From the best-selling and acclaimed author Barbara Else, Laughing at the Dark is a funny, moving memoir about how she rebelled against being a ‘good girl’. By the time she was in her forties, Barbara was married to a globally recognised academic physician and had two beautiful teenage daughters. As her writing career developed, her husband became angry at the prospect of her being anything but a housewife. In a moment of madness — or realisation — she packed her c...

The Warrior Queen is a subversive, funny novel about modern middle-class marriage. Kate Wildburn is in trouble. She is an extrovert, a lateral thinker and a talented pianist. She is also a good wife and mother, and an attractive woman who enjoys being a woman. Richard, her surgeon husband, is balding, aggressive, hard on his children – and is he having an affair? The Warrior Queen is a subversive look at modern middle-class marriage, a guerrilla war of t...

Accessible, warm and witty, Barbara Else's fifth novel is her most effervescent. Suzie, a thirty-seven-year-old single mother, is the youngest of three sisters and a stubborn misfit. While Lara is now going for a top job in the Ministry of Customs and Philippa runs the charity organisation 'Suite Three', Suzie is an on-call chef with a bank account at zero, has a fifteen-year-old son in trouble at school and a ballet-crazy seven year old with head lice. Her love life shoul...

This poignant, funny novel explores the intricate influences of memory and experience, invention and deception. 'Delia's body lay flat as a piece of paper, blank, as if everything on it had scurried off over the side.' Delia Whittborne finds herself in a hospital bed but can't recall how she got there, or even who she is. As her memory slowly returns, she realises it's not just her recent past and love-life she needs to make sense of but also her early childhood o...

A touching, tender and witty novel about men and women and family life. Sophie Redlove has a crumbling Gothic mansion to restore, three children to manage, a distraught friend - as well as possums in the laundry at midnight. She loves her absent husband, Russell - but there's an importunate older man who's after her, a slightly sycophantic younger one, an angel and a Viking on the scene . . . And what the hell is Russell up to? And indeed what's the story in Sophie's grad...

Combining essential information, professional insights, and lived experiences, this book offers a unique overview of the use of music therapy with active-duty service members, veterans, and other military-connected populations in the United States. Contributors include music therapists specializing with the military, as well as military personnel, veterans, and their families, providing an in-depth review of the impact that music therapy can have within this community.Detailing the...

A delicately layered, humorous novel, deliciously written, ranging over time and place. In the aftermath of Barnaby Rivers' death, complictions arise for three beautiful women: Bella, Ruth and wicked old Jocasta. Now nothing can go on in the old way. Crisis looms. In her funniest novel yet, Barbara Else contrasts attitudes to beauty, motherhood . . . and men. Looking down on it all is Barnaby himself, not sure if he's an angel or ghost.

A darkly humorous tale of rural isolation, violence, and a talking magpie.Tama is rescued by Marnie, but her husband Rob warns, 'If it keeps me awake, I'll have to wring its neck.' With Tama come new possibilities, but also a glimpse into the darkness of Marnie's marriage. As Tama's fame grows, the animal and human worlds intertwine, revealing the fragility and hope within.Set against the backdrop of a remote New Zealand farm, this literary fiction explores...

A chilling tale of manipulation and misplaced trust in a seemingly idyllic town. Twelve-year-old Justine is captivated by her charismatic new teacher, Mrs. Price, and yearns to be her favorite. But as a series of thefts plague their small New Zealand community, Justine begins to suspect that Mrs. Price may not be as perfect as she seems.As Justine delves deeper, she uncovers a web of secrets and deceptions that force her to question everything she thought she knew....

A gripping thriller where ambition and ideology collide in the New Zealand wilderness.When a landslide isolates a remote farm, the Birnam Wood collective sees an opportunity. But so does enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, testing their ideals and trust. As tensions rise, can they survive the forces of nature and human greed?From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, this unflinching tale explores the human impulse for survi...

A raw domestic thriller for fans of Liane Moriarty and The Slap. If you were gripped by Big Little Lies, you'll love One of Those Mothers.'Domestic noir up there with the best of them. Beautiful settings, believable characters, and a moral quandary to keep you reading through the night - One of Those Mothers is a page turner in all the right ways. - Jacqueline Bublitz, Before You Knew My Name'With st...

When Clifford Stilton dies, his son Gene crams his carefully kept diaries into a hall cupboard – but Clifford's words have too much life in them to be ignored, and start to permeate his family's world.Clifford taught Gene about how to find rocks and fossils, and about how to kill birds and fish. Gene passes on a similar inheritance to his daughters, Bridget and Christina – they have their own ways of digging and discovering the past, keeping an account of life, watching out for the ...