The stunning debut novel by the Winner of the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize 2025. An emotionally charged exploration of what happens when one moment changes everything.A child disappears in broad daylight—and no one sees a thing.Three-year-old Oliver, known as Apple Man, vanishes from a remote car park while his young father, Scott, carries fishing gear down to the beach. When he returns, the car is empty. His son has vanished without a trace.Apple Man's mother, Fae, ...

To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research—specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of ...

QVB FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTHBOOKTOPIA BOOK OF THE MONTHAs the long summer holiday stretches ahead, with her older sister more interested in boys, her mother disappearing on long walks and her father, beer in hand, watching the cricket, the youngest in the family often finds herself alone. At the beach, she meets Kahu, a boy who tells her a tragic story. A couple of years ago, a little girl went missing, presumed drowned. But no one ever found her body.Suddenly, the...

Can you ever truly run away from your past?Mickey Bloom: five foot tall, dyslexic, and bullied at school. With a mostly absent and hostile father, Mickey feels she's no good at anything. Until she discovers running.Mickey's new-found talent makes her realise she's everything she thought she wasn't — powerful, strong, and special. But her success comes at a cost, and the relentless training and pressure to win leaves Mickey broken; her dream in tatters.Years later, w...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTIONA compelling courtroom drama, Dice is an incredibly timely exploration of how sexual violence is viewed in our society.Four teenage boys invent a sex game based on rolling dice and doing what the numbers say.They are charged with multiple sexual offences against three teenage girls.Twelve random jurors are brought together in a trial to work out what actually happened.Only they c...

Becky thought she’d left Zoe Golden and that summer far behind.Set in 1995 against the backdrop of Auckland’s burgeoning party scene, Golden Days is the story of an intense late-teens friendship between bookish Becky and star-dusted Zoe Golden, and what happened when one terrifying night changed their lives and destroyed their friendship forever.After finding out that her husband has been cheating on her, Becky is mourning the end of her picture-perfect marriage at the bott...

A stunning debut novel about love, guilt and forgiveness. If you loved Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro, you will adore The Stars are a Million Glittering Worlds.Thea, a young woman crippled by guilt, flees to Central America to escape her life.In Guatemala, she meets the charismatic Chris and his partner, Sarah, and the three of them form a tight bond. But everything changes when a tragedy occurs.Thea soon finds herself in a new relatio...

**A New York Times Best Thriller of 2025Over the course of one sunbaked summer vacation, a family is pulled into a web of mysteries that the younger daughter sets out to solve. A tense, page-turning debut of childhood, innocence, and evil."I absolutely loved this page-turning family mystery and didn’t want it to end. . . An extraordinary, exquisitely written debut." --Liane Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of Here One Moment**At...

**‘Extraordinary . . . I absolutely loved this family mystery’ – Liane Moriarty, bestselling author of Here One Moment'Riveting . . . [It] held me captive'** – Hannah Kent, bestselling author of DevotionDiscover this breathtaking debut novel of family secrets and searing atmosphere set over one long, hot summer on the New Zealand coast.In the past, we had always spent our summer holidays in remote places. That ...

A powerful and compelling new novel about friendship, false prophets and the lure of belonging— from the bestselling author of One of Those Mothers.When five very different women join a gym run by the magnetic Lars and his elusive wife Priya, they are convinced they've found more than a fitness regime. Within its glass walls, wrapped around the branches of a ginkgo tree, they discover kinship, camaraderie and the promise of transformation.But as the group's devotion deepens...

A sexy, blackly comic mystery, where the impossibility of closure and a desire to fix the past collide.All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to Aotearoa-New Zealand to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she's barely seen since making her small-town escape as a teen. But her homecoming isn't the triumph it should be. She has nothing to show for her time in Sydney but a string of failed relationships, crappy jobs and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-gi...