Patricia McLean Bangs, by Stevan Eldred-Grigg  (Penguin, 2013), 300 pp., $30.   Bangs is the fourth in a series of novels about the family at the centre of Oracles and Miracles, published in 1988. The publishers of this latest book have opted to describe author Stevan Eldred-Grigg on the cover as ‘the writer of Oracles […]

Michael Morrissey The Secret Life of James Cook, by Graeme Lay (HarperCollins, 2013), 368 pp., $36.99.   Captain James Cook is prime candidate for being considered the greatest explorer of all time. Is there a better one? His three epic voyages, as daring as voyages to the red planet, had the advantage of traversing our […]

Azure Rissetto Tales From the Netherworld, by Jo Randerson (Steele Roberts, 2012), 116 pp., $25.   For many travellers, New Zealand is a far-off mystical land, quietly reposing at the bottom of the world, 12 hours from the West Coast of America and 24 from continental Europe. What the tourist brochures fail to disclose, however, […]

Tim Jones Tropic of Skorpeo, by Michael Morrissey (Steam Press, 2012), 289 pp., NZ$30.00.   For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juraletta and her Rhameo   Modern-day Shakespeare adaptions include: macho macho men Ralph Fiennes and Gerald Butler swaggering around as Coriolanus and Aufidius in present-day Serbia; an ensemble Much Ado […]

Emily Brookes Anticipation, by Tanya Moir (Random House New Zealand, 2013), 256 pp., $36.99   What makes us who we are? How much autonomy do you or I have over our own personalities, foibles, even fates? To what do we owe our ancestry? These are the questions that form the premise of Tanya Moir’s  often […]

Tasha Haines Two Girls in a Boat, by Emma Martin (Victoria University Press, 2013), 197 pp. $30.   Twenty or so years ago, I took the default position that short stories are to fiction what carrot sticks and a glass of water are to a fun night in—until the week of violent weather that precluded […]

Helen Watson White A Place to Stand, by Helen McNeil (S/P Del Sur Productions, 2013), 228 pp., $25.   Mr and Mrs Simpson were standing right next to the wooden block with its basin and Mrs Simpson was holding the lacy baby.  Sandra tried to listen to the man in the white robes but Amy’s […]

David Herkt Death On Demand, Paul Thomas (Hodder Moa, 2012) 272 pp., $36.99.   ‘I belong to New Zealand, not Australia,’ Fergus Hume stated in the introduction to the revised edition of his 1886 novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, the first crime novel to ever sell more than half a million copies. Its […]

Jimmy Currin Unspeakable Secrets Of The Aro Valley, by Danyl McLauchlan
 (Victoria University Press, 2013), 400 pp., $35.   There are, it is certain, unspeakable secrets locked away in Wellington’s Aro Valley – dark pools of reflection  that few dare to stare into too deeply. New Zealand is a country deathly afraid of its own […]

Vaughan Rapatahana The Graphologist’s Apprentice, by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Press, 2010) 260 pp., $25.   The first novel by Whiti Hereaka, increasingly known within Aotearoa-New Zealand as a fine playwright, is well-written with some very clever imagery, especially in the form of extended metaphors, and more especially puns, as for example:             A tap at […]

Elizabeth Smither The Writing Class, by Stephanie Johnson (Vintage, 2013) 243 pp., $37.99.   ‘The beauty of the novel in full sail will never be lost,’ Merle Carbury tells her creative writing class, before she adds a careful and impersonal note of disillusionment, ‘even as we choke in a plume of electronic soot.’ Anyone who […]

Kiran Dass The Invisible Rider, by Kirsten McDougall (Victoria University Press, 2012 ) 150 pp.,  $30.   I rather liked Wellington author Kirsten McDougall’s short story Clean Hands Save Lives, which won first prize in the ‘short’ section in The Long and the Short of It short story competition in 2011. I liked McDougall’s plaintive […]