Fiction > NZ Fiction

This is a novel of family secrets and tensions, and distant past grievances, set like so much of Maurice Gee's fiction in the West Auckland town of Loomis. It is also vintage Maurice Gee, widely recognised as New Zealand's finest living fiction writer. Publication will be a significant event. New Zealand fiction doesn't get any better than this. Three brothers and sisters, all now in their eighties, two of them living in the old family home, are struggling to cope with events that have happened way back in the past. It all bursts i... read more

When Kitty Farrell is offered a trinket by a street urchin, her impulsive response will change both of their lives forever, and place an unexpected strain on her marriage. For the past four years, she has sailed the high seas on the trading vessel Katipo with Rian, her wild Irish adventurer, but when they return to the Bay of Islands in 1845, they find themselves in the midst of a bloody affray. Their loyalties and their love are sorely tested, and Kitty's past comes back to haunt her when she encounters the bewitching child she na... read more

A re-issue of Patricia Grace's fourth novel in the new cover series design. Tawera and his sister are inseparable, in a relationship that is impossible for others to share. In fact his whole family is bonded by secrets, their genealogy stitched together by pride, shame and sometimes despair. Baby No-eyes has several threads running through it. One is the death of Te Paania's child, which is based on the true story of a dead child who was returned to her whanau with her eyes missing. In the years after her death, Baby has a continui... read more

'Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at - nothing - at nothing, simply'. Katherine Mansfield's perceptive and resonant writing helped to define the modern short story, observing apparently trivial incidents to create quietly devastating revelations of inner lives. In these three tales, aglow with light and colour, Mansfiel... read more

In her bestselling historical romances Tamar and White Feathers, Deborah Challinor introduced feisty Tamar Deane, the Cornish seamstress who became the owner of Aucklandâ€ÂÂÂ... read more

On 3 February 1931, Napier is devastated by a powerful earthquake – and Tamar Murdoch, beloved matriarch of Kenmore, is seriously injured. As she recovers, Tamar is preoccupied with the ongoing effects of the Great Depression. When her grandson threatens to leave for Spain to join the International Brigade, she feels a familiar dread – once again her family is threatened by war and heartbreak, as Hitler’s armies march. In the final volume of the Tamar trilogy, the story of the feisty Cornish seamstress who bec... read more

A brutal home invasion shocks the nation. A man is murdered, his wife bound, gagged and left to watch. But when Detective Sam Shephard scratches the surface, the victim, a successful businessman, is not all he seems to be. And when the evidence points to two of Dunedin's most hated criminals, the case seems cut and dried... until the body count starts to rise. Meanwhile, Sam is in big trouble again

Short of money, the inventor Thomas Edison is captivated by the charismatic figure of J.P. Morgan, the "world's banker". Accepting Morgan's glittering offer of almost unlimited cash in return for helping the man change the way the world does business, Edison sees himself descend from being the godlike inventor of electric light to being complicit in the invention of the electric chair. Ever more enmeshed in Morgan's personal life, he becomes infatuated by a world of privilege and power, where duty and desire, faith and immorality a... read more

Chinese Opera is a dark and dazzling novel set in an all too plausible New Zealand of the near future.'Little Frank is 120 years old and he'™s lost his mind or the part that can put damaged memories back together. Once the gang boss of ˜The Place he™s traded his imagination for secure long life. Trapped in a luxurious present of mindless routine, he'™s jolted awake in 2090 to the bizarre facts of his world: his obsession with the female lead at the Chinese Opera, his unsavoury liaison with the Binh Xuyen body-part pirates, their su... read more

Worlds separate Brent Rosser from Ulla Peet, but a burglary gone wrong brings them into a confrontation that will change their lives ? and end one of them, or perhaps both. There are many crimes in this chilling novel ? brutal murder, corporate fraud, domestic violence and spiritual bankruptcy. Through the chance meetings of the Peet and Rosser families, Crime Story asks questions about the victims and perpetrators of crime, and about the price of greed and personal isolation. It is a haunting portrayal of human frailty but al... read more

When he lifts his arms to point the camera at me, the shirt bunches around the muscles of his biceps and his shoulders. 'What's this about? Who sent you?' 'There's a simple message: back off.' The photograph has printed. He holds it up, shakes it dry and looks at it appraisingly. 'Not bad,' he says, turning the photo so I can see it. I look at myself, smiling at the camera, reflexively. 'This is for you,' he says, giving it to me. 'Keep it handy, so you can show the plastic surgeon what you used to look like.' When a rugby star, wh... read more

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 who divides her time between nail care and surfing the internet. Meanwhile, her new flatmate is a joyless couch potato who hogs the TV and is vigilant in her quest to prevent excessive electricity consumption. Life would seem a bit grim if not for Jo's eccentric honorary ... read more

Violetta has a sixth sense when it comes to love, which is why she is 'spiritual leader' of The Secret League of Widowed Darners, an all-but invisible army of ancient Italian widows who spend their time mending broken hearts in a hilltop town in Tuscany. Then Lily Turner arrives fresh from the boardrooms of Manhattan. She's just found out that her perfect husband has been having the children she could never have right there in Montevedova, with someone else, so she's come to find him and chop him into tiny pieces. With this Viole... read more

Set in 1906, "Dreamhunter" describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, where only a select group of people can go. These are the Dreamhunters and they harvest dreams which are then transmitted to the general public. This work is suitable for children aged 11 and above.

The story continues dramatically as Grace, overdreamt by Laura, introduces a nightmare instread of the happy holiday dream programmed to a packed Opera House audience, with chaotic results.

Everything We Hoped For is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force. A young mother in shocked contemplation of her new baby and young women in rehab and jail feature in mostly short and oblique stories which echo and connect with cumulative power. A broad range of other characters, including a NZ serviceman returned from active duty in Dili, the employees of a $2 Shop and a vegan couple at a Samoan resort complete an impressive contemporary canvas. Fir... read more

When Celia Inverarity, aged seventeen, is found brutally murdered in a secluded West Auckland park one Sunday afternoon, Paul Prior, her English teacher and mentor, is suspected of being her murderer.Celia’s death and the violence which follows send Prior back to examine the past − a past that is as secret as his father’s den in the old poison shed. Eventually the murderer is exposed, but not before a family has been split apart and old wounds revealed. This murder mystery is as close to vintage Maurice Gee as you can get.I... read more

Remittance men were sent away from Britain to live in a colony on a small and regular sum - a remittance. Usually behind them was some disgrace or scandal, a secret that each man carried, often to the grave. Scandal and secrets are at the heart of IRIDESCENCE, a novel that spans two decades of the Victorian age. It follows the intrigues and sexual shenanigans of the theatre world in a brilliantly amoral London to the small and dusty town of Napier in New Zealand. Can you keep a secret? Samuel Barton, a remittance man, is blown int... read more

Raised by gorillas in the wild jungles of New Zealand, scarred in battles with vicious giant wetas, seduced by a beautiful young scientist, discovered by Memphis record producer Sam Phillips and adored by millions – the dirt-to-dreams life story of Caliban is as legendary as his 30 number one hits. That story came to a dramatic end in 1977 when Caliban took his own life.But now, in a sensational new development, a manuscript, written in old age by Caliban himself, has emerged which proves that his story didn’t end... read more

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