Meridee Bang is brought up in a house on Olivine Street with too many children and too little money. It's the 1960s and while The Patty Duke Show and I Love Lucy depict what life should be like, things are somewhat different in the Bang household. For Meridee the movie of her life is called Getting Dragged up on Olivine Street. In her world, family life is all about survival. Spanning the '60s, '70s and '80s, Bangs follows Meridee from her pre-school yea...

White Ghosts, Yellow Peril is the first book ever to explore all sides of the relationship between China and New Zealand and their peoples during the seven or so generations after they initially came into contact. The Qing Empire and its successor states from 1790 to 1950 were vast, complex and torn by conflict. New Zealand, meanwhile, grew into a small, prosperous, orderly province of Europe. Not until now has anyone told the story of the links and tensions between the two countr...

A clever and compelling novel about illicit love and raw passion with unexpected twists and poignant depth. Manfred Morse has just hit fifty, and also the wall. Life seems empty. His marriage is long since over, his leathery old father is in his tenth year of dying of cancer, while his colleagues play games of petty politics. Seeking stress leave from his New Zealand university, he takes a job as guest lecturer at a university in Shanghai. Here he suddenly comes face-to-f...

An entirely new look at the shocking impact of the First World War on New Zealand. For New Zealand, World War One was wholly avoidable, wholly unnecessary — and almost wholly disastrous. Stevan Eldred-Grigg believes that the enormous cost of the war to our people was way too high — and that we still feel its effects, both socially and culturally, today. This is excellent narrative non-fiction, analysing our history in a novel way. It's very accessible but is backed up by m...

The social history of New Zealand's gold rushes, as used by Eleanor Catton in her research for The Luminaries. A thorough and carefully researched history of the gold rushes in New Zealand. Based on sound scholarship and aimed at the general reader it's accessibly written in a clear, clean and lively style. The scope is the social history of the goldfields of colonial New Zealand, from the 1850s to the 1870s. The book opens with a survey of worldwide rushes in the...

William McInnes' bestselling memoir, A Man's Got To Have A Hobby, takes us back to the long summer holidays of the 1960s and 70s, and the last of the baby-boomer childhoods. William writes with humour and affection about his family, and especially his mum and dad, who talked to the TV set and enjoyed life in their house near the bay.William McInnes is a talented writer and a natural storyteller. A tail-end baby boomer, he recalls summer holidays that seeme...

A raw, rough, poetic, funny, intensely moving and quite, quite beautiful memoir about a boy from the bush, growing up in Australian in the sixties.From one of Australia's favourite actors comes a classic memoir of an Australian childhood in the sixties.Young Steve was a larrikin, happy-go-lucky, resilient kid, coming of age in a simpler time. Growing up on a farm cut from virgin scrub at the end of a lake, a farm called Stillways, Steve daydreamed about cars and escape. His...

WINNER OF THE 2013 STEELE RUDD AWARD, QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARDSSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 KIBBLE AWARDFrom prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry s...

THE UPLIFTING AND HEARTWARMING LOVE LETTER TO FAMILY AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS . . . from BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show host Sara Cox.'Glorious springtime, haystacks and a herd of cows can all be found in this' Sunday Times Bestseller'Cox is a natural storyteller... she brings that authentic voice to bear in her memoir. The tone is so intimate, chatty and friendly, so you feel as though she could be sitting next ...

Children all over the world can't resist the special magic of a Paul Jennings story - for over twenty years he has entertained and enthralled young readers.This special collection of Paul's trickiest stories proves yet again that he is the master of unexpected twists and turns!

The complete short stories of the bestselling author of Mallawindy and the Woody Creek series"Pure brilliance. This is a book to keep and treasure - you'll want to read it again and again." Sun-HeraldAt the beginning of her writing journey, Joy Dettman's charming, irascible, melancholy, wisecracking characters appeared in over twenty unique tales, many of which have won awards, many of which have never bee...

‘Give me the boy and I will show you the man’ the saying goes. In this warm, tender, wonderfully evocative and often hilarious memoir one of the best-loved men in Britain, Alan Titchmarsh, brilliantly recalls his childhood in 1950s Yorkshire.Growing up in the beautiful landscape that surrounds Ilkley in Wharfedale inspired Alan’s early passion for nature.In a time of post-war austerity, hard work and ‘making do’ was not just the lot of the grown-ups; for the young Alan it was...