A compendium of non-fiction pieces held together by the theme of 'home' and commissioned from twenty-two of New Zealand's best writers. Strong, relevant, topical and pertinent, these essays are also compelling, provocative and affecting.What is home when it's a doorway on a city street because you are homeless? What is home for urban Maori returning to their tribal lands? How do refugees make new homes while coping with the fact that their old homes are in ruins?In this mar...

A fascinating, moving novel based on the real life of Dr Ernst Dieffenbach: scientist, explorer, revolutionary, outcast. Dieffenbach arrived in New Zealand in 1839 as a naturalist. What he discovered was fascinating, but what his prescient records didn't reveal was his own intriguing story. This compelling novel turns the focus on Dieffenbach. As a young idealist, he had plotted a revolution in the name of equality. Imprisoned and then exiled, first from Giessen, then Stra...

Edgy and absorbing, this innovative novel brings a fresh approach to New Zealand writing. What happens when grief draws you to your partner’s married brother? 28 year-old Djuna is without a foothold. The suicide of her partner has left her derailed and casting about for the joy she fears may be gone for good. Her parents’ relationship has disintegrated, her family home is occupied by Burmese refugees, and she is drawn to the one man she must reject. In pursuit o...

As if it will make up for her loss, they bring Hannah a duckling to care for. They were well meaning, and it could have done the trick.However, Hannah’s focus on the duck progressively alienates those around her. As the duck takes over her world, past secrets are exposed. Will Hannah’s life unravel completely?This funny, moving and insightful novel contemplates the chemistry between one person and another: a man and another man’s wife; a woman and a duck; a woman a...

Beautifully written, brilliantly observed and ultimately optimistic, this novel by one of New Zealand's finest writers powerfully captures those times when death puts life on hold. Sheff is disillusioned with journalism and, with plans to travel overseas, chucks in his job. But first he goes south to Alexandra, where his father is dying. He becomes caught up with his family in the agonising inertia of waiting for approaching death. Slowly he comes to terms with suppressed...

The inspiring and entertaining story of a determined young woman alone, who overcame the isolation of her family farm to build a flourishing business. When Lisa Harper returned to her family’s farm at the head of remote Mahau Sound, in the Marlborough Sounds, after years overseas working as a scientist, she showed all the pluck and entrepreneurial streak of the earlier generations of women in her family. The isolation wasn’t going to deter her from starting a new business....

This is the first volume of Witi Ihimaera's enthralling, award-winning memoir, packed with stories from the formative years of this much-loved writer. Witi Ihimaera is a consummate storyteller — one critic calling him one of our ‘finest and most memorable’. Some of his best stories, however, are about his own life. This honest, stirring work tells of the family and community into which Ihimaera was born, of his early life in rural New Zealand, of family secrets, of facing ...

A small community on New Zealand's Tasman Bay is suddenly overwhelmed by a bloodthirsty madness.There are fourteen survivors.Trapped in by a strange force-field called the 'no-go', cut off from the world outside, they must pull together, bury the dead and face their fears.Because whatever caused the insanity is still at large. And it hasn't finished with them yet.Wake is a riveting tour-de-force. A book about extreme events, ordinary people, heroic ...

Spanning several decades and several continents and set against the backdrop of a changing New Zealand, Chappy is a compelling story of enduring love. Uprooted from his privileged European life and sent to New Zealand to sort himself out, twenty-one-year-old Daniel pieces together the history of his Maori family. As his relatives revisit their past, Daniel learns of a remarkable love story between his Maori grandmother Oriwia and his Japanese grandfather Chappy. ...

Beginning with the return to Venice of an old and sick man determined to confront his past, and accompanied by his daughter who is escaping hers, The Antipodeans spans three generations of a New Zealand family and their interaction with three families of Northern Italy. From Venice to the South Island of New Zealand, from the assassination of a Gestapo commander in the last days of Italian resistance in WWII to contemporary real estate shenanigans in Auckland, from political assassination ...

A beautifully written, funny, intelligent and heartwarming novel about a young woman who leaves the city for her home town where she falls in love with a wonderful man - and does much more besides.In the wake of an unfortunate best-friend-and-boyfriend-caught-having-sex-in-a-chair incident, Jo Donnelly flees her civilised city life to take up a temporary job at the physiotherapy clinic in her small home town.Jo is ineptly assisted at work by a receptionist ...

'I entered the world kicking and screaming in 1973. I put my theatrical entrance down to me craving a nicotine fix. Mum smoked, like a chimney, right through the nine months of pregnancy. As far as anyone knew back then smoking was good for the unborn child. I'm pretty sure smoking was even permitted in the Plunket rooms mum and I used to go to before I was born.How I survived to tell the tale of my young years is a miracle - we had no seatbelts, no bike helmets, no sun screen, we ...