New Zealand Fiction, Songs, and Drama

(For poetry check out this link)

All Done With Mirrors by Russell Haley. ISBN 1-877161-68-3. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Step right up. Step right up. Here’s a story I haven’t told anyone before. It’s called ‘Find the Lady’. The story is Tilly Katterfelto’s. In her fifties, now living in Dunedin, she is also a traveler to many other destinations, the descendent of a stage magician, a tiny piece of whose skin she carries with her always. Courageous, funny, irritating but also disarmingly aware of her faults, Tilly is at once eccentrically unique and a kind of Everywoman. Talking to her friend, Tilly reveals her present life, her past. She details her obsession with the young Stella and her friendships with older women. Tilly peels back the layers of disguise and subterfuge that we rely on, eventually reaching an understanding and acceptance. Soft cover, 283 pages. Published in 2001.

Anno Domini 2000 or Woman's Destiny by Julius Vogel. ISBN 0824825012. Published by University of Hawai'i Press. Recommended retail price $14.95

Before women even got the vote, this novel prophesied women presidents, prime ministers and leaders of opposition. Before the Wright brothers flew it predicted global air travel. Before the Labour Party, it advocated social welfare and subsidised housing, and before the computer and e-mail it foresaw a "noiseless telegraph". With Britain's Empire rampant and Home Rule in ruins, it anticipated a prosperous independent Ireland and attempted secession by Australia. As prophecy, Julius Vogel's 2000 came nearer the mark than George Orwell's 1984, says Roger Robinson's informative critical introduction to this edition.

In the colourful tradition of sensation theatre and popular fiction of its day, Anno Domini 2000 is a story of royalty, love, heroism and villainy. It sets scenes of passion, treachery, abduction and a duel to the death against a background of international politics, technological invention and high tech warfare. All this from an ex-New Zealand Prime Minister! Sir Julius Vogel was prime minister of New Zealand from 1873-75 and again in 1876. Soft cover, 184 pages. Published in 2002 (first published in 1889).

Antipodean Tales: Stories from the dark side edited by Stephen Cain. Published by IPL Transpress. ISBN 0908876955. Recommended retail price $12.95.

... the house in the alps that is not quite what it seems...
... the weight loss program with results no-one expected...
... a disturbing dream from a past era that comes real...

Enter the world of the macabre, the supernatural and black humor in 23 absorbing original short stories from New Zealand's leading and emerging writers, including:

¨ Mike Johnson
¨ Craig Harrison
¨ Vivienne Plumb
¨ Peter Friend
¨ Patrick Hudson
¨ Lyn McConchie

Soft cover, 184 pages.

Bag Lady's Picnic,The and other stories by Frankie McMillan. ISBN 1877251097. Published by Shoal Bay Press. Recommended retail price $24.95.

This first collection introduces the work of an exciting new writer on the New Zealand literary scene.

Meet the Marshmallow Queen, the heroine of the collection's major story, whose wry resilience in the face of outrageous fortune arouses a rich mixture of compassion and laughter; Kenny, the support worker whose 'boundaries' became blurred; and many others - often battlers, loners or society's casualties - whose quiet stories will linger in the memory long after you've put down the book.
Two of Frankie's mentors have had this to say about her work:

Her writing is sharp, true, irreverent and compassionate. In this collection the author presents a world
slightly off center. People and lifestyles peripheral in more conventional middle class writing, here are mid-stage and well lit." -- Owen Marshall

"She offers a language of poignancy and humor, with flushes of something darker. Some [stories] are dramatic monologues; each partly reveals, partly conceals a situation ... both piercingly touching and engagingly comic." -- Harry Ricketts

Soft cover, 127 pages. Published in 2001.

Beginner’s Guide to the Treaty of Waitangi, The by Tony Veitch. Published by Horizon Press. ISBN 0958212627. Recommended retail price $19.95.

The Beginner’s Guide to the Treaty of Waitangi takes the reader back to the early years of European settlement in New Zealand, and offers, in a very light-hearted and entertaining way, an alternative account of how the Treaty came to be signed.

It is a delightfully amusing tale, woven around one of New Zealand’s most significant historical events, which will appeal to adult readers of all ages. Soft cover, 85 pages. Published in 1999.

Black Rainbow by Albert Wendt. Published by University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-1586-6. Recommended retail price $12.95.

This startling novel by Albert Wendt takes the form of a fast-moving allegorical thriller. Who are the all-powerful Tribunal and President? Who are the Hunters and the Hunted, and the allies from the depths of the city? Set in a future New Zealand where only the Citizen who asks no questions can achieve happiness, a renegade hero seeks to rescue his family in the State-sponsored Game of Life.

"Gripping and persuasive ...What looks on the surface like a gentle simplicity of style shows itself as the deft and sometimes opaque mastery of language that makes Wendt a major writer...A fascinating novel, deceptively simple in its appearance and continuously challenging, both as an adventure story and a futuristic allegory." --Dominion Sunday Times.

Soft cover, 272 pp. Published in 1995.

Blind Obedience by Beth Homes. ISBN 0958235104. Published by Horizon Press. Recommended retail price $21.95.

Blind Obedience transorts the reader to a world far away, where a man and a young girl have embarked on a long jurney. Rejected by the powerful brotherhood, Cirdien has viwed to exact a devastating revenge with the aid of an unlikely accomplice - a blind and mute young girl.

Can Cirdien avoid those who would punish him for his dark past, while training Ginta for the dangerous task she must perform at their equatorial destination?

More than a tale of triumph over adversity and the intricacies of human relationships, this grippng, yet deeply thought-provoking, story will appeal to readers of all ages. Soft cover, 227 pages. Published in 2002.

In the late 1820s, Lizzie Dawson, only sixteen, was forced to be the child bride of a notorious whaler in the remote Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand. There began a living hell. Until she met Matthew – a young Maori preacher – and with love came defiance.

Flash forward to today. Bel, also sixteen, is sent to a remote farm in the Sounds. Her parents are in the throes of divorce and Bel’s turbulent thoughts attract an uneasy force.

‘At last,’ says a voice in my head. ‘You’re here.’ And I know without a doubt that Lizzie has come for me, and me alone.

Lizzie has an urgent story to tell. Past events drive her to reach across time, across worlds.

This is an extraordinary first novel. Lorraine Orman evokes the nineteenth-century whalers’ lives as vividly as the contemporary story. Cross Tides sweeps you into its double world with eerie, irresistible power. Soft cover, 227 pages. Published in 2004.

Day of Grass by Peter Dornauf. Published by Hazard Press. ISBN 1877315079. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Eason Vercoe is an idealistic eighteen-year-old, a farm boy who becomes an undergraduate at a local university. Having bought himself a motorbike he sets off to find knowledge, but shy and unworldly Eason finds only loneliness… until his view of the world suddenly changed by the words of Plato.

A coming-of-age story, Day of Grass confronts the issues of life and death in a secular age, while at the same time singing a hymn to the pastoral beauty of tree-lined fields, hedges, haystacks, sheds, cattle and the cricket-humming grass.

Set in the sixties, it plays off against a background of political and social change in a New Zealand setting, where town and country also compete for the soul of an embattled young man.

Peter Dornauf lives, writes and paints in Hamilton, where he also teaches art history. Soft cover, 164 pages. Published in 2003.

Don’t Panic: Head for the Hills – New Zealand Short Stories by Glenis Jacobs. Published by Horizon Press. ISBN 0958235112. Recommended retail price $24.95.

Don’t Panic: Head for the Hills is a fascinating and diverse collection of short stories reflecting many aspects of life in New Zealand. Glenis Jacobs has drawn enthusiastically from her story-telling family and community background on New Zealand’s West Coast, and from her varied working experiences, to create entirely life-like characters and situations that every reader will readily relate to.

The stories touch on aspects of humanity and the world around us – contrasting the beauty of our natural world with the powerful forces of nature, and spanning the full range of human emotions and experiences, from love, joy, happiness and adventure to fear, danger, loneliness and anger.

Watch your back! A keen observer of the nuances of the world about her is let loose. She has the ability and shrewdness to weave these observations into a collectin of original short stories. A guarantee that at least one of these will hit home, tug at your heart, teach you a lesson, or frighten hell out of you. Read and enjoy. Richly inventive, this book marks the debut of a remarkable new talent – Audrey Fenton

Soft cover, 250 pages. Published in 2003.

 Dread by Stephen Sinclair. ISBN 0473067692.  Published by Addenda Books. Recommended retail price $9.98.

No beer, no dak, no hope…

The classic Kiwi road trip gone horribly wrong, DREAD follows the progress of Morton, Wes and Dean through small town New Zealand into the back of beyond. After falling foul of a local gang and ditching their ride, these low-lifes discover you can’t always rely on your mates.

Darkly funny and often disturbing, DREAD is a gripping read from the moment you get into their stolen car…

… you can’t get any more lost than this!

One of New Zealand’s most successful playwrights, Stephen Sinclair is co-author of the hit comedies “Ladies’ Night” and “The Sex Fiend.” Of his play “Caramel Cream” NZ Listener reviewer Dennis Welch wrote that Stephen is a writer who “…not only has a gift for comedy but also can tackle complex moral issues with uncompromising toughness.”

Stephen has worked on the feature films “Braindead,” “Meet the Feebles,” and the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy. His children’s novel Thief of Colours was published in 1995, DREAD is his first adult novel. Soft cover, 179 pages. Published in Dec 2000.

For a Fee of 2 Shillings by Faye Whittaker. Published by Dancing Lion Press. ISBN 13-978-1456578398. Recommended retail price $ 19.95.

Fate weaves its tricky threads amongst the garment of intrigue and mystery shrouding Miri, a beautiful young Maori woman. Her attempt to materialise her childhood obsession and fantasy to be other than she is, only serves to create a mantle of despair to hover over her life. Her choices, and her mistakes, impact upon her children's lives as well as those she unwittingly influences.

These adults are confronted by their own personal weaknesses, and they are given cause to examine their religious and spiritual beliefs, their family relationships, as well as the cultural expectations, bigotry and prejudice, accepted as the norm within pre and post World War II New Zealand society.

Faye Whittaker was born and raised under the shadow of Mount Taranaki, in a province of (Aotearoa) New Zealand renowned for dairy farming. This story, Faye's first novel, is taken from her life experience of the small, seemingly close-knit, service communities that have spring up around the apron of farms that extend from the base of the mountain out to the coast.

The setting she has chosen for this historical tale is a fictitious coastal township, where the mainstays are the church, the adjacent marae (Maori village) and the pub.

Soft cover, 290 pages. Published in 2011.

From Freyberg by Bill Edginton. National Pacific Press.  ISBN 1877368024. Recommended retail price $17.95

From Freyberg is a contemporary novel about relationships – about sexual passion and, by contrast, the calmer yet often complex flow of ongoing relationships.  It focuses on the decline into staleness of the relationship between Craig and Paul, two men who have been together for ten years.  Craig gets a jump start from an unexpected affair, and finds himself forced to analyze the relationship he has had with Paul.  This brings tensions to the lives of all three characters, who face questions about the meaning of gay relationships, and what they can learn from the lives of other people they meet.

From Freyberg also examines many broader themes about being gay in a heterosexual world – the environment of legal and social prejudice in which both Craig and Paul grew up, the more liberal attitudes they subsequently experience, the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic, Craig’s longstanding involvement in the Presbyterian Church, and the relationships of each of the central characters with their own biological family members.

Many readers will relate to the story of From Freyberg.  For gay men, it speaks to the experiences we have all had – the choices we have made and the responsibilities we have taken upon ourselves as we chart our various courses through our changing relationships and changing nation.
– Assoc. Prof. Witi Ihimaera

In an absorbing gay first novel about a relationship disrupted by an affair, Bill Edginton’s characters are pulled by commitment and passion, security and excitement, companionship and sexual fulfillment.  These men seek the good life, each driven by a different combination from the gamut of human needs – work, sex, affection, family, health, compassion, partnership, religion, art, community, friendship.

Bill Logan, gay rights campaigner and celebrant

Bill Edginton was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1938.  He graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master’s degree in Russian.  His early career was in the former Department of External Affairs where he had postings in Geneva and London.  Participation in a UNESCO General Conference in Paris led him to a position with the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO.  He worked generally in the field of international education and became Manager for International Education in the New Zealand Ministry of Education.

Bill Edginton came out as a gay man in the seventies.  He was drawn into political activism in the gay and lesbian movement through gay service groups.  This was primarily for law reform leading to the legislation enacted in New Zealand in 1986. At the same time, he became involved in an AIDS support network which was formed in Wellington in response to the developing AIDS pandemic.  He had a background as a layman in the Church and engaged in political activism there also, a role which necessarily continued well past the secular reform achieved in 1986. Published in 2004. Soft cover, 205 pages.

Glitch In Time, A by Peter Durney. National Pacific Press. ISBN 0958244820. Recommended retail price $24.95.

A wealthy recluse invites some friends for a visit, and sends his helicopter to transport them to his home.  The visitors are puzzled by the strange behavior of the helicopter pilot, and it transpires that this man claims to have been one of a group of people who have undergone a time-travel experience.  As he relates his adventures, it appears there is a historical record of this episode.  The time-traveler is, in fact, the subject of Ezekiel’s famous vision of “wheels within wheels” from biblical times.

The pilot’s story also includes other recorded incidents from ancient Babylon, in which real people appear to have emerged from the future with 20th century knowledge and technology.  Throughout the telling of the story there is reaction from the recluse and his friends – how did one of the time-travelers return to the present to tell his story?  This question is answered in a dramatic and tragic way, which also explains some of the strange behavior of the helicopter pilot in the earlier part of the story.

Peter Durney offers such vivid descriptions of people and places that readers can easily imagine themselves in a room with the main characters.  A deeply thought-provoking story laced with wry humor, A Glitch in Time inspires belief in a seemingly impossible phenomenon.  – Andrew Taylor, Principal, Opotiki College (1993 – 2002)

Science fiction. Soft cover, 225 pages. Published in 2003.

Gold in the Creek; a Dinkum Kiwi Farce by David McGill. Published by Silver Owl Press. ISBN 0959797955. Recommended retail price $16.95.

Gold is discovered in the Kotuku Creek. It could be too late. Restructuring has closed the post office. The petrol pumps have been pulled, the store is barely stocked, the pub is struggling. Can gold help ex-postmaster Jack Cavanagh unify the villagers and the retirement condo snobs to save the last vestige of village life, the bowling club? Is gold relevant to the Reverend Woodcock's battle to untie his tongue and woo Cathy Cavanagh and repel the widow Atkins? Has former boxer-turned-publican Bert Brough got any reason to smile at this whole new raft of gold-seeking riffraff ogling his spectacular wife? The answers beg new questions provoked by drug entrepreneur Bob Rogers defending his local cash crop.

This Kiwi farce rattles along at a pace literally breakneck for some characters. More disorder is visited upon this law-less backwater than Muldoon ever had a long baton shaken at. Its best chance is a born-again Grey Power initiative that could be a model for marginal rural villages monstered by Rogernomics .Soft cover, 256 pages. Published in 1996.

Hawks by Andrew Grant. Published by Shoal Bay Press. ISBN 0908704798. Recommended retail price $12.95.

Hawks is a tale of New Zealand's wild south-west, set during the early years of the venison recovery industry. This was a time when the cowboys rode choppers instead of horses and used semi-automatic weapons, not six guns. They lived, worked and sometimes dies in the most rugged and spectacular corner of this country - the vast Fiordland wilderness.

Hawks is a fictional tale but the fast action depicted here might very well have happened. It is the story of Gray, an enigmatic young man running from his past and the horrors of the Vietnam war. He returns to New Zealand's southern lands to find himself in a war of a very different kind - a dangerous war for the highest profits, set against some of the most inhospitable country in the world.

With the deadly skills he learned in the SAS, Gray becomes the top gun, the man every chopper pilot wants in the shooter's seat on his machine as the competition gets fiercer and men begin to take increasingly desperate risks. Some make mistakes and some die. Others are killed apparently having made no mistakes at all.

Gray's story encompasses life and death as well as love. Unashamedly robust, Hawks tells it like it really was, or could have been, as greed and jealousy and a woman named Mary combine in an explosive finale. Paddy thought this was a brilliant book ... tough, gritty and true to life. Highly recommended. Soft cover, 280 pages. Published in 1998.

Heart of the Volcano by Michael Morrissey. Addenda Books. ISBN 0473068443. Recommended retail price $10.

‘The moon was swallowed up in a faceless rush of cloud, the cold increasing. If he did not reach the top he had failed, he did not love her. The top of the mountain was to be his turning point. When he reached that he would turn back for home and for Helen. But would he reach the top?’

Grant, an expat New Zealander, is wandering through Guatemala when he meets Suloski, a Jewish-American painter. Across Lake Atitlan, where he has watched a young German woman swim naked, lies a conical mountain. He agrees to climb it with Suloski, together with Birgot, who regards Grant as an intruder, and Juan, a quasi-mystical Spaniard who has written a book on UFOs. Will Birgot’s attitude change? Juan offers peyote as their food and water run out. Grant thinks of Helen, his partner back in Auckland. Is their love intact? A jaguar is after his heart and the guerrillas are after his boots. Can he survive the volcano?

‘Vintage Morrissey ; muscular, tense, sexy, scary. The dialogue is – as ever – brilliant. It’s a very good story, well told. The ending is terrific.’ – Bernard Brown

Michael Morrissey lives and writes in Auckland and teaches short story writing. He was the first writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury in 1979 and the first New Zealander on the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1985. Author of over eighty short stories he has published nine books of poetry and edited two important anthologies: The New Fiction, 1985, and The Flamingo Anthology of New Zealand Short Stories, 2000. Heart of the Volcano is his fourth book of fiction. Soft cover, 92 pages. Published in 2000.

Hobsons’ Chance by Jenny Haworth. Published by Hazard Press. ISBN 1877270423. Recommended retail price $12.95.

Chance events may bring fame or obscurity, fortune or impoverishment. For some, the outcome is less clear-cut.

Traveling in England in 1830 with her brother, Captain William Hobson, Anita Hobson is desperate and in love. She has been torn from her Irish homeland by family fearful that she will be implicated in the actions of her fiancé, Irish nationalist and convicted murderer, Dr. Seamus O’Neill, who has been transported to Australia.

By chance, they meet a journalist, one Thomas Matthews, in a Shropshire inn. Matthews is so impressed with Anita’s warmth and spirit that he offers her the position of governess to his daughter, Hannah. Ideal for Anita who needs money to get to Australia.

But later, and without a word of explanation, Matthews himself departs for Australia, leaving his daughter with Anita. With her own goals firmly in mind, Anita takes Hannah and follows him.

The outcomes of Anita’s journey – the meeting again with her brother in 1836 and his later role in framing New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi; the escape of her fiancé to New Zealand and the fate of those such as the Maori lad, Maketu, whom O’Neill befriended and sent to Anita in Sydney to learn English – provide a compelling and heart-rending tale of chances gained and lost by a family that helped shape the birth of a new country.

Hobsons’ Chance is the powerful and intriguing story of the ways in which chance events in the lives of individuals can radically alter the destiny of nations. Soft cover, 304 pages. Published in 2003.

 Homestead by Hugh Mason. ISBN 0858811820. Published by Addenda. Recommended retail price $9.98.

Homestead is the story of the last large lease of Maori Land (named Waimarama) and the two families who inhabited it a century apart. The pivotal characters of these families are Muller, in parallel with Darwin, believed he had solved the outstanding conundrum of biodiversity. This prompted him to travel to Europe and air his theory.

Steven, a century later, finds a further parallel in his life’s experiences to those of Muller. They both indulge their insatiable curiosity and allow chance to shape their lives.

Hugh Mason’s seventh novel is a grand adventure of the mind and spirit and his most substantial and inspiring work to date – a most satisfying read. Soft cover, 244 pages. Published in 2001.

Huia Short Stories 1997. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 0908975643. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Short fiction by Mori New Zealanders – a richly imagined Aotearoa. Twenty-one writers, short-listed in the Huia Short Story Awards 1997, conduct ‘shispered conversations’, look with ‘knowing eyes’, joke, weekp and wonder. Many are first-time writers. These stories were selected by the judges of the awards, Patricia Grace and Keri Hulme.

Contributing authors: Alan Wehipeihana, Lindsay Charman-Love, Troy Egan, Aaron Smale, Moana Sinclair, Kellyana Morey, Margaret Smith, Annette Harris, Phil Kawana, Puti Lancaster, Vicki Fatu, John Moffatt, Cathrene Howe, Ron Hawker, Caroline Adair Down, Karl Wixon, Wena Harawira, Aroha Harris, Marlene J. Bennetts, Wendy Lanauze, Katie Anderson.

“…So I began writing things down too. Sticky sweet poems, muddy thoughts, other people’s wise words and, occasionally, something of my own that I really liked.” Soft cover, 180 pages. Published in 1997.

Huia Short Stories 3 by Jill Bevan-Brown, et al. Published by Huia Publishers.ISBN 1877241482. Recommended retail price $15.95

"What emerged looked like a green fly with long white pointed hair. It grew, doubling its size daily until it was the size of a large cat …”

Thirty five of the best short stories from the 1999 Huia Short Story Awards for Maori writers, judged by Phil Kawana and Trixie T Arama Menzies.

“Who met whom? And which of our kerb crawlers played by his own rules?"

Jill Bevan-Brown, Anton Blank, Tiaki Brown, Pirimia Burger, Lindsay Charman-Love, Hine Clover, Pine Dewes, Lance Evans, Ann French, Moana George, Marewa Glover, Wiremu Grace, Thomas Harowe, Aroha Harris, Vicki-Anne Heikell, Rachael House, Darryn Joseph, John Moffatt, Kei Munro, Ngarupiki Reid, Debra Reweti, Maraea Rihari, Lana Simmons-Donaldson, Hariata Tangahoe, Kirk Torrance, Jan Vincent, Kerehi Waiariki, Alan Wehipeihana, Ruth Wynyard.

“From your white waka you looked up, beyond the factories, and the sky seemed bigger …” Soft cover, 246 pages. Published in 1999.

Huia Short Stories 4; Contemporary Maori Fiction Te Awhina Arahanga et al. ISBN 1877266825. Published by Huia Publishers. Recommended retail price $16.95.

"The cloak looked just plain brown from a distance, but up close it was speckled with the colors of sand and cream and mud and treacle. Up close it looked like heavy rain."

Diverting, beautiful, strong: these stories could have come from no other country. The best of the short fiction from the 2001 Maori Literature Awards, judged by Patu Hohepa, Maori language commissioner, Keri Hulme, writer, whitebaiter and Terry Sturm, professor of English at Auckland University.

You don’t say a word. You just let me touch, feel, on and on. Like a little baby in a crib, feeling its own skin, feeling the air; the world, for the first time.

The authors include: Te Awhina Arahanga, Kerrie Blackmoore AhKiau, Lindsay Charman-Love, Gerry Te Kapa Coates, Caroline Adair Down, David Down, Trish fong, James George, Wiremu Grace, Aroha Harris, K.T. Harrison, Eru J. Hart, Vicki-Anne Heikeil, Darryn Joseph, Phil Kawana, Zion A. Komene, Mahinaarangi Leong, Pierre Lyndon, Michelle Manning, Dale Moffatt, Kellyana Morey, Paula Morris, Whetu-Marama Pahi, Maraea Rakuraku, Dianne Sharma-Winter, Charles Shortland, Lavinia de Lilva, Margaret Smith, Ngahuia Wade, Okeroa Waitai.

An even if you could explain everything, some things need a story because the reality doesn’t touch the soul. Soft cover, 266 pages. Published in 2001.

Huia Short Stories 5; Contemporary Maori Fictionby Marlene Bennetts et al. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 186969032X. Recommended retail price $17.95.

In early autumn, just as summer was fading, lilac would trick the senses and tell
Stories about evenings so warm that the tin roof ticked with the heat of the closing day …

Here is a selection of the best short fiction from the E tuhi! Get writing! Awards for Maori Writers 2003 judged by Renee, Scott Morrison and Keri Hulme.

I knew she’d sucked them in when the land around the urupa was turned into an
olive grove. When polenta fried golden in olive oil began turning up on the breakfast
menu. And seafood lasagne became one of the most sought-after main courses at a hui ...

The contributors to this collection are : Marlene Bennetts, Anton Blank, Georgina Boyd-Kerekere, Gerry Coates, Elsa Ellison, Ann French, Anahera Gildea, Marwea Glover, Wiremu Grace, Nathan Hoturoa Gray, Eru J. Hart, Cathrene Howe, Shona Jones, Darryn Joseph, Kelly Joseph, Michelle Lowe, Michelle Manning, Joel Maxwell, Rihia Rei Kenny, Hagen Tautari, Chas Te Runa, Jan A. Vincent, Alan Wehipeihana and Fay Williams.

When I sleep – now I’m back in New Zealand – I dream about London. My dreams my
New Zealand dreams – sorry – my dreams in New Zealand, are always the same story.
I’m catching the train home from the city: Charing Cross Station, Saint Johns Cross,
Brixton, Beckenham, Elmers End. Sometimes I’m in the carriage, sometimes I’m
drifting above the carriage, watching, blissfully, the endless sawtooth rows of houses
and apartments, the snow curdled in the street gutters …

Soft cover, 258 pages. Published in 2003.

Hummingbird by James George. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 1877283665. Recommended retail price $24.95.

‘I’d sort of sworn off endorsing novels, but this is so good, I can’t resist … James George is a wonderful find and Hummingbird is surely destined for a wide audience’ – Dame Fiona Kidman

Absolutely stunning must read novel - short-listed for New Zealand's prestigious Monatan Book Awards.

In this, James George’s extraordinary second novel, three people, strangers all, are thrown together in a world of sand and ocean and sky on Northland’s Ninety ile Beach.

Jordan – a tattooed man who lives alone at the base of his ancestral hill in a boat that was never launched – has his solitude broken by the arrival of two travelers: one who falls from the air, another who arrives following childhood memories. Kingi, a distinguished battle of Britain veteran, is journeying to keep a promise made on Crete half a century ago. Kataraina, a former prostitute, has left Sydney’s Kings Cross and is finally traveling home. But their journeys and their lives change forever with the arrival of a young woman and her daughter …

This novel sets global conflict against a sensuous search for love. The action sweeps across fifty years, and the ranges around the globe from New Zealand to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Hummingbird is a bittersweet exploration of freedom and confinement, parenthood and family, home and belonging.

‘I loved it. It’s perceptive, passionate, powerful and I didn’t want it to end’ – Renee

Soft cover, 343 pages. Published in 2003.

In The Bonds of Love by Lester Earnshaw. ISBN 1877161640. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Brian And Ailsa’s married life has not been easy, and Brian’s entrepreneurial ambitions have driven Ailsa to take their two daughters back to her home in the Orkney Islands. The bonds of love, however, draw Ailsa back. Life is hard on the Warkworth property Brian has bought, but Brian and Ailsa are united in their determination to make a success of their venture into chicken farming. Events, however, conspire to drive the couple apart as they try to cope with the dramatization of one of their daughters, accidental losses of stock on their smallholding, and Ailsa’s growing need for autonomy. Something has to give – and it does when Ailsa nearly loses her life.

Where other romantic stories end at the alter, In the Bonds of Love explores the reality of two strong-minded people learning to preserve their mutual love and respect in an unforgiving world.

Lester Earnshaw was born in Hawke’s Bay, and grew up in New Zealand. Since 1961 he and his family have lived in the United States. He is the author of Olivia (1995) and The Radio Man (1997). Soft cover, 300 pages. Published in 2000.

Irish Yankee, The by Edmund Bohan. ISBN 1877270164. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

“The strength of Edmund Bohan’s O’Rorke novels comes from his obvious expertise about the social and political history of 19th-century New Zealand… This latest novel is good fun, and it engages the attention nicely.”
- Ken Strongman, The Press

The Irish Yankee, Edmund Bohan’s fourth Inspector O’Rorke novel, opens in the Civil War-ravaged Tennessee of 1863, where a young Irish-American Union secret agent - known only as Sean Brennan - is sent on an assignment for General Ulysses S. Grant. Distracted by his growing passion for the beautiful Louisa Beaumont, and embroiled in a fatal web of deceit and treachery, he fails.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, twenty-two years later in July 1885, news of the death of ex-President Grant revives uncomfortable memories for the police detective Patrick O’Rorke. And when members of a visiting group of American feminist and temperance lecturers recognize in him the ‘Irish Yankee’ Brennan, whom they believed had died at Gettysburg, they set out to gain belated vengeance. But as O’Rorke, haunted anew by the bitter memories of betrayed love and youthful failure, plans to lure his old enemies into a trap of his own, he again puts at risk both his career and his life, and brings tragedy upon those around him. As crowds gather in central Christchurch for a major political rally, the assassins stalk O’Rorke through the city and out to his isolated property in Beckenham - before the shattering secrets of the past are finally revealed. Soft cover, 245 pages. Published in 2002.

Kokopu Dreams by Chris Baker. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 1877266310. Recommended retail price $14.95.

“Before the telly died, haggard-looking people, politicians mostly, described how an illegally imported rabbit calicivirus had mutated. It wasn’t killing rabbits any more – and nor was it affecting cats and dogs, and not the native bat nor the little spotted kiwi. But it had been killing people with a type of hemorrhagic fever that had traveled from the Mackenzie Country up and down the land like the wind, from Bluff to Cape Reinga in about three weeks. And that was the good news…”

The world is now no longer as it once was. After the Fever, Sean must leave his home in New Zealand’s far north and journey on horseback to the deep south. Future generations depend on his success. But myth has become reality, and many dangers await.

Chris Baker grew up in small towns all over the North Island of New Zealand. He worked in New Zealand and Australia as a journalist and editor and left the profession for fencing, bush and farm work, driving, construction work and concrete finishing. An environmental campaigner in the 1970’s, in the 1980’s he was a Laborer’s Union job delegate at the Marsden Point refinery expansion before moving to Brighton, south of Dunedin, where he now lives.

“I’m currently confined to a wheelchair (multiple sclerosis) and am writing full-time. My ancestry is Polynesian (Samoan), Celtic and Anglo-Saxon. I regard myself as a Pacific person, and my thanks to Ngapuhi Nui Tonu and particularly Ngati Hau and Ngati Korora for taking me in and allowing me to feel like I belonged somewhere.”

“…extraordinary debut novel of 51-year-old Otago writer Chris Baker … Huia Publishers usually publishes works by Maori writers, but there are good reasons for making an exception in Baker’s case. It’s hard to think of any novel written in the last five years more steeped in Maori mythology than Kokopu Dreams.” – Iain Sharp, Sunday Star-Times

“Immensely readable … carried by the strength of its storytelling and its open attempt at bringing a non-Maori view of biculturalism into our literature.” Anne Kennedy, New Zealand Listener

“Kokopu Dreams is an old story. Just about everyone loves old stories, especially when they are as well told as this one. New Zealand is the setting, and what better place to set a story of legend and magic? Why else would that other Arthurian-derived story The Lord of the Rings be filmed here?” – John Connor, New Zealand Herald

Paddy read this and couldn't put it down. Highly recommended. Soft cover, 230 pages. Published in 2000.

Maori Oral Literature: As Seen by a Classicist by Agathe Thornton. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 1877241431. Recommended retail price $12.95

“I am primarily a student of Homer and also of Heriod, that is, the early ‘oral’ literature of ancient Greece, which I have studied closely. It is with the experience of this field in mind that I approach the oral literature of Maori. I do not, of course, want to bend Maori literature into the forms of early Greek literature. But the intensive preoccupation with oral literature in one field may well open one’s eyes for what happens in another.”--Agathe Thornton, emeritus professor of Classics, Otago University..

“It is just a pity that published scholarship of this kind about Maori oral tradition is so rare.” -- Jane McRae, Department of Maori Studies, University of Auckland. Soft cover, 91 pages. Published 1999.

Monstrance, The by David McGill. Published by Silver Owl Press. ISBN 095824510X. Recommended retail price $19.95.

The story of a mysterious, stolen monstrance and its impact on the lives of two Auckland Westies as uptight New Zealand crumbles into the swinging sixties.

The monstrance, called the Tears of Christ because of supposed miraculous powers, is a vessel for the presentation of the Blessed Sacrament to the Catholic faithful. A Kiwi soldier souvenirs the vessel at war’s end in Yugoslavia, back home tossing it into a top cupboard of his new West Auckland state house. His son Steve McCann makes an enemy of playground bully Delaney as he befriends nervy Croatian immigrant Denko Petrovich, whose father has come here in pursuit of the monstrance.

Recovering on Waiheke Island from their parents’ deaths, a chance discovery shatters their island idyll and sets them off on a quest for the monstrance and their own identities. In Sydney, Vienna, Yugoslavia and Rome they survive OE (Overseas Experience) of the edgy kind. A London drug bust deports them back to Auckland and their old island haunt, its easy ways complicated by hard drugs and hippy communes. The story hurtles to a fiery conclusion in the sea-cave where they first encountered love, religion and mortal danger.

David McGill’s previous suspense novel Whakaari was described by the Sunday Star-Times as ‘a real ripper’, by the NZ Listener as a ‘fiery volcanic tale’. Soft cover, 264 pages. Published in 2003.

New Zealand Music Charts: 1966-1996: Singles by Dean Scapolo. ISBN 0908876009. Recommended retail price $24.95.

For the first time, this provides a complete source of look-up information, facts and data on every one of the 7500+ singles that made the New Zealand music charts in this three-decade period. Many different types of lists in user friendly format make this an indispensable reference source for both enthusiast and occupational users. Soft cover, 362 pages.

No Angel by Felicity Price. ISBN 1877270318. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $19.95.

When American PR supremo Alex Zerakowski is brought to New Zealand from California’s Napa Valley to help a Nelson winery that’s sold land to a landfill developer, she expects protests and media outrage – that goes with the job. But being caught up in an intricate web of deceit putting her life at risk? Nor was she prepared for the past to have such an impact on her.

Alex finds a diary that belonged to Carrie O’Neill, who came to the village of Hope (near Nelson) following Richard Burgess, her young, handsome lover and the father of her unborn child. There she endured his trial and execution as the leader of the Burgess gang, responsible for the infamous Maungatapu Murders that shook New Zealand in 1866. Alex realizes that her penchant for living on the edge parallels Carrie’s situation in more ways than one. Alex is no angel, but the events that unfold shock even her.

Felicity Price’s second novel once again draws on real dramatic events in our past, bringing them into contemporary focus with environmental issues, set against the backdrop of the wine industry and Nelson’s famous Montana World of WearableArt Awards. Soft cover, 329 pages. Published in 2002.

Olivia by Lester Earnshaw. ISBN 0-908790-76-7. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Beginning in the tiny town of Otane on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, Cameron Mountjoy’s life has taken many turns. From childhood delights and the tribulations of depression-era New Zealand to life as a radio operator in World War II, from housing contractor in post-war free-enterprise Auckland to founder of an electronics empire in America, Cameron’s life unfolds... And always at the center are the women in his life: his mother Bridget, first love Eva, war bride Olivia, forthright Irene, mercenary Sybil, and, after a lifetime of separation, his daughter Olivia.

“Olivia is a return to the social realism writing of a long-ago age when a story was a story and ran sweetly from start to finish (John Mulgan is the first name to spring to mind, followed by O.E. Middleton).” – Peter Payne, Nelson Evening Mail. Also by Lester Earnshaw - The Radioman.

Soft cover, 208 pages. Published in 1994.

One Lady at Wairakei by Rudyard Kipling. ISBN 0908606214. Published by Mallinson Rendel Publishers. Recommended retail price $7.95.

The fact that Rudyard Kipling visited New Zealand in 1891 is not widely known. That he wrote a short story One Lady at Wairakei while he was here, which was published at the time in the New Zealand Herald, will come as quite a surprise even to the literary world. The story is not contained in any of the standard collections of Kipling's works.

It is now being published for the first time in book form, with an introduction by Harry Ricketts, who has been responsible for rediscovering it.

Readers will find that it provides a fascinating glimpse of the over regulated, unstable economy then in existence in New Zealand, and an astonishingly accurate prediction of the development of New Zealand literature during the twentieth century.

Harry Ricketts is currently a lecturer in the English Department at Victoria University of Wellington. He admits to a lifelong love-hate relationship with Kipling, on whose short stories he wrote a B. Litt thesis while at Oxford. More recently, he has published an article on Kipling's autobiography, Something of Myself. He came across One Lady at Wairakei while investigating the conflicting accounts of Kipling's visit to New Zealand. The story struck him as so interesting that he felt it must be rescued from its position of unwarranted neglect. Hard cover, 55 pages. Published in 1983.

Opening Doors by Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan. Published by the Institute of Pacific Studies. ISBN 9820202507. Recommended retail price $3

A collection of poems by the Maori poet. Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan is from Northland, New Zealand. She went to school at Maropiu in the Kaihu Valley. At the age of 12 she left home to work in a succession of jobs in factories, hotels and hospitals. Twenty years ago she wrote a historical novel which the publishers, Collins of London, were interested in publishing. The manuscript for correction went astray in the mail. Evelyn "didn't have another copy nor the staying power to stick with it." At that time also she worked closely with the noted Maori writers, Harry Dansey and Hone Tuwhare in trying to set up a Maori Writers Society. Though unsuccessful there is now a flourishing Maori Writers and Artists Association in New Zealand.

Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan has lived in Europe and Asia. She has four children, and she lives permanently with her youngest daughter in Sydney. She teaches at a private Girls' School in East Sydney and she also tutors long-term prisoners at a number of Women's Prisons in Sydney. Soft cover, 28 pages. Published in 1979.

Parrot Parfait by Sue Emms. ISBN 187727027X. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $19.95.

Utterly captivating, quirky and peppered with deliciously black humor... a tantalizing recipe for the discerning literary palate.

Hello, he’d say, and tilt his little head. Hello. Who’s a clever boy? And some unsuspecting fool would forget what a brute he was and hold up a finger to stroke his vivid glowing feathers. One finger was all he needed to get a talon hold. A flurry of feathers, a triumphant squawk and that was it. Clever Pete, clever Pete, he’d cry while tears ran down the unsuspecting fool’s face and their mouth opened in an agonized shout.

Paula Mason left home taking nothing but bad memories, her dreams, determination, and Pete. And a promise to her brother, Mark, that she would make it up to him. Love, hate and guilt: the stuff that holds families together, or splits them apart.

She enjoys her life, her successful business, her lover, her friends, and, let’s face it, even Pete. Her childhood is far behind – until “those Grecian louts” unleash three disasters that spin her around and turn her life upside down. She finds herself going home to face her family, and the love, hate, and guilt that’s been holding them together, and keeping them apart, for so long.

Brought up in England, Aden and New Zealand, Sue Emms lives in Tauranga with her partner and various assorted kids, cats and other wildlife; but no parrots. Parrot Parfait was shortlisted in the inaugural 2001 Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award and is her first published novel. Her second novel, Come Yesterday, was runner-up in the 2002 Richard Webster Award. She has previously published short stories, poems and articles and has either won or been placed in literary awards in both Australia and New Zealand. She dreams big dreams of winning the Man Booker prize – but that is writers for you. They have vivid imaginations. Soft cover, 174 pages. Published in 2003.

Radio Man, The by Lester Earnshaw. ISBN 1877161209. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Larry La Salle returns to New Zealand after wartime service to find his experiences constitute an unbridgeable gap between him and his home town. The return to civilian life is made more difficult by his now being a radio/radar technician in a country with no electronics industry. Emigration to America seems his best option, but it may take years to obtain a visa. Consequently he sets up his own radio business in Warkworth and gradually becomes more and more involved with the characters of the town, including a series of its women. As years pass, his American dream and the memory of his wartime romance become ever more remote. Lester Earnshaw’s chronicle of The Radio Man is peopled by engaging characters and is a sympathetic examination of the dislocation felt by many New Zealanders who returned to a country they loved. Also by Lester Earnshaw - Olivia. Soft cover, 238 pages. Published in 1997.

Rutherford's Dreams: A New Zealand science fiction collection edited by Warwick Bennett and Patrick Hudson. Published by Transpress IPL. ISBN 0908876874. Recommended retail price $15.95.

....the trials of reincarnated Gauguin ...
... the voice of the small thunder lizard...
...the shadow that haunts the hacker...

This book is a superlative collection of top science fiction from New Zealand's best-known and emerging writers - including:

¨ Mike Johnson
¨ Chad Taylor
¨ Elizabeth Smither
¨ Michael Morrisey
¨ Vivienne Plumb
¨ David Hill
¨ Peter Friend
¨ Lyn McConchie

Explore the outer reaches of the imagination in twenty original stories, in most cases published here for the first time.
Rutherford's Dreams will delight all those who enjoy science fiction and an absolutely essential addition to any library of New Zealand literature. Soft cover, 240 pages.

Secrets of the Symphony by Gwen Skinner. ISBN 095821266X. Published by Horizon Press. Recommended retail price $19.95.

Secrets of the Symphony is a New Zealand based thriller involving the Mafia and a Hong Kong drug cartel.

The Tamaki Symphony Orchestra, a seething maelstrom of personal and sexual intrigue is the unlikely setting for murders, a battle for a new drug supply and the mysterious behaviour of a Russian violinist.

An intriguing thriller that keeps you glued to the page. Soft cover, 286 pages. Published in 2000.

Skeleton Woman, The: A Romance by Renee. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 1877283169. Recommended retail price $17.95.

Rose Anthony’s life has just become much more complicated. There’s a baby abandoned on her doorstep, and long-kept secrets are about to fly into the open …

Bogged down in the drama of a recent illness, the hurt of a serious row with her lover, and the anxiety of waiting to hear how her wall hanging has fared in the prestigious Stacy Copetition, Rose has no room for this latest dilemma. Scrawled on a card in black felt tip the words ‘For Rose Anthony’ leave no doubt that the baby was left for her. But whose baby is it? What secrets did Rose’s late mother, Ada, take to the grave” And how can the Skeleton Woman make the truth come out in the end?

The Skeleton Woman, Renee’s fifth novel, is a delight: a tightly plotted and entertaining read, powerfully told. Soft cover, 265 pages. Published in 2002.

Song of the Circle by Barry Brailsford.  ISBN 0958350213.  Published by StonePrint Press.  Recommended retail price $18.

Song of the Circle , the first book of five in the Chronicles takes us back to the great stone builders in the Americas. In the days before the Inca and Aztec Nations was a world that gave birth to children who sailed into the Pacific with a message of hope for the planet. The Circle encompasses many realms and opens wonderful gateways to trails of wisdom. It is a quest for truth.

Barry Brailsford was born on the wild west coast of the South Island of New Zealand beside the Mawhera River and beneath the mountain Tuhua. He has lectured and written widely in archaeology and history and received an MBE for his contribution to education and Maori scholarship. Soft cover, 300 pages. Published in 1996.

Song of the Eagle by Barry Brailsford.  ISBN 0958350259. Published by StonePrint Press. Recommended retail price $18.

In writing The Chronicles of the Stone Barry Brailsford accepted a great challenge. He decided to carry his archaeological knowledge, historical research and his understanding of the ancient lore, into a novel to share the story of the past with greater freedom. Truth and fiction are exciting partners within these pages, for all is paradox when we walk the rim of the circle. There is no beginning and no end, just the journey.

Song of the Eagle, the third book of five in the Chronicles moves with the ancestors on their long voyages to Kauai and the NW Pacific Nations of the Haida and the Innuit. Within its pages we soar with the eagles, walk with the totem animals of the First nation peoples and enter the icy Arctic world of the longest night of darkness. Soft cover, 202 pages. Published in 1998.

Song of the Old Tides by Barry Brailsford. ISBN 0958350280. Published by Stoneprint Press. Recommended retail price $34.95.

Song of the Old Tides is of today, of our journey now, each and every one, young and old, Maori, Polynesian, European, Asian, and all who call this land home.

For it tells the story of this land that embraces us, touches my life and yours with the past that is always with us, and eternity that walks with us every day.

It is the creation of the stars and the wonder of a world of light that gives birth to life.  It holds high the Mana of Aotearoa, the Spirit of this Land, and our place within it, for we do not stand apart.  Everyday this homeland speaks to us with a voice that honors the ancestors, and shares the way they saw its Promise.

It is of the Peace Makers, who carried Pounamu over the mountain passes, and the Warriors, and the Days of the Patu, the Days of the Muskets, and the Days of the Horse Soldiers.  And it is about the Days of Healing.

It offers a unique journey into the spirit of this land, a journey with two wise elders who carry the Promise that has never been set aside.

Born in Westland, New Zealand, where the land shouts history at every turn, Barry Brailsford followed its call into the writing and publishing world.  Barry’s work is a journey into the wisdom traditions of the Pacific peoples and the story of their past.  He is author of The Tattooed Land, Greenstone Trails, Song of Waitaha, Song of the Stone and In Search of the Southern Serpent.

His five novels, in the Chronicles of the Stone series, are based on ancient migration trails.  Barry has an MA in history and in 1990 was awarded an MBE for his contribution to education and Maori scholarship. Soft cover, 320 pages. Published in 2004.

Song of the Sacred Wind by Barry Brailsford.   ISBN 0958350273.  Published by StonePrint Press. Recommended retail price $18.

In writing The Chronicles of the Stone Barry Brailsford accepted a great challenge. He decided to carry his archaeological knowledge, historical research and his understanding of the ancient lore, into a novel to share the story of the past with greater freedom. Truth and fiction are exciting partners within these pages, for all is paradox when we walk the rim of the circle. There is no beginning and no end, just the journey.

Song of the Sacred Wind, the fifth and last book in the Chronicles. The ancient journeys that abound within this work were the flames that opened the way for the series, yet they are of the last book. Those who have already entered the Circle understand truth is paradox,, that there is no beginning and no end, just the journey. This is the last in time but ultimately beyond time. Soft cover, 217 pages. Published in 1998.

Song of the Silence by Barry Brailsford. ISBN 0958350266.  Published by StonePrint Press. Recommended retail price $18.

In writing The Chronicles of the Stone Barry Brailsford accepted a great challenge. He decided to carry his archaeological knowledge, historical research and his understanding of the ancient lore, into a novel to share the story of the past with greater freedom. Truth and fiction are exciting partners within these pages, for all is paradox when we walk the rim of the circle. There is no beginning and no end, just the journey.

Song of the Silence, the fourth book of five in the Chronicles journeys into China and the mysterious land at the Roof of the World. Amidst tall mountains we find the center that is of the silence and travel into its power. Old trails that reach into many lands are laid open within the wilderness and the Sphinx beckons.  Soft cover, 229 pages. Published in 1998.

Song of the Whale by Barry Brailsford.  ISBM 0958350248.  Published by StonePrint Press. Recommended retail price $18.

In writing The Chronicles of the Stone Barry Brailsford accepted a great challenge. He decided to carry his archaeological knowledge, historical research and his understanding of the ancient lore, into a novel to share the story of the past with greater freedom. Truth and fiction are exciting partners within these pages, for all is paradox when we walk the rim of the circle. There is no beginning and no end, just the journey.

Song of the Whale, the second book of five in the Chronicles takes us into the world where the great migration canoes and the the whales traveled the long tides together. It encompasses the fascinating world of Easter Island, the mountain trails of Aotearoa, or New Zealand, and sub-Antarctic waters, the feeding grounds of the whales. Soft cover, 222 pages. Published in 1997.

Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt. Published by University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-1796-6. Recommended retail price $15.00.

Originally published in 1973, this story of star-crossed lovers spotlights the complex nature of love, freedom, and racism in New Zealand. Samoan writer Albert Wendt's first novel, Sons for the Return Home, has long been out of print. Yet, readers continue to respond to the clarity of vision in this simple, powerful story of cross-cultural encounter.

" With searing penetration Albert Wendt reveals the hypocrisy of racial pride. The reader is constantly required to realign his own attitudes, about his and other races, reassess his own position." --New Zealand Bookwork

"It is unlikely that anyone else could portray the people of two countries with the honest assessment and generous humanity [Wendt] brings to this novel." --Islands

Soft cover, 218 pages. Published in 1996.

Stench by Mike Johnson. Published by Hazard Press. ISBN 1877270687. Recommended retail price $19.95

“ From book to book Mike Johnson keeps you guessing. What will he come up with next? With Stench he continues his career as one of the most innovative, original and fearless writers I know.”
– Witi Ihimaera. (Author of Whale Rider)

"After they closed down the hospital, before selling it off to the bulldozers, a few of us broke in at night through a loose window at the back and ran around the corridors in the dim light playing ghosts and dead people.

"That part was fun…"

These are the opening lines of Mike Johnson’s sixth novel, Stench. The book begins simply and beguilingly in a small NZ town, but soon widens and deepens into a powerful tale of a whole town’s descent into fear and frenzy.
A group of teenagers become party to a terrible secret: something lies beneath the floor of the old hospital, something that gives off a stench capable of changing people, warping their minds and their spirits, enslaving them. The action is seen through the eyes of one of these teenagers, the youngest and lowliest of them, a girl they all call Baby. The people of Hikitarua think Baby is a simpleton because she has a speech impediment and has difficulty communicating. But, at least in her own mind, she is the only one who can see clearly what is happening, and who desperately tries to prevent the unfolding tragedy. The only one who can save the town – or destroy it.

With the action taking place over three or four drought-filled, hot, wind-driven days, this home-grown horror story snaps the reader up in a vice-like grip that doesn’t let go until the last line.

Mike Johnson is one of New Zealand’s leading writers and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards. Born in Christchurch in 1947, he graduated from Canterbury University and went to Europe where he stayed for nine years, teaching English as a foreign language in Germany, Spain and North Africa. On his return to New Zealand in 1982 he moved to Waiheke Island where he has lived ever since with his family.

He first registered on the New Zealand literary scene as a poet before branching out into short stories and novels. He is familiar to many locals on Waiheke Island for his skills in the craft of marbling and taught creative writing for eight years at the University of Auckland’s Department for Continuing Education. He has twice stood for Parliament for the Green Party and has been active in environmental politics. He enjoys reading Dostoevsky, tramping and reading to his children.

Stench is Mike Johnson’s eleventh published book and was shortlisted in the 2002 Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award.

Previous publications include: Counterpart (HarperCollins) 2002, Dumb Show (Longacre Press) 1996. Soft cover, 304 pages.

Tasman’s Lay by Peter Hawes. ISBN 090879052X. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $12.95.

Until now, Abel Tasman’s log was the only account we had of the events surrounding his ‘discovery’ of New Zealand. But what was the real story behind that epic voyage? Did Tasman have sinister reasons for concealing the truth not only from his contemporaries but from future generations? All is now revealed with the discovery and publication of the frank, unexpurgated journal of Nyoman, a Balinese translator on Tasman’s ship, whose story of what really happened lifts the lid on the ultimate cover-up.

This is a very clever, well-written book. It will make the opinionated amongst us delighted that we pick up the sly references (as a biologist I was delighted to find out how sandflies and bats really made it to New Zealand.). Highly recommended. Soft cover.

Te Wao Nui a Tane by Hirini Melbourne. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 0908975996. Recommended retail price $29.95.

Welcome to Te Wao Nui A Tane, selected waiata by acclaimed story and song writer, Hirini Melbourne. This unique collection of Maori poetry and verse, illustrated beautifully by Te Maari Gardiner, celebrated the living world of New Zealand’s native forest, from the dawn of a new day to nightfall. Share the world of Tne with your children and family. The CD includes all 28 poems set to music. A CD and books for every day, and a treasure for the years to come. Hard cover books + CD-ROM, 72 pages. Published in 2000.

To Each His Own by Philip Temple. ISBN 1877161519. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $19.95.

In the icy winter before the Wall comes down, New Zealand historian Martin Stephenson goes to Berlin. He tells his wife and son that he is undertaking research for a book about German explorers. But his real purpose is much deeper – an exploration of himself. Through a tumultuous love affair, he confronts the guilt that continues to afflict two nations and comes to terms with his own. Philip Temple writes with insight and an honesty of purpose that is rare in contemporary fiction. In To Each His Own he has produced a powerful and truly international novel that departs from the traditional concerns of New Zealand literature, yet speaks to us, movingly, of family, of history, of culture. This is a superb book. Highly recommended. Soft cover, 208 pages. Published in 1999.

Top Hat and Taiaha and Other Stories by Lindsay Charman-Love. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 187726623X. Recommended retail price $13.95.

These stories travel through Irish landscapes and Tahitian coral islands, get caught in a cyclone, settle in Outback Australia, return to Aotearoa, eyeball a great white shark, pick up a kilt-clad hitchhiker on the way to Omapere…

“She had pored over pictures of Hokianga – a seascape of luminous dunes and tides, a landscape of pa sites and legends; top hats and bustles, ships of sail and steam; huge rafts of logs that women walked on a waka stacked with flax; olden days of warriors and warfare, a harbour land of trees.”

Lindsay Charman-Love lives in the Kokianga. He was first published as a finalist in the Huia Short Stories 1997 collection. In 1999 he won a Huia Short Story Award. Soft cover 134 pages. Published in 2001.

To the Land of Light: A Saga of Kupe and Ngahue by Jean Irvine. ISBN 0908790848. Published by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $15.95.

Voyaging from Polynesia, the legendary Kupe, his navigator Reti, face many dangers before they reach the land they search for, a land they have heard of only in myth and ancient tradition – the land of light. Surviving the long sea voyage, they discover much in common with the tribes they encounter, in fulfillment of whose prophecy Ngahue discovers pounamu, marries the sacred maiden, and eventually returns to Rarotonga. Set against the journey of legend and the dangers of the long sea voyage is Ngahue’s mental and spiritual journey of self-discovery. Ngahue must examine his attitudes towards other races, religious beliefs, and his grandfather’s philosophy of navigation, of ‘dreaming true’, in order to assume Reti’s mantle of ‘tohunga ahure wa’. The late Jean Irvine was a trained historian. She taught in Suva and London, and spent the latter part of her life in the Hokianga. Betty Gilderdale is a children’s writer. She has edited Jean Irvine’s fictional account of the journey to the land of light into its current form. Soft cover, 144 pages. Published in 1995.

Tyler's Gold by Andrew Grant. Published by Shoal Bay Press. ISBN 0908704992. Recommended retail price $12.95.

Tyler Smith is a New Zealand adventurer, mountain climber and salvage expert who has already become a legend among his fellow countrymen. Now the rumors circulate that he has discovered the wreckage and the gold of the General Grant - but has he?

The enigmatic Smith is one of the most recognizable faces in the South Pacific, but he is a man who few people actually know. Even his girl friend, the fiery and determined journalist Amanda Wylie, fails to comprehend the devious complexities of her lover. Neither does his long-time diving partner Falklands veteran Scotty Black. The secrets Smith holds could re-write the history books. Smith and the crew of the salvage ship Skua have discovered a fortune in gold bullion, but they are not alone in the wild waters of the Auckland Islands. Who is Rhys Baron, and why is he out to destroy Smith, on a quest that has nothing and everything to do with Tyler's gold?

Set in the stormy seas south of New Zealand, Tyler's Gold is a rip-roaring tale of gold lust, hot sex, cold treachery and murder.

Strap yourself into your easy chair and prepare to take the ride of your life beyond the Roaring Forties into the sub-Antarctic wilderness with Tyler Smith and the crew of Skua. Paddy thoroughly enjoyed this yarn ... his only criticism is that the hero dives using oxygen (instead of air) tanks

Andrew Grant was born on the south bank of the Waitaki River and grew up on farms in Otago and Southland in New Zealand, with a rifle in his hands. He has lived and worked around the world in a variety of occupations, including time spent in security positions in three countries, and several years in the merchant navy, where he experienced the power of the southern oceans first hand. He is a gourmet cook, keen traveler, small arms expert, fly fisherman and photographer. He has two children and lives with his wife Carol in Rangiora, near Christchurch. Andrew Grant's first novel Hawks was published in 1998. Soft cover, 320 pages. Published in 1999.

Unlevel Crossings by Michael O’Leary. Published by Huia Publishers. ISBN 1877266841. Recommended retail price $17.95.

Picaresque hero Patrick Mika Fitzgerald embarks on a physical and psychological train trip. He travels from Auckland to Dunedin in search of love, but along the way he encounters many things that he didn’t bargain on. Patrick Mika Fitzgerald’s journey is playful, outrageous and immense.

Michael O’Leary’s rhythmic prose, wordplay and multilingual puns provide a Maori-modernist take on Aotearoa New Zealand. Political and literary satiric jabs add feisty humor to the book’s exploration of the relationships between peoples; between New Zealand and elsewhere. Unlevel Crossings is a novel in the Irish-Maori tradition.

Michael O’Leary (Irish, Te Arawa) was educated at Auckland, Otago and Victoria universities and now lives on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington. He is well known as a novelist, playwright, poet, performer, publisher and bookshop proprietor. Soft cover, 238 pages. Published in 2002.

War and Pieces by Miles Spence. ISBN 1877270652. Puublished by Hazard Press. Recommended retail price $22.95.

John Pilgram enlists for the navy in 1941 because, “If the world’s about to end he wants to go out with his guns blazing.”

During his training at the naval base in Devonport, 18-year-old John embraces the novelties of mateship, chasing ‘sheilas’ and getting drunk. He discovers jazz, and a richness in the people and place that has him with sketching pencil always to hand. He is grabbing fun where he can because in wartime, who knows if it’ll be the last time?

But as his newfound passions for music and sketching develop, John fights to retain his belief in the beauty still to be found during an era of war and devastation. Posted to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, he comes under attack from the Japanese. He also meets jazz-savvy American servicemen and becomes renowned among them for his vibrant sketches and his uniquely kiwi take on the world around him.

In prose that eloquently describes the colorful language of seamen during the war years, this poignant and humorous novel dramatically captures the lives and times of those who served during World War II.

Miles Spence was born in Christchurch in 1922. He joined the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1941 aged 18. He was seconded to the Royal Navy and served on H.M.S.Victorious. In 1948 he began his professional music career, becoming an acclaimed jaz musician. Miles moved to Nelson in 1999 where he plays tenor saxophone, clarinet and flute in the local jazz band Milezajazz. Soft cover, 262 pages. Published in 2004.

Whakaari by David McGill. Published by Silver Owl Press. ISBN 0959797947. Recommended retail price $16.95.

Early in the new millennium terrorists threaten to trigger an eruption in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. The last big Taupo caldera explosion blew a chunk of debris the size of Auckland into the stratosphere. Advice to New Zealand - and the world's - first Green Government is to pray it is a small eruption like Tarawera in 1886, which only killed 105 people.

The Honorable Wiremu Waka, Minister of Financial Development in the new Green Government of New Zealand, is in Edinburgh seeking an eight billion dollar loan for tourist development of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. His aim is to change New Zealand's image from clean, green and boring to hot, red and exciting. The main part of his pitch is a state-of-the-art holovideo recreation of Maori volcano myth. On the night of his presentation to the ScotchTable he dies violently in a Scottish sauna.

His reluctant companion Neil Munro returns to New Zealand pursued by the killer he is determined to unmask. He scarcely recognises the country he grew up in. Maori radicals and fascist Pakeha youth clash at the Minister's bicultural state funeral and secret state video surveillance manipulates a country that on the surface appears to be leading the world once more in innovative legislation.

Munro is an unheroic man in his early forties, balding, paunchy, too short for his own self esteem, suffering from PFD - Post-Fame Depression - following the collapse of his television career and his marriage. Gourmet tastes on a budget deficit require him to take the only job going, a Fire Tour Video through the Taupo volcanic region from Taranaki to White Island in company with dyspeptic scientist who loathes the late Minister and the Minister's father, who blames Munro for his son's death.

This satirical eco-thriller goes beyond tomorrow's headlines into Taranaki oil production sabotage, Ruapehu ski resort bombing, the firing of the world-famous Rotorua Pink and White Terraces theme park, a terrorist threat to reprise the Tarawera hydrothermal eruption of 1886. Maori fire myth, scientific research and high-tech developments are necessary elements of a future shock fable about the extremes of politically correct Maori and Pakeha positions, the possibilities for electronic manipulation of public opinion and the coming tourist exploitation of our mightiest unspoiled mountain reaches.

David McGill has written 18 social histories of New Zealand and one children's fantasy. Hard cover, 263 pages. Published in 2000.

Wooden Horses by James George.  ISBN 1-877161-78-0. Published by Hazard Press.  Recommended retail price $15

“Why do they call you Horseshoe?”
It is the child.
“It’s what I do,” he says.
“Can you make shoes for my horse?”
“Never come across one yet I couldn’t.”
She steps towards him. He tenses. She lifts her hands,
Spreading them in the pale glow of the moon. And in her palms
Sits a wooden horse.

This extraordinary and memorable novel speaks of the redemption and regeneration made possible by love in lives where emotions have been all but destroyed. In an interwoven narrative that moves back and forth in time between the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, the European settlement of the North Island, the trenches of the First World War and the 1990s conflict in Bosnia, Wooden Horses focuses on former UN peacekeeper Tom Solomon and the mysterious old Maori woman, Phoenix, who seeks him out on a remote Northland beach to recount the story of her life. And her own story tells also of her foster parents, Jessye and Will (who has terrible secrets of his own), and of her intense love affair with a runaway boy, Luka, an event that shaped her life.

In prose that is both lyrical and compelling, first-time novelist James George has created a book of astonishing maturity. Soft cover, 192 pages. Published in 2000.

Click on links below for these books.

Caught in a Singapore Sling by Bob Nimmo

Dark Faith, A by Justin MacRae

Fourth Eye, The by Clinton Smith

Islands of Intimacy: Love Poems 1970-2000 by Denys Trussell

Long Hot Summer Singing by Mike Minehan

Long Range Plan, The by Wade Tabor

Passage of the Frog and the Wild Strawberries of 1942, The by Beniamino Petrosino

The Passionate Pen, New Zealand's Romance Writers talk to Rachel McAlpine by Rachel McAlpine

Playing God by Glenn Colquhoun

Rashoman Factor, The by Isa Moynihan

Ruahine: Mythic Women by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Second Favorite Son, The by Daniel Myers

Small Change of Silence, The by Michael Henderson

Strands by Keri Hulme

Talent For Flight, A by Glenda Fawkes

Tomorrow’s Empire by Sandra Arnold

Twilight of Power by James Catterick

Violated by Barbara Ker-Mann

Last modified on Saturday, Match 24, 2012