A Young Adult Fantasy Novel K’yra – a savage, prehistoric land where tribal villagers sacrifice giant cats to appease evil spirits. Kiya – a young woman from modern England, forced to live with the tribe and the big cats, attempts to mediate their mutual hostility. The hunt for unity – where a thousand-year war must end if Kiya and her friends are to survive. The Author: K W Austin is a musician, writer, and amateur scientist. Already well-known for his work in popular and classical music and hispassion for wild animals, he began writing K’yra: Hunting forUnityafter having worked with lions in a zooand listening toStravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’.He lives with two pianos and a cat in Masterton, New Zealand. "A fantasy that will stay with me after the storylines of other novels are forgotten" - From review by Alderaan Hoth

Bind: paperback

Pages: 220

Dimensions: 163 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 06-06-2018

‘Slippery, and exciting … The stories come at youdirectly, and then turn askance, and then slap youin the face’ Allan Drew ‘Bonsai’ brings together a pioneering collection of flash fiction and associated forms (prose poetry and haibun) from 165 writers in Aotearoa New Zealand, along with intriguing essays on this increasingly popular genre. In 200 small stories of no more than 300 words, where the translucent boundaries between prose and poetry are often transgressed, we discover a vast array of human experience. Here, children race snails, shoot tin cans, learn to fly, and look for Antarctica in a drain pipe, while Schrödinger’s cat dreams of life and death, a dog licks away a woman’s tears, and a peacock guards its human family. Family tensions spill over during trips to the beach, couples get together and fall apart, babies are born – or not born – and parents die. You might find yourself dancing like the cool kids, listening to a neighbour sing in the dark, or watching a tractor catch fire. There are perfect moments in miniature as dew falls on a spider’s web and strangers make eye contact. Composed with precision in a form where every word counts, these carefully chiselled works are provocative, tender and endlessly surprising. About the editors Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor of flash fiction whose recent work appears in ‘New Micro Fiction’(WW Norton, 2018). Among her many editing roles she is editor at ‘Flash Frontier’. Frankie McMillan has been called ‘our maestro of flash fiction’.Her book ‘My Mother and the Hungarians, and other small fictions’ (CUP, 2016) was long-listed for the Ockham Book Awards. James Norcliffe is a poet, editor and writer for children. He is editor at ‘Flash Frontier’and has published nine collections of poetry, including ‘Dark Days at the Oxygen Café’(VUP, 2016).

Bind: paperback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 24-08-2018

This is a novel of insights, bold assessments and revelations told by four contrasting characters from the generation whose adult lives were affected forever by World Wars I and II, the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the domestic upheaval that accompanied the waterfront lockout and protests against the war in Vietnam. It is an account to treasure, not simply because of its narrative power, its superb interweaving of the real and the imagined, and its huge and contrasting canvases, but because of its brilliant and meticulous archival research and its compassionate yet rigorous re-evaluation of some of New Zealand’s most bitter and wounding military, social and political battles, and of the officers, soldiers, nurses, trade unionists, conscientious objectors and political leaders involved. No New Zealand novel about the harrowing experience of our growth towards nationhood has a broader sweep and more detailed grasp of events. It is a masterpiece of times that must never be forgotten - Kevin Ireland The war to end wars ended in 1918. It is, however, still early in the twentieth century and Nelle, the World War I nurse who patched up the remnants of men who ‘survived’, fears for her fighter-pilot son; disastrously, Frank, the intellectual, has fallen in love with a German refugee; World War I sniper hero, Harry, the Christian, now fights for peace; and left-wing activist, Jim, goes to war in Spain to fight Fascism. In Province of Danger, our four narrators tell of their lives and loves during the years of a bitterly divided New Zealand; in the pitiless Spanish Civil War; in the six long years of World War II, and then its aftermath. We learn from them that when soldiers of the New Zealand division are sent to participate in what became the disasters of Greece and Crete, Crete was lost to the vastly outnumbered Germans through a combination of failure by senior officers to exercise initiative or to obey orders – their believing they were still fighting World War I. Thrown then into the North African battles the New Zealanders, at great cost, become a formidable fighting force. Thereafter, against the considered judgement of their general, they are shipped to the bloodshed and torment of the futile Italian campaign. Province of Danger brings to life a rich tableau of characters who, when forced to confront the most demanding circumstances, respond in various ways: many with courage, integrity and resilience. Not all of those at a higher level, however, reacted so positively when military and political blunders – too often glossed over by historians – were committed. Province of Danger, like its predecessor, March to the Sound of the Guns, is a story that vividly recreates the turbulence of the years in which New Zealand stumbled towards nationhood.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 448

Dimensions: 153 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 16-08-2018

Pushing against the boundaries of what poetry might be, Alison Glenny’s The Farewell Tourist is haunting, many-layered and slightly surreal. In The Magnetic Process sequence a man and a woman inhabit a polar world, adrift in zones of divergence, where dreams are filled with snow, icebergs, and sinking ships. Their scientific instruments and observations measure a fragmented and uncertain space where conventional perspectives are violated. In a series of histories – of the Atmosphere, of the Honeymoon – footnotes reference vanished texts. By turns mysterious, ominous and evocative, they represent connections to an obscured narrative of disintegration and icy melancholy.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 80

Dimensions: 150 x 230 x 6 mm

Publication Date: 20-08-2018

Following the success of Karyn Hay’s historical fiction novel, The March of the Foxgloves, Karyn returns with Winged Helmet, White Horse – more reminiscent in style of her debut, Emerald Budgies. Set in contemporary London, Winged Helmet, White Horse is a darkly comic psychological drama. Tim has mastered the art of subordination; to his job, his wife, and even his daughter. Having written one critically acclaimed book of poetry he is struggling to write a second, while his wife, Natasha, who is into “positive affirmations”, and spending money, has plans of her own. As Tim stumbles through the social landscape of suburban London, trying to give up alcohol and gain some control over his life, he makes several disturbing discoveries; ultimately concluding that he is not in control of anything, and that it’s all been a terrible, deadly illusion.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 360

Dimensions: 155 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 16-11-2018

Born in 1949, Bluff-based Cilla McQueen is one of New Zealand’s best-loved poets. Poeta: Selected and New Poems brings together a definitive selection of her poetry spanning five decades, arranged by the poet in a thematic narrative that elucidates abiding themes while maintaining a loose chronology of her creative life to date. Of mixed Scottish and English heritage, McQueen is a translocated Hebridean, a spokesperson variously for the southern islands and coast, Rakiura, Fiordland, Murihiku and Dunedin. One of a few indispensable poetic voices of the south, she has long been part of a social matrix of artists, among them Hone Tuwhare, Ralph Hotere and Marilynn Webb, dedicated to bringing out the native brogue and colours of Southland–Otago. Poeta gathers together poems from the poet’s 14 previous volumes, punctuated by 11 striking drawings, and also includes a range of new work that shows her riddling creativity continuing to grow and evolve. Collectively, the poems demonstrate a versatile and diligent wordsmith never content to sit on her laurels, ever experimenting and improving in her attempt to write the world’s poem.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 155 x 220 mm

The massive labyrinth was built to protect Zadie Kalverstein’s isolated desert town. Unfortunately, living in the maze’s shadow makes her feel anything but safe. Even without its enchanted deathtraps and illusions, a mysterious killer named Dex lurks in its corridors, terrorizing anyone in his path. But when Zadie’s best friend vanishes into the labyrinth—and everyone mysteriously forgets he exists—completing the maze becomes her only hope of saving him. In desperation, Zadie bribes Dex– the only person who knows the safe path through– into forming a tenuous alliance. Navigating a deadly garden, a lethal blood-filled hourglass, and other traps—with an untrustworthy murderer for her guide—Zadie’s one wrong step from certain death. But with time running out before her friend (and secret crush) is lost forever, Zadie must reach the exit and find him. If Dex and the labyrinth don’t kill her first.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 270

Publication Date: 31-05-2019

Landfall is New Zealand’s foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal. Published twice a year, each volume showcases two full-colour art portfolios and brims with vital new fiction, poetry, cultural commentary, reviews, and biographical and critical essays. The 2022 Spring edition, Landfall 244, is no exception. Editor Lynley Edmeades brings together a range of voices and perspectives, from established practitioners to emerging voices. The result is an exciting anthology that has its finger on the pulse of innovation and creativity in Aotearoa today.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 20-11-2022

Wellington, 1939. A hot summer’s day at a church picnic. Adelaide watches as a girl is rescued from the river and resolves to meet the unassuming hero of the moment. After a claustrophobic, strict childhood, John Brunner is Adelaide’s chance for a new beginning. But trouble in Europe is brewing and Adelaide’s delight in her new married life is overshadowed by the declaration of war. John’s sense of duty sees him enlist and he sails for Egypt. When John’s first letter arrives, a foreign, exotic world is brought to life. His letters become Adelaide’s obsession, his words carrying her through the days, turning her house from marital home to a literary shrine of love and longing. Until the letters stop coming. Barefoot is a moving, evocative story of two people in love: one stranded in the new reality of the local war effort, the other in the stifling deserts and desolate battlegrounds of far-off lands; lands where danger is always just around the corner and death can snatch you in the blink of an eye.

Bind: paperback

Publication Date: 03-10-2022

“A Millennial New Yorker, a Stewart Island fisherman, and a WW II veteran walk into a bar...” Maudie’s on the run – from New York and from her past – but she runs headlong into her future when she ends up on Rakiura Stewart Island on assignment to cover Aotearoa New Zealand’s southernmost running trails. Or, as her new fisherman friend Vil puts it: “Giving brainless bucket-listers hard-ons for islands like mine.” She quickly becomes absorbed into island life and once she hears tales of buried treasure, Maudie embarks on a dogged pursuit of the truth, increasingly hooked by gossipy hints. Clues and waypoints are buried in old SINs (Stewart Island News) and pieces of the puzzle are scrawled on buoys washed up on the pages. Maudie doesn’t cut a convincing detective figure. She’s an erratic, impulsive, semi-alcoholic millennial, but nothing breaks her stride as she wades into the world of laconic locals and dune grass politics. Like a daydreaming runner, the narrative weaves, loops, and backtracks, taking in pāua divers, whales, yellow-eyed penguins, muttonbirds, floating libraries and Sunday pub quizzers. Welcome to a tale of romance, adventure, and a treasure hunt which will take you through decades and landscapes, from the beaches of Rakiura Stewart Island to the battlefield of Monte Cassino, to post-war Paris, to the Twin Towers rebuild. Vast and sweeping in scope, this brilliant debut novel is braided with stories of love and war, loss, relationships, island lore, and the joys of running.  A Runner’s Guide to Rakiura is also playful, funny, and romantic, and like any good treasure hunt, there will be reckonings, redemptions, and yes… there will be treasure.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 424

Dimensions: 153 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 18-10-2022