Aue by Becky Manawatu

$35.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction

Winner! of the Ockham NZ Book Awards - Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2020. Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father's. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father an d sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to another violent home. But Arama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there's aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters. Here is a novel that is both raw and sublime, a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction. Haere mai, Becky Manawatu. ...Show more

The Trowenna Sea by Witi Ihimaera

$55.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Hohepa Te Umuroa is with Te Rauparaha at the Wairau killings in the 1840s, and at Boulcotts Farm in the Hutt Valley when white settlers lose their lives. Convicted of insurrection, he and four companions are transported to the convict town of Hobart to serve their sentences. Ismay Glossop and her doctor husband Gower McKissock have also come to Tasmania, via Nelson, New Zealand. On Maria's Island near Hobart, their lives intersect with the five Maori, with unexpected consequences. Witi Ihimaera returns from rewriting his early books with this brand-new novel, a compelling historical drama that places one of New Zealand's master storytellers at the height of his powers. First published November 2009. ...Show more

For Reasons of their Own by Chris Stuart

$35.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction

Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee

$38.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction | Reading Level: near fine

Spanning the four seasons of a year, Necessary Secrets tells the story of Dennis (Den) Sparks and his three adult children. Starting with Den contemplating his mortality on the day of his 70th birthday, the year ahead is told from four different points of view. A searing picture of New Zealand society t oday, the family deals with love, loss, financial struggles, drugs, domestic violence, and all the issues that Kiwis deal with daily. As he has done in his plays and his screen-writing, McGee turns a spotlight on the relationships and social issues of New Zealanders while making for an entertaining read. ...Show more

Pearly Gates by Owen Marshall

$38.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction | Reading Level: near fine

Funny, intriguing, lyrical and ultimately moving, this entertaining and insightful novel from one of this country's best writers both skewers and celebrates small town New Zealand. Pat `Pearly' Gates has achieved a lot in his life and evinces considerable satisfaction in his achievements. He has a reput ation as a former Otago rugby player and believes he would have been an All Black but for sporting injuries. He runs a successful real-estate agency in a provincial South Island town, of which he is the second-term mayor. Popular, happily married, well established, he cuts an impressive figure, especially in his own eyes. But will his pride and complacency come before a fall? And if so, how will that come about? ...Show more

The Strength of Eggshells by Kirsty Powell

$30.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction

She’s six feet tall and handles a motorbike like a professional, but Kate has insecurities that match her height and she ignores her past by pushing her fingers into her ears. Why did her mother Jane only communicate through poetry? What became of her grandmother Meredith who travelled up the Wha nganui River on a paddle steamer to marry a returned soldier in an ill-fated valley, beyond the Bridge to Nowhere? And what should Kate do about her own two-pointed love triangle? Somewhere out there are the answers; out where only her motorbike can take her. The Strength of Eggshells explores the lives of strong rural New Zealanders, set against the fragile isolation of a farm upbringing, two world wars and a landscape that is inevitably slipping beyond reach. ...Show more

Gabriel's Bay by Catherine Robertson

$38.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction | Reading Level: very good

A heart-warming, thoroughly entertaining novel about a whole community.

White Lies, Maori Legends and Fairytales by Falstaff Dowling-Mitchell

$38.00 NZD

Category: Young Adult

For teens 13 years and over - White Lies, Maori Legends and Fairytales is a powerful, engaging story about a boy called Petera, and his best mate Hone, growing up in small town Aotearoa. The book is full of childhood antics and adventure - surfing the sand dunes, dreaming of being an All Black, doing an ything they can to stop a weirdo girl from joining their gang, and avoiding Wiremu, the school bully, who wants to smash their faces in any chance he gets! But meeting new people prompts the boys to ask questions about their world. What happened between Maori and Europeans over land all those years ago? Was it fair? What does it mean today? Why did there have to be a war where people died? Why did people sign the Treaty of Waitangi? How different are New Zealand Maori people, from New Zealand European people, and what do they think of each other now? The boys discover that not everyone views the world in the same way and that sometimes you have to fight for who you are in a world that seems to be changing around you. ...Show more

The Claim by David BRIGGS

$32.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction

When his father dies, leaving behind a legacy of debt and failed businesses, Evan Cadwallader is doubtful that the derelict cottage in the foothills of New Zealand's Southern Alps will provide a solution but decides to visit anyway. He falls in love with the simple property and its remote location and h e tends and repairs it, creating a still oasis away from the loose and shifting life he leads in the world outside. He retreats there every summer, prospecting for gold at the claim that has been left to him by a passing stranger. Out on his claim on a stormy night his dog goes missing, and, following her frantic barks through a devil of a storm, he finds himself on a gorge edge, halfway down his claim, looking at the body of a young woman.Addie is close to death but Evan carries her to his cottage, and as he nurses her back to health, gradually pieces together the story of her life. Evan is torn between his growing feelings for Addie and the pull of his claim but as the gold begins to flow, they draw ever closer to each other and for a few glorious weeks they thrive. However Evan returns to the cottage one day to find the place ransacked and Addie gone. Frantic with worry he reports the break in to the police and events spiral out of control. His faith falters and he begins to wonder how well he really knows this mysterious young woman, and whether love and truth have ever truly coexisted within this brief and intense affair. ...Show more

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

$30.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction | Reading Level: near fine

Now a major television series. Winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, a breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems.... It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. Eleanor Catton was only 22 when she wrote The Rehearsal, which Adam Ross in the New York Times Book Review praised as "a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel" and Joshua Ferris called "a mesmerizing, labyrinthine, intricately patterned and astonishingly original novel." The Luminaries amply confirms that early promise, and secures Catton''''s reputation as one of the most dazzling and inventive young writers at work today. ...Show more

Inangahua Gold by Kathleen Gallagher

$33.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Fiction

Crosstrees (Children of the Furnace #2) by Brin Murray

$26.00 NZD

Category: Young Adult | Series: Children of the Furnace

`What we won was a small battle,' says Jace flat. `They'll be coming, fore we can turn this into a war.' Wil and Leah saved Jace from the Revout's Fires - but find out now, that was just the beginning. The Revelayshun's soldiers are riding to hunt down the Midwife. Only she can lead them to Wil's siste r, and the Truth That Will Change Everything. While Revout Sachs secretly plans a cruelty so depraved, it will become known as the New Atrocity. Leah pulls away, and kisses me with soft lips, and whispers: `Ride, Wil. Save the Midwife.' And the world too, while I'm about it. ...Show more