The air temperature was probably -35 degrees Celsius with wind chill. We couldn’t stand still for long. Our brains felt taxed and our bodies were running on empty. On the Football Field not far from the summit, Sue discovered a square of chocolate. We shared it, telling our bodies we didn’t need more. As we continued the descent, the air warmed and filled with oxygen. We began to encounter climbers heading up. Most knew who we were, incredulously asking: ‘are you the girls who slept on the summit’? – Karen McNeill, ‘A Ridge Too Far: The first female ascent of Denali’s Cassin Ridge’ A schoolgirl races from class to join a weekend trip to the hills. A mountaineering guide recalls his first weeks on the job during the 1920s. A young climber is shown the best route over the Main Divide by a big bull thar. A climbing party is bombarded by falling rock when Ruapehu suddenly erupts. A mountaineer pays tribute to the Māori guides from south Westland, while a fighter pilot tries to recapture an ascent of the Minarets from his tent in Nigeria during World War II. From the Darrans of Fiordland to Denali in Alaska, New Zealand climbers, both experienced and recreational, have captured their alpine experience in letters, journals, articles, memoirs, poems and novels. Drawing on 150 years of published and unpublished material, Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey, two top contemporary authors, have compiled a wide-ranging, fascinating and moving glimpse into New Zealand’s mountaineering culture and the people who write about it.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 372

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 12-06-2018

The follow on from The Agency. Dan Calder is back. Back in his native England once again to help his best friend and ex-partner Nick Hetherington. Nick’s daughter has been arrested in connection with the death of a Nottingham prostitute. Back to face his darkest moment as old acquaintances and old enemies set his cupboard full of skeletons rattling once more. ‘The Second Grave’ has Calder facing the battle of his life to fulfil a solemn promise to his dearest friend. New foes including a local gangster are prepared to do anything to prevent the truth being revealed.Left at home in New Zealand, Calder’s girlfriend Tara senses he also views this return as an opportunity to settle old scores. Time and the odds are against him; incredibly so too the upholders of law itself, his beloved police force.Rushing headlong towards the past; whoever coined the phrase you couldn’t even make this stuff up was very wrong.

Bind: paperback

Publication Date: 23-03-2018

Published simultaneously in Ireland by Salmon Poetry, Majella Cullinane’s remarkable second collection, Whisper of a Crow’s Wing, is the work of a poet with a distinct and powerful voice. These poems weigh and examine oppositions – the distance of time and place, the balance of life and death, the poet’s New Zealand home and her Irish heritage. Cullinane conjures the ghosts that haunt places and objects; our inner and outer world, with rich, physical language: ‘barter the night for the whorl of a wave’s tongue, the relish of brine. Know what it is to untangle light from the tooth of a roving tide.’ (Invitation) She writes with lyrical intensity about motherhood and family life, including the experience of miscarriage, and the process of moving through grief and loss to a place of acceptance and healing. This is a profound collection from a poet alive to the hidden world of memory and imagination, of the sublime in the everyday, tempered always by a shadow of the fragility of life and love. There is an elegance and poise and care in the language of these poems, an unobtrusive mastery and ease in their cadences and rhythms. Here is writing so close to the sound of how our speech usually arranges itself, and yet set with a hard delicacy that makes it quite something else – memorable, direct, focused to the movement of how the poems present both thought and feeling. – Vincent O’Sullivan

Bind: paperback

Pages: 88

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

‘The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.’ Thomas Moore This beautiful collection of poetry and prose through the seasons rhapsodises on the spectacle of colour and everything green and flourishing in the garden. The perfect book for a moment’s reflection, whether you are cooped up on a rainy day in your potting shed or admiring the fruits of your labour on a sunny evening from the pergola.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 111 x 154 mm

Publication Date: 09-04-2018

Do you know… Which famous author died of caffeine poisoning? Why Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was banned in China? Who was the first British writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? Banned books, feuding authors, literary felons, rejected masterpieces – it’s all in these pages, along with tips for aspiring writers and lists of the most iconic works. A treasure trove of compelling facts, riveting anecdotes and extraordinary characters, this is every book-lover’s dream: a book about books and the people who write them. Read on!

Bind: hardback

Pages: 240

Dimensions: 135 x 204 mm

Publication Date: 09-04-2018

The poetry in David Eggleton’s new collection possesses an intensity and driven energy, using the poet’s recognisable signature oratory voice, strong in beat and measure, rooted in rich traditions of chant, lament and ode. Mashing together the lyrical and the slangy, celebrating local vernaculars while simultaneously plugged in to a global zeitgeist of technobabble and fake news, Eggleton recycles and ‘repurposes’ high visual culture and demotic aural culture. Edgeland offers a tragicomic and surreal skewering of the cons, swindles, posturings and flaws of damaged people on the make, dislocating the reader with high speed jinks and swerves. A satirical eye interrogates ‘data’, media bilge, opinion, social change, extreme experience, and worst-case-scenario extrapolations. A menagerie of vivid characters burst off the page – including the man who mistook the moon for a candy bar, instigators, prestidigitators, procurators, promulgators, Zorro and Governor Grey – alongside a survey of 35 types of beard, an ode to ooze, metadada, Gordon Ramsay’s pan-sizzled bull’s pizzle, a Baxterian moa, and various other waka jumpers hailing from Jafaville to Jack’s Blowhole. Edgeland is a dazzling display of polychromatic virtuosity, teeming with irrepressible wordplay, startling imagery and anarchic wit, from one of New Zealand’s best-loved poets

Bind: paperback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

‘We wash up on the current dinghies bobbing in the swell. Sometimes an oar touches. Hello, hello over there we say to each other lying on our white sheets watching the view.’ My wide white bed is a poignant journey through the swells and up draughts of recovery, where hope and humour are never far away. It captures the small but significant interactions with hospital staff and other patients, from the moorings of a wide, white bed, during a prolonged stay in the hospital after orthopaedic surgery. The simple yet beautifully crafted poems make this a book everyone can appreciate – readers and non-readers of poetry alike. Trish Harris’s first collection of poetry follows the success of her memoir, The Walking Stick Tree (2016).

Bind: paperback

…and on that shimmering blue you have painted a faint traveller, a singular figure with wings setting the pace.’ A girl carries a tray of eggs on her fingertips, a man plays a cello in a field, a woman buys a carpet sweeper – these moments of everyday life are deceptively simple. Underneath, something else is going on – a sense of mystery, an awareness of impending death, a wry view of human nature. The poems in this collection tell a story, offer an insight or capture a moment of lyrical beauty. Together, they invite the reader to pause and pay attention. Adrienne invites those who aren’t natural poetry readers to find new ways to think about poems and perhaps even enjoy one or two. Keel & Drift is Adrienne’s third collection of poetry.

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AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results and winning essays from the 2018 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Award, and judge’s report by Emma Neale. WRITERS Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, Nick Ascroft, Joseph Barbon, Airini Beautrais, Tony Beyer, Mark Broatch, Danny Bultitude, Brent Cantwell, Rachel Connor, Ruth Corkill, Mark Edgecombe, Lynley Edmeades, Johanna Emeney, Bonnie Etherington, Jess Fiebig, Meagan France, Kim Fulton, Isabel Haarhaus, Bernadette Hall, Michael Hall, Rebecca Hawkes, Aaron Horrell, Jac Jenkins, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Wen-Juenn Lee, Zoë Meager, Alice Miller, Dave Moore, Art Nahill, Janet Newman, Charles Olsen, Joanna Preston, Jessie Puru, Jeremy Roberts, Derek Schulz, Sarah Scott, Charlotte Simmonds, Tracey Slaughter, Elizabeth Smither, Rachael Taylor, Lynette Thorstensen, James Tremlett, Tam Vosper, Dunstan Ward, Susan Wardell, Sugar Magnolia Wilson REVIEWS Landfall Review Online: books recently reviewed Chris Else on Moonshine Eggs by Russell Haley Stephanie Johnson on Decline and Fall on Savage Street by Fiona Farrell Owen Marshall on Tess by Kirsten McDougall Chris Tse on What Is Left Behind by Tom Weston; Rumpelstiltskin Blues by John Adams; Tales of the Waihorotiu by Carin Smeaton Ray Grover on Phoney Wars: New Zealand society in the Second World War by Stevan Eldred-Grigg with Hugh Eldred-Grigg Genevieve Scanlan on Hoard by Fleur Adcock; Field Notes by Mary Cresswell; Luminescent by Nina Powles Philip Temple on Edmund Hillary: A biography by Michael Gill Tom Brooking on Tōtara: A natural and cultural history by Philip Simpson Published with the assistance of Creative New Zealand

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 01-05-2018

Teenager Cason Martin is the youngest ballerina in the Atlanta Ballet Conservatory. She never really had a choice of whether she learned to dance or not. Her mother, the conservatory's artistic director, has made all the decisions in Cason's life. But that's about to change. Cason has been hiding an injury, and it's much worse than anyone imagines. Davis Channing understands all too well what it's like to give up control of your life. He's survived cancer, but his drug addiction nearly killed him. Now he's been sober for seven months and enjoying his community service at the hospital. But just when he thinks he's got it together, Davis's ex-girlfriend, who is still battling her addiction, barrels back into his life. Cason and Davis are not friends. But, as their worlds collide, they will start to depend on one another. Can they both be brave enough to beat the odds?

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 134 x 205 mm

Publication Date: 31-08-2018