Money Power Love


Joss Sheldon - 2017
    As a result of their different upbringings, they spend their lives chasing three very different things: Money, power and love.This is a human story: A tale about people like ourselves, cajoled by the whimsy of circumstance, who find themselves performing the most beautiful acts as well as the most vulgar.This is a historical story: A tale set in the early 1800s, which shines a light on how bankers, with the power to create money out of nothing, were able to shape the world we live in today.And this is a love story: A tale about three men, who fall in love with the same woman, at the very same time…

Cry of the Taniwha


Des Hunt - 2009
    The empty eye sockets were scary enough . . .Matt Logan isn't looking forward to spending the school holidays with his grandmother and her new husband. He has to fly to Rotorua, where he doesn't know anybody, and he's a bit wary of his new step-grandfather. All Matt knows is that he's Maori and a bus driver.Along with his worries, Matt packs his pride and joy - a homemade metal detector, because, you never know, he might find something interesting.What he finds is Juzza, who lives over the back fence and wants to join a local gang. When the boys unearth a handcuffed skeleton, a chain of events begins to coil around them. together they are thrown into a deadly search for treasure when the local gang boss decides to exploit their find for himself.

Stonedogs


Craig Marriner - 2002
    A novel, which won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, to make you cringe and shudder, then wet yourself laughing. Its raw and scathing prose breaks new ground against the backdrop of a world-view as chilling as the nightly news. In between drug deals and binge-drinking, reckless driving and street fights, the delinquents of the Brotherhood wage the holiest of wars. Yes, they will derail the Juggernaut before it can suicide … or have a ball trying at least. But when one of them falls prey to Roto-Vegas gang members, the cultural terrorists mobilise in earnest. Revenge takes them on a road-trip - a coming of age from hell. It is a journey to the corners of a collective psyche peopled by nightmares as real as the headlines of today, a New Zealand the tourists and executives had better pray they never stumble upon. Alone and gut-shot, the Juggernaut closing in, the Brotherhood will rally for an audacious final stand, a last ditch fight for their minds and their lives … and perhaps for the future of us all.

The Rehearsal


Eleanor Catton - 2008
    When news spreads of a high school teacher's relationship with his underage student, participants and observers alike soon take part in an elaborate show of concern and dismay. But beneath the surface of the teenage girls' display, there simmers a new awareness of their own power. They obsessively examine the details of the affair with the curiosity, jealousy, and approbation native to any adolescent girl, under the watchful eye of their stern and enigmatic saxophone teacher, whose focus may not be as strictly on their upcoming recital as she implies.

State Highway One


Sam Coley - 2020
    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.

All Who Live On Islands


Rose Lu - 2019
    In these intimate and entertaining essays, Rose Lu takes us through personal history – a shopping trip with her Shanghai-born grandparents, her career in the Wellington tech industry, an epic hike through the Himalayas – to explore friendship, the weight of stories told and not told about diverse cultures, and the reverberations of our parents’ and grandparents’ choices. Frank and compassionate, Rose Lu’s stories illuminate the cultural and linguistic questions that migrants face, as well as what it is to be a young person living in 21st-century Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Good Doctor


Lance O'Sullivan - 2015
    After being expelled from two schools, Lance could have gone off the rails. Instead, he found his way at Hato Petera College, connecting with his Maori ancestry, and going on to study medicine. After a brief but outstanding career working as a GP in the public health system, Lance and his wife Tracy quit their day jobs to set up a ground-breaking practice in the Far North that offers free healthcare to the many who can't afford it.For his work, Lance has been acknowledged as a Sir Peter Blake Emerging Leader, Public Health Champion, Maori of the Year and, most recently, Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.Passionate, brave and free-thinking, Lance stood up when no one else would. The Good Doctor charts his inspirational, one-of-a-kind life story, while relaying an overarching hope for a better New Zealand.

Magpie Hall


Rachael King - 2009
    Grappling with her unfinished thesis on the Gothic Victorian novel and grieving the death of her beloved grandfather, she returns to Magpie Hall alone to collect her inheritance – her grandfather’s prized taxidermy collection, started by her great-great grandfather Henry Summers more than 100 years ago.However, his legacy extends beyond mere taxidermy and leads to a cabinet of Victorian curiosities; a proverbial ‘Pandora’s Box’. Will it explode the lid on the secret lives of Henry Summers and his wife, Dora, and throw a new light on her mysterious disappearance?Magpie Hall explores the fleshly taboo around class and tattoos in the Victorian era; the intimacy and atavistic nature of a marriage and contemporary relationships; the potentially obsessive/ compulsive behaviour of collecting flora, fauna (and other things) that can decimate native species and ruin lives.A modern-day ghost story with a twist, this is story- telling at its most visceral and sublime. Magpie Hall is a multi-layered story; a delectable Gothic novel inside a ghost story inside a Gothic novel.Rachael King brings a sharp, dark edge to this literary drama and a playfulness to the genre of the Gothic novel. She recalls the ghostly spirit of Wuthering Heights and evokes past and present-day New Zealand with intelligence and ease.

Hunter


Joy Cowley - 2004
     When fourteen-year-old Jordan and her younger brothers learn they'll have to ride a rickety plane home for the holidays, they're a little scared. But when it crashes on a wild and deserted peninsula in New Zealand, they are completely terrified. And injured. Worst of all, they're completely alone. Or are they? Whose voice is Jordan hearing telling her what to do next? Two hundred years ago, a hunter, Jordan's age, slave to Maori warriors hunting for the Moa bird, is in a dangerous spot, as well. He has the gift of sight, but what is the strange silvery bird that he sees crashing into the sea? And who is the girl with golden hair who is in trouble? He needs to escape the warriors, but he is driven to help the girl. If she will only listen. . . . In this suspenseful, captivating book, renowned author Joy Cowley brings two very different worlds together, giving us a rare glimpse at the remarkable human spirit that connects us all.

The Keeper of Secrets


Julie Thomas - 2011
    A family torn apart. A decision that could change everything.Berlin, 1939. Fourteen year old Simon Horowitz is awash in a world of music. His family owns a superb collection of instruments and at its heart is his father's 1742 Guarneri de Gesu violin. But all is lost when the Nazis march across Europe and Simon and his father and brother are sent to Dachau. Amid unimaginable cruelty and death, Simon finds kindness from an unexpected corner, and a chance to pick up a violin again and a chance to live.In the present day, orchestra conductor Rafael Gomez has seen much in his time on the world's stage, but he finds himself oddly inspired by the playing of an aspiring violin virtuoso, a fantastic talent who is only just fourteen. Then the boy, Daniel Horowitz, suddenly refuses to play another note, and Rafael knows he'll do anything he can to change that. When he learns the boy's family once owned a precious violin, believed to have been lost forever, Rafael thinks he might know exactly how to get Daniel playing again. In taking on the task he discovers a family story like no other that winds from World War II and Communist Russia all the way to Rafael's very own stage.

The Stakes


Ben Sanders - 2018
    The latest from Ben Sanders, following his novels American Blood and Marshall’s Law.Rip-offs are a dangerous game, but heist man Miles Keller thinks he’s found a good strategy: rob rich New York criminals and then retire early, before word’s out about his true identity. New town, new name, no worries. Retirement can’t come soon enough, though. The NYPD is investigating him for the shooting of a hitman named Jack Deen, who was targeting Lucy Gates—a former police informant and Miles’s ex-lover. Miles thinks shooting hitmen counts as altruism, but in any case a murder charge would make life difficult. He’s ready to go to ground, but then Nina Stone reappears in his life. Nina is a fellow heist professional and the estranged wife of LA crime boss Charles Stone. Miles last saw her five years ago, and since then her life has grown more complicated: her husband wants her back, and he’s dispatched his go-to gun thug to play repo man. Complicating matters is the fact that the gun thug in question is Bobby Deen, cousin of the dead Jack Deen—and Bobby wants vengeance. The stakes couldn’t be higher, but Nina has an offer that could be lucrative. Maybe Miles can stick around a while longer…

False Advertising


Dianne Blacklock - 2007
    She recycles, obeys the water restrictions, she is even polite to telemarketers. as a mother, wife, daughter and nurse, Helen is used to putting everyone's needs before her own. But it only takes one momentary lapse of concentration to shatter her life forever.There was no momentary lapse for Gemma. Her customary recklessness leaves her pregnant, alone and estranged from her family with her one-promising advertising career in tatters.So when Gemma barges unceremoniously into Helen's life, things will never be the same again for either of them. Two very different women who have one thing in common - their lives have fallen short of their expectations. But is fate offering them a second chance?

The Swimmers


Chloe Lane - 2020
    As Erin looks back at her twenty-six-year-old self, she can finally tell the story of the unimaginable task she faced one winter.

The New Zealand Wars / Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa


Vincent O'Malley - 2019
    Physical remnants or reminders from these conflicts and their aftermath can be found all over the country, whether in central Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, or in more rural locations such as Te Pōrere or Te Awamutu.

My Christmas Billionaire (The Billionaire Kings Book 7)


Serenity Woods - 2019
    But on the night that I finally plucked up courage to ask him back to my room, he turned me down. Okay, he didn't just turn me down; he crushed my very soul. That was a month ago, and now, at Christmastime, I’m traveling with my family to the Arctic Circle to celebrate Noah’s wedding. Because Stefan and I are the only two singletons left, I just know we’re going to end up sitting together on the plane and in restaurants. I can’t bear to be near him. It hurts too much. And then he tells me he has feelings for me. He says he can’t date me, but refuses to reveal why. He wants me; the heat in his eyes convinces me of that. But what can I possibly do about it in sub-zero temperatures? “That’s it,” Clio says. “We’re commencing Operation Polar Fling.” According to Clio, all men can be seduced. I guess we’re about to find out if she's right.