The Slow Roll by Simon Lendrum
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
It seemed a simple request. "Can you find my daughter who has run away?" But for professional gambler O'Malley, life isn't that simple. There is the murder of one of his poker partners, the attention of drug dealers, money launderers, the police, the gangs, and just to top it all off there is his intri ...Show more
The Last Letter of Godfrey Cheathem by Luke Elworthy
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
"The [NZ] novel of the year" - STEVE BRAUNIAS, Newsroom.co.nz, Dec 2022. A novel of father figures, bullshit and belonging. As Vladimir Nabokov expert Professor Brian Bode writes in his foreword to Godfrey Cheathem's last letter:"I was able to play a prominent role in bringing his remarkable novel Chasi ...Show more
Kawai: For Such a Time As This by Monty Soutar
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
This epic historical adventure tells the story of pre-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand like it's never been told before. A young Māori man, compelled to learn the stories of his ancestors, returns to his family marae on the east coast of the North Island to speak to his elderly grand-uncle, the keeper of t ...Show more
Poor People With Money - A Novel by Dominic Hoey
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Monday Woolridge is a fighter with a face covered in scars and life full of debt. Her Avondale flat has no furniture, her father's dead, her catatonic mother's in an expensive nursing home and her kickboxing gym is going to Thailand. Monday's shitty bartending job pays fifty cents over minimum wage, and ...Show more
Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant by Cristina Sanders
Category: NZ Fiction
It’s 1866 and the three-masted sailing ship General Grant is on the southern route from Melbourne to London, with gold from the diggings secreted in returning miners’ hems and pockets. In the fog and the dark, the ship strikes the cliffs of the Auckland Islands, is sucked into a cave and wrecked. Only f ...Show more
Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
Set on the shores of Lake Tekapo, this vivid novel is about familial love, friendship and how our lives touch, connect and impact upon one another. 'The SUV advanced, without slowing as it passed; the driver probably didn't even register him. Roland watched until it reached the canal crossing, where the ...Show more
Mary's Boy, Jean Jacques and Other Stories by Vincent O'Sullivan
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, we last see Dr Frankenstein’s Creature shunned by human society and crossing the Arctic wasteland. What if he were rescued by an eccentric English expedition intent on sailing from pole to pole and back – only to be cast away again in a remote fiord in Aotearoa’s deep south ...Show more
NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women by Qiane Matata-Sipu
Category: NZ Non-Fiction
NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women is a powerful and important snapshot of Indigenous wāhine today. Through wide-ranging voices this ambitious social documentary showcases diverse representations of leadership, systems change and success. You will obtain authentic insight into life as an Indigenous ...Show more
Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Kurangaituku is the story of Hatupatu told from the perspective of the traditional ‘monster’, Kurangaituku, the bird woman. In the traditional story, told from the view of Hatupatu, he is out hunting and is captured by a creature that is part bird and part woman. The bird woman imprisons him in her cav ...Show more
I Laugh Me Broken by Bridget Van der Zijpp
Category: NZ Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Ginny is feeling lighter and heavier at the same time. She’s just learned from her cousin about a devastating genetic inheritance – but the revelation has brought a new logic to her mother’s death many years before, and to her mother’s love. Leaving her fiancé in the dark, Ginny flees to Germany to rese ...Show more
The Madison Gap by Patricia Donovan
Category: Sale Book | Reading Level: near fine
You think you know someone. You accept that because you are siblings, raised in the same house in the same town by the same parents, you share a common view of the world, live by an identical set of values. But what if you are wrong? In Sydney, 2017, in the laid-back suburb of Glebe, Lexi Madison is liv ...Show more
Blood on Vines by Madeleine Eskedahl
Category: Sale Book
Four friends, a shared past, a common enemy. In New Zealand's Martinborough, an ex-wine maker is murdered. The precise planning and execution by the unknown assailant begin a series of vile attacks. Meanwhile north of Auckland, the long, hot summer is over and the tourists have left the Matakana wine c ...Show more