Fiction Genres Recent Picks

New Zealand fiction

March 2010

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Captured by Neil Cross. (2010)
Although he is still young, Kenny has just weeks to live. Before he dies, he wants to find his childhood best friend Callie Barton and thank her for the kindness she showed him when they were at school together. But when Kenny begins his search, he discovers that Callie Barton has gone missing. Although cleared of any involvement, her husband Jonathan seems to be hiding something. Kenny has no choice but to take matters into his own hands. And knowing that time is running out on him, he's prepared to do whatever it takes. (Book cover)

Collision, Joanna Orwin. (2009)
In 1772 a disastrous collision in the Southern Ocean saw French expedition leader, Monsieur Marc Joseph Marion du Fresne, bring the tall ships Marquis de Castries and Mascarin into the Bay of Islands, northern New Zealand, seeking fresh water and new spars. Through the eyes of Andre Tallec, a young ensign, and his counterpart, Te Kape, favoured protégé of local chief Te Kuri, the events of the next two months unfold with harrowing tension and a sense of impending doom. Blinded by the apparent goodwill of the Naturals and his belief in French superiority, Marion misunderstands their interactions with local Maori. Each day, the French unwittingly transgress further. With gathering frustration, the local chiefs find their mana increasingly compromised and their spiritual wellbeing threatened. Te Kuri and his fellow chiefs try every means at their disposal to encourage these strange tipua from the sea to leave them in peace, until only one course of honourable action remains. (Book cover)

The Rybinsk deception Colin D. Peel. (2009)
David Coburn: working undercover, but profiting from the activities of the remote outpost he is supposed to have infiltrated. Hari Tan: sapphire trader turned modern-day pirate preying on shipping in the Malacca Strait. Heather Cameron: UNICEF nurse struggling to prevent the exploitation of children on a beach of toxic waste. Luther O'Halloran: nuclear defence analyst on assignment to the US National Counter-Proliferation Centre. These are the four people whose futures hang in the balance when the crew of a Russian super tanker are found dying of radiation poisoning. There is a conspiracy so menacing that unless Coburn can halt an attack on a warship in the Yellow Sea, the US will be forced into conflict with an enemy having a nuclear arsenal that this time will be frighteningly real. (Book cover)

Containment by Vanda Symon. (2009)
Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aramoana when shipping containers wash up on the beach and are looted. Detective Constable Sam Shephard knows first-hand the desperation of the scavengers, she’s got the scars to prove it, plus a skull in the sand and a body pulled from the ocean. The undercurrents from one mornings’ madness are far-reaching. Who else will be caught in the backwash? Can Sam stem the tide? (Book cover)

Somebody loves us all by Damien Wilkins. (2009)
Paddy Thompson, speech therapist, newspaper columnist, is fifty and happy. His dark period is behind him: a failed marriage, a career crisis. Now he lives with Helena (‘the best thing that ever happened to him’), helps the kids with their speech problems and has moved his mother into a new apartment next door. So what are these new signs of upset? One of his clients refused to speak. Helena is under stress at work. His newspaper column has run out of puff. Then his mother presents him with the biggest challenge of his life. (Book cover)

Blood bond by Michael Green. (2009)
The Chatfield family, half living in the UK, the other in New Zealand, found the stark realities of survival after a deadly pandemic swept across the world. Now escaping the repressive regime at Haver hall in the UK, a group sails back to the Southern Hemisphere. Stopping in South Africa and then Australia, they are faced by unexpected dangers but also hope that there might survivors. What waits them in New Zealand, though, is even more challenging. And can those left in the UK survive each other? (Book cover)

Knotted, by Michelle Holman. (2009)
Danny Lawson is struggling to raise her twin sister’s orphaned children and hold down a full-time job in a busy A & E department. Then the children’s American uncle, Ross Fabello, contacts her out of the blue, under family orders to take the children back to meet their father’s family. Ross has money, time, and frankly, a formidable family that will not take no for an answer. So how come a mouthy nurse keeps managing to out manoeuvre him? But while she’d be the first to admit that Ross’s family seems a little unhinged, she’d still love to have them, minus their sarcastic eldest son of course. So it’s game on for a titanic battle of wills and the most unfortunate, irresistible sexual attraction.

The Trowenna sea : a novel by Witi Ihimaera. (2009)
Hohepa Te Umuroa is with Te Rauparaha at Wairau killings in the 1840’s and at Boulcott’s Farm in the Hutt Valley when white settlers lose their lives. Convicted of insurrection, he and four companions are transported to the convict town of Hobart to serve their sentences. Ismay Glossop and her doctor husband Gower Mckissock have also come to Tasmania, via Nelson, New Zealand. On Maria Island near Hobart, their lives intersect with the five Maori, with dramatic and unexpected consequences. (Book cover)

Lush by Vanessa Johnson. (2010)
Lydia Kyriacos has it all, a stylish flat in Notting Hill Gate, a successful banker boyfriend, a great job in the West End and friends who can always be relied on to keep the party going. But within the next 48 hours that’s all about to change, because Lydia also has a big problem that’s not going away. When her perfect life crashes down around her there’s nowhere to hide from the truth that she’s out of control. Can she put down her wine glass long enough to discover the party’s over, and will she recognise the one man who truly ‘gets’ her before it’s too late. (Book cover)

Magpie Hall by Rachael King. (2009)
Rosemary Summers is an amateur taxidermist and a passionate collector of Tattoos. To her, both activities honour the deceased and keep their memory alive. After the death of her beloved grandfather, and while struggling to finish her thesis on gothic Victorian novels, she returns alone to Magpie Hall to claim her inheritance: Grandpa’s own taxidermy collection, started more than 100 years ago by their ancestor Henry Summers. As she sorts through Henry’s legacy, the ghosts of her family’s past begin to make their presence known. (Book cover)

Short Stories

The best New Zealand fiction. 6 edited by Owen Marshall (c2009)
New Zealand is a very different place from six years ago, when this series began. The preoccupations of writers constantly shift from year to year and in this volume characters face such things as redundancy, global warming, leaky homes and over-population, but they deal with them in quirky, moving, humorous and shocking ways. This is a surprisingly uplifting collection, where love reigns supreme and characters do live happily ever after. Selected by Owen Marshall, these twenty stories introduce exciting new names as well as exhibit the recent work of some of our top writers: Norman Bilbrough, Aaron Blaker, Jennifer Compton, Marie Duncan, Laurence Fearnley, Sue Francis, Charlotte Grimshaw, Gay Johnson, Mike Johnson, Graeme Lay, Frankie McMillan, Kate Mahony, Andre Ngapo, Carl Nixon, Tina Shaw, Elizabeth Smither, Rebecca Styles, Vincent O'Sullivan, Campbell Taylor and Judith White. (Book cover)

Aroha and the river : and other stories by Jeanette Galpin. (2009)
Short stories of the land and sea, they are evocative and intriguing by an award-winning writer. (Book cover)

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