Kirjahaku

It's Pygmalion and Educating Rita Down Under. In 1975, the Communists captured Saigon. A family of six flee, with their youngest, Thanh, aged two. It's a terrifying escape on a tiny boat overloaded with desperate refugees. In Melbourne, Australia, English Literature teacher, David, introduces Shakespeare using the wit of Groucho Marx. David retires and hits a brick wall. Broke and alone, he rents a shoebox in Footscray surrounded by Vietnamese immigrants. His neighbour is the now 25-year-old Thanh who escaped decades ago. She only speaks Vietnamese. He offers to teach her English, or rather Elizabethan English, the language of Shakespeare. She rattles off verily, forsooth and skimble-skamble, my Lord. Their relationship develops. Has the young Vietnamese woman fallen for her senior Aussie teacher? With weird and wonderful family members interfering, can Thanh succeed? Will her love for David bring happiness? And will The Bard ever get the same recognition as Groucho Marx?

The Code of Monte ChristoJoanna Best is a brilliant homicide cop and a damn good criminal. She clashes with senior police and dangerous villains. But Jo isn't a criminal by choice. The only way to fix a family crisis is to break the law, and as she consorts with crims, she tries to solve a double homicide where her colleagues may have arrested the wrong guy. Juggling two jobs is deadly as her partner in crime and her Homicide boss both plan to knife her. So when a maniac tortures her family, Jo panics. Can she find a double homicide murderer? Is her career over? Will a loved family member be killed? And what on Earth is the Code of Monte Christo?

Some people ask to be murdered, like the journalist who researched a VIP paedophile ring. To kill the story you kill the writer. Someone did. Homicide detective Joanna Best has suspects galore but her favourite gets murdered. Now Jo Best is both a brilliant cop and a bloody good crim. She and a friend set up a scam to retrieve a small fortune pinched by two gangsters - the Brothers Crimm. Life gets interesting. The crims kidnap and torture, the top cop sets up a sting, and Jo's father gets arrested. Life wasn't meant to be easy. Whodunit with the two murders and what will Jo lose first--her career, a limb or her life?

A crowded playground is bursting with excited toddlers, their parents and grandparents. Four-year-old Candice disappears. How? Was she abducted? Did she wander off? Where is she? Joanna Best moves from Homicide to Serious Crime and finding little Candy consumes the city.Jo's secretive criminal life involves helping a young woman, the victim of revenge porn. A brute is on the warpath looking for Joe Best. Who? Candy's parents are at breaking point. They must be handled with sensitivity. At their home, Jo starts a brawl and is arrested. Can she ever stay out of trouble? And can she handle not one but three suitors? Candy isn't found and Homicide take over the case until Best saves her best for last.

She's the youngest and smartest Homicide detective in town. Jo Best is keen to solve two murders until she gets a phone call from France. Why would Jo and her crime-busting buddy take off for Paris? And what is happening with Jo's romantic entanglements? All this and more in the biggest Joanna Best mystery ever-Book 5 in the series.

How would you feel deciding if a loved one lives or dies? Or what if you and a loved one are kidnapped, and you alone can save them. Detective Senior Constable Joanna Best is drowning in life or death situations, while trying to solve two homicides where one murder weapon is a tree. Is there a bent copper in the squad? Has the Me Too movement surfaced in Melbourne? See how our vulnerable detective reacts to one stunning proposal. And what the heck is Mickey Spillane doing in Brunswick? All this and more as we discover the sins of the grandfather.

In A Plum Job, the brilliant and beautiful actress Louise Wellesley, a.k.a. Plum, joins the Secret Intelligence Service and arrives in Paris in the summer of 1939. While baring her breasts on stage at the Folies Berg re, war begins and soon the German army is marching up the Champs- lys es. The French Resistance think she's a collaborator, the police arrest her for murder, and the Gestapo fancy her body. She uncovers a British double-agent, and flees with a price on her head. In A Plum Jam, back in England, she joins ENSA (Every Night Something Awful) to entertain troops. Starring in a panto at Windsor Castle, she's snatched when the IRA kidnaps a royal princess. Still in her Cinderella costume, Plum fights back. Prime Minister Churchill demands she join the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Training is horrendous. Parachuted into southern France, she plays her toughest role from an enclosed Carmelite monastery. Sister Plum? Like Nancy Wake, she encounters randy Frenchmen, vicious Gestapo agents and double-crossing locals. Blowing up trains and killing Nazis is easy. But telling London there's a mole in the SOE HQ is damn tricky. Plum's in a right royal jam.

The Covid KillerAs the pandemic surges, Jo Best is between a rock and a hard place. To save a dear friend's reputation, Jo must punish her beloved grandfather. Some choice. Her unofficial partner, IT whiz Michael Chan, turns PI trying to help a young Australian born Chinese woman find the mother she never knew. Has Michael dumped the detective? The world is attacked by a virus, and some deluded killer actively spreads the disease. There's a new murder in a Melbourne creek, and a 32 year-old murder on a Queenscliff beach. Does Jo create a new world record by arresting a killer while together they fall off a roof? With her career at the crossroads, and an offer she finds intriguing, have we seen the last of Detective Joanna Best?This is Book 8 in the series The Detective Joanna Best Mysteries

Is Louise Wellesley insane? In 1940 she fled the Gestapo in Nazi-run Paris, escaping torture and death. In 1941 she parachuted into southern France and now everyone wants her head - the Vichy police, Gestapo, the Resistance, even the Catholic Church. She's captured and tortured but discovers a terrible secret. Special Operations Executive agents are being killed in France thanks to a traitor in the SOE headquarters in Baker Street, London. It could be anyone. Louise can't radio the fact because it may tip off the mole. To get back to England and expose the collaborator, she needs to escape from France on the Freedom Trail to Spain. That means climbing the mighty Pyrenees where enemy patrols, traitors, sheer drops and a raging river await. Her acting skills have never been so tested. How can she discover the SOE Judas? A Plum Jewel is Nancy Wake and Sherlock Holmes meets Louise Beatrice Wellesley aka Plum.

Jonathon Sweeping became Oliver Twist before Dickens was born. In a London slum, his young parents battled poverty, disease and heartache. Forget schooling. Shove the child up a chimney. Make young Sweeping a sweep. Threaten him, injure him but under no circumstances pay him. No wonder death and stealing dominated society when even children fronted the Old Bailey. What hope for the boy? Jonathon moved from prison hulk to convict ship to the other side of the world where Van Diemen's Land with its stunning natural beauty became a war zone. It was kill or be killed as genocide exploded. The boy became a man fighting injustice, cruelty and bushfires. He started a family and together they lived, loved and built a new nation in what became Tasmania. This is Jonathon Sweeping's sweeping saga.A novel about crime and punishment in Britain in the 19th century, transportation to the the British colonies, and the war between the Europeans and indigenous Australians. The aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, later Tasmania, were murdered, captured, forcibly moved, and eventually died.

Adolf Hitler invited the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for afternoon tea. World War Two roars over the horizon and George Miracle is desperate to leave the Royal Station. But why? His family love the village and Royal Station of Wolferton. War explodes, George leaves Norfolk taking a new job in the London Underground. The man who loved sunshine on main and branch line platforms is buried in the tunnels beneath Piccadilly. What, as a driver? No, George is running the entire British rail network as part of the Railway Executive Committee. Well, not on his own. Bombs fall on London destroying people, pets and places. George and Co. move millions of refugees, troops and tanks. Throw in spies and the IRA and life is never boring. He madly misses his amazing family, survives two world wars but the Battle of Beeching derails him. The massive destruction of trains, tracks, stations and jobs is too much for George as the hated Beeching axe swings hard. Grandpa George Miracle retires to fade away until a miraculous event pulls in right on time. It's a true miracle and a fabulous finale to the life of a railwayman who worked "on the rail" for 50+ years.