Danger Awards 2025 shortlists announced

The BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Danger Awards.

Shortlisted titles in each category are:

Debut crime fiction

• What I Would Do to You (Georgia Harper, Vintage)
• Gus and the Missing Boy (Troy Hunter, Wakefield)
• A Town Called Treachery (Mitch Jennings, HarperCollins)
• All You Took from Me (Lisa Kenway, Transit Lounge)
• The Crag (Claire Sutherland, Affirm)

Crime fiction

• Shadow City (Natalie Conyer, Echo)
• Sanctuary (Garry Disher, Text)
• Bone Lands (Pip Fioretti, Affirm)
• High Wire (Candice Fox, Penguin)
• Joy Moody Is Out of Time (Kerryn Mayne, Bantam)
• Highway 13 (Fiona McFarlane, A&U)
• Pheasants Nest (Louise Milligan, A&U)
• The Dream (Iain Ryan, Ultimo)
• Girl Falling (Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan)
• Cutler (David Whish-Wilson, Fremantle)

Crime nonfiction

• In the Dead of Night (Greg Haddrick, A&U)
• Black Witness (Amy McQuire, UQP)
• The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop (Neil Mercer, A&U)
• Dark City (John Silvester, Macmillan)
• The Outback Court Reporter (Jamelle Wells, ABC Books).

Now in their eighth year, the Danger Awards aim ‘to honour books featuring Australia as a setting for stories about crime and justice’.

Winners are set to receive $1000 and a trophy, as well as an invitation to speak at next year’s BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival.

A people’s choice award winner will also be selected from the shortlists, with all four winners to be announced on 13 September.

More information about the awards is available on the festival website.

Category: Awards Local news