After months of researching butterflies in Sāmoa, Adam is looking forward to returning home to his family. Then his transfer to the airport doesn’t arrive. Worse, a hastily arranged taxi takes him not to departures but an empty field in the middle of nowhere, and he misses his flight. As he...Read more
A chain of events sparked by a murder in a cemetery sends tattoo artist Lestari Cassidy into the orbit of an unpredictable drug.
Its connection to several deaths amongst the local transient community, along with the uncovering of illegal clinical trials in the 1980s, sends her...Read more
Wellington. The land dips and rolls, the wind has a life of its own. Dig a little deeper and the city is unforgiving and unrepentant. Forget the politicians, they’re poor amateurs in deception and crime.
It’s Saturday night down on the wharf. Celebrations are in full swing for...Read more
Nat Spiller, an admired climate change activist, has accidentally drowned. That's the police verdict. But was it an accident? His partner Ellie thinks otherwise.
Pam, Ellie's aunt, draws a reluctant Lauren Fraser into the mystery. The formidable Lloyd, Nat's father, head of...Read more
With his sixth collection of stories, this leading young New Zealand author and journalist finds purchase for the first time with an American publisher. In Hell of a Thing, a cowardly father seeks a more exciting son; two lovers on a posh date dine on self-delusion; and an author turns his...Read more
Keep a secret. Tell a lie. Protect the family. At all costs.
A compulsively readable suspense thriller from Ngaio Marsh Award shortlisted author, Nikki Crutchley, which will keep you guessing and reading up until late into the night....Read more
Syd Shaeffer used to be so much: ambitious and fearless, a stellar New York District Attorney, and fiancée to love of her life, Frank Spinelli.
A viral eye infection changed all that. Now she's blind and runs a failing law practice out in the burbs.
But when Frank goes...Read more
Respectable appearances can hide the blackest of secrets.
The Vanishing Act is a spicy tale of intrigue set in 1960s New Zealand, where society’s constraints and the laws of the day made outcasts of lesbians and prostitutes.
Rosemary Cawley is used...Read more
"Sure thirty years is a long time. Sure the case was closed. Well, never really a case as such. Fifteen-year-old brown girl tops herself, who cares? Turn the page. That bloody notebook, thought Club. God knows what was in it. Who knew that little bitch could even write?"
Ruby...Read more
Margot’s clients all lie to her, but one lie could cost her family and freedom.
Psychologist Margot Scott has a picture-perfect life: a nice house in the suburbs, a husband, two children, and a successful career. On a warm spring morning, Margot spots one of her clients on a busy...Read more
It is 1973 and Jude - known to her friends as Toto - has just graduated from art school and moves into a house in a run-down part of Leeds. Jude is a chaotic wild child who flirts with the wrong kind of people, drinks too much and gets stoned too often. Never happy to stay in one place for...Read more
Breen sometimes thought sourly that Tiger Jackson would have made a good fascist. He told unreliable stories, he liked power and admiration, and he had all three military virtues- self-belief, luck, and an eye for the main chance. Despite all this, Breen liked him. Somehow it was impossible...Read more
The story starts with the death of Constable Garrett... and continues with his resurrection as a conscious cyborg initially controlled by Spencer Langley aged 13, inventor, entrepreneur and car thief. Things get even more complicated with the introduction of sinister criminals and Garrett’s...Read more
What if evolution got it wrong and the human race was threatened at the very core of its DNA? Charlie (14) is living in a time when a strange virus is affection sections of the Homosapien race. They are becoming more hostile, more aggressive. It seems there is a throwback to the Neand gene...Read more
Cassi Whelan, aged 12, and her father, Mike, have recently moved into a repaired house in Avondale, on the edge of Christchurch’s Red Zone. Although only four when the earthquakes destroyed the city, Cassi’s memories still haunt her, affecting much of her life. She is an obsessive runner...Read more
The countdown has begun!
On her nineteenth birthday Careen survived a terrifying assault at the hands of the Clown Killer. She was lucky; she escaped - the next eleven girls did not. On each dead body the killer left a card numbered two to twelve.
Careen has tried...Read more
Special powers are gifted, but there is a Faustian price to pay in this epic novel, packed with laughter, darkness, pain, dreams, superpowers, love and light.
What if the greatest gift you ever received came from those you trusted least? What if it stained your hands with...Read more
A compulsive and chilling novel about subjugation, survival and the meaning of family.
Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tyre tracks in the mud leading into the almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other...Read more
Secrets, lies and love.
Mystery and unsettling revelations keep up the suspense in this page-turning novel.
The last time I saw Sophie A, she was kissing James Bacon. She could have any guy she wanted, but she was kissing an English teacher who was eight years...Read more
It is Saturday afternoon and two boys’ schools are locked in battle for college rugby supremacy. Priya – a fifteen year old who barely belongs – watches from the sidelines.
Then it is Saturday night and the team is partying, Priya's friends have evaporated and she isn't sure...Read more
Life in the safe suburbs of Christchurch isn't dangerous enough for Marty. He needs excitement in punk, protest, politics and crackpipes. Marty soon finds Mona, a teenage runaway living in a flophouse of skinheads and goths. The two of them live for drugs and dodgy deals but they are...Read more
Katherine Mansfield created some of literature’s most chilling characters, not least Harry Kember and his wife. They seemed out of place among the families enjoying summer holidays at Wellington’s Days Bay. Some of the women at the Bay thought that one day Harry would commit a murder....Read more
1985. Neus Bauen, a post-hardcore band from Illinois, are touring America, on the brink of fame. When one member of the band is sexually assaulted and another is wounded by a gunshot, these two cataclysmic events alter the course of the band’s four members’ lives forever.
...Read more
“We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country.
That distance will not save us.”
With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organizations are forced to traffic data to ensure the...Read more
A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for five strangers whose paths cross in a London café - their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye and as the captives grapple...Read more
Sandy Barrett's hiking escapades were usually uneventful and relaxing, until the day she risked her life saving a trapped seagull and tumbled down a 100 metre cliff. After tree branches miraculously broke her fall, her body lay battered on a rocky ledge. A greater horror lay await to...Read more
Secrets. Everyone has them. Nice ones that make your heart soar, little ones that make you blush, naughty ones that make you smile and dark ones you hope will remain hidden forever.
One thing’s for certain – everyone wants their secrets kept out of the public eye. Especially...Read more
Matt Bullock, an Auckland university student clashes with his flying instructor Jason Collins who tries to hit on Matt's racy girlfriend Fleur Lassiter, resulting in the two men brawling at their aeroclub.
Illegal immigrant Vladimir Zhukov, a ruthless Russian veteran of the...Read more
'They come for me as I sleep. Their pale faces stare at me, their soft voices tell me to wake, to wake. They come to remind me of the night, to remind me of what I have done.'Read more
A novel about family secrets and discovery of a long-ago crime. Hilda is a reclusive single woman who lives on the North Kent marshes with her rescue cats. One day she has a visit from a young woman called Nicky, who claims to be her half-sister, the "love child" of Hilda's father who has...Read more