Move over, Jack Reacher, here comes Frank Winter The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America carries the Double Jeopardy clause. This states that no man, having been acquitted of a crime, shall be tried a second time for the same crime. Frank Winter, a retired county sheriff and former hard-boiled Boston detective with a soft center, is living in curmudgeonly retirement with his beloved dog, Dolly. But when his daughter’s killer is released on parole, Frank’s back, a man on a mission, and it’s yesterday once more. But first, Frank’s got a bunch of favours to call in. Throw in a rookie minder cop who’s great with computers but scared of guns, and help from the desirable Destiny, whose past is even murkier than Frank’s… well, you just know things will go according to plan. Strong characters, well-paced action, dark humour and cracking dialogue make Double Jeopardy an old-school crime novel with a surprisingly modern twist.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 264

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 24-05-2023

Isaac Newton was a man driven by a passion to unlock the secrets of the universe. But those were God’s secrets, and in the 1660s, England was a dangerous place for a young scholar who dared to challenge God’s supremacy – a world that also believed in the devil and the power of magic. But Isaac’s quest to understand the universe would not be silenced, even when tempted by darker impulses and a passion for Alice Cutler, whose life is threatened by a disciple of the Witchfinder General. A desperate Isaac, a seeker of knowledge but also a young man in love and fearing his life is falling apart, is driven to scientific creation and choices with fatal outcomes. This beautifully imagined novel examines one of our great historical myths and follows Newton’s path to becoming the Greene Lyon, alchemy’s symbolic creature who devours the sun. A compelling story that explores the tensions between the thirst for knowledge and the consequences of desire, Greene Lyon will haunt you long after the apple has fallen from the tree.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 30-05-2024

This is the true story of life on the road for two young people back in the day when travel was one big adventure. In 1969 Steve Lowndes and Lisa Potts met by chance at a dusty bus stop in Bolivia and spent the next ten years travelling around the world together. Pakistan, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, America, Canada, Indonesia, Australia… all these countries and more attracted our intrepid travellers in their quest to explore, to experience the unfamiliar, in the new decade of the 1970s. These are the days before credit cards, mobile phones or internet cafés, when the journey itself is the point of the experience, destinations are vaguely on the other side of the planet and getting there simply takes as long as it takes. Full of colour, beauty, romance and the pleasures of the open road, these tales of two travellers in the days before mass tourism, full airliners and clogged cities lovingly recalled here by Steve and Lisa really are journeys to write home about. No plans, just you, your passport, a change of clothes and the appeal of the unknown, the thrill of taking on whatever tomorrow brings. Whether you made a similar journey, or wanted to, or would like to, or are yet to be seduced by the lure of the road less travelled, Travelling Light is the book for you.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 28-10-2022

Why do we need to talk about Norman? Because although Norman Kirk was prime minister for barely 21 months some 50 years ago, he still speaks to us. His belief in the state as a force for good and his style of leadership could and should be powerful guides for politics in the 21st century. Kirk was not a supporter of the neoliberalist ideology that has given us widening inequality, rising poverty and the virtual obliteration from public debate and policy-making of the workers who create this country’s wealth. His idea of a healthy country was, famously, one whose citizens could realistically expect to find “someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for”. But the social contract central to politics in his day has been broken, and state and society are now run almost exclusively on business lines. This book, by veteran journalist and political commentator Denis Welch, is aimed at recovering what Norman Kirk stood for – a sense of government with a clear moral purpose, in which there is daylight between public service and the commercial world.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 168

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 14-06-2023

The Baby Boomers: the first generation to unite globally with music, culture and action to challenge the personal and political power of those in authority. Growing up in a post-war world but living with the daily shadow of the Cold War and the growing horror of the Vietnam War, the Baby Boomers protested. They were loud. They were visible. They weren’t going to take it anymore. And they made a difference. So what happened to all that juice and energy, that passion to change the world for the better that marked many of those who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies? Were they just a bunch of hippies after all? Activist, creative entrepreneur and counsellor Robin Woodsford is a Baby Boomer and in this moving reflection on his life and times he discovers that his personal story is also a universal one. More, he says the job’s not done yet and calls on fellow Baby Boomers to remember their passionate youth, to dust off their placards and to join their grandchildren on the front line as the world faces the new monster at the door – climate change. Baby Boomers: it’s time to make your legacy count.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 152

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 22-05-2024

"The work of a poet who knows how important people and places are… I kept thinking, too, about life’s voyagings. I found the whole very affecting — touching, tender, rueful at times… And all the more impressive for being unsentimental." - Brian Turner We are unmoored by circumstances that set us adrift from our normal lives into unknown waters. The poems in this debut collection range from the luxury of certainty, through the loss of a partner, to establishing a new life in a different part of the country. But nothing is secure, and a global pandemic again threatens to disrupt the familiar. Through it all, there is reassurance in recognising the perfection in arising and passing away. About the author: Bridget Auchmuty was born in Britain in 1951, came to New Zealand to visit her sister, and never went home. She spent more than thirty years in the Nelson region, where she and her partner lived on ten acres in the Motueka Valley. After his death, she shifted to the Ida Valley in Central Otago, where she lives in a yurt. The core of this collection formed one component of the author’s Master’s degree in Creative Writing at Massey University, and several of the poems have appeared in prominent poetry journals.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 88

Dimensions: 160 x 235 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2020

The Christ’s College campus in Christchurch is unquestionably one of the most remarkable collections of buildings in New Zealand, but there are few publications which focus solely on its architecture. To produce this book, Sir Miles Warren, the architect for Christ’s College for 43 years, enlisted fellow Christchurch architect Alec Bruce to create this succinct summary of the design of the college’s unique buildings. Earlier collaborations on projects at Christ’s College led naturally to this shared authorship. Drawings have been used instead of photographs, to show the range of types of graphical information from which buildings were produced and the different creative tendencies of the architects involved. Later design commissions contend with the challenge of working in an established heritage environment. Significant parts of Christ’s College were changed as a result of the Christchurch earthquakes, lending urgency to the publication of this book, which includes buildings which have been removed since September 2010.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 303 x 255 mm

Publication Date: 20-09-2021

Two years after graduating, Kees Bruin was exhibiting alongside Leo Bensemann, Don Binney, Doris Lusk, Trevor Moffitt, Peter Siddell, Olivia Spencer-Bower, Grahame Sydney, Robin White, and Brent Wong. For more than five decades of dedicated painterly practice and exhibition, Kees Bruin has established a unique visionary identity within the framework of New Zealand realism that is enthusiastically commissioned and collected internationally. His three overlapping categories: photo-realism, super-realism and what he terms “visionary-realism,” sprung from a personal search for all things truth hence his clever use of symbol, have gifted us exquisite panoramic landscapes, expressions of cultural pursuits such as surfing and skateboarding often imbued with metaphor, single and group portraits, reinterpretations of masters, especially the Dutch Golden Age, elaborated ‘still-lifes’ and works that explore elements of western Judaeo-Christian histories combined with contemporaneous fashions, settings and views to and from the earth. This personal genre launches us as art viewers into emotional odysseys of timeless human concern: Spirituality, the universe, beauty, truth, life and death, sex, betrayal, vanity and loss, as well as using paint to express beauty for its own sake.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 192

Dimensions: 300 x 300 mm

Publication Date: 12-10-2021

Frank Herbert’s DUNE meets Ian McEwan’s MACHINES LIKE ME Once upon a time in the future, things are looking grim. Plague stalks the land, people live behind city walls, or underground, or huddle in remote ham-lets. No more animals, no more birdlife, no more freedom… never has the divide between rich and poor been so evident, never has the Earth been so despoiled, and never has the need for a hero been stronger. Enter Chevalier, an unassuming and mild-man-nered tax inspector by day but a secret law-breaker and risk-taker by night who decides to experiment with a new virtual reality headset – CIRCE. And before he knows it, our hero finds he can dip in and out of a world long ago and far away where his deepest hopes and fears are met, where there’s magic in the air, and where his spirit and bravery can emerge. Helped (and hindered) by a collection of heroes, heroines, gods, goddesses and raving beauties from ages both ancient and modern, our hero gradually takes on the spirit and bravery of the legendary Gawayn. Masks, disguise and identity are key to the journey, and Chevalier discovers he is not alone. A bold and cunning plan is called for… the evolution of Gawayn is essential. This is a fable for our times. Serious, whimsical, funny, powerful and sexy, Chevalier & Gawayn is a thrilling mix of adventure and adversity and the need to heed the past. It is also a warning of the dangers facing society, but most of all, it is a celebration of our power to face and overcome them.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 472

Dimensions: 153 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 30-07-2022

Family, friends, secrets … It wasn’t always like this. Mila is a child of the northern bush and she has a gift. Descended from generations of healers, Mila is surrounded by a happy extended family, and delights in the sights, sounds and scents of her beloved forest, where she listens, learns, and runs free. Tommy-next-door is a quirky kid with a passion for bones, fossils and the bush. He doesn’t see the world as others do, but nothing escapes the Bone Man. Tommy is also Mila’s best friend, but she doesn’t know that yet. Then Mila’s life is changed forever when her little sister, Anahera, dies in a tragic accident that Mila blames herself for. The death tears the family apart but it’s the events after Anahera’s death where the real tragedy takes place – events with far-reaching consequences – and Mila flees to the city, far from everything and everyone she loves. When life and death are very close, their worlds hold hands. Forest and family call Mila back home where Tommy helps her piece together the broken bits of her life. Bush sanctuary, bush justice. Mila can finally wear the cloak of many cultures and fulfil the destiny whispered by her Croatian ancestors, confirmed by the rongoā Māori practitioner next door, and enhanced by the ways of modern medicine. Blood matters, but so do friends. Powerful yet tender and beautifully imagined, Mila and the Bone Man unites enduring love with the power of healing. A novel about guilt, forgiveness and finding your way home. And the secrets we keep to protect those we love the most.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 272

Dimensions: 153 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 18-08-2022