Ripped Apart is Mayor Bob Parker’s personal story about the earthquakes that devastated Christchurch. Bob’s tireless and unflappable communications gained him superstar status around the world.
He so impressed the American TV network, NBC, it broadcast to the world that New York, after 9/11, had Rudy Giuliani. Christchurch, after the earthquakes, had Bob Parker.
A Christchurch mother said: “For eight days I lived in my house under a table with my children because we were so scared. The only thing that calmed us was Bob’s voice on the radio. We trusted him”.
Within a few months of his triumphs the tide turned. The Minister of Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, dubbed him “a clown”; his council was dysfunctional; and Government, not the council, controlled the city’s rebuild.
Ripped Apart reveals the arguments, indecision, petty jealousies, power struggles and policies that occurred before, during, and after the crises. These are balanced with glimpses of dedication, courage, compassion and a unique vision. It is a story about people behind the scenes and events that saw Christchurch Ripped Apart, not just physically, but politically and emotionally.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 240

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 01-02-1970

Gina Campbell, last surviving member of a remarkable dynasty, will forever be most closely associated with the fatal attempt by her father to break the water speed record in his astounding boat. In that sense she is indeed the 'daughter of Bluebird' and has played a ceaseless role in the boat's restoration. In this absorbing autobiography she talks about:

Her life with Donald Campbell as father, early-day 'celebrity', and holder of many world records on land and water.
Her personal life three failed marriages, a suicide attempt and finding happiness in later life, only to have it snatched away; her power-boating career and setting two women's world water speed records in 1984 and 1990.
Her reaction to her father's death while attempting to set a new world water speed record on Coniston Water in January 1967.
Her complete shock at the discovery of Bluebird and Donald Campbell's body by divers in 2001.
Her decision to authorise the removal of the boat and Campbell's remains from the lake despite widespread opposition.
The decision to restore Bluebird and house her in the Ruskin Museum on Coniston Water. Her dream of once again seeing and hearing Bluebird on the lake.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 286

Dimensions: 160 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2012

William Shakespeare and John Milton are the two most important poets in English. Shakespeare’s achievements are unchallengeable and secure. Milton can make a far more controversial claim to eminence. He wrote the only poem in English recognized as an epic, Paradise Lost, a poem which challenged the beliefs and presuppositions of all of its readers. As a literary writer, his political and historical significance is unique; he was at the centre of the most traumatic period of modern British history, and this left an imprint on his writings.
Richard Bradford addresses two key topics in this short account of Milton’s life and work: the parallels between Paradise Lost and the events in England of the mid-to-late-seventeenth century; and the question of whether Milton’s writings reflect his sense of despair at man’s apparent failure to make the best of our world after the Fall and is thus the first testimony of his religious doubt.

Fascinating for both the general reader and for academics, Richard Bradford brings new understanding to the life, times and works of one of Britain’s most significant writers.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 120

Publication Date: 22-02-2013

I was filled with the growing hope that my door to freedom lay through the Ouija. And first and foremost in pursuance of my plan, I aimed at inveigling the Commandant into the spiritualist circle and making him the instrument of my escape. The news that there existed a buried treasure which the Turks were seeking gave me an idea of how to do it…

Captured during the First World War, Lieutenant E.H. Jones (a Welsh officer in the Indian Army) and Lieutenant C.W. Hill (an Australian serving in the R.A.F.) were prisoners of war at the Yozgad prison camp in Turkey.
Duty-bound as officers to attempt escape, Jones sensed that what had previously been the harmless fun of fooling around with a homemade Ouija board could be turned into something much more productive. Playing on the credulous nature of their captors, Hill and Jones weave an incredibly elaborate plot, hatched to plan their escape. Acting as mediums for the Ouija board, they attempted to convince their captors that they were gradually descending into insanity – which, had it been true, would have seen them repatriated.
A true story of bravery, dedication and extreme hardship, this book is a fascinating insight account of a daring escapade, a narrative that deserves to be brought back into the public eye.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 160

Publication Date: 26-04-2013

Comedian, mod and professional grump Ian Moore has had enough.
Tired of being unable to park anywhere near his cramped house in a noisy town he doesn’t like, he hatches a plan to move his wife and young son to a remote corner of the Loire Valley in search of serenity and space.
Several years later, Ian finds himself up to his neck in bilingual offspring, feral cats, promiscuous horses, dysfunctional spaniels and needy hens; he’s wrestling with electric fences, a foreign language, a mountain of animal waste and a wife who collects livestock like there’s a biblical flood on the horizon, all while trying not to dirty his loafers.
But despite the ups, downs and increasing demands of Ian’s showbiz career, the Moore family persevere in true Brit style to create a unique, colourful and ultimately rewarding life in their new home – à la campagne and à la mod!

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 06-05-2013

‘Here again, Mr Cossey?’ asked the young Spanish embryologist, shooting me a welcoming smile as I followed him down the corridor. He had recognised me by sight and that wasn’t good. I was now the one thing you don’t want to be in a fertility clinic. A regular.
Martha wanted a baby. Mark wanted a baby.
What’s the worst that could happen?
In four years of baby-making boot camp, Mark and Martha face The Calendar, the joy of sober, scheduled sex, hostile cervical mucus, IUI and IVF. Through a combination of ignorance and outrage, Mark survives ejaculating into a small jar, stabbing his wife, having his sperm turned pink and group sex with whales. Written with genuine laugh-out-loud humour and complete honesty, Trying is a noholds- barred welcome to the world of the infertile written by a man who has lived through it all and come through with his ultimate dream realised – his own family. It says a lot when you can call two years of sleepless nights a happy ending.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 288

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 06-05-2013

Here is a series of sixty-four letters, carefully preserved by Mary McIlrath in Killinchy, Co. Down, N. Ireland.

They detail the progress of Mary’s great uncles, the two McIlrath brothers who emigrated in 1860 to New Zealand, and describe their work and achievements over fifty-five years. Historically and genealogically valuable are the frequent references to other emigrants from Killinchy and surrounding district whom they frequently met there. The news, messages and greetings included in the letters of the McIlrath brothers were sure to have been read and circulated to relatives, friends and neighbours, drawing that community at home closer together as well as closer to the one on the other side of the world. Re-reading these letters today, with their deeply personal style and content, it is easy to imagine that our ancestors are writing to us from the past.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 143

Dimensions: 210 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-04-2009

The woman was one of those irritating expat types who felt she owed it to the world to impart on her all her superior knowledge of life in France. I realised that if I didn’t stop her now, she’d be bending my ear all the way to Bergerac.
‘Actually,’ I said, leaning in toward the woman, ‘I’m planning to integrate my way into the boxers of the first good-looking Frenchman I see. Can’t think of any better way to learn the language myself. You wouldn’t happen to know the French for "fancy a shag?" would you? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi just seems a bit nineteen-seventies these days.’

After one particularly bad day at work, advertising executive and confirmed city girl Melanie Jones decides to give up her old life in search of something new and simpler in South West France. With little knowledge of the country, even less of the language and just the memory of a disastrous school French exchange and a few day trips to Calais, she embarks on her adventure with a suitcase full of optimism and not a little bit of naivety. After all, how different can life in France be?
After a series of adventures with skirt-ripping tractors, handsome twin farmers, celebrity not-quite-beens, unusual toilets and a bonkers ex-pat community, all topped up, of course, with lashings of rosé, Melanie begins to discover that her new life in France isn’t quite what she’d thought it would be.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 352

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 04-06-2013

12 Years a Slave, soon to be a huge new Hollywood film (February 2014 release), is the harrowing true story of Solomon Northup who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, enduring unimaginable degradation and abuse until his rescue twelve years later.
Tricked by two men offering him a job as a musician in New York State in 1841, Solomon Northup was drugged and kidnapped. His life in jeopardy, he was forced to assume a new name and fake past. Taken to Louisiana on a disease-ridden plague ship, he was initially sold to a cotton planter. In the twelve years that follow he is sold to many different owners who treat him with varying levels of savagery; forced labour, scant food and numerous beatings are his regular fare. Against all odds, Northup eventually succeeds in contacting a sympathetic party and manages to get word to his family. The ensuing rescue and legal cases are no less shocking and intriguing than the rest of the tale. Northup's meticulous first-hand recordings of slave life provide a true-life testament to tremendous courage and tenacity in the face of unfathomable injustice. A new film premiering in 2014, featuring Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch, and directed by Steve McQueen, is sure to introduce this amazing story to a new audience.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 300

Publication Date: 01-08-2013

Tony Walsh was first introduced to NZ's bush clad ranges, to pig hunting and some life-defining experiences by Ned Tuite, whose usual attire was a black woollen bush singlet and a pair of khaki shorts suspended from a thin leather belt. Through Ned, Tony met a band of those iconic good keen men of an era now past, and began a journey of experiences he will never forget.
There were the likes of ugly Eddie, who ate all the pigs' ears; Jack, who thought the ghosts were after him after a midnight tumble down the hill; or Charlie, who didn't know whether to mash his spuds before or after they were cook. Men whose characters were as colourful and multifaceted as the forests and mountains they came from.
The Black Singlet Brigade is a memoir written with eloquence and a dash of humour at every turn. It combines the untamed beauty of the wild with hilarious adventures and unique characters to build a picture of a life long gone, in the bush and back-country of New Zealand.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 105

Publication Date: 30-07-2013