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A group of women living in violent relationships meets each week in a community house. Their advocates - feisty, radical feminists, Leah Gunn and her partner Kelly, have developed a liberating practice, from their own lived experience, which helps women to evaluate their lives and make decisions...A story told in a group session acts as the catalyst for transformation and tragedy. Thus unfolds tales of abuse, betrayals, violence and compassion that make compelling reading. This story is as relevant today as it was in the 1990s, the setting for the book.

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Pages: 220

Dimensions: 148 x 225 mm

This is a story many New Zealand women - particularly those who grew up in the country - will identify with. Elspeth Biss was brought up on Hawke's Bay farms in the 1940s; attended boarding school in the 1950s; trained as a nurse, married, and brought up a family in the 1960s and 70s on farms in the Wairarapa. As she writes: "The 1960s may well have been 'the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius', as the popular song had it, with the Beatles, Mary Quant and the mini-skirt, but for me and most of my friends it was a decade of child raising, washing nappies, Plunket and kindergartens." In her absorbing memoir, Elspeth Biss evokes the way things were during 'all those yesterdays'. She is fiercely proud of her Scottish heritage, going 'home' for the first time in 1946. Passionate about horses and hunting, she is also always looking for a new challenge - 'retirement' is an opportunity to sell cosmetics and learn to kayak at an age when most prefer sedentary pursuits. All Those Yesterdays celebrates a life well lived away from the headlines and the city lights.

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Pages: 205

This absorbing story is set in Greytown, in the Wairarapa, in the late 1860s. Greytown, a Small Farms Settlement, was the first inland township in New Zealand, but its beginnings were very like those elsewhere. A Better Place is a story about life in the township and on the area's small farms. A young wife from Devon, named Kate, arrives in Wellington with two children to meet their husband and father, who had sailed fom England two years previously and taken up land in Greytown. After a hazardous journey over the 'hill' she faces life in a rough cottage with earthen floor. She learns to milk cows, tend the garden and make a home for her family. Life is hard, but theirs are happy times too as settlers work together to ensure that they have, indeed, achieved 'a better place'.

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Pages: 342

Dimensions: 150 x 240 mm

Rod and Rosamunde Read's journey is a story of love and devotion. It is also a story of strong emotions - anger, frustration, distress, joy, acceptance and learning. As well as being a very personal story, it is an important and valuable guide for care givers - doctors, nurses, rest home workers - who have the challenging and critical task of helping patients through their journey with Alzheimers and other forms of dementia. Forget Me Not gives wonderful insights into the many aspects of the progressive decline from good health to a very different world and the inevitable consequences for those who care and love the patient.

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Pages: 157

Safe Haven traces the life of Featherston Military Camp and, through letters, diaries and reminiscences, the men who lived there. The camp left a legacy in buildings, photographs and the site itself, now quiet land alongside State Highway Two, east of Featherston. The building of Featherston Military Camp in late 1915 transformed a stony paddock east of Featherston township in south Wairarapa into a ready-made barrack town which could house up to 8,000 raw soldiers at a time. Volunteers and conscripts from all parts of the country came to Featherston, spending two to four months in training, our largest military base their temporary home before they left the safety of New Zealand to endure the heaviest wartime casualties this country has suffered. They lived in barracks and tents, enduring the good and bad of camp life and Featherston's lively climate. The infantry then marched over the Rimutaka Range to Trentham Camp before taking ship for the Western Front. In total about 55,000 men trained at the Featherston Military Camp between 1916-19.

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Pages: 175

In the mid-19th century a woman's place in society - or sphere - was dictated by very different standards and expectations. A Woman's Sphere is the story of Florence Pettigrew's marriage to Charles Spurway, the son of a transported convict and known as 'Cornstalk' - a name commonly given to children who grew taller and stronger than their convict parents. Florence, a free woman and talented artist, works in her father's store in Hobart Town, Tasmania. One day, with the jingle of the shop door bell, Charles appears, wanting to buy a gift for his grandfather, a remittance man. Gradually, a relationship, not encouraged by her father, develops and leads to marriage. Initially idyllic, the marriage encounters difficulties stoically borne by Florence. Charles, on the other hand, does not accept his lot and following his dreams and wanting to leave his 'cornstalk' label behind, decides to move to New Zealand. In the Wairarapa township of Masterton he sets up as a stock and station agent. Florence has no choice but to move with him. Trapped in a marriage she can't escape, Florence is consoled by her art, and her involvement in the temperance movement and the battle to gain women the vote. There are tragic consequences.

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Pages: 216

Dimensions: 140 x 210 mm

A very few pioneer New Zealand families have lived and farmed their land for six, even seven generations. These New Zealanders and their stories, shaped by the land itself, are an important part of the history of Aotearoa. This is the story of one such family whose forebears, Charles and Elizabeth Matthews, arrived in 1842 on the sailing ship London. They settled first in Wellington but, drawn by the pull of the land, moved to Wairarapa and purchased the first acres their descendants still farm today. Seven generations have lived on Waiorongomai. Diaries written by Alfred Matthews, the memoirs of his grandson, Jack, and tape recorded conversations with more recent members of the family, all play a part in this history. It is the story of a family devoted to its farming, the development of one of the country's leading Romney sheep studs and the passing on of a love of the land from one generation to the next. It is also dedicated to all the men and families who have worked on Waiorongomai over the last 160 years.

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Pages: 382

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".

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Pages: 400

Dimensions: 170 x 240 x 25 mm

Publication Date: 03-07-2017

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

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Pages: 220

Dimensions: 163 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 06-06-2018