NZ Fiction

A fictionalised account of Captain James Cook’s early life, The Secret Life of James Cook depicts in imaginative form Cook’s early life and ambitions, his naval career in Canada and beyond and his marriage to Elizabeth and their family life.
Drawing on his deep knowledge of the South Pacific and Australasia... read more

When Sugar Wallace arrives in Manhattan with nothing but a beehive, a secret past and a taste for good manners, life starts to change for the dispirited occupants of 33 Flores Street. But as love wings its way into their hearts and homes, it flies away from Sugar herself, until a doorman without a door and a certain busy que... read more

A unique blend of a compelling story with insights into writing from a prize-winning author...some of us are not satisfied with that one life, even if it is shared with many friends and relatives. Writers take what we learn of human nature and, fuelled by our longings for other existences and other times, forge new identities... read more

Harry Gill, a moderately successful writer of historical fiction, has been awarded the annual Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship-a 'living memorial' to the poet, Margaret Rose Hurndell. He arrives in the small French village of Menton, where Hurndell once lived and worked, to write. But the Memorial Room is not suitable-it has n... read more

Just what does Auckland mean to us? This exciting and exuberant issue explores the question, and has been selected from the huge number of submissions received, as well as from the work of invited contributors. It is essay-rich, with Auckland-themed pieces from Martin Edmond, Michael Morrissey, Majella Cullinane, Iain Sharp... read more

 
Sport is the place to discover the best new New Zealand writers. Each annual issue is a superb snapshot of the cutting edge of New Zealand’s literary scene, and Sport 40 is no exception, offering 300 pages of fiction, poetry and essays.
In honour of New Zealand’s turn as country o... read more

Early nineteenth century New Zealand - the great chief Te Rauparaha has conquered tiny Kapiti Island, from where Ngati Toa launches brutal attacks on its southern enemies. Off the coast of Kapiti, English trader John Stewart seeks to trade with Te Rauparaha, setting off a train of events that forever change the course of New ... read more

Rejacketed issue

Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised family moves from New York City to the wide skies of Auckland, to the very end of her life, this is her great gift and possible misfortune. Through the wilderness of a commune, ... read more

It was a Friday when Wes and Cyril came to town with a trick to play on the local bookmaker, but there was already other skullduggery afoot.

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Widely acclaimed when first published, Maurice Gee's Blindsight is now regarded as one of the master's finest novels and one of the best novels published in New Zealand in the past couple of decades. Reviewer Dennis Welch suggests it may be Gee's best work of fiction since the highly regarded Plumb. Gee's complex but knowing ... read more

Powerful and visionary, Keri Hulme has written the great New Zealand novel of our times. The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Her cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute s... read more

Boomtown Los Angeles, 1929: the movies have burst into song and speech, and aircraft into the skies at speed. Into this world of soundstages and speakeasies comes Xas, stunt flier and wingless angel, with his German passport and his broken heart, determined only to go on living in the air. What does it take to turn a wind? Wi... read more

These stories, when first published, won the Hubert Church Award, saving Janet Frame from an impending lobotomy. Now, for the first time, they appear in the same book as her only published collection of poems. This is a beautifully produced volume that offers an ideal introduction to her work; a must-have for every NZ home and library.

'You could look back after a long time and ask, who wanted what from whom?' A man confronts death after an operation, a devout Christian encounters a man who hurt her long ago, a secretary uncovers her boss's secret shame. And in a house in Auckland an elderly woman is writing the last book of her life, one which, she says, c... read more

'Dougie's story and mine is not told in the history of William Larnach. It is our private journey, and only we understand how it came about; only we know the fitness and the wonder of it.'
William James Mudie Larnach's name resonates in New Zealand history - the politician and self-made man who built the famous 'castle'... read more

In June 1941, Nazi troops march on Leningrad and surround it. Hitler's plan is to shell, bomb, and starve the city into submission. Most of the cultural elite are evacuated early in the siege, but Dmitri Shostakovich, the most famous composer in Russia, stays on to defend his city, digging ditches and fire-watching. At night ... read more

IAll my life I think I've been trying to find it again, that clarity, as if all the world's air were rushing into me and filling my lungs to the brim./I IAnd that sense of defying gravity before the thrill of falling./I In this richly imaginative and compelling collection of longer stories, Witi Ihimaera ranges across an in... read more

Emerging brittle and cynical from a wildly dysfunctional family, Ngaio careers from ice cream factory to children's home to Oxford to rehab. Along the way, she discovers herself and her sexuality - at raucous parties with trainee nurses, in feminist encounter groups and Wiccan covens, in university classrooms and legendary sa... read more