Book picks similar to
Ocean Roads by James George


fiction
nz
maori
author-new-zealand

I Am Radar


Reif Larsen - 2014
    The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy — with pitch-black skin — born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. "A childbirth is an explosion," the ancient physician says by way of explanation. "Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn't it?" I Am Radar begins with Radar's perplexing birth but rapidly explodes outward, carrying readers across the globe and throughout history, as well as to unknown regions where radio waves and subatomic particles dance to their own design, where a century of conflict and art unite in a mesmerizing narrative whole.Deep in arctic Norway, a cadre of Norwegian schoolteachers is imprisoned during the Second World War. Founding a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of recorded history for decades to come, these schoolteachers steal radioactive material from a hidden Nazi nuclear reactor and use it to stage a surreal art performance on a frozen coastline. This strange society appears again in the aftermath of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime, when another secret performance takes place but goes horrifically wrong. Echoes of this disaster can be heard during the Yugoslavian wars, when an avant-garde puppeteer finds himself trapped inside Belgrade while his brother serves in the genocidal militia that attacks Srebrenica. Decades later, in the war-torn Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the largest library in the world even as the country around him collapses. All of these stories are linked by Radar — now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands — who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents,and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane


Lisa See - 2017
    For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city. As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.

Into the Americas


Lance Morcan - 2015
    It was inspired by the diary entries of young English blacksmith John Jewitt during his time aboard the brigantine The Boston and also during his sojourn at Nootka Sound, on North America's western seaboard, from 1802 to 1805.Written by father-and-son writing team Lance & James Morcan (authors of The World Duology and The Orphan Trilogy), INTO THE AMERICAS is a tale of two vastly different cultures – Indigenous North American and European civilization – colliding head on. It is also a Romeo and Juliet story set in the wilderness.Nineteen year-old blacksmith John Jewitt is one of only two survivors after his crewmates clash with the fierce Mowachaht tribe in the Pacific Northwest. A life of slavery awaits John and his fellow survivor, a belligerent American sailmaker, in a village ruled by the iron fist of Maquina, the all-powerful chief. Desperate to taste freedom again, they make several doomed escape attempts over mountains and sea. Only their value to the tribe and John’s relationship with Maquina prevents their captors from killing them.As the seasons pass, John ‘goes Indian’ after falling in love with Eu-stochee, a beautiful maiden. This further alienates him from his fellow captive whose defiance leads to violent consequences. In the bloodshed that follows, John discovers another side to himself – a side he never knew existed and a side he detests. His desire to be reunited with the family and friends he left behind returns even stronger than before.The stakes rise when John learns Eu-stochee is pregnant. When a final opportunity to escape arises, he must choose between returning to civilization or staying with Eu-stochee and their newborn son.

Come Rain Or Shine


Susan Sallis - 1998
    Close friendships were forged as Natasha, Prudence, Rachel and Maisie worked together under the benevolent rule of the two Markham brothers. Now, in 1980, Natasha, newly divorced and back from America with a fifteen-year-old daughter, decides there must be a reunion. Pru, always the mysterious one, deeply involved with her commune in Cornwall, unexpectedly offers Prospect House, a property she has inherited in the Malvern hills where they may all forgather. Rachel, married to her former boss, a Liberal MP, gladly leaves a tangled domestic situation to join the friends she hasn't seen for so long. And Maisie ... Maisie, perhaps the most vulnerable of the four, mother of five children, married to the unpredictable Edward, fails to arrive at Prospect House. The drama of her disappearance has a far-reaching effect on the lives and destinies of them all. Come Rain or Shine is a poignant and unforgettable story of the particularly close friendships that women enjoy - and of the complications that can arise when friends meet again after many years have passed.

An Irishwoman's Tale


Patti Lacy - 2008
    It takes a crisis in her daughter's life -- and the encouragement of Sally, a plucky Southern transplant -- to propel Mary back to the rocky cliffs of her home in County Clare, Ireland.

The complete novels of Jane Austen


Jane Austen - 2016
    This book contains the complete novels of Jane Austen.- Lady Susan- Sense and Sensibility- Pride and Prejudice- Mansfield Park- Emma- Persuasion- Northanger Abbey- Love And Friendship And Other Early Works

Things I Learned At Art School


Megan Dunn - 2021
    Until now.Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn’s ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.From her single mother's love life to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance.Chapters include (but are not limited to): The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty: That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don’t Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist.

Middle Son


Deborah Iida - 1996
    Now, as an adult returning from Oahu to visit his ailing mother, Spencer is rediscovering what it means to be a middle son in a world where duty shapes destiny -- and where the ghosts of those long gone can haunt a man no matter how far from home he travels.

Dinner at Rose's


Danielle Hawkins - 2012
    Meanwhile, her new flatmate is a joyless couch potato who hogs the TV and is vigilant in her quest to prevent excessive electricity consumption. Life would seem a bit grim if not for Jo's eccentric honorary Aunty Rose, who lives up the valley with her pet piglet, four dogs and two sheep.Rose was a wise and infinitely patient friend to both Jo and her bona fide nephew, Matthew, while they were growing up. And when Rose is hit by illness Jo moves in to look after her, while Matt helps out as much as his farming duties allow. But illness aside, it's not long before the mischievous Rose is playing cupid.

Interred with Their Bones


Jennifer Lee Carrell - 2007
    Before she can reveal it to Kate, the Globe is burned to the ground and Roz is found dead--murdered in the strange manner of Hamlet's father.Inside the box, Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a deadly, high-stakes treasure hunt. From London to Harvard to the American West, Kate races to evade a killer and solve a tantalizing string of clues hidden in the words of Shakespeare, which may unlock one of history's greatest secrets. But Kate is not alone in this hunt, and the buried truth threatens to come at the ultimate cost.

There There


Tommy Orange - 2018
    Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

The Way to Rainy Mountain


N. Scott Momaday - 1969
    One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth."The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself." —From the new Preface

Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoir


Tom Scott - 2017
    Grant and Murray Ball, his travels to the ends of the earth with his close friend Ed Hillary, and more...

Sandstorm


James Rollins - 2004
    And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia... or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia.

The Sacketts Box 4 vols


Louis L'Amour - 1999
    Matriarch Em shows women as strong as men. They fight for justice with fast guns, smooth tongues, and hammer fists, against harsh nature - desert, hurricane - and villains. A nose for gold and weakness for ladies bring trouble.