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Landfall

A missing child. 
A city on edge.
Time is running out…

The world is in the grip of climate catastrophe. Sydney has been transformed by rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and rocketing social divide and unrest.
When a small girl on the margins goes missing, Senior Detective Sadiya Azad is assigned to find her. She knows exactly what it is to be displaced, and swallowed by the landscape. A murder at the site of the child’s disappearance suggests a connection and web of corruption, but fear keeps eyes turned and mouths closed. 
With few leads to go on and only days until a deadly storm strikes the city, Sadiya and offsider Detective Sergeant Paul Findlay find themselves locked in a race against time.
Chilling and utterly compelling, Landfall is crime writing at its best – and a terrifying vision of the future bearing down on us.

Published April 2025 by Penguin Random House Australia and Hodder & Stoughton UK.

Order a copy now (Australia/UK)

Praise for Landfall

“Propulsive.”
Sian Cain, The Guardian

“A bleak vision of our ecological future — and a brilliant police procedural. Bradley’s most commercial novel to date is one of the highlights of my reading year.”
Simon McDonald

“In Landfall, Bradley elevates the crime genre to portray a world where climate change has already landed and there’s no hiding from the consequences or the growing social divides. Absorbing, unsettling and masterfully written – Bradley’s vision of the future will stay with me for a long time.”
Sara Foster

“Landfall imagines a city at the fruition of the countless warnings we’ve ignored: shattered, exhausted and violent. Bradley’s heatwave and looming storm make for wild drama: they’re also what’s waiting for us, on all the evidence. This is a propulsive crime thriller, drawn from a deep understanding of our likely urban futures. James Bradley has found yet another way to smash our apathy.”
Jock Serong

“Landfall is a deeply moving thriller, with police officer Sadiya desperately searching for a missing child before a deadly storm hits Sydney. The flooded cityscape is unrecognisable, humanity teetering on the brink, its inhabitants haunted by memories of the world before. A devastating and heartbreaking portrait of a terrifying future world and the chinks of humanity left within it. Unmissable.”
Heather Critchlow