In 1959, unable to earn a living as a playwright in a country without a professional theatre, Bruce Mason presented, in fear and trembling, The End of the Golden Weather. Between 1959 and 1978, when illness forced his retirement from the stage, he performed it nearly 1000 times, in theatres, school halls, church halls and community ha.. More
Fourteen magnificent new stories from a New Zealand master.
O’Sullivan’s stories exhibit a shrewd understanding that pierces to the heart of what it means to be human. O’Sullivan can mock, satirise and laugh, but he also finds dignity in unexpected places. He is interested in the art of living, and in the borderland where t.. More
“the American people are on a need-to-know basis and the 37th state of Genison is not something they need to know” – Jack McCraeLuke Sawyer is an ex-slave and former Union soldier-turned-lawman. Along with his partner, Jack McCrae, Luke is tasked with finding Charles Lee Ringo – a maniacal cult leader with a loyal army of disgruntled former co.. More
Young Chjara Vallé, full of irrepressible music and sensuality, is exiled from Corsica — sold as a servant to an opium addict in Paris. Music paves the way for her to flee with Henry, her love, to New England. There the new freedoms and Puritan vigour vie for ascendancy. What will the Americans make of this throat-singing, glass har.. More
One night a child is admitted to the hospital, the victim of abuse.
But who made the anonymous phone call that caused the series of events that led to this tragedy? And why did they do it?
.. More
When the camera rolls who can tell what is movie script and what is real life? It is 1929 and few people are who they say they are when Hollywood on Tour comes to town to make a movie with a scattering of Stars plus throngs of star-struck locals. So when Hollywood on Tour collides with the innocent young local seamstresses of The Hollywood School o.. More
Karen was ready to spread her wings. She had broken her engagement a year ago and had been content to live at home with her mother since then, but now she was restless and ready to move on. That was when Wade asked her to partner him at his twenty-first birthday celebrations. She had no idea that this invitation was going to change her life forever.. More
The Ice Shelf: an eco-comedyOn the eve of flying to Antarctica to take up an arts fellowship, thirty-something Janice, recently separated, has a long night of remembrance, regret and realisation as she goes about the city looking for a friend to take care of her fridge while she’s away. En route she discards section after section of her manuscript .. More
The subject of Jack Ross’s latest book is amnesia. A man washes up alone on a beach with no memory of who or where he is; a woman finds him and takes him back to her house. He scans her library to find some clue to his past, his location. Could this strange new world be Atlantis? Jack Ross captures the disoriented state of his lead character in the.. More
The Intentions Book is a tender and funny novel about love and communication, and the ways our families shape us. Morris Goldberg is a man who can't cry. Semi-retired from his career as a metadata analyst, he lives alone and conducts imaginary conversations with his recently-deceased wife, Sadie. Then news arrives that his daughter Rachel is.. More
The 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. From June through July they faced one of toughest in the race’s history: 5,476 kilometres of unsealed roads on heavy, fixed-wheel bikes. They rode in darkness through mountains with no light and brakes like glass. They weren’t .. More
Philip Fetch is a lawyer with an office in a suburban shopping mall, a husband and father, and a cyclist on Wellington’s narrow and winding streets. He is also a man who increasingly finds simple things in life baffling. As he moves through the sometimes alarming and sometimes comical episodes of this novel, a break in the hurtling flow of.. More
1914, the waters of Whakaraupō ripple with tension of soldiers leaving for war…Jean Fraser, a nurse at the Lyttelton Casualty Ward, and Kaito Nimura, an idealistic navy Lieutenant, meet by chance. Caught up in the romance and patriotic fervour, Kaito promises enduring love with his most precious possession, a guardian stone made by his beloved gran.. More
Maurice, a small-town librarian, dies one Monday morning in a fiery car crash. Finding himself in a very unexpected afterlife, he befriends Kit, who knows more than he shouldabout Heaven – and about Maurice’s life on Earth.Meanwhile, Maurice’s daughter Andy struggles to come to terms with the death of her ineffectual father. Tasked with preparing h.. More
Eddie wins a national competition where she can spend a day with her local MP and give a speech in Parliament (where she'll meet the Prime Minister) but it's a prize Eddie doesn't want! When her dad is injured in a workplace accident he sets his sights on getting better for Eddie's day with the PM...so Eddie sets her sights on going through with it.. More
*** WINNER of the Man Booker Prize 2013 ***
‘There was this large world of rolling time and shifting spaces, and that small, stilled world of horror and unease – they fit inside each other, a sphere within a sphere.’
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the West Coast goldfields. On the night of his arrival, he .. More
In 2007 Bernadette Hall spent six months in Ireland, not far from Blarney, on the Rathcoola Fellowship. The poems in this collection arise from that experience.
With light-heartedness and daring, they track between dualities: the North and the South in Ireland; the rain-washed skies of Donoughmore, Co. Cork and the Queensland rainforest. Bet.. More