Ned Kelly Awards Shortlist Announced

18 August 2025

The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest and most prestigious recognition honouring published crime fiction and true crime writing. We are proud to see a number of titles available from Ulverscroft on the shortlist. Further information on the shortlisted titles are below.

17 Years Later by J.P. Pomare
Available in Large Print, CD, MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook.
The violent slaughter of the Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation. Their young live-in chef, Bill Kareama, was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. But the brutal crime scarred the idyllic town of Cambridge forever.
Seventeen years later, true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott tracks down prison psychologist TK Phillips. Once a fierce campaigner for an appeal, TK now lives a quiet life with Bill's case firmly in his past. As Sloane lures a reluctant TK back into the fight, evidence emerges that casts new light on the Primroses - and who might have wanted them dead.
While the list of suspects grows, Bill's innocence is still far from assured. What will it cost Sloane and TK to uncover the truth?

Cold Truth by Ashley Kalagian-Blunt
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
When you can fake anything, how do you know what's real?
Harlow Close has made a career as an influencer uncovering the secrets of Winnipeg, dubbed 'North America's strangest city'. The region is renowned for its sub-zero temperatures, dropping to minus 40 degrees - sometimes for months at a time. Yet, it's not just the frigid winters and geographic seclusion that render Winnipeg peculiar.
When Harlow's father mysteriously disappears amidst a particularly brutal cold snap, suspicions of foul play arise. It's not like Scott to miss phone calls -and he's been even more cautious since that time he was catfished by a romance scammer. Unhappy with the pace of the police investigation, Harlow launches her own search, enlisting her sister Blaise's reluctant help.

As Harlow struggles to uncover what happened to her father, she's forced to question everyone and everything around her - including herself.

Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday people.
In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further - into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.
Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer's home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.
What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without putting the killers at the centre of the story?

Sanctuary by Garry Disher
Available in Large Print, CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
Grace is a thief - a good one. But she's always on the move, always looking over her shoulder, always alone. It's not the life she wants. Then a run-in with an old associate forces her to lie low in a small rural town, where she happens across an antiques shop. The owner Erin is timid but friendly, and has a granny flat to rent. And Grace glimpses a different life, and perhaps a home.
But there are dangerous men watching her, and Grace should know better than to let her guard slip. Because no matter how far she runs, her past is always just a few steps behind...

Shadow City by Natalie Conyer
Available in Large Print, CD, MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook.
Sydney, Australia: The body of a young woman is found in Chinatown. She's been beaten, tortured - and tattooed with the image of a sun. Called to the scene, Sergeant Jackie Rose asks herself whether this was a drug murder, or something else. But before her investigation can get underway, she is ordered to hand the case over to the Australian Federal Police.
Cape Town, South Africa: A local girl recruited to study in Australia has fallen off the radar. Veteran detective Schalk Lourens - recently suspended from duty - has already made plans to visit his daughter in Sydney, with emigration in mind. He decides to search for the missing girl while he is there.
Jackie and Schalk join forces, exposing a trail of corruption and crime stretching from the foreshore of the city's iconic harbour, back to South Africa, and across the world.

Storm Child by Michael Robotham
Available in Large Print, CD, MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook.
The most painful of Evie Cormac's memories have been locked away, ever since she was held prisoner as a child - a child whose rescue captured hearts and headlines. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven's mission is to guide her to something near normality. But today, on a Lincolnshire beach, seventeen bodies wash up in front of them. There is only one survivor, with two women still missing. And Evie's nightmares come roaring back... Whatever happened all those years ago lies at the core of this new tragedy. Because these deaths are no accident. The same dark forces are reaching out, dragging her back into the storm. Evie must now call upon Cyrus's unique skills, and her own, in their search for the missing pieces of this complex and haunting puzzle. But will that be enough to save them? And who will pay for the past?

Unbury The Dead by Fiona Hardy
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
They Messed with the Wrong Women
Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it's not as simple as cleaning up.
Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while Alice's mission is to drive one of Australia's richest men along Victoria's east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he's dead. But when a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, Teddy and Alice turn the tables on their wealthy employers to shake out the truth.
Unbury the Dead is a superbly fresh and pacey high-stakes drama with two irresistible heroines.

Best True Crime
The Kingpin And The Crooked Cop by Neil Mercer
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
The life and crimes of our most corrupt policeman and most notorious gangster featuring astonishing new evidence.
Roger Rogerson captured Australia's attention as its most notorious cop in the golden age of graft and violence. But who was the real Rogerson? And who was his principal partner in crime, the underworld kingpin, heroin dealer and armed bandit Arthur 'Neddy' Smith? Now Rogerson and Smith are both dead, and the full truth can be revealed.
Roger and Neddy have fascinated the public for decades. Our most decorated yet crooked police officer and the murderous drug importer he protected and enabled led interwoven careers that were truly stranger than fiction. Their crimes were committed against a backdrop of a changing Australia, as the nation's social fabric adapted to a more global world, and money - and drugs - poured into the country. Police, judges and even the media were up for sale, and Rogerson and Smith were the princes in this glamourous but bloody kingdom.
But as Roger and Neddy grew ever richer and more powerful, their crimes became too brazen, too violent and too public, leading to their spectacular downfall, years in court and life in prison. Crime reporter Neil Mercer knew Roger and Neddy since early 1980s, when the men were at the height of their powers. He followed their careers for major news outlets, met with them and was given exclusive interviews and insider information. Rogerson even wrote to him from jail. With key witnesses finally coming forward, Mercer has uncovered astonishing new evidence that will rewrite the story of the Australian underworld.
The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop is the definitive account of Roger and Neddy, and the era that made them. As compelling as any crime novel, it is filled with colour, violence and inside stories not seen or read before.

The Lasting Harm by Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
The explosive, behind-the-scenes account of the criminal trial of the century.
I understand and sympathise with the feeling you might have that you already know the Jeffrey Epstein story. But I am not here to tell you a story about Jeffrey Epstein, or even Ghislaine Maxwell. I am here to tell you the stories of ten women, many of whom have never spoken at length before, about the real impact of sexual trauma on their lives.'
In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors and now faces 55 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day.
The Lasting Harm is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome. Centring the stories of four women and their testimonies and supplemented by extra material to which Osborne-Crowley has exclusive access, The Lasting Harm brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice.

They’ll Never Hold Me by Michael Adams
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
In 1959, Australians thrilled to every move made by a new criminal underdog, a Ned Kelly for the rock 'n' roll era.
Kevin John Simmonds was a charismatic crook whose brazen crime spree had scored him a lengthy prison sentence. But as he was led from court, he boasted, 'They'll never hold me.'
Two months later, Simmo made good on his promise, staging a daring escape from Long Bay Gaol. When his bid for freedom took a deadly turn, legendary Detective Ray 'the Gunner' Kelly took charge of the search, putting the fugitive in the crosshairs of the biggest armed manhunt in Australian history.
They'll Never Hold Me is the true story of an antihero with a code of honour who captured the public's hearts and minds even as he enraged the cops and the establishment. Brilliantly researched and written by Michael Adams, of the Forgotten Australia podcast, this never-before-told tale takes us beyond the public adventures that made Simmo into Public Enemy No. 1 to reveal the haunting tragedies he was trying to outrun and the terrible fate that even he might not escape.

Best International Crime Fiction
Home Truths by Charity Norman
Available in CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
Livia Denby is on trial for attempted murder. The jury have reached a verdict.
Two years earlier, Livia was a probation officer in Yorkshire, her husband Scott a teacher. Their children, Heidi and Noah, round out a happy family until the day Scott's brother dies.
Grief and guilt leave Scott seeking answers, a search which takes him into the world of conspiracy theories. As his grip on reality slides, he makes a decision which will put the family on a collision course with tragedy.
Livia's family has been torn apart, and now her son's life is hanging in the balance. Just how far will she go to save the ones she loves?

Leave The Girls Behind by Jacqueline Bublitz
Available in Large Print, CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender - and an amateur detective who just can't stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can't help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.
Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women, one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl - and to her childhood friend, all those years ago.

Return To Blood by Michael Bennett
Available in Large Print, CD and MP3 CD audiobook.
Hana Westerman has left Auckland and her career as a detective behind her. Settled in a quiet coastal town, all she wants is a fresh start.
The discovery of a skeleton in the dunes near her house changes everything. The remains are those of a young M?ori woman who went missing four years before, and Hana has a connection to the case. Twenty-one years ago, a schoolmate of hers was found buried in the exact same spot. Her killer died in prison, but did the police get the wrong man? And if he was innocent, then why did he confess?
No longer part of the CIB, Hana turns to her ex-husband Jaye, a high-flying Detective Inspector, for help. But when she is cut out of the investigation, she realises that she will have to find the answers she needs on her own.

The Waiting by Michael Connelly
Available in Large Print.
Renee Ballard and the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit find a DNA connection between a recently arrested man, and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The detainee's father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror. However, when they move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets.
Ballard's badge, gun, and ID are stolen - a theft she can't report without giving her enemies in the department the ammunition they need to end her career. She has no choice but to go outside the department for help, which leads her to the door of Harry Bosch.
Meanwhile, Bosch's daughter Maddie wants to supplement her work as a patrol officer by investigating cold cases with Ballard. But Renee soon learns that Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city's library of lost souls.