Fiction @ Wellington City Libraries

From a high-tech fable to a contemporary noir fantasy, with the colonisation of distant planets to battles for galactic freedom, this month’s selection of new science fiction and fantasy novels has it all.

Rise of the TaiGethen / James Barclay.
“The Elves have been driven out of their capital. The invading forces of Mankind, backed by the terrifying power of their mages have taken hundreds of elves as hostages and have now begun to plunder the sacred jungles of Calaius. Those few elves that remain free are fragmented, in squabbling factions, and they must unite before they can take a stand against Man. Many believe that the battle is already lost, but Auum is not one of them. He knows Men’s numbers are great but their tactics are weak; he knows Men think the Elves are already beaten; he is convinced that his people must fight now, or see their race destroyed.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Dark Eden / Chris Beckett.
“You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, beneath the light and warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of a startlingly alien, sunless world. After 163 years and six generations of incestuous inbreeding, the Family is riddled with deformity and feeblemindedness. Your culture is an infantile stew of half-remembered fact and devolved ritual that stifles innovation and punishes independent thought. You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to abandon hope, the first to abandon the old ways, the first to kill another, the first to venture in to the Dark, and the first to discover the truth about Eden.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

The house on Durrow Street / Galen Beckett.
“Ivy, the eldest of the Lockwell sisters, is now Mrs. Quent, and her life has gone back to that of polite society. But she soon finds out that dark powers are once again gathering and she must decide if her place is that of a woman of station or that of a magician’s wife.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Moxyland / Lauren Beukes
“A frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable, this novel follows the lives of four narrators living in an alternative futuristic Cape Town, South Africa. An art-school dropout, and AIDS baby, a tech-activist and an RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone’s got to stand up to Government Inc., whatever the cost.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Aloha from Hell / Richard Kadrey.
“The third Sandman Slim contemporary noir fantasy. Lucifer has returned to Heaven, leaving a power vacuum in Hell. Mason, the magician whom half-angelic antihero James Stark recently killed, is more than willing to step into the breach, and soon he’s massing demonic forces to attack Heaven and possibly destroy the universe. Manipulating angels, demons, and the monstrous Kissi, Stark must head off a full-scale war, and if that means returning to Hell, he might as well do the Orpheus thing and rescue his dead girlfriend while he’s there. Fittingly, perhaps, Hell turns out to look a lot like Stark’s hometown, Los Angeles, on a very bad day.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The agent gambit / Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.
“Once a brilliant First-in-Scout, Val Con yos’Phelium was “recruited” by the shadowy Liaden Department of Interior and brainwashed into an Agent of Change, a ruthless covert operative who kills without remorse. Val Con has been playing a deep game, far from the orderly life of clan and kin. Fleeing his latest mission, he saves the life of ex-mercenary Miri Robertson, a Terran on the run from interplanetary assassins. Thrown together by circumstances, Val Con and Miri struggle to elude their enemies and stay alive without killing each other-or surrendering to the unexpected passion that flares between them. ” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Korval’s game / Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.
“Val Con yos’Phelium is a fugitive, an heir of Clan Korval, and wanted by the covert Liaden agency known as the Department of the Interior, whose rulers have declared unofficial war against the entire clan! With only his love, Miri Robertson, by his side, Val Con plans a desperate gamble by forming an alliance with Clan Erob on the planet where Miri was born.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

In the mouth of the whale / Paul McAuley.
“Fomalhaut was first colonised by the posthuman Quick, who established an archipelago of thistledown cities and edenic worldlets within the star’s vast dust belt. Their peaceful, decadent civilisation was swiftly conquered by a band of ruthless, aggressive, unreconstructed humans who call themselves the True, then, a century before, the True beat back an advance party of Ghosts, a posthuman cult which colonised the nearby system of Beta Hydri after being driven from the Solar System a thousand years ago. Now the Ghosts have returned to Fomalhaut, to begin their end game: the conquest of its single gas giant planet, a captured interstellar wanderer far older than the rest of Fomalhaut’s system. At its core is a sphere of hot metallic hydrogen with strange and powerful properties based on exotic quantum physics.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Theft of swords / Michael J. Sullivan.
“Hadrian Blackwater and Royce Melborn are a pair of thieves and mercenaries, they are just criminals who happen to have hearts of gold. Going by the inexplicably pretentious shared name of “Riyria,” they steal incriminating letters from a blackmailer, kidnap a young king to save his life, and protect a village menaced by a terrible monster. Along the way, they meet a clever princess, an unlucky monk, a 1,000-year-old wizard with no hands, and a naive but heroic farm girl, all while the powerful Church of Nyphron is secretly schemes to control the world.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A rising thunder / David Weber.
“After a brutal attack on the Manticoran home system, Honor Harrington has discovered plan designed to enslave the entire human species. Behind that plans lies the shadowy organization known as the Mesan Alignment. Task #1 for Honor is to shut down and secure the wormhole network that is the source of the Star Kingdom’s wealth and power, but also its greatest vulnerability. Yet this is an act that the ancient and corrupt Earth-based Solarian League inevitably takes as a declaration of war. Once again Honor Harrington is thrust into a desperate battle that she must win if she is to survive to take the fight to the real enemy of galactic freedom.” – (adapted from Book cover description)

An exciting selection of new Historical Fiction received this month. From the time of Alexander the Great in 359 BC, to 15th century Belgium, from post war France to the early 1970’s and the Watergate scandal, some truly exciting reads. If historical fiction is a favourite genre, more great reading can be found from the short list for the 2012 Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize on our Fiction website page.

Wide awake : a novel / Robert Bober ; translated from the French by Carol Volk.
” Bernard Appelbaum, 21 years old and newly entranced by his native Paris seen through the lens of filmmaker Francois Truffaut, lands a role as an extra in Truffaut’s latest, Jules et Jim (a story of simple coincidences shaping one’s life). Upon seeing the film, Bernard’s mother, Hannah, opens up about her own life’s coincidences, especially how her marriage to Bernard’s father, Yankel, resulted from their mutual friend Liezer’s absence one evening, giving Yankel the chance to confess his love. After Yankel died in the camps when Bernard was only two, Hannah reconnected with Liezer, whom she married and with whom she had Bernard’s half-brother, Alex. When Liezer dies in a plane crash, both boys are left fatherless and brimming with questions about their shared heritage.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Waiting for sunrise / William Boyd.
“Vienna, 1913. As Lysander Rief, a young English actor, is waiting for his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist Dr Bensimon, a young woman enters the waiting room. She is clearly in distress, but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense beauty. They begin a passionate love affair and life in Vienna becomes tinged with a powerful frisson of excitement for Lysander. Back in London, 1914. War is imminent, and events in Vienna have caught up with Lysander in the most damaging way. Unable to live an ordinary life, he is plunged into the dangerous theatre of wartime intelligence, a world of sex, scandal and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code which is threatening Britain’s safety, and use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

God of war / Christian Cameron.
“The story of how Alexander the Great conquered the world,- first crushing Greek resistance to Macedonian rule, then destroying the Persian Empire in three monumental battles, before marching into the unknown and final victory in India. Narrated by his boyhood friend Ptolemy, this is the story of Alexander as you have never heard it before: raw, intimate, brutal, full of the terror and exhilaration of battle, the heroism and the horror of conquest, and, ultimately, the tragedy of a man who aimed to be more than human.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Spartacus : the gladiator / Ben Kane.
“This book begins in the Thracian village to which Spartacus has returned after escaping from life as an auxiliary in the Roman army. Jealous of his attachment to Ariadne, a Dionysian priestess, the Thracian king betrays Spartacus to the Romans who take him, along with Ariadne, into captivity and to the school of gladiators at Capua. Against the background of the unbelievable brutality of gladiatorial life, Spartacus and Crixus the Gaul plan the audacious overthrow of their Roman masters. They escape and flee to Vesuvius, where they recruit and train an army of escaped slaves that will have to face the conquerors of the known world, the most successful deadly army in all of history in a battle that will set in motion the legend that is Spartacus.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Watergate a novel / Thomas Mallon.
“Thomas Mallon conveys the drama and high comedy of the Nixon presidency through the urgent perspectives of seven characters we only thought we knew before now, moving readers from the private cabins of Camp David to the klieg lights of the Senate Caucus Room, from the District of Columbia jail to the Dupont Circle mansion of Theodore Roosevelt’s sharp-tongued ninety-year-old daughter, and into the hive of the Watergate complex itself, home not only to the Democratic National Committee but also to the president’s attorney general, his recklessly loyal secretary, and the shadowy man from Mississippi who pays out hush money to the burglars.” (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

The shadow prince / Terence Morgan.
“Perkin Warbeck is an ordinary young man in fifteenth-century Tournai. The son of a port official, he loves nothing more than swimming, singing and fishing with his father. But Perkin has a secret. His real name is Richard, and he is the rightful Prince of England. Thought to have been murdered with his brother, Edward, in the Tower of London, he was covertly taken to the continent and placed with an adoptive family under an assumed identity. But when his enemies seek him out he must flee, and embarks on a new life sailing the high seas with the era’s greatest adventurers. But Richard cannot avoid his fate forever. He knows he must return to England, to assume the throne that is his birthright. But what for Richard is a homecoming, for the new king, Henry Tudor, is nothing less than an invasion, and ‘Perkin’ slowly comes to learn that the price of his goal is the blood of innocent men.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

The house I loved / Tatiana de Rosnay.
“Parisian Rose Bazelet is a woman in mourning, for her husband and son, both long dead; for her distant daughter; and because of Napoleon III’s ambitious urban planning agenda in the mid-19th century, an enormous project that could destroy her beloved family estate. With the planners already leveling nearby houses, Rose hides in her cellar and writes letters to her deceased husband about her struggle to save their home. As the letters continue, and destruction grows near, Rose remembers her married life. With the planners “rattling about at the entrance” and taking her friend Alexandrine, who has come to rescue her, by surprise, Rose reveals to her late husband the dark secret she could never bring herself to tell him when he was alive.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The Winter Palace / Eva Stachniak.
“The epic, sensuous story of Catherine the Great’s ruthless rise to power, through the eyes of a young girl groomed as the Empress’s spy in 18th Century Russia. Vavara, a young orphaned Polish girl, is brought to serve at Empress Elizabeth’s glittering, dangerous court in St Petersburg, she is schooled by the Chancellor himself in skills from lock-picking to love-making, learning above all else to stay silent, and listen. Soon, she is Elizabeth’s ‘tongue’ – her secret eyes and ears.Then Sophie, a vulnerable young princess, arrives from Prussia as a prospective bride for Elizabeth’s heir. Set to spy on her by the Empress, Vavara soon becomes her friend and confidante, and helps her navigate the illicit seductions and the treacherous shifting allegiances of the court. ut Sophie’s destiny is to become the notorious Catherine the Great. Are her ambitions more lofty and far-reaching than anyone suspected, and will she stop at nothing to achieve absolute power?” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Queen of America / Luis Alberto Urrea.
“After the bloody Tomochic rebellion, Teresita Urrea, beloved healer and “Saint of Cabora,” flees with her father to Arizona. But their plans are derailed when she once again is claimed as the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution. Besieged by pilgrims and pursued by assassins, Teresita embarks on a journey through turn-of-the-century industrial America-New York, San Francisco, St. Louis. She meets immigrants and tycoons, European royalty and Cuban poets, all waking to the new American century. And as she decides what her own role in this modern future will be, she must ask herself: can a saint fall in love?” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

The secret history of Costaguana / Juan Gabriel Vásquez ; translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean.
“This novel covers about 100 years of Colombian history, from the birth of the revolutionary Miguel Altamirano in 1820 to Conrad’s death in 1924. Miguel’s illegitimate son Jose, the narrator of this story, reunites with his father in Panama, marries and has a daughter named Eloisa, and travels to London, where he meets Conrad and tells him the story of his life and of Colombia. When Conrad’s novel Nostromo is published, Altamirano recognizes what he had related to Conrad, but his physical presence is missing. When Conrad dies, Altamirano, with delightful literary irony, decides to set the record straight, addressing Eloisa and an unknown jury and interrupting himself frequently to clarify points.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Our picks of the new graphic novels at the library this month include the highly recommended Oil and Water — the compelling story of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler. For lighter relief, check out the weird and wonderful Zombie Survival Guide: recorded Attacks by Max Brooks, author of World War Z : an oral history of the zombie war, as well as Volume 0 of the web comic xkcd. Enjoy!

The armed garden and other stories / David B. ; edited and translated by Kim Thompson.
“David B., the creator of the acclaimed Epileptic (2006), gives full rein to his fascination with history, magic and gods, not to mention grand battles, in this literate, witty and absorbing collection of stories, all based on historical fact (or at least historical legend).” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Pure pajamas / [Mark Bell].
“Pure Pajamas collects Marc Bell’s best material from his syndicated weekly comic strip for the Montreal Mirror and the Halifax Coast, as well as a host of anthologies. Throughout this collection, Bell creates symbiotic relationships within his fantasy ecosystems, drawn in a rubbery big-foot style. Reminiscent of the sixties comics of R. Crumb but with a kind of bemused detachment in place of Crumb’s ire, Bell addresses the big issues of what it’s like to live in today’s world.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

The zombie survival guide : recorded attacks / Max Brooks ; illustrated by Ibraim Roberson.
“Called the “Studs Terkel of zombie journalism,” Brooks provides the lessons that history has taught about zombie outbreaks. Here, Brooks chronicles the most famous outbreaks, gruesomely illustrated in graphic novel form.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Brain Boy / by Herb Castle, Gil Kane & Frank Springer.
“A freak accident with an electrical tower affected Matt Price’s brain while he was still in the womb. Ever since then, he’s had mysterious mental powers, such as telepathy, the ability to levitate, and mind control! Naturally, the government recruited him straight out of high school, and now he battles mad dictators and thawed-out dinosaurs as Brain Boy.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

The adventures of Hergé / José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental ; illustrated by Stanislas Barthélémy ; translated by Helge Dascher.
“Georges Prosper Remi, the world-famous “Herge” of Tintin authorship, himself becomes the subject of a comic drawn in his trademark clear-line color. More an homage than a formal biography, this collection of mostly four-page episodes evokes high points of the artist’s colorful life: an early obsession with drawing, a boy scout rescue in the Alps, a first job with Le XXe Siecle newspaper, a first concept for his boyish reporter/detective hero, the ascent to fame, the romantic and professional complications that followed, friendship with a Chinese artist, censure as a possible Nazi collaborator, exoneration and maturity, and then death.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Oil & water / Steve Duin, author ; Shannon Wheeler, artist.
“Four months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a small group of Oregonians traveled to the Gulf Coast to assess the damage. In this graphic-novel recounting of their expedition, we follow the well-intentioned but naive activists as they meet scientists, crabbers, bird rehabilitators, the local head of Homeland Security (found shark fishing on a beach), and other locals whose lives were roiled by the disaster. Details of the devastation are conveyed mostly through interviews with those personally affected and dry text pages. As for the human element, vignettes portraying the residents and their experiences are more compelling than the (apparently fictionalized) sequences featuring the clueless outsiders.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A flight of angels / conceived & illustrated by Rebecca Guay; [written by] Holly Black…[et al.]
“In this collection, created by fantasy artist Guay (Veils), a group of goblins, faeries, and other magical creatures gather around an unconscious angel who has fallen from the sky into their midst. Some of the creatures want to kill the angel, while others, taken by his beauty, want him to live. To decide what to do, the magical creatures hold a trial, and, as evidence, several of them tell tales they have heard about angels. These tales are each written by a different fantasy novelist or graphic novel writer.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

xkcd : volume 0 / Randall Munroe.
“Randall Munroe describes “xkcd” as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. This book creates laughs from science jokes on one page to relationship humor on another. “xkcd: volume 0″ is the first book from the immensely popular webcomic with a passionate readership (just Google “xkcd meetup”). The artist selected personal and fan favorites from his first 600 comics.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Empire State : a love story (or not) / Jason Shiga.
“Empire State is a graphic novel with a bold visual approach and chronology and a timeless story: the vagaries of love and friendship and the mish-mash of both. Jimmy is a twenty-something, stereotypical geek who’s living at home in Oakland, working at the library, and trapped in his own torpidity. When his best girl friend Sara (a girl and a friend, but not a girlfriend) declares she’s moving to New York City to get a life (translation: an apartment in Brooklyn and a publishing internship), Jimmy is rattled, then lonely and then desperate. He gathers up his courage, writes Sara a letter about his true feelings for her, and asks her to meet him at the top of the Empire State Building.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Little nothings. [Vol. 4], My shadow in the distance / Lewis Trondheim ; [translation by Joe Johnson].
“Paranoia, little annoyances, big annoyances, love, travel and childhood are all subjected to Trondheim’s wit and skill in this collection of humorous snippets of everyday life.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

The Walter Scott prize for historical fiction was founded in 2010 by distant relatives of Sir Walter Scott, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. The prize of £25, 000 is awarded each year to a historical novel, “that has the ability to shed light on the present as well as the past.” This year’s panel of judges in chaired by historian and writer Alistair Moffat and the winner selected from the six shortlisted novels will be announced mid June. Previous winners have been Hilary Mantel in 2010 for Wolf Hall and Andrea Levy in 2011 for The Long Song.

The shortlisted novels for this year’s award are:

• On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry

• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

• Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

• The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst

• Pure by Andrew Miller

• The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth

For more information on Sir Walter Scott, his life and his impact, try this:

Scott-land : the man who invented a nation / Stuart Kelly.
“His name and image are everywhere – from Bank of Scotland fivers to the bizarre monument in Edinburgh’s city centre. Scott-land presumes that the reader will have only a hazy awareness of Sir Walter Scott, and, although Stuart Kelly will offer insights into Scott’s works and biography, this is emphatically not a conventional literary biography, nor is it a critical study. Partly a surreptitious autobiography – Stuart Kelly was born near Abbotsford – his examination of Scott’s legacy and character come to change his own thoughts on writing, reviewing, being Scottish, and being human.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk description)

This fiction newletter for April highlights some of the best novels received in the previous month. Selected from the graphic novels, contemporary fiction, mysteries, science fiction and fantasy, and New Zealand fiction recent picks, there is something for every reading preference. Remember if a title is unavailable you can easily place a reserve.

Library News

• We’ve added over 23,000 copyright-free public domain eBook titles!

Hi everyone, Deborah and I are the fiction selectors for Wellington City Libraries and we spend a lot of time reading about, and choosing, lovely new fiction for the library.

Every few weeks we pick just a couple of books that we’ve ordered during the week that have really caught our eye and profile them here. They won’t be ’shelf ready’ as one says, but they will be due to published in the next six months and you can find them on the catalogue, available to reserve.

So, onto this week’s picks!

Diary of a mad fat girl.
If you’re a fan of Janet Evanovich, you’re going to love getting to know Gracelia “Ace” Jones. Ace is a feisty, sassy Southern lady, a Stephanie Plum-type character who, along with best friends Chloe and Linda, wrecks delicious havoc righting the wrongs in small-town Bugtussle. At the end of all the high jinks – some sleuthing. a little breaking and entering, a spot of dressing up as drag queens – the sisterhood expose the lies, the double-standards and dodgy goings-on in Bugtussle, Lots of fun – let’s hope we hear more of Ace and her friends in the future!

Nun / Simonetta Agnello Hornby
If you like your historical romances to have exotic locations, depth and complexity, you’re going to want to read this book. We follow Agata Padellini, who after her father’s death, is sent by her mother into a convent to separate her from the man she loves. Agata initially accepts her fate, and we learn much about the rituals, the jealousies and the intrigue of convent life in nineteenth-century Sicily. But this is a romance, so we can be sure that Agata will find a way to break her vowels and leave the convent for true love. A predictable plot? Not entirely, and not least because her eventual true love isn’t her first love. There are twists and turns and serendipitous happenings along the way in Agata’s story to keep you turning the pages far into the night.

Arcadia / Lauren Groff.
What happens when the ideal of the rural hippy life, full of warm, hard-working people with similar ideals and living off the land, fails to fulfil its promise? Bill Stone is a little boy, being lovingly raised by Adam and Hannah in Arcadia, a commune in the western reaches of New York State. But ideals are hard to live up to, and nothing lasts forever. As the 1960s progress, Arcadia becomes a magnet for people seeking the hippy experience, inevitably bringing the drugs, political debates and influences of the counter-culture movement that eventually destroy the dream. Core members leave – but adapting to the real world is harder for some than for others. Bill himself must find his place in this changed world. Lovely writing, apparently, and highly recommended by reviewers.

Mysteries can take many surprising twists as they wind towards a conclusion, no other genre sets out to surprise in quite so many ways. However, amongst all the unpreditabilty is one element that can always be relied upon, an ominous sounding title. Well, that and murder I suppose…

Victims : an Alex Delaware novel / Jonathan Kellerman.
“Drawing from insights gained in his clinical work with mentally distressed children, Kellerman pulls the reader into a macabre case of ritualistic slaughter in his 27th Alex Delaware/Milo Sturgis title. After discovering two identically grisly murders, the investigative duo (Delaware is a psychologist, Sturgis an LAPD lieutenant) strive to connect the apparently unrelated victims. As the body count rises, names and experiences from Delaware’s clinical training begin to surface unexpectedly and the case becomes personal. Verdict Kellerman’s bizarre yet plausible thriller will be a treat for his many fans, who will recognize and appreciate the emphasis upon psychological detail and insight instead of more customary sleuthing terminology…” – (adapted from Library Journal summary)

Heart of a killer / David Rosenfelt.
“Edgar-finalist Rosenfelt’s fine stand-alone begins as a legal thriller that twists into a murder mystery before becoming a full-blown suspense chiller. The life of Karen Harrison, a 14-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect, can only be saved by a heart transplant from a matching donor. Karen’s mom, Sheryl, who shares Karen’s rare blood type, wishes to donate her heart. Two complications stand in Sheryl’s way. First, she must die to enable the transplant. Second, in order to commit suicide, she must get out of prison, where she’s serving 15 years to life for her abusive husband’s murder six years earlier. That’s where Sheryl’s underachieving lawyer, Jamie Wagner, comes in. Jamie hopes to file a lawsuit against the state of New Jersey on her behalf, but his plans change when he learns Sheryl may not be guilty…” – (adapted from Publisher Weekly summary)

Cut, crop & die : a Kiki Lowenstein scrap-n-craft mystery / Joanna Campbell Slan.
“Tainted icing triggers a rare allergy, and a hobbyist croaks at a scrapbooking crop sponsored by Time in a Bottle, the store where Kiki Lowenstein works. When it comes out that someone swiped the victim’s emergency medication, the scrappers realize they have a murder on their hands, and the entire community jumps to point the finger at Kiki and her coworkers. Suddenly, the one anchor in Kiki’s stormy life is on the verge of sinking beneath a ruined reputation. But who wouldn’t want to kill Yvonne Gaynor? The nasty woman had enough enemies to fill a memory album. Once again, Kiki gets sucked into a mystery that should be left to that dreamy detective, Chad Detweiller — who hasn’t tried to kiss her yet. With anti-Semitic threats coming in at the store, a quarrelsome teen daughter at home, and constant financial pressure, Kiki needs to keep her cool if she’s going to set things right.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Left for dead : a novel / J.A. Jance.
“Bestseller Jance’s engaging seventh Ali Reynolds novel (after 2011’s Fatal Error) offers plenty of scope for the widowed former reporter, anchorwoman, and graduate of the Arizona Police Academy, who now heads a private charitable fund, to use her sleuthing talents. When 17-year-old Rose Ventana is found dead near the Mexican border, savagely beaten and tortured, the police assume she’s just another casualty of the drug wars. But Ali’s dear friend, Sister Anselm, thinks otherwise, and the two vigorous and persistent women discover links to other cases that suggest a serial killer at work. Meanwhile, the pair involve themselves in caring for the extended family of a local deputy, mysteriously wounded and suspected of dealing in drugs…” – (adapted from Publisher Weekly summary)

Catch me / Lisa Gardner.
“D.D. Warren has returned from maternity leave and is back on the job just in time to investigate a crime spree in which the victims are also child predators. She’s soon contacted by a young woman named Charlie Grant, who announces that she expects to be killed in several days and asks D.D. to investigate her murder. As D.D. copes with personal issues while working with her old team (plus a new face in Detective O) to piece together this crime puzzle, the two seemingly unconnected cases begin to show signs of overlapping. The clues all point in one direction, prompting D.D. to rethink and reevaluate the evidence in the race to put that final piece in place. Verdict New York Times best-selling author Gardner (Love You More; Live To Tell; Alone) always plays in the big leagues, but this scare-your-socks-off thriller is a grand slam, packed with enigmatic characters (some good, some crazily evil), expert procedural detail, and superb storytelling…” – (adapted from Library Journal summary)

Vigilante / Stephen J. Cannell.
“In the last novel by acclaimed producer and New York Times bestselling author Stephen J. Cannell, LAPD detective Shane Scully and his partner Sumner Hitchens investigate a crime with ties to the sometimes violent world of reality TV. Lita Mendez was a thorn in the LAPD’s side. An aggressive police critic and gang activist, she’d filed countless complaints against the department. So when she’s found dead in her home, Detective Scully and his partner Hitchens fear the worst: that there’s a killer in their ranks. Outside the crime scene, Nixon Nash and his television crew have set up shop. Nash is the charismatic host of a hit reality show called “Vigilante TV,” dedicated to beating the cops at their own game: solving murders before they can. Now he has the murder of Lita Mendez in his sights. He presents the detectives with a choice: either join his team, or prepare for a public takedown. But Scully knows that Nash isn’t the folk-hero he seems. He will do anything in the name of self-promotion. If a detective got in his way, would he be prepared to kill? In this new novel, Scully will have to risk everything save himself and the job he loves…” – (description from Amazon.com summary)

Unwanted / Kristina Ohlsson ; [translated by Sarah Death].
“Swedish federal investigator Frederika Bergman is an academic whose intellect assists her in formulating unique theories during her investigations. Unfortunately, her mostly male colleagues show contempt at her lack of previous police experience and push aside her findings and opinions. But before Frederika can quit and work in a profession more appropriate for her talent, a simple custodial interference case quickly turns into a serial kidnapping and murder spree. VERDICT This award-winning first volume in an acclaimed Swedish crime series spends a significant amount of time introducing and setting up Frederika’s investigative team. While this makes for a slightly lengthy thriller, it does not take away from the compelling story line. Ohlsson’s U.S. debut is a complicated novel that delves into every parent’s nightmare. Fans of detective or thriller fiction will delight in discovering this excellent addition to the Scandinavian mystery genre…” – (adapted from Library Journal summary)

The bloody meadow / William Ryan.
“Following his investigations in The Holy Thief, which implicated those at the very top of authority in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself decorated and hailed as an example to all Soviet workers. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace – his new-found knowledge is dangerous, and if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to the frozen camps of the far north. But when the knock on the door comes, in the dead of night, it is not Siberia Korolev is destined for. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman: Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya, a model citizen. Korolev is unnerved to learn that Lenskaya had been of interest to Ezhov, the feared Commissar for State Security. Ezhov himself wants to matter looked into. And when the detective arrives on the set for Bloody Meadow, in the bleak, battle-scarred Ukraine, he soon discovers that there is more to Lenskaya’s death than meets the eye…” – (description from Amazon.com summary)

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary since the puiblication of Albert Wendt’s Sons for the return home and his name is now is now synonymous with Pasefika literature. The following is a list that covers the most recent examples of Pasefika literature in the library’s holdings. It is apt that the first two books are collections edited by Albert Wendt and the third is his most recent novel Vela.

Whetū moana : contemporary Polynesian poems in English / edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri & Robert Sullivan.
“‘Whetu Moana’ is the first anthology of contemporary indigenous Polynesian poetry to be written in English and edited by Polynesians. The collection includes many well-known poets, together with lesser known, young poets. The collection reveals an active, varied and creative scene which confronts both a complex colonial past and a contemporary global present.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Mauri ola : contemporary Polynesian poems in English / edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan.
“Mauri Ola is a fresh selection of poetry written over the last 25 years by writers and Polynesian poets scattered around the world. Many of the original Whetu Moana poets reappear – as well as the new voices of an exciting young generation. Energetic, courageous and vital, the poems in this anthology confront both a complex colonial past and a fast-moving global present, proving the creative energy and thriving well-being of Polynesian literature.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The adventures of Vela / Albert Wendt.
“Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela – Vela, so red and ugly at birth they called him the Cooked; Vela the lonely admirer of pigs and the connoisseur of feet; Vela the lover of song maker Mulialofa the Boneman. Follow him down through the centuries on his travels, encountering the single-minded society of the Tagatanei and the Smellocracy of Olfact. Accompany him, too, as he recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearsome warrior queen, before whose powers Palagi priests and travelling chroniclers still bow down today.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The marriage proposal / Célestine Hitiura Vaite.
“Materena Mahi likes movies about love. And after fourteen years with Pito, the father of her three children, she wants a ring on her finger and a framed wedding certificate on the wall. Pito thinks that when you give a woman a ring and a wedding certificate she’s going to start acting like she’s the boss. “Eh,” he insists, “it’s the rope around the neck.”" “So when a drunken Pito finally proposes, Materena thinks she wouldn’t mind becoming a madame. Before long every relative is giving her advice and suddenly, she’s not even sure that she really wants that ring on her finger.” – (adapted from Book jacket)

Island of shattered dreams / Chantal Spitz ; translated by Jean Anderson.
“Finally in English, Island of Shattered Dreams is the first ever novel by an indigenous Tahitian writer. In a lyrical and immensely moving style, this book combines a family saga and a doomed love story, set against the background of French Polynesia in the period leading up to the first nuclear tests. The text is highly critical of the French government, and as a result its publication in Tahiti was polarising.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Breadfruit : a novel / Ce͡lestine Vaite.
“When a drunken Pito proposes to Materena, she initially thinks it’s just the booze talking. As she nevertheless starts planning, she juggles everyday life only to have Pito act as though he’s forgotten his proposal.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The smell of the moon / Lemanatele M. Kneubuhl.
“This book isn’t Lord of the Rings, but it is a quest; and it’s not Roots, but it is a story about the difficult and joyous search for your origins; and it’s not Gilligan’s Island, but it is set on an island paradise. The Smell of the Moon celebrates a return to humanity, to family and community, to a place where your senses can live large … where you can smell the moon!” “In The Smell of the Moon American Samoan novelist Lemanatele M. Kneubuhl tests the sparkling waters of making bold life changes and he jumps into the deep end of the blue Pacific Ocean.” – (adapted from Book jacket)

Frangipani / Cʹelestine Hitiura Vaite.
“In Tahiti, some mothers say that daughters are a blessing, others say they are a curse. Materena, champion professional cleaner of the Mahi family and the best listener in all of Tahiti, is usually the one solving the problems. But right now she’s that close from throwing her daughter Leilani into the street. “It doesn’t matter what I do,” she confides to Mama Teta, to Cousin Rita, to Mama Loana and the Virgin Mary Understanding Woman, “it’s always the wrong thing. I’m going taravana!” And if that wasn’t enough, now there’s a boy on the horizon. Or so the relatives are saying…” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The mango’s kiss : a novel / by Albert Wendt.
“Love is never simple, though, and in this story of the struggles and passions of Pele and her family, it must adapt to the growing world that stretches out from village life in Samoa to the cities of Europe, America and New Zealand. And it must encompass the family’s links to the ancient gods of pre-missionary times and move through the turn of the nineteenth century, the First World War, the terrible Spanish Influenza Epidemic and beyond.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Meļaļ / Robert Barclay.
“On Good Friday, 1981, Rujen Keju and his two sons come face to face with their complicated inheritance-one that includes years of atomic testing and the continued military presence of the U.S. in the Pacific.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

They who do not grieve / Sia Figiel.
“Sia Figiel’s powerful, poetic skills weave together the voices of three generations from two families. Their dream worlds and realities intermingle, just as the histories of each genertation run through the next. At the centre of the novel is the Samoan women’s tattoo, the malu. The shame and grief of not completing the tattoo ceremony go hand in hand with the shame and grief of illicit love and broken promises.” – (adapted from Back cover)

Where we once belonged / by Sia Figiel.
“Fiction. A bestseller in New Zealand and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Prize, Sia Figiel’s debut marks the first time a novel by a Samoan woman has been published in the United States. Figiel uses the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su’ifefiloi to talk back to Western anthropological studies on Samoan women and culture. Told in a series of linked episodes, this powerful and highly original narrative follows thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga as she navigates the mores and restrictions of her village and comes to terms with her own search for identity. A story of Samoan PUBERTY BLUES, in which Gauguin is dead but Elvis lives on.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Hours of great reading can be found in this month’s selection of new Contemporary novels. Highly recommended titles are ‘Defending Jacob’ by William Landay, ‘Alys, always’ by Harriet Lane and the historical novel, translated from the Chinese, ‘The Flowers of War’ by Geling Yan.

A sentimental traitor / Michael Dobbs.
“A missile tears a passenger plane from the skies over London. Everyone on board is killed, including thirty-seven special children. As terror turns to international chaos, can the government survive? Who would have killed them and why? When Harry Jones starts searching for answers, he stumbles into the middle of a plot that stretches from Russia to the Islamic revolution in Egypt, from the shores of the Caspian Sea to an ancient church in rural Wiltshire. Yet every lead he pursues finds its way back to the secret corners of Brussels and a British woman named Patricia Vaine.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Shelter : a novel / Frances Greenslade.
“Maggie’s father is ‘Mr Safety’. He knows the woods of Duchess Creek in Northern Canada like the back of his hand, and he has taught his daughter how to survive, how to find and make a shelter in all weathers, in any conditions. Along with her sister, Jenny, and their mother Irene, they are safe from the outside world. But when an accident at work goes fatally wrong, Irene struggles to look after her daughters alone. Wild, imaginative and unpredictable, she billets the two girls with a family, promising to return once the summer is over and she has earned more money. But the summer turns to winter, which rolls round again and again. When the letters stop, the two sisters realise that they can rely on no one but themselves, but what kind of shelter can two young girls make for themselves?” – (adapted from Amazon co.uk. summary)

Kind of cruel / Sophie Hannah.
“When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn’t expect that anything much will change. She doesn’t expect it to help with her chronic insomnia. She doesn’t expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: ‘Kind, cruel, kind of cruel’, words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where. She doesn’t expect to be arrested two hours later, as a result of having spoken those words out loud, in connection with the brutal murder of Katharine Allen, a woman she’s never heard of.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

She’s never coming back / by Hans Koppel.
“Mike Zetterberg lives with his wife Ylva and their daughter in a house just outside Helsingborg. One evening, Ylva isn’t home as expected after work. Mike passes it off as a drink with a work friend, but when she’s still missing the next day, he starts to worry. As Mike battles suspicion from the police and his own despair, he is unaware that Ylva is still alive, just a stone’s throw from his own home. Ylva has been drawn into a twisted plot of revenge and tragedy that leads back into her and her abductors’ shared past.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Defending Jacob : a novel / William Landay.
“Andy Barber, a respected First Assistant DA who lives in Newton, Mass., with his gentle wife, Laurie, and their 14-year-old son, Jacob, must face the unthinkable when Ben Rifkin, Jacob’s classmate, is found stabbed to death in the woods. Internet accusations and incontrovertible evidence point to big, handsome Jacob. Andy’s prosecutorial gut insists a child molester is the real killer, but as Jacob’s trial proceeds and Andy’s marriage crumbles under the forced revelation of old secrets, horror builds on horror toward a breathtakingly brutal outcome.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Alys, always / Harriet Lane.
“Frances is a thirty-something sub-editor, an invisible production, drone on the books pages of the Questioner. Her routine and colourless existence is disrupted one winter evening when she happens upon the aftermath of a car crash and hears the last words of the driver, Alys Kyte. When Alys’s family makes contact in an attempt to find closure, Frances is given a tantalising glimpse of a very different world: one of privilege and possibility. The relationships she builds with the Kytes will have an impact on her own life, both professionally and personally, as Frances dares to wonder whether she might now become a player in her own right.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

It had to be you / David Nobbs.
“One man, five very different women. James Hollingshurst is a man shaped by those who surround him. And in James’s case, it’s some very different women. Be it his trusty wife Deborah, his hapless PA Marcia or his ex-girlfriend Jane. And there’s one woman in James’s life who is about to upset the status quo. A tragic accident is about to shake the bedrock of life as James knows it. An event sets a train in motion, which will challenge everything he’s ever known and everyone he’s ever loved. It will also bring his beloved daughter, Charlotte who he has not seen for fifteen years, tantalisingly close to him.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

Cell 8 / by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström ; translated by Kari Dickson.
“A cheap crooner by the name of John Schwarz earns his keep on a ferry between Sweden and Finland, singing evergreens for drunken passengers. One night, he loses his temper with a man harassing women in the crowd, beating him unconscious. As drunken brawls are commonplace on the Baltic cruising ferries, no one raises an eyebrow. No one, that is, but Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens. Concerned by the details of the case report, Grens can’t help but think someone capable of such violence must have a history of it. As a precaution, he orders Schwarz arrested: one that is seemingly justified when Schwarz provides such resistance that he has to be sedated. Suspicion turns to shock when Grens discovers that John Schwarz does not exist. When he learns that the man in his custody is in fact John Meyer Frey, an American citizen from Marcusville, Ohio, he is even more astonished. John Meyer Frey cannot be sitting in front of him: John Meyer Frey died on Death Row six years earlier.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

The soldier’s wife / Joanna Trollope.
“After six months away in Afghanistan, the soldiers come home, to their girlfriends, wives, parents, children. After six months of hell, being home will surely be heaven. Except that it isn’t. When Dan returns home to Alexa and their children, all of whom he adores, it’s still the army that comes first. Alexa wasn’t prepared, when she married a soldier, that she would really be marrying the regiment.“ – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The flowers of war / Geling Yan ; translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman.
“December 1937. The Japanese have taken Nanking. A group of terrified schoolgirls hides in the compound of an American church. Among them is Shujuan, through whose thirteen-year-old eyes we witness the shocking events that follow. Run by Father Engelmann, an American priest who has been in China for many years, the church is supposedly neutral ground in the war between China and Japan. But it becomes clear the Japanese are not obeying international rules of engagement. As they pour through the streets of Nanking, raping and pillaging the civilian population, the girls are in increasing danger. And their safety is further compromised when prostitutes from the nearby brothel climb over the wall into the compound seeking refuge.” – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk summary)

This selection of recently received New Zealand fiction includes the new novel by Anthony McCarten, the new murder mystery from Paddy Richardson, and Paul Cleave’s great new suspense thriller.

Collecting Cooper : a thriller / Paul Cleave.
” Emotionally tortured PI Theodore Tate, is released after serving four months in prison for a drunk driving accident that seriously injured a 17-year-old girl. A former Christchurch police colleague asks him to help track a murderer known as Melissa X, who’s been targeting men in uniform and Donovan Green, Tate’s former lawyer, also approaches him. Donovan wants Tate to find his daughter, Emma, who happens to be the girl Tate nearly killed in the accident. Emma’s disappearance is connected with the abduction of a college psychology professor of hers, Cooper Riley. Set in the city of Christchurch depicted as a hot bed of violence and human weakness, with complex characters and a twisting plot that will keep every reader guessing.”(adapted from Syndetics summary)

I play the mermaid song : the autobiography of a dead transvestite / Sebastian Hales.
“ Because of his compulsive cross-dressing Richard has grown up alienated form the conventional society of New Zealand. All his life he has lived between two worlds, his public face of Richard the violinist, and his inner heart of Nora, and only now can he try to reconcile them? Richard must peel off his past, his disguises, the elaborate patchwork of lies and deceits and shadow he has built up. Only then will he find his true skin. But when he unpicks the tapestry with its threads of heredity, convention, music, sex and fantasy, what will be left.” (adapted from Book cover)

Barefoot / Michelle Holman.
“This blistering tale of two self-centred headstrong high-achievers is the continuation of Holman’s first novel, Bonkers. Sherry and Glen have three things in common. They’re uncommonly tall, neither is anything like their married siblings, and they fancy each other rotten. The trouble is that Sherry can’t stand the arrogant American former-NBA star, while Glenn can’t stand the aloof “don’t mess with me” policewoman. Ending up in bed together is a great surprise.” (adapted from Book cover)

In the absence of heroes / Anthony McCarten.
“Jim and Renata Delpe’s life is in a very modern crisis. With their son, Jeff, sending text messages to his dead brother while slipping quickly into internet addiction, and with Renata engaged in a secret internet relationship with a figure she has never actually met, Jim Delpe, who has had ‘a love-hate relationship’ with computers, is left with no choice but to log in himself, if the family is to be saved.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Traces of red / Paddy Richardson.
“ The ratings are dropping and television journalist Rebecca Thorne has lost her edge. She has to find a hard-hitting story, something that will make people notice. Connor Bligh, doing time for the vicious murders of three family members, has always protested his innocence. He’s eccentric and a loner, but does that make him a ruthless killer? There are gaping holes in the prosecution’s case. This is the story Rebecca need but she’s breaking the rules, becoming too involved. How can she remain objective? And, most of all how can she trust Connor Bligh?” (adapted from Book cover)

The weigh, the piece and the loaf : a novel / by Fionna Sheppard.
“Thirty-something, unattached Carrie wants a life, just not the one she has. Carrie believes that to attract a man, she must change herself. If she was thin she would feel great and look wonderful, then the perfect man would appear. Life would be blissful. So she writes a plan, but the journey to bliss doesn’t quite follow the plan. The real world, events, her family and her best friends all get in the way.” (adapted from Book cover)

Dark jelly / Alice Tawhai.
“In this her third collection of stories, Alice Tawhai delves into the nature of reality, enabling readers to experience altered perceptions, encounters that weave madness and sanity, dreams and drug-induced hallucinations, darkness and light. Glimpsing what goes on behind closed doors, we are given a snapshot of mew Zealand subcultures, exploring what people filter out, what they let into their consciousness, and how everyone enters the illusion of the world through different paths.” (adapted from Book cover)

The far beyond / by Warwick Thompson.
“A fictionalized account of the voyage from Scotland to New Zealand in the 19th century of the author’s great-grandparents.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The courier’s tale / Peter Walker.
“ It is 1536. King Henry need a champion to defend the change he has made in England and lights on his young cousin, Reginald Pole, a brilliant scholar living in Venice, to make the case for divorce on his behalf. And as a result, Thomas Cromwell needs a courier to carry the King’s Letters back to Italy. The King’s chief minister chooses Michael Throckmorton, the hard-up younger son of a titled family. Now two very different men are caught between the rock of the King’s desire and the hard place of the Pope’s refusal. What will become of the scholar’s scruples? And what will become of the courier’s hopes for his first love now that his life has become a tragicomedy of endless journeys?” (adapted from Book cover)

Coast / David Carnegie Young.
“Coast examines the power of dune country upon the lives of three generations of men as it heals the effects of two world wars. The first, a Scottish ploughman finds in Turakina, New Zealand a black-sand estuary in the path of the Roaring Forties, a place of beauty, unexpected violence and surprising familiarity. Following the demise of his father from wounds after World War I, the son discovers solace in this same landscape. He courts trouble however, taking his attitudes into the Air Force during the war in the Pacific. The grandson discovers astonishing links with his grandfather’s history along this wild coastline. He must deal with the delayed impacts of the past, though, and must return to where it all began.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)