A young priest on the other side of the screen is shaken by what he learns. A former college athlete with an MBA from a prestigious university, Father Joe Russo is not your typical man of God. Nine years earlier, his own life took a tragic turn and he gave everything up, committing his life to the church. Now his peaceful existence is being tested, and he finds himself questioning the God he serves, the vows he made, and someone he left behind.In this gripping thriller, a priest and an FBI agent work to uncover secrets and expose hidden crimes, but when it seems they have it all figured out, everything they think they know will be questioned.

    Molly is dreading having to spend time with her mother, but she is pleased her son will see his cousins and is looking forward to catching up with her brothers . . . Joe in particular.Under the summer sun, family tensions intensify, relationships become heightened and Molly and Joe will not be the only ones with secrets that must be kept hidden.'No one must ever know.'

    We both looked after Sophie and her baby. We had to. It’s not like Sophie was going to look after that baby herself. All she was interested in was weeping and wailing for her dead husband. She was so busy weeping and wailing for her dead husband that she rejected his baby who was right in front of her.When Olga’s friend Lara becomes a grandmother, Olga helps out whenever she can. After all, it’s a big imposition on Lara, looking after her bereaved daughter and the baby. And the new mother is not exactly considerate.But smoldering beneath Olga’s sensible support and loving generosity is a deep jealous need to be the centre of Lara’s attention and affection—a need that soon becomes a consuming, dangerous and ultimately tragic obsession.Gigi Fenster’s A Good Winter is an enthralling psychological thriller, a dark and complex portrait of a troubled mind.

    She swallowed hard and looked out of her cabin window. The plane had just broken through a clump of clouds and below was an undulating patchwork of reds and greens. It was what she’d been expecting. The ruralness. Yet also different from the image she’d held in her head. The vastness. The intense terracotta colour. The relentless blue of the sky.’Greta Jellings blushes and bumbles her way through her carefully ordered existence, forever constrained by what her mother would have said and done. No expectation, no disappointment was one of her mother’s mantras. It serves Greta well too. It is the death of her dear friend Walter, and his unusual bequest, that finally forces Greta to escape the shackles of her safe life. Revealed in a series of letters, Walter has set Greta a challenge that leads her across the world, and so far outside her comfort zone, that she has no choice but to confront who she really is. It is in the foreignness of strangers that she finds the familiar, and in the expanse of the vista that she gains perspective.'Addressed to Greta' is a captivating novel about a woman learning to express her true self. A story about finding the courage to be seen, and a testament to the transformative power of friendship.

    And then there was the question of Simon Lampton.' Roza Hallwright leads a quiet, orderly life, working at her publishing job each day, returning home to the large, comfortable house she shares with her politician husband David and her two stepchildren. But this peaceful existence is about to be changed forever. In the next few months there will be an election, and, if the polls are correct, Roza will become the Prime Minister's wife. She has faced the prospect with relative calm, but a chance encounter with party donor Simon Lampton sparks a chain of consequences that will bring turmoil to both their lives. Award-winning writer Charlotte Grimshaw has turned her unflinching eye on contemporary New Zealand society in this intricate and elegant novel. Sharp, moving, brimming with insight and observation, The Night Book is at once a meditation on power and politics, and an intensely humane look at the choices people make as they struggle, against the odds, to maintain love and integrity in their lives.

    A sleepy bohemian neighbourhood.An ancient legend from the ancient past.A brilliant but troubled young writer.A voluptuous healer.A shadowy cult and its sinister leader.A trail of riddles; a hidden artefact.An explicit sex scene, then a struggle for ultimate power.And a final, unspeakable secret.Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley is a dark and hilarious odyssey through Wellington’s underbelly.

    A kidnapping. Escape.... University student Jemma Howell's life has turned upside down: she's pregnant and her boyfriend has just died. A lawyer has Jemma sign away the child to her dead boyfriend's parents, the wealthy Winchesters. Some six months after giving birth, Jemma is still obsessed with her baby's welfare. A chance opportunity occurs. She makes a split-second decision. She is now a kidnapper and on the run. Detective Constable Tim Findlay is assigned to the Winchester kidnapping, his first big case. In the course of the investigation, he and his partner uncover deeply hidden secrets of the Winchester family. For Tim, the difference between right and wrong becomes blurred. BYE BABY BUNTING is a page-turning psychological thriller that explores society's attitudes to single parenting and adoption and the laws that apply to birth-mother, child and adoptive parents. The story takes place in Auckland, New Zealand, Hawaii and Winnipeg, Canada between 1963 and the present.

    After her hippie British parents are murdered, Lilly is raised at a Sufi shrine in Morocco. As a young woman she goes on pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she teaches Qur'an to children and falls in love with an idealistic doctor. But even swathed in a traditional headscarf, Lilly can't escape being marked as a foreigner. Forced to flee Ethiopia for England, she must once again confront the riddle of who she is and where she belongs.

    By turns darkly comic and heartbreakingly sad, Sweetland is a deeply suspenseful story about one man's struggles against the forces of nature and the ruins of memory. For twelve generations, when the fish were plentiful and when they all-but disappeared, the inhabitants of this remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement, and each has been offered a generous compensation package to leave. But the money is offered with a proviso: everyone has to go; the government won't be responsible for one crazy coot who chooses to stay alone on an island.  That coot is Moses Sweetland. Motivated in part by a sense of history and belonging, haunted by memories of the short and lonely time he spent away from his home as a younger man, and concerned that his somewhat eccentric great-nephew will wilt on the mainland, Moses refuses to leave. But in the face of determined, sometimes violent, opposition from his family and his friends, Sweetland is eventually swayed to sign on to the government's plan. Then a tragic accident prompts him to fake his own death and stay on the deserted island. As he manages a desperately diminishing food supply, and battles against the ravages of weather, Sweetland finds himself in the company of the vibrant ghosts of the former islanders, whose porch lights still seem to turn on at night.

    Nineteen-year-old Irma lives in a rural Mennonite community in Mexico. She has already been cast out of her family for marrying a young Mexican ne'er-do-well she barely knows, although she remains close to her rebellious younger sister and yearns for the lost intimacy with her mother. With a husband who proves elusive and often absent, a punishing father, and a faith in God damaged beyond repair, Irma appears trapped in an untenable and desperate situation. When a celebrated Mexican filmmaker and his crew arrive from Mexico City to make a movie about the insular community in which she was raised, Irma is immediately drawn to the outsiders and is soon hired as a translator on the set. But her father, intractable and domineering, is determined to destroy the film and get rid of the interlopers. His action sets Irma on an irrevocable path toward something that feels like freedom. A novel of great humanity, written with dry wit, edgy humor, and emotional poignancy, Irma Voth is the powerful story of a young woman's quest to discover all that she may become in the unexpectedly rich and confounding world that lies beyond the stifling, observant community she knows.

    She's got lots of friends, and her boyfriend is the school hunk. She's being encouraged to 'take the relationship to the next stage' by her friend Lizzie.Home is pretty much a non-event. Her mother seems distracted, her father breezes in and out but isn't really present, her brother is a stoner. Her life is turned upside down when Dad announces that he wants them to live on an off-shore island for a year and work to make it into a conservation island. Minna is horrified at the idea, as is her mother. All the more so when they discover that the whole venture is to be made into a reality TV series.To her utter dismay, Minna finds herself on an island, with only her family for company. There's no phone or email contact with the outside world. The helicopter ride to the island has made Mum sick and she doesn't seem to be recovering. Minna has to cope with new family dynamics, come to terms with the fact that her parents' marriage is doomed, and has to learn domestic arts that don't rate very highly on her excitement meter.Can you find a new you?

    I want to go home. I want you to come with me.'I want to go from here . . .'Finger on Cape Reinga.'. . . to here.'Finger at the bottom of Stewart Island, right at the bottom of the map.It's been years since Alex was in New Zealand, and years since he spent any one-on-one time with his twin sister, Amy. When they lose their parents in a shock accident it seems like the perfect time to reconnect as siblings. To reconnect with this country they call 'home'.As they journey the length of State Highway One, they will scratch at wounds that have never healed - and Alex will be forced to reckon with what coming home really means.

    With an invisible monster you never know when you're in danger and when you're safe—if you retreat to your fortress you can't be sure you haven't locked it in with you. The invisible monster is something on which no one is an expert. But everyone has the same relationship to it. It could just as well be peering over your shoulder as mine.On a sunny spring morning the settlement of Kahukura in Tasman is suddenly overwhelmed by a mysterious mass insanity. A handful of survivors find themselves cut off from the world, and surrounded by the dead. As the group of try to take care of one another, and survive in ever more difficult circumstances, it becomes apparent that this isn't the first time that this has happened, and that they aren't all survivors and victims - two of them are something quite other. And, it seems, they are trapped with something. Something unseen is picking at the loose threads of their characters, corrupting, provoking, and haunting them.Wake is a book that asks: 'What are the last things left when the worst has happened?' It is a book about extreme events, ordinary people, heroic compassion—and invisible monsters.

    Following his dream of becoming a writer, he turns away from everything he knows, and enters adulthood embittered, angry, and resentful.As he struggles to make a name for himself, he is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. Although it requires a betrayal of his principles as an artist, he resigns himself to what appears to be fate. The writer’s compromise brings money and recognition, but these are fleeting and he soon finds himself caught in a web of depression and financial hardship. Desperate and sinking quickly, the writer begins taking trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he hopes to reconnect with his muse. During one of these excursions, he meets Nigel Moon, a grizzled fellow author nearing the end of his career. Moon gives the writer a second golden opportunity and the chance to prove himself in the face of personal doubts—but only if the writer is able to set his past aside.Equal parts witty and dark and wry and tragic, the text uses simplicity as its focus. Raw and honest, Becoming Moon is an unforgettable book about exorcising past demons and finding personal redemption.

    Without consulting her husband or knowing how she's going to pay for it, she makes the owners a full price offer. Despite a rough start in the new culture, Gille and her family eventually befriend their neighbors on callejon de Chepito and form a close bond with the Cordova clan. As their affection for the lively Mexican family grows, so do the complications of their cross-cultural relationship. When the oldest daughter seeks to cross the border illegally, the lives of the two families become inextricably entwined. The View from Casa Chepitos puts a human face on the immigration controversy and paints an intimate portrait of Mexican life. But the story also explores the deeper issues women of all ages and cultures face: affirming their self-worth and purpose, building enduring relationships, and discovering where it is they truly belong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------