woa bookshelf

Shame
Jasvinder Sanghera
These women live in terror, and honour-based violence is at the root of all their fears.' SHAME is the heart-rending true story of a young girl's escape from a nightmare.

Overwhelmed and alone, Jasvinder was 15 when she ran away from home to escape a forced marriage to a much older man she'd never met. She had to move constantly, ever wary of being tracked down for betraying her family's honour. Her three years in hiding ended with the news that her sister Robina had committed suicide by setting herself alight - because she was being so badly abused by her husband. At the funeral the family ostracised Jasvinder and twenty years later, her sisters still refuse to speak to her. Jasvinder has since educated herself, become a parent and founded a shelter for women fleeing their families in similar circumstances - and in many cases, fearful for their lives. Even today, she still receives threats on the lives of her children from the families of the women she cares for. This is her story.

Jane Hunter - Growing a Legacy
Tessa Anderson
From Marlborough to Manhattan, from Rapaura Road to the Ritz. The inspirational story of one woman and her place in the history of New World wine 
In the last 30 years the province of Marlborough has moved from relative obscurity to become New Zealand’s largest and best-known wine region with a reputation for producing some of the world’s finest Sauvignon Blanc. This huge potential was something that was recognised back in the early ’80s by Ernie Hunter of Hunter’s Wines, when he founded his fledgling winery in the region’s Wairau Valley. In 1987, Ernie’s dream almost died with him when he was tragically killed in a motor accident. The marketing genius and public face of their winery, he was largely responsible for the initial international acclaim Hunter’s Wines received.  After his death, his wife, Jane Hunter, a qualified viticulturist who had been working with Montana Wines, was left to grapple her way through an emotional, legal and potentially terminal financial minefield, nurturing the vines and the business alike. ‘All I got left with when Ernie died,’ she says, ‘was a business not doing so well, a bloody goat, a big dog and a derelict cottage.’  Quietly but surely Jane Hunter steered the company forward through some of the most difficult times in the New Zealand wine industry’s history, managing significant growth in size, annual output and reputation. Over the years, the company’s annual output has increased three fold to around 85,000 cases of wine, 70% of which is exported.  Hunter’s Wines has gone to win more than 120 gold medals at national and international competitions, including the coveted Marquis de Goulaine Trophy for Best Sauvignon Blanc in the World. Some 20 years on, Jane Hunter has become internationally recognised in her own right as a leading vintner and one of the pioneers of Marlborough’s Sauvignon Blanc success.  She is also the recipient of many awards and acknowledgements, including the prestigious Women in Wine Award and an OBE.  Her story is one of perseverance and resilience. Tessa Anderson is a Marlborough-based journalist who has watched the growth of Hunter’s Wines, and the Marlborough and New Zealand wine industries, both professionally and personally, for the past 25 years.

The Accidental Organiser
GET ORGANISED AT HOME & WORK
Wendy Davie
In every life there is a room, a drawer, a schedule or a handbag that strikes fear in the heart of its owner. It is full of CLUTTER.  

Imagine if it wasn’t so. Organising Guru Wendy Davie offers incentives and practical strategies for entering the murkier recesses of our homes and workplaces, dealing with them bit by manageable bit – and having FUN in the process. Written with warmth and humour, Wendy’s simple action plans make the ‘impossible’ possible. She shows how to live a decluttered, streamlined and more enjoyable life. In a few easy steps you’ll be organised – as if by accident! ‘This book could change your life!’

NGAIO MARSH: HER LIFE IN CRIME
Joanne Drayton
While Ngaio Marsh had a larger than life public persona, she was fiercely protective of her private life. No one knows better how to cover tracks with red herrings and remove incriminating evidence than a crime fiction writer. This fascinating biography of Ngaio Marsh pieces together both the public and private Marsh in a way that is as riveting as a crime novel. Through Marsh's writing and her theatre productions and publications, Joanne Drayton assembles the pieces to the puzzle that is Ngaio Marsh, proving that life can be as thrilling as fiction. Marsh wrote her first detective novel in a London flat in the depths of the 1930s Depression. In 'A Man Lay Dead' she brought to life Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Through thirty-two novels he would establish himself as one of the great super-sleuths, and Marsh as one of four Queens of Golden Age detective fiction writing alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham. In 1932, a family tragedy brought Marsh home to New Zealand, to a life divided - between hemispheres, between passionate relationships at home and abroad, and between the world of publishing and her life as a stage director. In 1949, her writing would earn her the ultimate distinction when Penguin and Collins released the ‘Marsh Million’ - 100,000 copies of ten of her titles - on to the world market. The popular appetite for classic ‘whodunits’ was insatiable and Marsh was one of the best, but her greatest love was the stage - or was it?

Sepulchre
Kate Mosse
October 1897: on the Eve of All Saint's, when graves are said to open and spirits walk, a young Parisian girl, Leonie Vernier, disappears without trace from her Aunt's country estate, the Domaine de la Cade. That same night, in a tiny village across the valley, an elderly reclusive priest is brutally murdered. All that links the two events is the music heard echoing in the ancient woods and the painted Tarot card pressed between the bloodied fingers of the dead man's hand. Card XV, Le Diable - The Devil.

October 2007: Meredith Martin arrives at the Domaine de la Cade and is immediately captivated by the tragic history of the house and the fate of Leonie Vernier. But when Meredith stumbles upon an ancient tomb, a sepulchre, hidden deep within the grounds and hears ghostly music echoing through the woods at night, she realises the story of the cards is far from dead and buried. And against her will, she finds herself caught up in a race against time to solve the century-old mystery of Leonie's disappearance.

The Awa Book of New Zealand Science
A new book that tells the stories of breakthrough discoveries by New Zealand scientists has received high praise from Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy. Gilmore, who was born and raised in Christchurch, and became the first New Zealander to receive a doctorate in astronomy, said receiving an advance copy of The Awa Book of New Zealand Science from the publisher had ruined his weekend. ‘I could not put it down this wonderful collection of writings by remarkable people, many heroes and several geniuses.’  The Awa Book of New Zealand Science is a gripping read.  Consisting largely of eyewitness accounts by scientists themselves, it tells the stories of widely varying scientific discoveries, from colonial naturalists describing New Zealand’s unique birdlife, to physicists unveiling the structure of the atom and DNA, and today’s medical researchers finding new links between environment, genetics and disease. The editor, science writer and historian Rebecca Priestley, said all pieces had been carefully chosen to be accessible to the general reader. ‘Lots of people think of science as too hard. They’ll be amazed when they read this book – lots of the pieces are as thrilling as a good detective story.’  The publisher, Awa Press, says it has been overwhelmed by the positive response. Bernard Beckett, author of best-seller Genesis and Falling for Science, calls the book ‘an eloquent collection that reminds us of the range and intensity of intellectual obsession, and the sheer hard graft of dragging us to new understandings.’ Paul Callaghan, Alan MacDiarmid professor of physical sciences at Victoria University and a well-known science commentator on Radio New Zealand, applauded it as highly readable and valuable. ‘It shows how New Zealand’s history is interwoven with both scientific achievement and insight—not only about our country’s unique environment, but about the universe of knowledge that belongs to all humanity.’

Murder on the Apricot Coast
Marion Halligan
The eagerly-awaited sequel to the bestselling The Apricot Colonel is another charming novel of fruit preserving, cross-dressing . . . and murder. Cosy crime at its very best.

All is not as it seems in the calm, well-ordered streets of the nation's capital. After the turbulence of their courtship, Cassandra and the colonel have settled into wedded bliss - only to have it shattered by a death far too close to home. A friend's daughter is found dead from a drug overdose - a tragic suicide. But when her unfinished manuscript turns up containing an explosive expose of the local child prostitution scene, suicide turns to murder.

With characteristic panache, much reading between the lines, and a magnificent wardrobe of women's clothes (his), Cassandra and her colonel set out to find the truth in this eagerly awaited sequel to The Apricot Colonel.

Albatross
Tui de Roy, Mark Jones, Julian Fitter
This magnificent book is both a celebration of the Albatross and a call for their survival. Big in size, and with almost 400 extraordinary photographs by award-winning photographer Tui de Roy, Albatross is the most comprehensive book on this mysterious and much-loved sea-bird to date.

The albatross is a creature of legend, of poetry and of dreams. It is the ultimate nomad, whose sailplane wings – the longest of any living bird – harness the shrieking winds of the Southern Ocean as it glides around the globe. This master of wind and wave is also the subject of intense scientific scrutiny and fascinating revelations. But just as we are discovering the magic of these glorious birds, they are becoming increasingly threatened; today, over three-quarters of all albatross species are edging towards extinction

Ribbons of Grace
Maxine Alterio
Ribbons of Grace is set in China, Orkney and New Zealand between 1870 and 1895. It explores the themes of concealment, alienation, love, forgiveness and friendship through three interrelated storylines narrated by Ming Yuet, a female Chinese sojourner masquerading as a male gold-miner; Conran, an Orcadian stonemason; and Ida, an English settler with aspirations to be a nurse. The novel centres on the relationship between Ming Yuet and Conran, which various settlers think is not only interracial but also homosexual, thereby believing the lovers have crossed both sexual and cultural boundaries. Their love affair develops amidst suspicion, fear and hostility as British settlers and Chinese sojourners attempt to live and work in Arrowtown, a small goldmining town in the lower South Island of New Zealand. An act of violence ensues which irrevocably shatters the lives of those directly and indirectly involved. As the main characters reflect on their roles prior to this event and throughout its shattering aftermath, they pass on their stories to Fang Yin, the daughter of Ming Yuet and Conran. Their stories move between the past and present, homeland and adopted country and from the living to the deceased, revealing differences and similarities about approaches to life and death. Ribbons of Grace is also a novel about the healing potential of friendship and the redemptive power of storytelling.

Courage at the Top
Andrea Needham

In Courage at the Top Needham defines leadership with courage, provides case-studies which reveal why courage is so
essential in a good leader, and provides an action plan to achieve leadership courage.

Over the Wide and Trackless Sea
Megan Hutching
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European settlers travelled to New Zealand from distant shores over treacherous seas to build new lives here. In early histories of Pakeha settlement many of the women were unknown; they stayed silent and few were known by name. Through extensive research, acclaimed historian Megan Hutching brings to life the lives of eleven pioneer women and girls of New Zealand. ‘I chose these eleven women and girls because together their stories illuminate some of the many strands that have gone into weaving the fabric of this country’s history,’ Megan says. Some women featured in Over the Wide and Trackless Sea did record their time here. Eliza White’s journals give a rich and detailed description of her life, and she describes her four-month journey to New Zealand by whaling ship as over the ‘wide and trackless sea’. Lady Barker wrote two well-loved books about her time here, Amey Daldy lead the way for women’s suffrage and Kirstine Nielsen created the concept of the health stamp and helped found the Country Women’s Institute. Megan Hutching gives an insight and understanding of these women’s lives, whose hardships are difficult to comprehend. Most of these women left the security of a familiar way of life to endure a difficult journey that involved sickness and suffering. Once in New Zealand, they survived numerous emotional and natural disasters – the deaths of their children, along with fire, snow storms, earth quakes and floods. From Dalmatia, Britain and Denmark, these women ended up settling from the far north to the far south of New Zealand. Whether gum-diggers in North Auckland, whaling station wives, or  sheep station owners in Canterbury , they broke in an untamed land, and raised families, while performing their daily domestic duties.    

Who is Sylvia?
The Diary of a Biography of Sylvia Ashton Warner
Lynley Hood
For four years writer Lynley Hood was obsessed, or possibly possessed, by New Zealand writer and educator Sylvia Ashton Warner. Who is Sylvia? was first published in1990. It is a compelling diary of Hood’s experiences and reflections while writing Sylvia, her award winning biography of Sylvia Ashton Warner. The new edition, to be released on 25^th July, is published by Longacre Press to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sylvia Ashton Warner, and the forthcoming conference on her life and work which will be held in Auckland on 9^th and 10^th August this year. Lynley Hood reveals the highs and lows of a biographer’s discoveries, and the frustrations and intrigue of the literary scene at the time. Who is Sylvia? brilliantly captures the unflinching spirit and energy of the biographer and chronicles her own development as a solitary full-time writer. Lynley Hood’s writing career was launched with Sylvia which won the 1989 Book of the Year Wattie Award. Lynley Hood is a former Burns Fellow and the author of several books including the controversial A City Possessed - The Christchurch Civic Creche Case (2001)  which went on to win the Montana Book of the Year Award as well as the People’s Choice Award. Lynley has a Doctorate of Literature from the University of Otago and is a former Burns fellow.

What's Happening to Our Girls?
Maggie Hamilton
Why are girls as young as five years old concerned about their looks and addicted to shopping?
Why are they having sex and binge-drinking so young, responding to chat-room predators, and bullying their peers via email and text messages?
Why are depression, cutting and eating disorders on the rise, and why, with so much choice, do so many just want to marry young and have babies?
In a few short years our girls have become vulnerable - not just teen girls, but also young girls and baby girls. They are being forced to grow up faster than ever before. What a twelve-year-old girl experienced at seven is not what a seven-year-old girl is now struggling with. Many of the guidelines we offer girls no longer apply, or are contradicted by messages from media and advertising telling girls how to look, think, behave and feel. Over two years Maggie Hamilton interviewed girls, teachers, school counsellors, psychologists, and law enforcement and medical personnel to get an insider's view on what girls are experiencing at present, from birth to the teenage years. Informed, revealing, compassionate and at times shocking, What's Happening to Our Girls? is a book for parents and all those who want to better understand and support girls.

The Ringmaster
Vanda Symon
After the events described in Overkill, our hero Sam is now training to be a detective at Dunedin Central. The novel begins with the brutal murder of a young female student, one of a number of vicious murders in the region. There is the chilling prospect of a predator loose in Dunedin. Being on the lowest rung of the ladder and with an unsupportive boss, Sam is assigned not to the murder enquiry but to the local visiting circus, which is being harassed by animal rights activists. Sam finds herself at the very centre of the murder investigation when she realises that the itinerary of the touring circus precisely matches the locations of the unsolved murders around the country. Sam’s insight is a break-through, and soon the investigation centres on the circus and its abrasive owner Terry Bennett. But when another young Dunedin student is murdered, the killer is now revealed to be much closer to home. Who else is on the murderer’s list and is Sam in great danger?

Speaking at the Press ChCh Writers' Festival Friday 5 Sept

The Darkness Looking Back
Andrea Jutson
Across Auckland, deliveries are failing to reach their targets - because the intended recipients are dead. What starts as a grisly murder without a motive turns into something more sinister, as another body is discovered. Someone wants them found; someone who wants to send a message. A serial killer is once more at work in the City of Sails, and his victims are women with too much love to give. To track down the avenging Cupid, Detective Constable Andy Stirling needs all the help he can get from psychic medium James Paxton. When the media get wind of Paxton's involvement, however, the manhunt rapidly becomes a circus. As pressure mounts from all sides, Paxton and Stirling must find the killer before he strikes again ...
Love is all around - and so is he.
Look out!

Anywhere But Here
Ella West 
The sequel to Thieves. Like wanted criminals, Nicky and the other travelers are on the run. But what’s their crime? They all have an extraordinary gift: the ability to transport themselves anywhere, through the powers of thought alone. Pursuing the travellers is the Project, an organisation that abducted them from their parents, virtually enslaving them, and pushed them to carry out secret missions. Until they escaped. Now the five teenagers are in Los Angeles, trying to keep one step ahead of their pursuers. They might make it if they work as a team — but loyalties are shifting. In one head-long dash, the travellers must find out what they want and who they want to be, but the Project is shadowing their every move. The sequel to Thieves, and the second novel in a planned trilogy, Anywhere but Here is a taut, tersely written race against time. ‘We may have escaped the Project but there is more ….’ Nicky

Family OE
by Luke Willamson, Karen Williamson
If you are planning to take your children on an extended trip overseas, Family OE is a must-have. It’s packed with good advice gathered by the Williamson family on their eight months of travel in Western Europe, Turkey and Canada. This book is not a ‘where to’ guide, but a ‘how to’, tailored specially to family travel and covering such topics as planning, what to take, preparing your children for the trip, what to do about school, budgeting, health and safety, and more. Practical tips are interleaved with travel anecdotes and snippets from the family’s journals. Black-and-white and colour photographs help illustrate the ins, outs, ups and downs of family travel, and are also guaranteed to whet the appetite and get you planning your own Family OE.

Krystyna’s Story
Halina Ogonowska-Coates 
‘As a child I loved my mother but she seemed different from other mothers. She didn’t know how old she was. She couldn’t remember where she was born. I wondered what had happened to her that she could have forgotten such important things. It had something to do with the Second World War …’
Krystyna is one of 732 Polish children who survived forced deportation to the Soviet Union and was given a  home in New Zealand in 1944. Her remarkable story, a composite portrait drawn from interviews with Polish survivors,  begins in a peaceful Polish village and follows her family’s harrowing journey to a labour camp in Siberia, the terrible flight to freedom, and Krystyna’s lonely voyage to a safe refuge in New Zealand. This story is a beautifully evoked account of a child’s journey through Europe at war, and a young woman’s bewildering encounter with rural New Zealand.

Whispers of Waitaha
Makere and Te Porohau Ruka Te Korako
Whispers of Waitaha: Traditions of a Nation tells simply of the oral transfer of information from grandparent to grandchild.  The stories of 8 grandmothers - these writings are the legacy left to our mokopuna of Waitaha from the mothers & grandmothers - the words have always been in oral form until  now This transfer, allowing for the “moko”, design and the “puna”, pool, to hold onto not only the physical attributes of transfer, but for the grandchild to become aware of the great pools of memory that reside universally. These pools of memory and experience are accessed by the mokopuna, grandchild with the appropriate psychological, geological, biological and spiritual keys, within the safety and structure of the teachings. Our wisdom keepers have long realized and teach continually that we will never lose our story, therefore we will never lose our dream of the guture.  And the grandmothers smile and whisper, “When gentleness and kindness are given us, plant the thoughts of love in your garden within you and speak of the warmth that surrounds the thoughts of love to them.”   This beautifully illustrated book  written in Maori & English, has won  Silver Award in the Nautilus Book Awards of the United States It was displayed at the Book Expo America, in Los Angeles at the end of May this year.

For you are Waitaha and you are of the moko and puna of the universe

When Friends Hurt
Dr. Jan Yager
For everyone who has ever wondered about friends who hurt or reject them, this authoritative book provides invaluable insights and on-target advice on taking actions to understand and effectively deal with problematical friendships. Based on extensive original research, When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal With Friends Who Betray, Abandon, or Wound You by sociologist and friendship expert Dr. Jan Yager (NY: Simon and Schuster, Inc., Fireside Books, 2002) demonstrates how, why, and when to let go of bad friends and how to develop the positive friendships (or put more time and energy into existing good friendships) that enrich our lives on every level. To research her book, Dr. Yager interviewed dozens of people - including men and women from New Zealand - about their experiences in friendships that had gone wrong. She provides invaluable insights and advice on negative friendships and covers topics such as:
• understanding the 21 types of potentially negative friends and how to respond to them        • dealing with betrayal
• deciding if a friendship is worth saving                                                                             • the best way to rid yourself of a noxious friend
• negotiating friendships at work

The Seven Sisters of Matariki
Toni Rolleston-Cummins
An adventurous young man called Mitai lives with his seven handsome brothers in the village of Maketu. He watches his brothers become bewitched by seven beautiful women, and under their spell, the brothers no longer eat, look after themselves, work in their gardens or hunt. Realising the women are patupaiarehe, fairy women, he knows they must be cast far away. They are given to Urutengangana, the god of the stars, and he places the patupaiarehe in the heavens farthest from the earth. Yet once a year, at winter solstice, he allows their beauty to shine in the eastern sky.
 

The Pirate's Daughter
Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Cezair-Thompson conjures the tragic glamour of golden age Hollywood against the backdrop of lusty, turbulent Jamaica in her dual generational coming-of-age saga. Ida Joseph is 13 years old when Errol Flynn is nearly shipwrecked off the coast of her hometown of Port Antonio in 1946. Flynn instantly loves Jamaica and, eager to find a refuge from stateside scandal, purchases an island across from the port. Navy Island becomes the setting for his glittering parties, movie projects and affair with Ida in her senior year of high school. Flynn refuses to take responsibility for the resulting child, May, and after trying to make a go of it in Jamaica, Ida leaves May and heads to New York City, where she marries a wealthy baron friend of Flynn's who purchases the island after Flynn dies. May grows to adulthood on Navy Island, develops something more than a crush on a married family friend 40 years her senior and indulges in drugs and free love.

Jamaica's tumultuous progression toward self-governance—with the violent chaos it unleashes on Navy Island—reveals certain hidden truths about the baron. For all the high drama, the reader never feels fully privy to Ida or May, but Cezair-Thompson otherwise succeeds magnificently in evoking a world distant in both time and place.

Just A Bang On The Head
Rosie Belton
Just a Bang on the Head by Rosie Belton offers a searingly honest and moving insight into the world of brain injury. This compelling story of loss, courage and the struggle to rebuild a new and meaningful life is essential reading for anyone dealing with a brain injury, their friends and family, health professionals and social workers.

Mothers Ruin
Nicola Barry
Alcohol abuse is rampant worldwide, we are constantly being bombarded with stories about the drinking culture and we know it is not confined to any class or social group.

Nicola Barry grew up in well-to-do Edinburgh family. The daughter of two medical professionals and with her brothers boarders at public school, she should have been destined for great things from an early age. But behind the closed doors of their beautiful family home, her mother was drinking herself to death and slowly destroying the family as she went. Although spending much of her time as her mother’s caregiver and being sucked in to the alcoholism cycle herself, Nicola broke free and came out the other side.  Mother’s Ruin is her story.

Written with humour, sarcasm, intelligence and courage, this is a harrowing tale. The opening lines to the first chapter are so strong and gut-wrenching that the reader is hooked right from the beginning.

Serial Survivors
Jan Jordan
This book tells the story of fifteen women who survived a sexual assault, all of them attacked by the same serial rapist. It tells the story of their survival, and is based on extensive interviews with the fifteen women. The interviews illustrate how each stage of the process following the attack became an exercise in survival – surviving the assault, managing police interviewing, surviving and coping with going to court, surviving all the many impacts on their lives, and also managing how those close to them were affected. The picture that emerges demonstrates that surviving rape is not a one-off event but a continual process. The different procedures and aspects each pose their own challenges as the victims/survivors manage the various and on-going intrusions and encounters that follow in the aftermath of rape. This book presents their stories – the losses and the triumphs, the battles and the victories. Their accounts make both their fear and courage palpable. They demonstrate the many diverse ways in which a sexual attack can impact, not only on the woman herself but on her partner, parents, children, friends, neighbours – all of us. For when one woman is raped, a whole community hurts. That is why we need to understand so much more deeply the impacts of rape, and why we must do all we can to minimise its occurrence.

Ritual
Mo Hayden
A UK case in 2001 — where a young boy ‘Adam’s’ torso was found in the Thames — inspired Mo’s latest novel, Ritual. It opens with its heroine Flea Marley, a police diver, finding a severed hand in Bristol harbour. The fact that there’s no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed. DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared.

Twenty Chickens for a Saddle
Robyn Scott
When Robyn Scott was six years old her parents abruptly exchanged the tranquil pastures of New Zealand for a converted cowshed in the wilds of Botswana, where their three small children grew up collecting snakes, canoeing with crocodiles and breaking in horses in the veld. Falling in love with the country where Robyn’s eccentric grandfather had served as pilot to Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first beloved president, her parents at once set off in his pioneering and unconventional footsteps. This is the story of the family’s fifteen years in Botswana, during which Linda Scott haphazardly and single-handedly homeschooled her three children – each eccentric characters in their own right – while her husband, Keith, ran a flying doctor practice and attempted, with erratic success, to adapt his experience to the unique demands of a rural practice and the growing burden of AIDS. A funny and unsentimental account of a childhood where dissecting a snake was the closest Robyn, Damien and Lulu came to a biology lesson, and children from the cattle posts were their only classmates, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is also a unique insight into modern Botswana. Set against the backdrop of one of Africa’s rare democratic success stories battling with one of the continent’s worst AIDS crises, the book remains throughout an uplifting, engaging and deeply affectionate portrayal of an extraordinary place and family.

The Host
Stephenie Meyer
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged. Most of humanity has succumbed. When Melanie, one of the few remaining "wild" humans is captured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind. Wanderer probes Melanie's thoughts, hoping to discover the whereabouts of the remaining human resistance. Instead, Melanie fills Wanderer's mind with visions of the man Melanie loves—Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she has been tasked with exposing. When outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off on a dangerous and uncertain search for the man they both love. "Stephenie Meyer is an amazing phenomenon—out of the brightness of her mind and spirit comes the illuminated darkness of her stories. For no matter how much pain her characters suffer, Meyer infuses the tales with light and hope." —Orson Scott Card, author of the Ender Saga

HOW TO MAKE A PIUPIU
Leilani Rickard
There seems to be a growing interest in learning Maori weaving not only by Maori but by people of all nationalities. However there is a limited number of weavers around the country able to pass on their skills to future generations. Rotorua weaver Leilani Rickard has put together an illustrated book in a hope to share her skills with a wider network of people. Leilani was taught to make piupiu (traditional Maori flax skirts) by her Aunty and she now passes on her skills to her grand-daughters. Making piupiu is a full time job for Leilani that her brother is also involved in and she shares an in-house gallery with her husband (a well regarded carver) in Rotorua. There aren’t many people as skilled in making piupiu in NZ as Lielani; she is highly regarded and makes excellent quality skirts using traditional methods (eg to scrap the flax Leilani uses a muscle shell, she’s used the same one for 5 years). The art of making piupiu is very labour and time intensive. It is an art that you do for love. Leilani is extremely passionate about this skill and the culture surrounding piupiu and is a joy to talk with. HOW TO MAKE A PIUPIU will appeal to people of all ages – young and old.

Te Kahui O Matariki
Libby Hakaraia and Colleen Urlich  
Te Kāhui o Matariki is a large-scale book containing contemporary artwork, photography, poetry and short writings including personal experiences of Matariki - the Maori New Year. This book begins with an introduction and background to Matariki. The artists include painters, sculptors, photographers, weavers, carvers and mixed media artists.

Misconduct
Bridget van der Zijpp
Burn it, she decided. Drive it behind the disused factory near the polluted creek at the industrial park, and set it alight.
Simone’s obsession with her former lover is dangerously out of control, so when the approach of her fortieth birthday brings on a compulsion to wreak havoc in his new life, a house-sitting opportunity at a remote beach provides a welcome escape. She began to be seduced by the idea of a lovely, distant solitude. And actually she had good incentive to leave. With only the responsibility of somebody else’s perpetually cheerful dog, Simone values her isolation – but her elderly neighbours have other ideas and begin to pull her into their eccentric lives. Is it possible she’s got away with it, or will the things she’s done come back to haunt her?  Misconduct is a moving novel about the possibility of reinvention, the sweet and sour taste of revenge, and a woman’s search for friendship and love.

Shrapnel & Semaphore
Jan Chamberlin
Shrapnel & Semaphore is a powerful book, reaching out even after all these years to remind us not only of the human cost to those who served at Gallipoli, but also of their humanity and spirit. In the late 1990s Bill Leadley’s granddaughter, Jan Chamberlin, spent many months researching her family archives in order to be able to put her grandfather’s diary covering the ANZAC landing on Gallipoli in context. Shrapnel & Semaphore is the result and it is an amazing story of courage, faith and service based on a series of diary entries written by Lance-Corporal Walter Edmund (Bill) Leadley covering the period 25 April 1915 through to 8 December, and from 25 March 1916 to 9 September prior to serving at The Somme where he was seriously wounded and invalided out. The fascinating and frequently harrowing narrative is supported by family and archive photographs. Soon after his return to New Zealand in 1917, Bill Leadley became involved in the Canterbury Returned Soldiers’ Association and went on to invest an enormous amount of time and effort over the next 25 years – on both a professional and personal basis – helping to rehabilitate injured fellow servicemen. In a subsequent chapter to the diaries themselves Jan Chamberlin records his dedication to the RSA.

An Offer You Can't Refuse
Jill Mansell
Lola has no intention of accepting when her boyfriend Dougie’s snobbish mother offers her 10,000 to break up with him. Then she discovers a secret that makes her think again.
Dougie would probably have broken up with her in the long run, and this way she can help one of the people she loves most in the world. Ten years later, though, when Lola
meets Dougie again, her feelings for him are as strong as ever. But she broke Dougie’s heart — and he’s about to discover that she was paid to do it. She can never tell him
the truth, so can she get him back? Well, Lola’s very attractive and very persuasive. But even she’s got her work cut out this time.

Burning The Evidence
Terri Kessell
An unforgettable historical novel comes from Auckland newcomer Terri Kessell. She combines a novelist’s skill with a historians exciting research into early NZ history – the murderous affray of the burning of the Boyd. This transfixed the world of 1809 when a clash with Maori seeking revenge – utu – resulted in one of the most famous fires in maritime history.
For years the world’s sailing ships stopped visiting New Zealand’s Bay of Islands and surrounding ports, such was the fear engendered by utu. One woman survived and witnessed the whole affair through to the end. Young Englishwoman Ann, feisty and capable, has been sent out to the horrors of Sydney’s penal colony. Her crime: stealing a piece of linen.

How she eventually escapes the horrors of this convict-world and gets caught up in a new and terrifying chapter in New Zealand’s history is the backbone of the strongly told narrative.
But it is Ann’s very special character that makes this a book hard to put down and hard to forget. She heads a cast of men and women on both sides of the Tasman whose interactions push the boundarues of the usual historical novel. Burning The Evidence is based on true events.
 

The Girl Who Proposed
Elizabeth Smither
Have times changed? ‘I want to marry you. I want to marry you and have your babies. Two, I thought. Possibly three.’
But when Natasha Proctor proposes to San Berenger in her lunch hour he flees down the stairs, ‘his tie hanging over his shoulder like a panting tongue’.
Natasha’s dilemma (how much or how little have relations between men and women changed?) is one of the situations faced by the characters in Elizabeth Smither’s delightful new short story collection.
Why is a woman afraid of an unoccupied white bed in her hotel room?
How does a competent HR consultant deal with road rage, or a middle-aged violinist endure mid-life? But there is fun as well: a library roster based on Chinese astrological signs, a proposal for a society of people with Big Heads; and the enduring happiness of Kathy & Tim, the Internet true love story featured in Six Pack Two.
 

From Fat Chick to Marathon Runner
Kerre Woodham
When celebrated radio personality and columnist Kerre Woodham found herself forty, overweight and depressed she faced two choices
 - do nothing and probably not make it to fifty or do something and get her life back. Fortunately for all of us, and especially those women
who like to eat and dress well, she decided to fight back. Leaving kilos of herself and two bra sizes behind ‘somewhere in the Waitakeres'
she embarked on a fitness and training regime, with a goal to complete the Auckland marathon. To the laugh out loud delight and support
of her readers and listeners, she battled her way to fitness and achieved her goal - then decided that she didn't want to stop. With the 2008
New York marathon in her sights, Short Fat Chick documents her life changing decision to get fit and stay fit, eat what she wants and still
wear a size 12 dress. With insightful comments and fitness and training tips from her personal trainer, Gaz Brown, Kerre tells it like it is and
takes the reader on a journey of self discovery and self discipline we can all admire and emulate.

A Sandwich Short of a Picnic
Felicity Price
When her husband packs his bags and declares that he is moving in with his girlfriend, Penny Rushmore feels like the rug has been pulled from underneath her. Her grief feels insurmountable - that is until her girlfriends ply her with wine and ideas of revenge. The seed is sown - don't get mad, get even. It's planned to perfection and guaranteed to hit her husband exactly where it hurts.  But time doesn't stand still for Penny Rushmore - her mother is slipping further down the rabbit-hole of dementia, her job places ever-increasing demands on her, and then she discovers she has breast cancer.

 In A Sandwich Short of a Picnic, Felicity Price manages to deftly convey the juggling act that women who 'have it all' often play. With Penny, Felicity creates a character who is not just a career woman, a mother or a wife, but more importantly a survivor. Felicity's lively tone and humour make the exploration of these issues accessible and easily navigated. A Sandwich Short of a Picnic is a fun and sassy novel that reaffirms the most important things in life are not whether you can lose those extra kilos or splurge on killer heels. They are family and friends, health and wellbeing. Plus a hot new boyfriend and a tasty Pinot Gris don't hurt, right?

Landings
Jenny Pattrick
The Whanganui River at the turn of the twentieth century is a busy thoroughfare, taking sightseers through the spectacular landscape by paddle steamer and acting as highway for the sparse scatterings of settlements along its twisting length. The people who have made it their home are a diverse collection, from Samuel Blencoe, trying to forget his past life as a convict, to the hoteliers at Pipiriki, the nuns at Jerusalem, the Maori families, the Chinese market gardener and the farmers, like Danny and Stella, trying to tame the wild bush. There's also Bridie, the strange, silent girl, who haunts the banks of the river where the accident occurred that robbed her of her mind. Like the tributaries that trickle down the mountains and join the mighty river, so the lives of these people come together in this vivid and moving tale of a stunningly unique place.

You Shut Up!
Eva-Maria Salikhova
“You Shut Up!” is not a comfortable read. It challenges parents to reassess the way they relate to their teenagers and come up with an approach that is guided by a
mixture of love and pragmatism, communication and non-interference, with less judgement and more trust – something we aren’t always very good at. While parents
won’t necessarily agree with everything Eva-Maria says – or be able to execute the balancing act she espouses – they will have trouble getting her voice out of their
 heads, especially next time they have a run-in with one of their teenagers. In a nutshell, Eva-Maria’s book advises adults to ‘chill’. This is a provocative tale told from
 a thinking teenager’s point of view and every parent should read it for that reason alone.

River Song
Belinda Hollyer
Jessye loves living with her nana, but when her carefree mother sweeps back into her life, she is forced to grow up – and make some difficult decisions.
‘I have discovered that you can go along for ages without seeing things as they really are. And then one day their true colours light up as clear as anything,
as clear as the sun in the morning. They come in so close you can’t ignore them, they tap you on the shoulder or grab you by the arm and won’t let go until
you listen to what they have to say. And on the day my destiny gave me the nod I was sprawled on the sofa in the river house beside Nana, listening to her sing.
Set in New Zealand, River Song is a moving and exquisitely written coming-of-age story. Beautifully threaded with Maori culture, the story follows Jessye, a girl
whose tumultuous life flits between her grandmother and her mother, as she tries to make sense of her family past and the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of all of their lives.

Juicy Writing
Brigid Lowry

Juicy Writing is a treasure-trove of inspiration and practical advice on creative writing - and on living a confident, creative life - especially for teenagers. It's a book to relish, to dip into, to read on the train, to lend to a friend. It will bring out the best in you. Why being a writer is good: You get paid to make stuff up, you get to travel because it's research, you can stay home and work in your pyjamas. Why being a writer is bad: Sitting by yourself in your study for hours is lonely. Brigid Lowry knows the highs and lows of being a writer, but she still thinks it's a joy. In this book she takes you on a journey to discover yourself and what you really want to say, AND how to make it juicy and original. So, what do you need to begin? Where can you find ideas? How can you make your writing better? What can you do if you get stuck? Let Brigid inspire you to doodle, daydream and discover your creativity - then write hard and fast into the wild land of your imagination. If you ever thought you'd like to write, start reading Juicy Writing!

Here is a portrait of the growth of a writer, of the challenges of faith, and the route one woman takes to reach a better accommodation with herself, and her family. It’s a heartfelt and lyrical narrative – as the author questions her closest relationships, and some of the stifling patterns she has fallen into. Yet it will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever tried to juggle relationships, the craving for solitude, and the urge to write or to devote oneself to a career which demands total focus. Delicately written, yet tough at the core, this memoir weaves together a journey to Spain with several years of internal change. Digging for Spain explores an intensely personal yet common rite of passage: that of a woman learning to separate her identity from motherhood, marriage, and beliefs formed in youthful inexperience. It also shows the astonishing versatility of one of our beset-loved writers for young adults

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The Blood of Flowers
Anita Amirrezvani
In Iranian-American Amirrezvani's lushly orchestrated debut, a comet signals misfortune to the remote 17th-century Persian village where the nameless narrator lives modestly but happily with her parents, both of whom expect to see the 14-year-old married within the year. Her fascination with rug making is a pastime they indulge only for the interim, but her father's untimely death prompts the girl to travel with her mother to the city of Isfahan, where the two live as servants in the opulent home of an uncle—a wealthy rug maker to the Shah. The only marriage proposal now in the offing is a three-month renewable contract with the son of a horse trader. Teetering on poverty and shame, the girl weaves fantasies for her temporary husband's pleasure and exchanges tales with her beleaguered mother until, having mastered the art of making and selling carpets under her uncle's tutelage, she undertakes to free her mother and herself. With journalistic clarity, Amirrezvani describes how to make a carpet knot by knot, and then sell it negotiation by negotiation, guiding readers through workshops and bazaars. Sumptuous imagery and a modern sensibility (despite a preponderance of flowery language and schematic female bonding and male bullying) make this a winning debut.

Through the Darkness
Judith Garfield Todd
 Judith Todd, the daughter of Sir Garfield Todd, erstwhile prime minister of colonial Southern Rhodesia, spent eight years in exile in Britain as an opponent of white minority rule in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. She returned to Zimbabwe shortly before independence in 1980, and soon realised that, far from being the solution to Zimbabwe’s ills, Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu (PF) party were increasingly becoming the problem. As the country slid into economic and social decline, Todd had a front-row view from her position as director of a local development agency. Over the first 25 years of Mugabe’s rule, she kept journals, notes and copies of letters and documents from which she has compiled an intensely personal account of life in Zimbabwe.

Marathon Woman
Kathrine Switzer
 Proclaimed as ‘the most important running book of the last 10 years,’ by Marathon & Beyond magazine, Marathon Woman is not really about running: it’s about overcoming the impossible and changing lives. Marathon Woman is the inspiring story about how one person really can make a difference, particularly if that person is Kathrine Switzer. It is an insightful, often funny and sometimes poignant social commentary as Switzer relates events of her life alongside one of the most turbulent eras in history: 1946–1984. Best known globally as the first woman to officially register and complete the famous Boston Marathon in 1967, Switzer was physically attacked mid-race by the enraged race director simply because she was a female running in what was then considered an all-male event, in an all-male domain, in an era when women were considered incapable of running 42.2 kilometres. The galvanizing photos of this incident were flashed around the planet and have become one of Time-Life’s 100 Photos that Changed the World.

The Clothes On Their Backs
Linda Grant
Clothes have always played a leading part in Linda Grant’s fiction and memoirs, from her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, in which a character warns, “You are what you wear”. Even Remind Me Who I Am Again, her moving account of her mother’s dementia, starts off with a list of that lady’s gorgeous adornments: “Crocodile shoes and mink stoles, an eternity ring encrusted with diamonds, handbags in burnished patent leather . . .” 
We are what we wear because clothes reveal our personalities but, as Grant makes clear as she guides us through a dizzying ethical maze, they also conceal them. We leave Vivien, now middle-aged and recently widowed for the second time, swinging a bag containing a svelte new dress – a symbol of hope for the future if anything is – and we understand that, in this meticulously textured and complex novel, beneath Grant’s surface dressing, what she is talking about is more than skin deep

The Two Miss Parsons
Jill Marshall
 Cally is a solo mother in her thirties who has just been made redundant from her classy London marketing job. One day her nine-year-old daughter Paige announces that she wants to go to New Zealand to meet her father, Alan, who abandoned Cally when she became pregnant. Alan is told they're coming, but during the flight to Auckland, Cally finds herself sitting next to the lovely Simon, and they decide to continue their high-altitude flirtation when they reach New Zealand. But Paige has other ideas. Cally and Simon as a unit is definitely not in her grand plan. Paige plots to get her Mum and Dad back together, with help by email from her best friend Charlotte back in London. Cally, Simon and Alan are suddenly entwined in an unusual love triangle.

KITCHEN TABLE MILLIONAIRE
Catriona MacLennan
 Failure rates for small business start-ups is very high; budding entrepreneurs need to carefully set up and develop their businesses to reduce failure risk. There is a large percentage of the labour force with investment and interest in small business, this new book will appeal to many entrepreneurial New Zealanders. Written in an accessible format, Kitchen Table Millionaire discusses everything the budding home business owner will need to know about setting up a home business and making it a success.

Your Money Personality
Liz Koh
The average New Zealander will earn more than two million dollars in their lifetime – yet most of us struggle to pay bills and feel we are furiously pedalling on a financial treadmill without making much progress towards the life we really want to lead. This brilliant personal finance guide will change forever the way you think about money. Successful financial planner Liz Koh reveals that each of us has a hidden attitude towards money, which strongly influences our ability to create wealth and use it to enjoy life to the full. Where most personal finance guides are written by theorists, Koh’s advice is practical, down-to-earth, and based on her years of experience as a respected financial adviser. Her book contains all the advice you’ll ever need on saving, investing and making the most of your money. Liz writes and comments on money and personal finance for leading publications, and is a sought-after speaker who has run many successful seminars on wealth creation.

Deluxe
Dana Thomas
Dana Thomas has dug deep into the dark side of the luxury industry, finding out all the secrets that Prada, Gucci and Burberry don't want you to know. She visits the last bastion of old-world luxury – Hermes, which is still based in France, where old-fashioned highly skilled artisans still make their coveted Kelly and Birkin bags by hand. But most of its competitors in the luxury fashion business have outsourced; they've gone corporate, they've gone large scale. Thomas takes us right into the action, from the scent factories in Grasse that manufacture Christian Dior and Prada perfumes, to the crowded factories in China, full of workers gluing together 'Made in Italy' bags by the thousands. Deluxe is an uncompromising and rollicking read about the real world behind the glossy spreads in magazines and fantastic dresses on the red carpet. What is the new definition of luxury when the advertising for the luxury lifestyle is targeted mainly towards the middle-class masses? What are we paying for when quality is no longer quality?

Saltskin
Louise Moulin
Partly set in late eighteenth century London and partly in modern day New Zealand, two stories intertwine.
In eighteenth century London lives Angelo, a young man torn by grief. While assisting his step-father in weaving a commissioned tapestry he becomes obsessed with the woven portrait. In a quest to find the woman in the portrait he takes off to the South Seas. In modern day New Zealand lives Gilda Page, a pragmatic, self-assured young woman. Broken hearted she decides love is for fools and resigns herself to the fact that she will never find it. But why is she plagued by stifling dreams and what is the mystery surrounding the women in her family? Saltskin is a universal tale of romantic love taken to the extreme, exploring the pursuit of perfection and the colour and power of doomed love. This is a compelling first novel.

Chandler's Run
Denise Muir
 In 1853, consumption causes Adam to take his family to leave the foetid streets of London to join his uncle on a sheep run in the high country of the rugged South Island. His family prepare to brave the challenges of this virtually unknown country with the expectation that the pure mountain air will aid in the recovery of Adam’s ailing lungs. Thus, Adam Chandler, his wife Lucy and their two children are among the 187 souls that set sail on the Rajah from Gravesend bound for the other side of the world. Leaving behind everything they know, their doomed journey brings them to hardship and tragedy. In an unforgiving climate, they struggle to survive and become reliant on the abrasive and ill-reputed neighbour Ruby Gaunt. Everything changes for the Chandler family when itinerant Scottish master drover, James McKenzie and his black-and-white bitch, Friday, ride onto Chandler’s Run.  In this beautifully descriptive story, first-time novelist Denise Muir superbly captures the essence of life of pioneers, effortlessly layering historical detail over emotional depth.

Love Is Not For Cowards
Birgit Weber
When two people in a relationship are overwhelmed by conflicts that seem unsolvable they often believe that it is due to a lack of love. But this is the moment when we should stop blaming our partner and take a look at ourselves! Love is Not For Cowards is a book about daring to love. About daring to share our inner feelings and thoughts with our partner without worrying about their reactions. Unfortunately, many people believe that conflicts should be avoided at all costs, as they are the sign of an unhealthy relationship. Paradoxically this often leads to a breakdown instead of the development of a deeper relationship. Leading Danish psychotherapist Birgit Weber believes the fear of revealing our true selves stems from our childhood. It is these fears that lie behind all the misunderstandings we may experience with our partner. In this highly accessible book, Birgit Weber shows how we can refine our reactions and feelings without expecting that our partner should accept these. It is only when we accept ourselves that we can become a whole person and thereby be a better partner.
This book is at once confronting, insightful, reassuring and exhilarating. On the challenging journey of love and self-exploration, Love Is Not for Cowards is a valuable companion.

The Road to Castle Hill
Christine Fernyhough with Louise Callan
 Christine Fernyhough is well known as a leading Auckland philanthropist, having set up Books in Homes and then the Gifted Kids Programme for high achieving children in low decile schools. In 2004 she was a recent widow when she spied an advertisement for the sale of the legendary Castle Hill Station, near Porters Heights in the Canterbury alps. A woman of energy and enterprise, she bought it and so began a new life learning to run a high country farm at some of the highest elevations in the South Island. This joyful book tells of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of high country life. Christine has thrown herself into station life with gusto, learning to ride so she can join musters in the back country, feeding out to her stock during the disastrous snowstorm of 2006, training a sheep dog, buying stock with her manager at the sales and getting on famously with the colourful local characters who are her neighbours, and diversifying the station with a tourism enterprise - and proving that she is not a city slicker on a dalliance. Warm, humorous, this inspirational book tells the story of a woman bold enough to do what many urbanites dream of: embark on an entirely new life and through herself into a considerable challenge. Beautifully illustrated, The Road to Castle Hill is also a celebration of New Zealand high-country way of life.

A Touch of Sleeve
Susan Bell
Behold the frog who opens his mouth to display his whole inside: If a man exposes his inner thoughts he brings great shame upon himself.

Perhaps this Japanese proverb explains why Westerners know so little about Japan and how its citizens fared during World War II and the consequent US Occupation. In A Touch of Sleeve one Japanese gentleman doesn’t care about exposing his ‘insides’ for public view. He has things he wants to say … This is Hisashi Furuya’s story as told to Susan Bell. The author met Hisashi when he and his sister immigrated to New Zealand in 1991. Her portrait of Hisashi tells how one man was caught up in the course of history, and was not only influenced by tradition and family, but by events unfolding on a daily basis. Susan Bell maps the history of Japan along with that of Hisashi’s ancestors, both his samurai and priestly lineage. With his traditional childhood and elite education Hisashi had a future full of promise. But war changed his life dramatically. Here we are given a Japanese view of the military build-up that led to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. We experience first hand the savage carpet bombings of Tokyo, the consequent deprivation of its inhabitants and their bewilderment at the US Occupation. We also witness the rebuilding of a defeated nation. Another Japanese proverb that Hisashi is fond of is, ‘When our sleeves touch it is karma’. Hisashi believes that meeting Susan Bell was inevitable and that she has enabled him to tell his story so that we may better understand Japan today.