A novel about loss and light, about storytelling and the sea. The year is 1977 and a shocking accident sees Robert and Jess suddenly orphaned. Finding refuge with their lighthouse keeper grandparents, they begin to navigate their loss and rebuild their lives. But how secure can this new home be, with the threat of lighthouse automation and closures looming? As adults, Jess and Robert must deal with the fallout of the tragic events of their childhood, disconnected from each other and the home that once sheltered them. Buffeted by the storms of life, they find themselves inescapably drawn back towards the world of the sea. Light Keeping is a subtle and immersive novel drawing on the richness of family stories and their role in defining and connecting us. Set in the late-seventies and contemporary New Zealand, the book follows parallel storylines, evoking fascinating details of lighthouse life and reflecting on the relentless social change brought by new technology. Ultimately, this is a story of hope and reconnection – of finding, and keeping, light.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 220

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 02-10-2023

In Forms of Freedom Dougal McNeill explores how the creative literary imagination can influence progressive social change in the real world. In engaging prose and with impressive intellectual range, McNeill applies insights from Marxist critical theory to the works of selected Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian writers. From Harry Holland, Henry Lawson and Mary Gilmore responding to the legacy of Robert Burns in the nineteenth century, to twenty-first-century novelists applying their literary imaginations to intersectional spaces and Indigenous, settler, gendered and international freedom traditions, McNeill reveals literature’s capacity to find potent forms with which to articulate concepts of, and beliefs about, freedom. McNeill’s argument for literature as an essential ‘form of freedom’ is a resonant call for our times. Incorporating discussion of work by 13 authors from both sides of the Tasman, Forms of Freedom is an essential book for students and researchers of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian literature. Authors whose work is discussed in Forms of Freedom include: Pip Adam; Mary Gilmore; Patricia Grace; Dorothy Hewett; Harry Holland; Eve Langley; Henry Lawson; Amanda Lohrey; Elsie Locke; Emily Perkins; Alice Tawhai; Hone Tuwhare; Ellen van Neerven; Albert Wendt.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 248

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 15-08-2024

A collection of contemporary creative writing from emerging and celebrated writers. In A Vase and a Vast Sea, poetry and prose rustle against the window, scatter palm fronds across the road and sneak off to the movies on a Tuesday. There are moments of nostalgia blended with dangerous undercurrents and domestic life. This collection is a reunion of writers such as Renée, Maggie Rainey-Smith, Barbara Else, Rata Gordon, Tim Jones, Anahera Gildea, and Adrienne Jansen, and is an essential keepsake of New Zealand literature and a much-loved writing course.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 146

Dimensions: 125 x 186 mm

Publication Date: 05-10-2020

Featured Artists: Claire Beynon, Ewan McDougall (cover artist) and Bridget Reweti Awards & Competitions: Results from the 2021 Charles Brasch Young Writers Essay Competition Other Highlights: The latest reviews of New Zealand Books as well as stunning new writing from established literary heavyweights and thrilling new voices - the work promises to range from the wry, ludic and lyrical, to gripping body horror as social commentary, which is at once comic and unsettling.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 01-05-2021

In Angola, South African and Cuban troops are engaged in the biggest tank battle since the second world war. Ministers want MI6 to intervene, but discreetly. The South Africans after all are battling to preserve apartheid. On the front line in Angola Thomas is exposed to the realities of war. But death is soon much closer to home. After thirty years at the heart of British Intelligence Adam Joseff has retired to his stamp collection. His loyalty is beyond question. Until he is murdered in the Caribbean. Then the questions start. Has Joseff betrayed his country? Or has he been betrayed? What was he doing in Antigua? Who could want to kill him? And why was he so interested in an Angolan student young enough to be his granddaughter? In the latest Dylan thriller Thomas and Julia confront death, betrayal and their own conscience. They start pulling the clues together to solve this latest mystery and then the politicians take over...

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 22-04-2021

SATELLITES ARE FALLING OUT OF THE SKIES When rogue junk collides with a television satellite 22,000 miles above the Earth, blind cosmologist Harry Stones approaches Film Director Nathalie Thompson to make an investigative documentary. Undeterred by Harry's lack of sight, their quest leads them from the peaks of Arizona to a mile-deep mine in Yorkshire, and finally to a Launchpad in Kazakhstan. As more and more satellites keep falling out of the sky, their curiosity turns to fear. Forewarned of the possible outbreak of World War Three, can Harry and Nathalie prevent the space collision of all time?

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 138 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 14-05-2021

This blacked-out, bourgeois, boarding-house life – God in Heaven, how I really loathe it! The smell of evening cooking in the passages, the businessmen’s faces, the church clock chiming the polite quarters down the street – the whole couchemar d’une incessante mise en scène. Pfui! Am I alive or dead? What I want is to get drunk, to lie in the hot and generous sun, to sleep with wild boys – yes, that is more like it. – James Courage, Diary, 24 Jan 1941. New Zealand author James Courage was born in Christchurch in 1903, and he became aware of his homosexuality during his adolescent years. He moved to London in 1927 and began writing novels, plays, poems and short stories. He was much more sexually open than most of his homosexual writer contemporaries – Frank Sargeson, Eric McCormick, Charles Brasch and Bill Pearson. A Way of Love, published in 1959, was the first gay novel written by a New Zealander, and some of his other seven novels (including Fires in the Distance and The Call Home) contain queer characters. Between 1920 and 1963, Courage confided his innermost thoughts to a private diary. He wrote about leaving New Zealand, the men he met in London’s streets, and forging friendships in the literary scene. He was an evocative chronicler of landscapes and indoor settings: life on long ocean voyages, air raid shelters during the war, and the psychiatrist’s clinic at a time when society was deeply ambivalent about homosexuality. Courage recorded his personal triumphs and struggles with an engaging honesty, a lively intelligence, and a whimsical sense of humour. Chris Brickell’s selections from the 400,000 words of diary entries reveal Courage to be a truly engaging man, a complex personality and an astute observer with a gentle, whimsical sense of humour, an acerbic wit and an artist’s appreciation of art. Courage’s diaries are a delightful surprise … James Courage is revealed to be both a significant writer and a sensitive, brave and engaging New Zealander we should be proud to own and celebrate. – Paul Millar What a wealth of contemporary detail is here about the shadow world (to many readers) of covert sexual engagement, and the sharp and engaging portrait of a middle-class privileged life, with its travel and its civilian experience of war. I also found of great interest his gradual change from an almost copy-book privileged aesthete, to a late in the day socialist. – Vincent O’Sullivan

Bind: paperback

Pages: 416

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 04-06-2021

If you’ve ever walked along a beach or rocky shore and peered, poked or wondered at the things cast upon it by the waves, this book is for you. Sea foam, ambergris, giant squid, stranded whales, seaweed, shells, plastic, dead birds, shoes and pieces of planes or rockets … Beaches are our windows to the ocean, and the objects we find on them tell stories about life, death and dynamic processes in the sea. Beachcombing looks at waves and tides, the connectivity of Southern Hemisphere coastlines, and the life cycles of marine plants and animals. It will help you understand the objects and organisms you find on beaches, and the intriguing reasons they have come to be there.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 116

Dimensions: 170 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 28-05-2021

Roddy Doyle meets The Full Monty in a story of hopes, dreams, love and betrayal - and the football pools. Reggie Kellison loves his family but it's a struggle. He has 5 children with number 6 on the way, his marriage is failing, and he dreams of a better life, a life away from the never-ending humdrum of struggling to make ends meet in 1960s Liverpool. He fantasises about running away with Laura from accounts, about his beloved Tranmere Rovers winning the league and about somehow (this is sketchy) making lots of money. Working at Littlewood's he pitches a cracking idea for a summer cricket pools, giving him the opportunity to win a fair commission if they take up his idea. Littlewoods rejects his proposal, but then, to Reggie's fury, bring out an identical game. Seething, he vows to get his revenge and plots a football pools heist, assisted by his brother-in-law Rodney and the delicious Laura. The scam works and Reggie finally has all the money he ever dreamed of - but he doesn't get the girl. Laura flees to Australia with Rodney, and while Reggie is heartbroken, all is not as it seems. Decades later Reggie and Ronnie's sons dig deeper into this family secret but what does it reveal? And will Reggie finally forgive Laura ? and Rodney ? for breaking his heart?

Bind: paperback

Pages: 288

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 11-03-2021

It should have been a relaxing day at the beach for Dr Clair Mercer and her family. But an argument with husband Adam distracts her from watching their four-year-old autistic son, and tragedy strikes when a sneaker wave sweeps him away. Clair's well-ordered life is plunged into madness, and after attempting to murder her husband, she walks into the ocean. Arrested, charged and awaiting trial on a locked psychiatric unit, can she discover a path to forgiveness, for herself and the husband she tried to kill? The Wave is a beautifully-written debut novel that explores the emotional complexity of family life - and how suffering, self-realisation and the power of love can heal even the most wounded bonds of trust.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 25-03-2021