Stunning photography capturing the beauty of New Zealand's South Island

Bind: paperback

Pages: 48

Dimensions: 245 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2016

At the end of the first volume of Elspeth Sandys’ absorbing memoir, What Lies Beneath, an adult Elspeth has solved the riddle of her birth parents and begun to piece together the events of her early life and find her place in the world. Casting Off begins on the eve of Elspeth’s first marriage. She and her husband will soon depart New Zealand for England, joining a throng of Kiwis who chose to uproot themselves from their native land. New attachments will be formed: new loves – of people; of places – will take the place of the old. But the home country will continue to exercise a pull. Backgrounding the personal story in this deeply satisfying memoir is the story of the Thatcher years and the creeping virus of neo-liberalism, the sexual revolution of the sixties, the beguiling world of books – reading and writing – and theatre. Elspeth Sandys’ refreshing honesty and her skill as a writer of fiction and drama propel the reader through an absorbing life story that is equally a commentary on the meaning of memoir and the peculiarities of memory.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Long-listed for Ngaio Marsh Best Novel 2018 Their Taonga: Ngai Tahu’s ancient and sacred treasure. Everybody covets it. When it is stolen, the ancestors start wreaking havoc. The curse destroys people’s lives. Boats are overturned, babies die at birth, throats are slit. It must be returned to appease the ancestors. It has drawn Countess Margarita Szechnyi and Boyland the Collector, otherwise known as the Butcher of Warsaw, together into a web of murder, intrigue, love and deceit. Inspector O’Rorke is pushed into the case, along with his good friend Colonel Henry Jamieson and Henare Greaves as they attempt to return the Taonga to its rightful place. Starting in the secret caves of Murihiku in New Zealand’s South Island in 1883, then travelling to South America, on to London, then over to the Greek Isles, this book keeps the reader intrigued right through to the gripping climax. This is the sixth in Edmund Bohan’s gripping series of Inspector O’Rorke novels.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 200

Dimensions: 152 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 15-05-2017

The continuing myth that Canterbury was born in December 1850 with the arrival of the First Four Ships has to be dispelled. Canterbury did not, like the legendary Athena, spring 'fully-armed from the head of Zeus' (in this case, John Robert Godley) as succeeding generations after 1851 have been led to believe. So much of the initial work was carried out by the Canterbury Association Chief Surveyor Captain Thomas; so much of this effort, intentionally or unintentionally, was obscured by the settlers of the 1850s, Thomas deserves recognition as a Canterbury founder.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 210 x 297 mm

Publication Date: 24-04-2017

Seabirds Beyond the Mountain Crest tells the fascinating story of New Zealand’s endemic Hutton’s shearwater, a species that breeds only at two remote locations, high in the Kaikoura Mountains. Amateur ornithologist Geoff Harrow is the person most closely associated with the story of Hutton’s shearwater, for it was Geoff who discovered the two remaining nesting sites in the 1960s. For five decades he visited the mountains whenever he could to observe and record the birds, and to encourage the Department of Conservation and its predecessors to take steps to conserve this endangered species. As a result, scientist Richard Cuthbert was to spend three years living with 200,000 Hutton’s shearwaters and their neighbours, studying their behaviour, observing their interactions, measuring and recording facts and figures to build a detailed picture of why and how these birds had survived. The discoveries over time of Richard and his co-workers turned received wisdom on its head and revealed a whole new predator story. Richard’s beautifully written, witty account – of the challenge and exasperation, the heartbreak and hardship, and the sheer joy of conservation fieldwork in a remote environment – is beautifully interwoven with other fascinating stories – of the ‘discovery’ of the species by nineteenth-century scientists and collectors, and Geoff Harrow’s discovery of the nesting grounds and subsequent long involvement with this species. Seabirds Beyond the Mountain Crest is a delightful and highly entertaining read.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 220

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 14-08-2017

In 1966 Michael Illingworth, whose oil painting Adam and Eve appears on the front cover of this book, was awarded the inaugural Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. For the first time in New Zealand a practising artist was given a studio and paid a salary to make art for a whole year. Such support, as Frances Hodgkins herself wrote from her own experience, was capable of ‘yielding up riches – undreamed of’. Poet and critic David Eggleton has described the fellowship as ‘an emblem of cultural endeavour which … holds a legendary status in the public imagination’. The initiative and much of the early funding for the fellowship is thought to have come from poet, editor and arts patron Charles Brasch, and it was set up by the University of Otago Council. Fifty years later, the Frances Hodgkins is still going strong, one of five arts fellowships offered through the University of Otago’s Humanities Division. This sumptuous book brings together the art and the stories of half a century of Frances Hodgkins fellows. Arts commentator Priscilla Pitts writes about their work, while journalist Andrea Hotere interviews the artists about their lives and sources of inspiration. The result is a vibrant celebration of a wealth of talent fostered through New Zealand’s foremost visual arts residency, showing how the artistic wealth created has flowed back into the culture of the small country that nurtured it.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 220 x 280 mm

Publication Date: 11-09-2017

Phoney Wars looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. It questions the war as a story of ‘good’ against ‘bad’. All readers know that the Axis powers behaved ruthlessly, but how many are aware of the brutality of the Allied powers in bombing and starving ‘enemy’ towns and cities? New Zealand colluded in and even carried out such brutal aggressions. Were we, in going to war, really on the side of the angels? Contrary to the propaganda of the time – and subsequent memory – going to war did not unite New Zealanders: it divided them, often bitterly. People disagreed over whether or not we should fight, what we were fighting for and why, who was fighting, who was paying, and who was dying. In this provocative and moving book, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders’ hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humour, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 424

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 13-10-2017

Everyone knows Australia was once a penal colony, but few realise that New Zealander prisoners were sent there. During the mid-nineteenth century at least 110 people were transported from New Zealand to serve time as convict labourers in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Even more were sentenced by colonial judges to the harsh punishment of transportation, but somehow managed to avoid being sent across the Tasman Sea. In examining the remarkable experiences of unremarkable people, this fascinating book provides insights into the lives of people like William Phelps Pickering, a self-made entrepreneur turned criminal; Margaret Reardon, a potential accomplice to murder and convicted perjurer; and Te Kumete, a Māori warrior transported as a rebel. Their stories, and others like them, reveal a complex society overseen by a governing class intent on cleansing the colony of what was considered to be a burgeoning criminal underclass. This lively book also offers insights into penal servitude in Van Diemen’s Land as revealed through the lived experiences of the men and sole woman transported from New Zealand. Whether Māori men serving time for political infractions, white-collar criminals, labourers, vagrants or the soldiers sent to fight the empire’s wars, each convict’s experiences reveal something about the way in which the British Empire sought to discipline, punish and reform those who trespassed against it.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 284

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 10-11-2017

In his down-to-earth and lively style, Mitchell, who experienced politics first-hand as a long-serving Labour MP for Grimsby, denounces the economic policy of the last three decades as “a long march down Dead-End Street” – a neoliberal experiment that has benefitted the rich and eroded the “good society” with its welfare state and governments’ commitment to the betterment of the people. He charts the development of a neoliberal creed, market-driven and with governments devoted instead to efficiency, cost-cutting and austerity at the people’s expense, and draws parallels between Thatcherism in the United Kingdom, Rogernomics in New Zealand, and all that came after them. Mitchell observes how neoliberalism has failed to deliver on its promises, including that of the “trickle-down” effect, resulting in much greater inequality in both countries. Ultimately, he finds useful lessons in its failure and possible pointers to a fairer society for all.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 116

Dimensions: 210 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2017

Sue Bradford is half American and sixth generation Kiwi on her father’s side -- her European missionary genes date from 1820s Northland. Despite her grassroots New Zild twang, she was raised in Auckland by middle class, bohemian intellectuals and survived a childhood made difficult by her brilliant but domineering father. Fast forward through the tumultuous Vietnam War protest era, the 1981 Springbok Tour and 16 years in the invisible community sector where she became, with husband Bill, a loud voice and a highly effective organiser for society’s marginalised, and Sue suddenly and unexpectedly found herself in Parliament. From December 1999, as a hardworking, and much admired Green MP she managed a hefty portfolio and succeeded in getting three member’s bills into legislation, including her contentious bill to amend section 59 of the Crimes Act. Her mainstream political career ended, abruptly and disappointingly, five months after she lost the May 2009 Green Party co-leadership contest. Subsequently she achieved a PhD and transformed herself into Dr Sue Bradford -- activist and academic. Her readable thesis on the need for a major left wing think tank in Aotearoa has been downloaded in full almost 3,000 times and Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA), the infant left think tank she set up as a result, is growing lustily. Sue Bradford is still evolving but in terms of what matters most, her core social justice principles, she remains constant. -----------------Quotes from Review by Bronwyn Elsmore, Flaxroots Productions - "Jenny Chamberlain’s writing is fluent, polished, and definitely not dry to read.... It needed all those pages to give a full appreciation. Having read them, it leaves me wondering how one woman has fitted so much into her life. My respects to both the subject and the author".

Bind: paperback

Pages: 400

Dimensions: 170 x 240 x 25 mm

Publication Date: 03-07-2017