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January is bored in her life, unhappy and friendless, and she is absorbed in a fantasy romance she has invented with a married man. Through an advertisement in a paper, January meets Mae, an elderly woman, who is a graphologist looking to pass on her knowledge. Mae teaches January graphology skills - how to learn about a person's character from their handwriting - and the two become friends, until Mae challenges January about her fantasy affair. Mae finds 'love letters' that January has written, but are supposedly from her lover. I... read more

Classic Ihimaera. First published by Reed in 1972, it collects stories about Maori within settings that are Maori and with characters who are central to that setting — heroes, heroines and villains — rather than supporting players or sidekicks. These stories introduce the themes of aroha, whanaungatanga and manaakitanga — love, acknowledging kin and tribal relationships, and supporting Maori identity — tha... read more

When Betty Guard steps ashore in Sydney in 1834, she meets with a heroine’s welcome — as befits a brave young woman who has survived being kidnapped by Taranaki Maori. But questions about Betty and her husband Jacky, a convict turned whaler, trouble the governing elite of the raw new town. Based on true events, this is the compelling story of love and duty, and of the quest for freedom in a pioneering age. A runner-up in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards Fiction section 2006 & Winner of the Readers' Choice Fir... read more

One of the biggest novels ever published in New Zealand, and a bestseller throughout the world. Lloyd Jones' dazzling novel has been acclaimed throughout the world as a love song to the power of the imagination and of storytelling. It shows how books can change lives. Winner of Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best Book 2007 and Montana New Zealand Book Awards: Readers' Choice Award 2007 and Montana New Zealand Book Awards: Deutz Medal for Fiction 2007 and Commonwealth Writer's Prize Best Book South East Asia and South Pacifi... read more

Powerful and visionary, Keri Hulme has written the great New Zealand novel of our times. The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Her cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Maori factory worker with a nasty temper. The narrative unravels to reveal the truths that lie behind these ... read more

A collection of vivid, accessible stories, which are modern in setting or sensitivity, entertaining and New Zealand in focus - and this collection can be read purely for the immense pleasure they offer. However, the stories can also be read for the way they explore elements from earlier stories from Maori myth and fairy tales to masterpieces by writers such as Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Henry James and Anton Chekov. Selected because their observations remain fresh and honest in the 21st century and, as the award-winning auth... read more

After beginning a new job as a ship surveyor,Ralph travels to the Coromandel peninsula to assist Captain Rothfall, a marine inspector,with an investigation into a local fishing vessel that has not returned from sea, and is feared lost. The inspector’s abrasive manner makes him unpopular with the people of the town, most of whom seem to be connected in some way to the fishing company whose boat has gone missing. When Captain Rothfall’s frozen body is found in the fishing company’s refrigerated chamber, suspicion fa... read more

Friday rush hour, Auckland city. A lone shooter fires across a packed street and kills a man. Detective Sergeant Sean Devereaux is assigned the case. He's not complaining - his Friday nights are seldom better spent. But the inquiry is not straightforward. Witness accounts are conflicting. The dead man appears to be an unintended victim, with the true target unknown. It's a homicide that leaves police with no initial suspects and no apparent motive. Devereaux's former colleague, John Hale, is in no position to help. Hale is on his o... read more

Warm, insightful and poignant, Freeing Grace tells the story of David, curate of an inner-city parish, and Leila, his Nigerian-born wife. Unable to have children of their own, they're desperate for a family. When they finally hear they've been approved to adopt a baby, Grace, they can scarcely believe their good fortune. There's just one problem for which David and Leila cannot plan; Grace's birth family - the enigmatic, charismatic Harrisons. Enlisting their friend, the feckless, charming New Zealander, Jake Kelly - who's half in ... read more

Against the historical background of the compelling and extraordinary events which surrounded the village of Parihaka in the 1870s and 1880s, Witi Ihimaera tells the fictional story of Erenora. Parihaka was a place synonymous with passive resistance, a place that Erenora called home, a place where Horitana came to find and marry her. It was also a place that the colonial settlers wanted to occupy, by fair means or foul. While most in Parihaka who passively resisted the encroachments were sent to gaol, Horitana was to meet a far wor... read more

When bad girl, April Ritchie, returns home to Pisa after a nine-year absence, not too many of the townsfolk are glad to see her back. 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... read more

Auckland, June 1886. Ngati Wai chief Paratene Te Manu spends long sessions, over three long days, having his portrait painted by the Bohemian painter Gottfried Lindauer. Hearing of Lindauer's planned trip to England reminds him of his own journey there, twenty years earlier, with a party of northern rangatira. As he sits for Lindauer, Paratene retreats deeper and deeper into the past, from the triumphs in London and their meetings with royalty to the disintegration of the visit into poverty, mistrust, and humiliation. Based on a true story

A fascinating novel based on the life of the infamous baby farmer Minnie Dean, the only woman in New Zealand history ever to be hanged.
Accused of infanticide and awaiting trial and then sentence, Minnie confides in the Reverend Lindsay. Alternating between these two contrasting personalities, the novel tells Minnie's version of events. From her oppressive upbringing in Victorian Scotland to adulthood in Southland, Minnie battles her own nature and the hardships of colonial life and social hypocrisy. Once Minnie is tr... read more

This third collection of short stories by Alice Tawhai explores the complex mix of beauty and heartache, resilience and joys of people living in seemingly bleak situations. The perceptions of people and their lives are fresh and poignant, seeing the humanity and quiet hope alongside the darkness. The vivid imagery and intensely evocative writing make each story and those in them hauntingly memorable.

Morris Goldberg is a man who can’t cry. Semi-retired from his career as a metadata analyst, he lives alone and conducts imaginary conversations with his recently-deceased wife, Sadie. Then news arrives that his daughter Rachel is missing in the bush, with bad weather on the way.
While Morris waits for news, he thinks back over his life, and as memory and dream start to merge, key scenes from his childhood and marriage play out in his imagination and the urgent questions of a lifetime press forward. What happens to... read more

In 1914, Tamar Murdoch’s brothelkeeping days are behind her. Her life is one of ease and contentment at Kenmore, a prosperous estate in the Hawkes Bay, as storm clouds over Europe begin casting long shadows. In this gripping second instalment of Deborah Challinor’s sweeping family saga, Tamar’s love for her children is sorely tested as one by one they are called, or driven, into the living hell of World War One. During the Boer War, Joseph, her illegitimate eldest son, fought as a European, but this time h... read more

When Tamar Deane is orphaned at seventeen in a small Cornish village, she seizes the chance for a new life and emigrates to New Zealand. In March 1879, alone and frightened on the Plymouth quay, she is befriended by an extraordinary woman. Myrna McTaggert is travelling to Auckland with plans to establish the finest brothel in the southern hemisphere and her unconventional friendship proves invaluable when when Tamar makes disastrous choices in the new colony. Tragedy and scandal befall her, but unexpected good fortune brings vast c... read more

Welcome to 1987. It's boom time on the sharemarket and money is flying around the stratosphere just waiting to fall into the hands of those with the nerve to reach high enough to grab it. Mike, a middle-aged romantic lead with a clapped out VW and three kids to different mothers is not amongst them. While his girlfriend Louise is climbing to dizzying heights on the corporate ladder and his six-year-old daughter lives in disdain of anything without a designer label, his teenage son is pilfering from collection plates to pay the rent... read more

This anniversary edition of Witi Ihimaera's Pounamu, Pounamu celebrates the 40th year in print of one of New Zealand's most seminal works of fiction. When Pounamu, Pounamu was published in 1972, it was a landmark occasion for New Zealand literature in many ways. It was the first work of fiction published by a Maori writer, it was the first collection of short stories that looked at contemporary Maori life and it launched the career of on of New Zealand's best-known authors. The Pounamu, Pounamu 40th Anniversary Edition is a beautif... read more