of Marilyn Wallman.
She is the author of Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Scribe 2010) and The End of Charity: Time for Social Enterprise (Allen & Unwin 2008) co-written with Nic Frances, and winner of the Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.
Her -
Michael Brissenden
Michael Brissenden is an author and journalist. His first book of fiction – ‘The List’ was published in 2017 and ‘Dead Letters’ 2021 also features the Federal investigator Sidney Allen.
Buy books on Amazon
'Smoke' was published in June 2024 and his new book 'Dust' is published in September 2025.
Michael was a journalist with the ABC for 35 years. He was posted to Moscow, Brussels and Washington and worked in Canberra for many years in various roles – including as the Political Editor for the daily television current affairs program – the 7.30 Report, as the ABC’s defence and security correspondent and as the presenter of the ‘AM’ Current Affairs program on ABC radio. From 2017 to 2021 he was a reporter with the ABC’s investigative television documentary program -
Chris Hammer
Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction author. His first book, Scrublands, was an instant #1 bestseller upon publication in 2018. It won the prestigious UK Crime Writers' Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger and was shortlisted for awards in Australia and the United States.
Buy books on Amazon
Scrublands has been sold into translation in several foreign languages. Chris's follow-up books—Silver (2019), Trust (2020), Treasure & Dirt (2021), The Tilt (2022) and The Seven (2023)—are also bestsellers and all have been shortlisted for major literary prizes. The Valley is his seventh novel.
The Tilt (published as Dead Man's Creek in the UK) was named The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year for 2023.
Scrublands has been adapted for television, screening -
Candice Fox
Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney's western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.
Buy books on Amazon
As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia's wealth of true crime writers.
Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal -
Mark Smith
Mark Smith lives on the west coast of Victoria, Australia, He is the author of four novels: The Road To Winter, Wilder Country, Land of Fences and If Not Us (all Text Publishing). Wilder Country won the 2018 Australian Indie Book Award for YA. Mark is also an award winning writer of short fiction. He is the co-curator of Mind Went Walking, The Songs of Paul Kelly Reimagined and Into Your Arms, The Songs of Nick Cave Reimagined (both Fremantle Press). HIs first adult novel will be published by Pan Macmillan in January 2025
Buy books on Amazon -
Petronella McGovern
Petronella McGovern writes psychological thrillers focusing on everyday characters and contemporary issues.
Buy books on Amazon
Petronella is fascinated by what makes us tick, the lies we tell, and the secrets we keep. She is the best-selling author of Six Minutes, The Good Teacher, The Liars and The Last Trace. Her books have been nominated in the Ned Kelly Awards, the Davitt Awards and the Australian Independent Bookseller Awards. The Liars was selected in the Top 100 Big W/Better Reading list for 2023.
Petronella grew up in a large family on a farm in New South Wales. Australian landscapes and the bush feature strongly in her stories. Among other adventures, she has worked on a summer camp in America and travelled in eastern Africa which inspired parts of h -
Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is an author, speaker and podcaster. Her number one bestselling psychological thriller, Dark Mode, was published in Australia/NZ, the UK, South Korea and Germany. It was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, the Ned Kelly Awards and the Danger Awards.
Buy books on Amazon
Her latest thrillers are Cold Truth and Like, Follow, Die.
She has two earlier books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. Her writing appears widely across Australian and international publications.
Ashley is a frequent speaker and panel moderator, and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. She has taught creative writing across Austr -
Dervla McTiernan
Number one internationally bestselling author Dervla McTiernan is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels, including the much-loved Cormac Reilly series and two number 1 bestselling standalone thrillers, The Murder Rule and What Happened to Nina?, both New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year and both currently in development for screen adaptation. Dervla is also the author of four novellas, and her audio novella, The Sisters, was a four-week number one bestseller in the United States. Before turning her hand to writing, Dervla spent twelve years working as a lawyer in her home country of Ireland. Following the global financial crisis, she relocated to Western Australia where she now lives with her husband, two chil
Buy books on Amazon -
Christian White
Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He co-created the television series Carnivores, currently in development with Matchbox Pictures and Heyday TV, and co-wrote Relic, a psychological horror feature film to be produced by Carver Films (The Snowtown Murders, Partisan).
Buy books on Amazon
Born and raised on the Mornington Peninsula, Christian had an eclectic range of ‘day jobs’ before he was able to write full-time, including food-cart driver on a golf course and video editor for an adult film company. He now spends his days writing from his home in Melbourne where he lives with his wife, the filmmaker Summer DeRoche, and their adopt -
Fiona Hardy
Fiona Hardy is a bookseller (and was in fact shortlisted for ABA Young Bookseller of the Year in 2017). She is a reviewer published in Books+Publishing, The Big Issue, and Readings Monthly, and was a committee member of the Australian Crime Writers Association, which organises the Ned Kelly Awards. Her short fiction has been published in The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2017, Gargouille, and other journals; her short story 'Green Thumbs' won the 2024 Scarlet Stiletto HQ Best Thriller Prize.
Buy books on Amazon
Her first book, 'How to Make a Movie in Twelve Days', was longlisted for the ABIA and Indie Book Awards, and was a CBCA Notable Book for 2020. Her second book, 'How to Write the Soundtrack to Your Life', won the 2021 Children's Peace Literature Award. -
Michelle Prak
Coming in April 2025: BARREN CAPE.
Buy books on Amazon
Michelle Prak's debut thriller THE RUSH was published by Simon & Schuster ANZ; Crooked Lane Books (US); and by HarperCollins France, as LE DELUGE. It's a road trip thrill ride that takes place over two frantic days.
THE RUSH was voted into Better Reading's annual Top 100 reads (2024), and longlisted in the Sisters of Crime Australia Davitt Awards.
Also a short story writer, Michelle was runner-up in the Furphy Literary Prize, 2021.
Between 2019 and 2020, Michelle self-published three women's contemporary novels. Now she's turned to the thriller genre and hopes fans will follow along.
Long before Michelle began writing professionally she was a reader and continues to share on Goodreads.
If you don't want to miss -
Bruce Nash
I have always written.
Buy books on Amazon
For three decades, I taught English in Secondary Schools throughout Queensland.
I survived.
I now live and write and make habitat on the far south coast of New South Wales, on Djiringanj Country by the shores of Wallaga Lake, with my partner Deborah, our dogs Finnegan and Rupert, numerous chooks, a Satin Bower Bird called Lord Byron, a Diamond Python who shall remain nameless, and numerous Wattlebirds, Lorikeets, Galahs, White-headed Pigeons, Whipbirds, King Parrots, Crimson Rosellas, Black Cockatoos, Eastern Spinebills.......
All the Words We Know is my most recent novel, published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
My previous novel was The Long River of Cat Fisher, published in 2020 by Australian Scholarly Publishing (Arden -
Sarah Clutton
Sarah Clutton is an Australian author and former lawyer who writes contemporary fiction full of drama, suspense and humour. Having majored in psychology in her original degree, she is fascinated by people. How does the past shape us? What determines the outcomes when moral and legal boundaries collide? Are the adults really always right?
Buy books on Amazon
Sarah's work saw her named as the national recipient of the Dymocks/Fiona McIntosh Commercial Fiction Scholarship in 2018. Her next book, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is published by Allen & Unwin and will be on the shelves in 2025. She lives with her family in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales in the tiny, historic village of Berrima. The region is famous for the International Cri -
Shelley Burr
Shelley Burr works at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment in Canberra, Australia. She grew up splitting her time between Newcastle and Glenrowan, where her father's family are all sheep farmers.
Buy books on Amazon -
Brooke Hardwick
ABOUT THE BOOK
Buy books on Amazon
In this spine-chilling gothic thriller, a woman on the brink travels to a remote writers’ retreat to uncover the secrets of her past and lands herself in a deadly situation that could destroy her future.
Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.
As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a serie -
Jane Caro
Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.
Buy books on Amazon -
Petronella McGovern
Petronella McGovern writes psychological thrillers focusing on everyday characters and contemporary issues.
Buy books on Amazon
Petronella is fascinated by what makes us tick, the lies we tell, and the secrets we keep. She is the best-selling author of Six Minutes, The Good Teacher, The Liars and The Last Trace. Her books have been nominated in the Ned Kelly Awards, the Davitt Awards and the Australian Independent Bookseller Awards. The Liars was selected in the Top 100 Big W/Better Reading list for 2023.
Petronella grew up in a large family on a farm in New South Wales. Australian landscapes and the bush feature strongly in her stories. Among other adventures, she has worked on a summer camp in America and travelled in eastern Africa which inspired parts of h -
Karen Kirsten
Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena's Gift, a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, an Australian Jewish Book Award finalist, and described by Pulitzer prize winning author Geraldine Brooks as, “a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.”
Buy books on Amazon
Karen is an Australian-American writer and Holocaust educator who speaks on the topics of hatred and reconciliation around the world. Her essay, “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Karen’s writing has also appeared in Salon, Huffington Post, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, WIEZ in -
Corinne Duyvis
To prevent my Goodreads friends list from becoming unwieldy, I only accept friend requests from people I know.
Buy books on Amazon
* * *
Corinne Duyvis is the critically acclaimed author of the YA sci-fi/fantasy novels Otherbound, which Kirkus called “a stunning debut;” On the Edge of Gone, which Publishers Weekly called “a riveting apocalyptic thriller with substantial depth;” and The Art of Saving the World, which Kirkus called “impossible to put down.” She is also the author of the original Marvel prose novel Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All. Corinne hails from the Netherlands.
She’s a co-founder and editor of Disability in Kidlit as well as the originator of the #ownvoices hashtag. -
Dave Warner
Dave Warner is the author of fourteen crime novels, including the winner of the 1996 WA Premier’s Award for Fiction (City of Light) and the 2016 Ned Kelly winner of Best Australian Crime Fiction (Before it Breaks). He has also written a children's book series and seven non-fiction titles, and screenwritten for film and TV.
Buy books on Amazon
Dave Warner originally gained national recognition as a musician-songwriter in the late 1970s with Bob Dylan referring to Dave and Richard Clapton as his “favourite Australian artists”.
As early as 1973 Dave had formed Australia’s first punk band, Pus, playing early versions of tracks such as Suburban Boy and Hot Crotch which he was later to record with Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs. In 1975, Dave went to London and wrot -
Maryrose Cuskelly
Maryrose Cuskelly is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
Buy books on Amazon
She is the best-selling author of The Cane (Allen & Uwin 2022), shortlisted for best debut in the 2023 Davitt Awards.
In 2019, her book Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards.
In 2016, she was awarded the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay on the 1972 abduction and murder of Marilyn Wallman.
She is the author of Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Scribe 2010) and The End of Charity: Time for Social Enterprise (Allen & Unwin 2008) co-written with Nic Frances, and winner of the Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.
Her -
Brooke Hardwick
ABOUT THE BOOK
Buy books on Amazon
In this spine-chilling gothic thriller, a woman on the brink travels to a remote writers’ retreat to uncover the secrets of her past and lands herself in a deadly situation that could destroy her future.
Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.
As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a serie