Bryce Courtenay, conspiracies and campfire cooking: the best Australian books out in August
Each month Guardian Australia editors and critics pick the upcoming titles they have devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on
What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in July
Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments
The stranger in a strange place is an enduring narrative in Australian fiction. But what if the crime scene is a whole continent?
In my new novel The Leap, there is no single mystery to solve, no killer to track down. Just deliberately forgotten truths about racism, massacres and hatred
The best recent crime and thrillers – roundup
Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson; Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson; The Good Liar by Denise Mina; The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun; Gunner by Alan Parks
A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan review – an immersive but imperfect coming-of-age mystery
Subject of a fierce bidding war, this charming debut shows Trevelyan has an impressive knack for character, but is let down by a predictable plot
Chris Hammer: ‘The suburbs can be delightfully sinister. The blandness is a great setting for crime books’
The novelist reflects on his trip along the drought-stricken Murray-Darling that prompted the leap into writing and how the Australian bush inspires his bestselling crime fiction
The best recent crime and thrillers – roundup
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates; A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor; Death of a Diplomat by Eliza Reid; Actually, I’m a Murderer by Terry Deary; Can You Solve the Murder? by Antony Johnston
The 10 best audiobooks for summer
To soundtrack those long, lazy afternoons try Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s torrid love affair, a real-life pirate of the Caribbean or Peter Dinklage as Hercule Poirot
The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz review – jazz age mystery packed with corpses and charisma
The actor’s first novel, set on (and sometimes narrated by) a luxury boat in 1925, swerves from cosy Christie homage into something far more brutal
Peter Lovesey obituary
Crime writer known for his ‘history-mystery’ series about the Victorian detective Sergeant Cribb
BBC harnesses AI to create writing classes given by Agatha Christie
Videos will share author’s tips on everything from story structure and plot twists to the art of suspense
‘You have to be taken inside Poirot’s brain’: Ken Ludwig on the secret to adapting Agatha Christie
The US playwright and anglophile behind much-revived comedies has a flair for crime and is following a crowd-pleasing Murder on the Orient Express with Death on the Nile
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty; All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman; This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen; The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie; Death and Other Occupations by Veronika Dapunt
Crime and thrillers of the month – review
A couple’s struggle to survive a serial killer, a prank that goes terribly wrong – and the hunt for an old friend who went missing in the woods
Anthony Horowitz: ‘I’m too nervous to reread The Lord of the Rings – it might reveal how jaded I’ve become’
The Alex Rider author on being put off Dickens for a decade, why he reads poetry in the mornings, and how reading Sherlock Holmes made him want to be a crime writer