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Lisa Ellery

Hot Ground by Lisa Ellery

Hot Ground by Lisa Ellery

In stock in Australia. Express Post from SA today if you order before 1 pm ACST. Trade paperback. ISBN 9781760993191. Pages 400. On sale 2 Sep 2025.
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Rated ★★★★★ from over 100 orders

In Hot Ground, Lisa Ellery drops Detective Jessy Parkin into Kalgoorlie on a sweltering night when a mallet thuds into a marker peg and trouble ripples across the goldfields. A veteran prospector, Max Cochrane, vanishes; his daughter is frantic; Jessy is tasked with a search that keeps shifting underfoot. Ellery keeps the investigation rooted in police craft and mine-site detail while the desert’s heat, red dust and diesel hang in the air.

As Jessy digs, business interests, old loyalties and a century of buried stories crowd the case. The closer she gets, the tighter the outback closes ranks and her fragile restart in uniform teeters. Central tension: can Jessy find Max before money and history swallow the truth. I could taste fly grit and see the bitumen shimmer. Tropes: outback procedural, buried secrets.

What you are getting

  • Format: Trade paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • Publisher: Fremantle Press
  • Imprint: Fremantle Press
  • ISBN: 9781760993191
  • Publication date: 2 Sep 2025
  • Condition: New

Why this book matters

Ellery’s second novel brings real WA goldfields texture to a tight police search that blooms into a bigger mystery. It follows Jessy Parkin from Private Prosecution into a fresh setting, but it reads cleanly as a standalone. Grounded procedure, high heat and moral pressure deliver that tense rural-crime feel with a lawyer-author’s eye for process.

For readers who enjoyed

  • Jane Harper
  • Dervla McTiernan
  • Chris Hammer
  • Garry Disher
  • Sarah Bailey

Safe passage

Same-day dispatch before 1 pm ACST. Express Post with tracking. Packed to protect corners. Simple 30-day returns. Pickup available in Stansbury SA.

Quick answers

Is this in stock? Yes. Orders before 1 pm ACST ship today.
Is gift wrap available? Yes. Add a note at checkout.
Do I need to read the first book? No. This works as a standalone.

Blurb

In the middle of the night in a remote part of Western Australia’s goldfields, the thud of a mallet on a marker peg sets off a chain reaction that unearths secrets long buried.

Detective Jessy Parkin – sent to policing purgatory in the aftermath of a tainted investigation – is tasked with finding Max Cochrane, a veteran prospector who has vanished into thin air.

What begins with a concerned daughter’s plea for help soon burgeons into a mystery as shapeshifting as a desert mirage. Fortunes are being built on the back of Kalgoorlie’s coveted gold, but the truth might be the rarest find of all.

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