Backlist > Fiction

The Cup - a short satirical novel. Brilliant. We needed a comic novel about the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and here it is. Like a direct decendant of Vincent O'Sullivan's 70s satire "Miracle", Dan Cleary's "THE CUP" also has an affectionate and informed crack at rugby, politics and the unholy combination of the two through its central character, Baldy. Poor Baldy has been charged with running the preparations for the Rugby World Cup - and it turns out to be the worst job in New Zealand. Victoria Cartwright is a ratings-hungry TV jour... read more

Buckinbah Weir is a contemporary mystery set in the forestry backblocks of New Zealand's central North Island. A weir on a forest creek has been the scene of a series of strange murders stretching back to the early 1900s that have never been solved. With the murders occurring intermittently over a long period of time, local people in the small settlements nearby have their own suspicions and theories as to who- or what - may lie behind the heinous crimes, but no one really knows why they keep happening, or when the killer will stri... read more

Sue Carey is a driven, twenty-something doctor struggling to preserve her sanity, sobriety and humanity in the corridors of one of Cape Town's biggest public hospitals. Finding imaginative ways of saving patients is her life's work. Finding a man who wants more than a one-night stand would be nice as well. Sue's journey of self-discovery is both harrowing and hilarious. The Karma Suture visits the bedsides of the patients who make her weep and the men who make her weak. She discovers that all she ever wanted is waiting for her ...i... read more

Where The Road Has No Turning is a fascinating tale based around the memories of an old man who was once a coal miner and dreamed of leaving the harsh realities of the mines to marry his childhood sweetheart and go into the army. Early one morning he goes for a walk in the hills and finds himself entering a tunnel. After a fall, he wakes up in an environment that is strange, yet somehow familiar - one in which workers living underground have become trapped and enslaved by the expectations of those around them. Their only hope is to... read more

Canigou is a contemporary thriller that takes the reader on a fascinating journey across Europe and Asia, and deep into the history of both continents. The intrigue traces from the origins of the bubonic plague in China - its discovery and what is subsequently learned about it in the following centuries - and the zealous anti-reformation activities of an old Jesuit society in central Europe. A contemporary society is determined to recover valuable documents which were originally hidden in a port barrel during the seventeenth centu... read more

From their very first words, Adrienne Frater's original and compelling stories draw you in and her vividly realised characters stay with you long after you stop reading. Meet, in these pages, a frustrated legal clerk who goes to bed as Pauline and wakes up as Pohutakawa, a sociology professor moonlighting as a graffiti artist, a woman finding liberation in a Turkish bath house and many more, in settings ranging from small-town New Zealand to Norway. Adrienne's work has already delighted a large audience through radio broadcasts; no... read more

An Eco-thriller from a New Zealand wildlife biologist and award-winning novelist! Ignoring a 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan sends its whaling fleet deep into the Antarctic to kill whales under the guise of 'scientific research'. Thrust into this volatile situation is Richard Major, an unlikely hero accompanying a whale research expedition. On the High Seas he must confront a terrifying adversary - a ruthless fishing industrialist who would wipe out entire species to satisfy an insatiable lust for money and power... read more

An adaption for the theatre by Mervyn Thompson of John A. Lee's powerful novel. John A. Lee was born in Dunedin in 1891. His first novel "Children of the Poor" was published in 1934 and was based on his early life which saw him work in factories, on farms and serve time in prison. He became a prominent Labour Party politician between the wars before he was expelled from the party in 1940. He retained a high profile as an outspoken political and social commentator until his death in 1982. 96 pages 138 x 210mm

Poems new & old Apirana Taylor is a popular and acclaimed poet, short-story writer, novlist, playwright, actor, musician and painter. This, his fifth volume of poetry, includes much new work, together with many old favourites (the ones most requested at readings). First published May 2009, Christchurch Softcover 172pages

Linda Niccol's second book of short stories The Temperature of Water is a wonderfully varied collection of tales which will take you under the surface of the oft times frantic lives of those seeking solace, understanding, redemption and love. Named after the novella, The Temperature of Water, this collection extends her range and depth into the obsessive worlds of scientific invention, the challenges for those coping with an MS sufferer and a Down syndrome girl, and the brittle worlds of casually formed relationships some want more... read more

Bounty is a cornucopia and a ship. Ships envelop you and land you in new worlds. The opening sequence of sonnets pays hommage to Frank Hurley, the photographer on Shackleton's Endurance, which was crushed in the pack-ice in Antarctica in 1915. The central sequence of the collection recounts the voyage of the Bounty alongside that of the Odyssey, through sonnets addressed to blind fiddler, Michael Byrne, who enjoyed 'allurements of dissipation beyond anything that can be conceived' in Tahiti, was shipped back in chains to England an... read more

The Travellers is a unique collection of fictional stories from the post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s. They are set during a time of transition from the golden era of travel by train and by ship to the beginning of the modern era of travel by air. Each story describes, in fascinating detail, a chance encounter on their travels between two or more people from different walks of life, and the arguments or friendships that subsequently develop.

Janus Carpenter finds an object, which he calls "The Orb", near a forest track that unlocks the corridors to wisdom and eternity. A spiritual entity from the Orb attaches itself to him, and teaches him many secrets. The entity has knowledge of all things except the emotional understanding of humanity. Together they explore the depths of human passion, fear and unworthiness. They enter the dimensions of life after death, healing and religious teachings. As Janus's extraordinary gifts become known in his wider community, he is hi... read more

This is the story of one woman's journey into her past, her struggle to overcome the pain of it, how it has shaped her present and how it changes her future. A phone call one morning jolts forty-five-year-old Cass McClellan out of her successful, suburban family life. Suddenly she needs to find Leo, the son she hasn't seen for twenty years because, when he was ten, his father took him away on holiday and never brought him back. Cass does not know where he is but she has to take him the news of the death of his father. What do you ... read more

Living in idyllic Golden Bay, artist Ivan is plagued by a low frequency humming noise: is it whale song, tinnitus, electro-magnetism, a CIA weapon or the voice of God? Worse, Ivan is bored. His sensible lover, Jane, neglects her café to support his increasingly bizarre attempts to outwit the Hum. But he is most attracted by the spiritual solutions offered by warrior-woman Xania, a fanatical t’ai chi teacher with links to Argentina. Xania manipulates the ... read more

Two women and their struggle to survive on the wild West Coast of the South Island.

Charles Latimer is witness to the murder of a stranger who is helping the poor. When hundreds of people gather to mourn her death, he decides to give up his job working for a successful publisher, and begin a search for a world he never knew existed among the poor of London. Sleeping on a bench beside the canal, Charles begins a new life as a journalist writing about the artists and poets he meets, and the remarkable lives they lead. Charles discovers romance and wonderful friends and publishes their work to undreamed of acclaim. "... read more

A travel book - with a decided difference. A father and son decide to meet up in Liverpool to find out where they belong, where they come from and where to go next. Mick, the father, is an immigrant with a Birmingham-Irish background; Sam, the son, is a born and bred Kiwi - immersed in Maoritanga and the world of ceramic arts. The father wants to fulfil a lifelong dream of being a bit of a writer; the son is already pursuing his dreams as an artist-craftsman working in the south of France. They travel together through European land... read more

Meg, Henry, Steph and Diana are all students in Wellington in the 1970s. Thrown together in the broad sphere of leftist politics, they find falling in and out of love just as mesmerising as it is for the middle classes they despise.While Henry is busy trying to run a Youth Summit, Meg suppresses her bourgeois passion for handcrafts and learns to go on demonstrations.Steph, Henry’s lover, identifies with the jilted wife in a Katherine Mansfield story and stages a psychotic episode at He... read more

Having just turned 80, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell presents the best of his early and middle period poems, as well as his latest collections, Gallipoli and other Poems, Maori Battalion and an autobiographical poem in letters, Poets in Our Youth. Few New Zealand poets have treated the natural world with greater sensitivity, while his personal lyrics and love poems have a music and a depth of feeling that set them apart. Campbell is in the enviable position of being both a New Zealand and a Cook Islands poet, enabling him to draw o... read more