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A Short History of New Zealand
Gordon McLauchlan - 1999
Accessible and simple - this is McLauchlan's 'personal' take on our history.
Fishing for Māui
Isa Pearl Ritchie - 2018
Valerie reads George Eliot to get to sleep – just to take her mind off worries over her patients, her children, their father and the next family dinner. Elena is so obsessed with health, traditional food, her pregnancy and her blog she doesn’t notice that her partner, Malcolm the ethicist, is getting himself into a moral dilemma of his own making. Evie wants to save the world one chicken at a time. Meanwhile her boyfriend, Michael is on a quest to reconnect with his Māori heritage and discover his own identity. Rosa is eight years old and lost in her own fantasy world, but she’s the only one who can tell something’s not right. Crisis has the power to bring this family together, but will it be too late?
Hand Me Down
Michelle Holman - 2011
April's spoilt-brat behaviour had never won her many friends, and her fast exit from town the night of her seventeenth birthday left more questions than answers. So it isn't too surprising that people get a kick out of seeing Daddy's little princess reduced to earning her keep as a kiss-o-gram girl in a red rubber dress. It seems everyone has a bone to pick with April, especially Tarn Elliott, whose reputation she unfairly ruined. Tarn has a score to settle. April has secrets she doesn't want to share. Can the good people of Pisa, and Tarn Elliott in particular, see beyond the petite wee blonde's wisecracks to the real April underneath?
Singing Home the Whale
Mandy Hager - 2014
After he discovers a young abandoned orca, his life is further thrown into chaos when he rallies to help protect it against hostile locals.The boy and the whale develop a special bond, linked by Will’s love of singing. With echoes of the classic book and film The Whale Rider, this is a strong, exciting and beautifully written story and a compelling exploration of many global concerns.
East in Eden
Izabela Shopova - 2009
I never perceived our life in New Zealand as exile and emigration as martyrdom, as it is the custom (and pretty much a patriotic obligation) in the Bulgarian cultural and literary tradition. Our life in Aotearoa was a challenge and a lifetime adventure, a love affair and a hilarious comedy (with just the tiny bit of drama) in a land, regarded by the rest of the world as the last Eden on Earth. This book is my humble attempt to tell the story of our hardship and joy, suffering and fun, the mundane and the extraordinary, the adventurous and the banal, that we faced during our six years in New Zealand. It is about the friends we found. The clichés we wrestled. The wonders we witnessed. The people we met. The lessons we learned. The country we reluctantly, but helplessly fell in love with. About Aotearoa - The Land Of The Long White Cloud. About New Zealand - at the end of the world.
A Mistake
Carl Shuker - 2019
But while operating on a young woman with life-threatening blood poisoning, something goes horribly wrong. In the midst of a new scheme to publicly report surgeons' performance, her colleagues begin to close ranks, and Elizabeth's life is thrown into disarray. Tough and abrasive, Elizabeth has survived and succeeded in this most demanding, palpably sexist field. But can she survive a single mistake?A Mistake is a page-turning procedural thriller about powerful women working in challenging spheres. The novel examines how a survivor who has successfully navigated years of a culture of casual sexism and machismo finds herself suddenly in the fight of her life. When a mistake is life-threatening, who should ultimately be held responsible?
Isle of Tears
Deborah Challinor - 2009
When armed conflict drives a wedge between Maori and Pakeha, not everyone can choose sides easily. For Isla McKinnon, the choices are bitter. Taken in by local Maori when her parents are brutally murdered, she has grown to womanhood and taken a Maori husband. In a thrilling tale of love and loss from the land wars - when simmering tensions between Maori and the encroaching Pakeha settlements exploded into bloody warfare - love and trust are put cruelly to the test. Separated from her husband and her family and restored to Auckland society, Isla must learn to survive in both worlds. Inevitably, she must decide between them, and lose part of her heart forever.
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.
My Brother's War
David Hill - 2012
William eagerly enlists for the army but his younger brother, Edmund, is a conscientious objector and refuses to fight. While William trains to be a soldier, Edmund is arrested. Both brothers will end up on the bloody battlefields of France, but their journeys there are very different. And what they experience at the front line will challenge the beliefs that led them there.
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.
Jake Bailey: What Cancer Taught Me
Jake Bailey - 2017
As he lay in hospital fighting to stay alive, his speech grabbed headlines around the world.Jake’s cancer, and that speech, became the start of a bigger journey that continues today. In this remarkably honest account of his illness, treatment and recovery, Jake shares all that the experience has taught him. His book is an uplifting call to action for people of all ages.
Kiwi Tracks
Andrew Stevenson - 1999
Andrew Stevenson explores the hiker's heaven of New Zealand's famed wilderness areas, and provides an illuminating and gently humorous view of his fellow back-packers.
Smith's Dream
C.K. Stead - 1971
In a right-wing coup one man, Volkner, has seized power in New Zealand and is using army and special police to maintain his government. Smith's Dream forces us to imagine such a situation and to ask ourselves: Where would you stand? How far would you go?
Moonlight Sonata
Eileen Merriman - 2019
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.'
One Night Out Stealing
Alan Duff - 1992
The ensuing events unfold with stark brutality amidst a seldom-seen New Zealand cityscape of littered streets reflected in rain puddles and crowded speeding highways and noisy smoke-filled bars, a world of inarticulate turmoil.