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NZSA New Books List - October 2015
Congratulations to all those who have launched a book this month. Here's a few that our members have sent in for the New Books Lists.
Enjoy!
Claire Hill New Books List Editor
Keen to submit your book for the next edition of the New Books List? Please send to: Claire Hill
Deadline: 6 November. Please take note of the Submission Requirements as outlined at the bottom of this email.
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Brave's Journey
by Jan Goldie
A boy. A weird tattoo. A silver necklace showing four elements; ‘Earth. Air. Fire. Water.’
When Brave woke up that first, life-changing day, he had no idea that pretty soon he’d be controlling the weather, talking to royalty and journeying to another world. Let alone riding a camel.
Life in the mysterious world of Arvalonia, where magic springs from the nature around you, couldn’t be more different to his ordinary existence back home. Especially when he meets True... bossy, rich, driven teenager True who's out to make his life a misery.
Brave and True venture deep into enemy territory; facing a month without a bath, nipping stinkbuggies, evil ruler Mallevia’s ruthless green guards and eventually a battle with the vile queen herself.
Discover a place where the nature of power is within the power of nature. Escape the ordinary.
Available: in selected Paper Plus stores and independent books stores. Available on iBooks, Amazon and direct from the publisher. For more information visit www.jangoldie.com
Author's Bio: Jan Goldie is the first New Zealand author to be taken on by IFWG Publishing Australia. A writer by day, you can usually find her tapping out marketing slogans or working on website content, while building plot lines for new children’s books in the back of her mind. A true multi-tasker, she’s currently chipping away at three new projects. Brave’s Journey was written with the help of the NZ Society of Authors mentorship programme, with Barbara Murison. It was shortlisted in for the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2014.
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The Roadman Boogie
by Nikki Slade Robinson
“I’m cold and bored and soggy”
sneezed the Roadman with a sigh,
“All I do is Stop-Go-Stop
at traffic sloshing by.”
We’ve all been stuck in queues waiting for the stop sign to be turned to read ‘go’. We’ve all seen the Roadmen and women standing there through sweltering summers, freezing wet days, for hours on end, yet they always seem to have a smile and wave for everyone. But once in a while there’s a Roadman (or woman!) with a little bit more to offer... such as Malifa Chapman in Wellington, who entertained everyone with his dancing while on sign duty.
His antics, along with an historical tale of a similar character around the Eastern Bay of Plenty area back in the 1970’s, was the inspiration for the story.
The Roadman hears music from passing vehicles...
A station-wagon followed
with a do-wop-diddy beat.
The Roadman couldn’t help but
do-wop-diddy with his feet.
With each song that he hears, his dancing gets increasingly impressive – from disco to mambo, he does it all. But the weather worsens... until the road has to be closed. Not to worry, the Roadman has a solution to suit everyone!
Available: published by Duck Creek Press, an imprint of David Ling Publishing www.davidling.co.nz. It will be available through all good bookshops and online stockists. ISBN 978-1-927305-11-9. Suits ages 3 - 7
Author's Bio: Nikki Slade Robinson is a long time children's author and illustrator, having worked with many publishers in New Zealand. Her previous title was 'Muddle & Mo' (pub Duck Creek Press - David Ling) which has also been picked up by both Australian and American publishers. She has created 9 titles to date as an author/illustrator, and illustrated over 70 titles. More titles are scheduled to release over the next 12 months. gonikki@paradise.net.nz
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Peter Hall: My Life, Art and Love of Jazz
by Reg Birchfield
Reg Birchfield has ghost written a short biography of the life, career and jazz-loving predilections of London born and internationally successful fabric designer and artist, Peter Hall, who now lives and paints in Howick, Auckland.
Peter Hall was born in 1938, just a few months before Germany’s Luftwaffe hurtled bombs at the tiny central London flat he and his parents were forced to abandon in favour of the marginally safer outer city suburb of Pinner.
A lavishly illustrated life story, the book was designed by Hall and his son Daniel. The imagery captures war time London, Hall’s early years as an aspiring drummer in an art school jazz band, his early work at London’s Royal College of Art, and the hugely successful designs he created to capture the fashionable essence of London’s nineteen sixties cultural revolution. Many of Peter’s top selling designs hang in London's Victoria and Albert Museum of Art and Design.
Peter Hall's long and successful career as a designer, artist and jazz devotee played out in Britain, South Africa and New Zealand. He now paints predominantly, though by no means exclusively, New Zealand landscapes. Many of his stunningly colourful and conceptually diverse works feature in the book.
Available: All good booksellers. RRP $40.
Author's Bio: Reg Birchfield is a journalist, author and publisher. His other books include The Rise and Fall of JBL and Out of the Woods which he co-authored with Ian F. Grant.
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Something Else
by David Parkyn
Being the record of an expedition to locate and capture an iceberg said to be somewhere off the coast of the South Island, last seen buried deep within the heart of Freemans Bay.
Overlooking an old boatyard, in a city threatened by drought, in a country wracked by unusual weather patterns, in a building marked for demolition, a fugitive from art contemplates a blank canvas, a jar of old brushes and a fresh page in his journal. As he surveys the grounds on which he’s lived and worked ‘a mutinous crew’ conspire to take him on a voyage of salvage and recovery, into inner city Auckland of the ’sixties to revisit the deaths which he believes his early obsession is implicated. A voyage to illuminate a looming personal and global disaster, to navigate the shoals of art and politics, obsession and friendship, and the shifting shores of modern art movements.
‘… Let us therefore raise our glasses and peer over the ramparts to the crests and hollows beyond. To art’s accomplice: to treason…’
Available: Currently on writer's website through PayPal, various internet sites (e.g. Abe Books), through Quilters Bookshop and discerning bookshops by late November 2015. A 388 page novel with 19 black and white images by Sally Griffin. $38
Author's Bio: David Parkyn was born in Dunedin, grew up in Lower Hutt and Wellington before shifting to Auckland. He has worked on building sites and boatyards, in surveying and for a news clipping service, and was editor of an inner city newspaper and a farming monthly. His publications include two collections of poems, ‘Children of the Storm’ and ‘Colonial Landscape’ (illustrations Phil Clairmont, Sally Griffin, Alan Taylor) and an EP ‘From the Resistance’.. He now lives in Wellington.
Website: www.davidparkyn.com
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Fracking & Hawk
by Pat White
These poems, writes John Horrocks, ‘draw on a lifetime of immersion in the natural world and its rhythms’, and follow on from Planting the Olives (Frontiers, 2004). In Fracking & Hawk, the poet has added a strong sense of disquiet to his well-known observation of rural life and nature. This ‘deep engagement’ is described by Sue Wootton as being, ‘beautifully crafted, intelligent, and full of heart’. $25 + Postage
Available: please post orders to: Frontiers Press, c/- 17 Princes Street, Fairlie 7925, New Zealand or: email: patvwhite@gmail.com
Author's Bio: Pat White is author of books of poetry, and a prose memoir How the Land Lies. In 2010 he was Writer-in-residence at Randell Cottage, and 2012 the Seresin/Landfall Wrier-in-residence. He is also an artist, and his exhibition Gallipoli; in search of a family story has been shown in a number of venues since 2005.
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Birds about Water:
Beyond the bird garden
by Fay Bolt
In Fay Bolt’s new ebook we are close to water and beyond her bird garden. In ‘Birds about Water’ she asks... Have you ever seen hundreds of godwits roosting on a lonely beach? Or a rare white heron poised to stab a fish... or spoonbills slicing their broad bills through rippling water? Fay Bolt has—and she has watched shy pied stilts reflected in water as they perform delicate ballet movements. She contrasts these ‘extra-ordinary’ water-birds with squawking, quarrelsome, ‘ordinary’ seagulls scavenging on a wild shore, the birds we all think we know.
Fay’s riveting camera images illustrate her perceptive descriptions and memories of New Zealand’s remarkable water-birds—some of them rare, some endangered. She also focuses her lens and her thoughts on ordinary birds that we often scarcely notice, birds that are also special. All her birds about water have beauty, to be treasured and protected.
Available: from Amazon and Wheelers ePlatform
Author’s Bio: Fay Bolt, the writer and photographer, was brought up on a farm in North Otago, New Zealand. For more than thirty years she was Head of Music at Motueka High School. During those years Fay and her husband Derek made a large garden at their country home and there Fay waited with her camera and watched the birds.
On her retirement, Fay and Derek self-published her book, ‘The Bird Garden’, and when all 2500 copies sold Fay adapted it to make two ebooks—‘In the Bird Garden’ and ‘In the Bird Garden Again’. Her third ebook ‘The Bird Garden Kitchen’ reflects her love of cooking for family and friends.
Fay and Derek have now left their bird garden and live in a small townhouse with a pocket-sized courtyard. This is a different lifestyle for them but only five minutes away is their beloved Motueka Sandspit with its water birds.
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The Ghosts of Tarawera
by Sue Copsey
Spine-chilling NZ junior fiction
Holidaying in the shadow of Mt Tarawera, Joe and Eddie encounter the legendary phantom canoe that warned of the volcano’s catastrophic 1886 eruption. Mysterious messages on his phone and ghostly encounters at the nearby Buried Village convince Joe the mountain is reawakening.
The boys meet Rocky, a geologist also staying at Lake Rotomahana. Joe shares his ghostly experiences, but Rocky puts his faith only in science, not in warnings from beyond the grave. How can Joe convince him to raise the alert?
Sensing the Earth’s disquiet, Rocky’s pet dog and cat disappear, and Joe’s animal-mad sister goes in search of them. Can Joe, Eddie, and Beckie’s annoying friend, Anastasia-from-California, find her before the worst happens? As the volcano bursts into life, the children are stranded on the lake and the ghosts of Tarawera reappear.
This stand-alone junior fiction title is the second in the Spooky Adventures series, and is the follow-up to The Ghosts of Young Nick’s Head (2011).
Available: from NZ bookshops ($20) or directly from Sue on www.suecopsey.com ($15 + postage). Also available as an ebook on Amazon, and as an ebook with sound effects and music on Booktrack.com
Author’s Bio: Sue Copsey is an award-winning children’s author and editor. Her 2012 title Our Children Aotearoa was a Storylines Notable Book, and Children Just Like Me, which she wrote while a senior editor at Dorling Kindersely UK, won the UK Times Educational Supplement Best Children’s Non-fiction prize. Sue has worked as an editor in New Zealand publishing for 20 years.
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Searching for Summer
by Elizabeth Ascot
(written under a pseudonym for various reasons)
It is 1963. Elizabeth and Jane leave New Zealand for London and adventure. But when one of the coldest British winters on record hits, the two friends flee to gentler climes. A light-hearted memoir of a sun-soaked year in Greece, of the girls’ adventures, the characters they meet, and most of all, the country they fell in love with. Oh yes, and a couple of gorgeous Greek guys.
Full of warmth and nostalgia, this is a fun read for anyone who has been on a Big OE, or who dreams of doing so.
Available: at Amazon
Author’s Bio: Elizabeth (Pulford) has published stories, poems, and articles for adults and children. Plus over sixty books for children, from early readers through to Young Adults, along with one adult’s novel. Her other published adult novels are e-books.
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Apple Tea and Camel Pee
by Linley Jones
This collection of award-winning short stories combines many settings and themes and covers a wide range of human emotions.
From the joys of a New Zealand childhood – the stink of rotten eggs gathered for eeling; the fossicking for treasure in the flotsam and jetsam on the beach; the challenges of growing up; and the poignancy of being ‘somewhere towards the end’, and the gradual decline into old age and death – to the brashness and bold, raw beauty of New World Australia contrasting with Old World Europe and the dizzying excitement and charm of Turkey.
Available: Readaway Books, Howick, Linley Jones Produced for Linley Jones by AM Publishing NZ
Author's Bio: Linley Jones started writing while living on board the yacht Campari and sailing around the Pacific Islands including the Solomon's and Papua New Guinea, and circumnavigating New Zealand. Her early books, ‘Net Navigator’, ‘Making Waves’ and ‘On the Edge’ are aimed at eight to twelve year olds and include many of the traumas experienced at sea.
The short stories in this collection have been written over many years but it was not until she won a competition that she decided that she really could do this – write short stories! She writes anywhere and everywhere, is never lost for words, finding inspiration in everyday things, overheard conversations and interesting encounters.
She lives at Bucklands Beach, Auckland and can be found either in her lovely garden or on board the yacht Campari with her husband, Les.
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Open Your Eyes, Jackson Ryder
by Rudy Castañeda López
Fifteen-year-old Jackson Ryder has always loved art, but in the wake of his mother’s death, he must choose between his passion and his grieving father’s approval. Pulled from his New York home and thrust into the melting pot that is San Sebastiano, California in the 1960s, Jackson finds himself embroiled in an era of assassination, an emerging art scene, the Civil Rights Movement and The Beatles. As he learns how to deal with life, death and a new found interest in girls, drawing is the only thing stopping his world from spinning out of control.
Available: from bookstores throughout New Zealand, from Escalator Press, on Amazon and Kobo.
Author's Bio: In 1986 Mexican-American artist, Rudy Castañeda López, and his Kiwi wife, Janice, walked 5000 km across the USA in support of global nuclear disarmament. Afterward, with a pregnant wife and $250, he immigrated to New Zealand and worked in art education for the next two decades.
He wrote his first novel, The Song of Laughing Bird (National Pacific Press) for daughter, India in 2005. His project for his Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing at Whitireia in 2013 was the first draft of Open Your Eyes, Jackson Ryder. He was also given the Honour Award in the New Zealand Writing School Short Story Competition that year. In 2014 he started writing full-time.
He lives on the banks of the Pauatahanui Inlet, with Jan, India, his son Ben, mother-in-law, Patricia, three cats and several fish.
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Life's Cruel Wisdom
by R J Harris
An old manuscript is unearthed with the title ‘The Tragedy Of Life’s Cruel Wisdom By William Of Stratford 1615’, and it is immediately hailed as a lost, and probably last play, by Shakespeare. My book – ‘Life’s Cruel Wisdom’ – is what I have called a ‘novelog’. Brian Jones, the manuscript’s discoverer, scans and uploads pages from the unearthed manuscript and invites people to post comments on his blog after they have read and interpreted a page. As various bloggers post their comments, opinion about the manuscript’s authenticity continually shifts between true and false. Some bloggers misinterpret words in the manuscript and reach often quite absurd conclusions, while others are inspired to tell their life stories. Finally, however, as the drama of the play unfolds, an unsettling comparison begins to emerge between this Elizabethan stage play and today’s world. Eventually the unforeseen consequences of trying to share this discovery with the rest of the world, prove explosive, and a long, troubling shadow is cast over our tenuous, civilised values.
Available: By email from the author drzargle1@gmail.com. $7 (incl p&p).
Author's Bio: The author is a dog who lives in a tree in the North Island. He listens to Mongolian throat singing, prefers white wine and has ambitions to travel anonymously through space.
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Inside the Black Horse
by Ray Berard
Inside the Black Horse is a fast-moving thriller, a story of fate, and unlikely love story for our time.
Pio Morgan is waiting outside a pub on a cold winter night. There is a debt he must pay and no options left. What he does next drags a group of strangers into a web of confusion that over the course of a few days changes all their lives. The young Maori widow just trying to raise her children, the corporate executive hiding his mistake, the gang of criminals that will do what ever it takes to recover what they've lost - and the outsider sent to town to try and figure out who did what. Time is running out for all of them as events take an increasingly dark turn.
Available: distributed by Nationwide Book distributers and available at select NZ bookshops. Published by Mary Egan Publishing.
Author's Bio: Ray Berard is a Canadian born Kiwi writer based in Christchurch New Zealand. Inside the Black Horse is his debut novel, based off a diary he kept during his years supervising betting outlets for the New Zealand Racing Board.
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Corrupted on the Côte d’Azur
by Richard Donald
A young New Zealander, Tom, obtains a job in the south of France as a sous-chef. His sister Maggie joins him and becomes the mistress of an influential and unscrupulous owner of a supermarket chain. His list of misdemeanours includes theft, tax fraud, omitting to tell his numerous partners that he is HIV positive, child pornography and indirectly, murder. The question is whether he will manage to corrupt the legal system and avoid justice? Will Maggie be corrupted by her dangerous liaison? Is it only the small flies that get caught up in the cobweb of the law?
Available: Books may be purchased by email to radonald@cyberxpress.co.nz. It will later be available on Amazon.com.
Author's Bio: Richard Donald was born in England and has lived in New Zealand most of his life. Before his retirement, he was an endocrinologist and professor in medicine at the Christchurch School of Medicine. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Otago.
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Destination New Zealand
by Judith Anne Crews
This is a collection of 12 personal stories of women who have migrated to New Zealand over a time span of 26 years.
The stories are accompanied by photographs from their lives in their home country and in New Zealand. Each story reflects the women’s joys and challenges faced through their migration journey and show incredible strength of character as they get on with life in their new country.
Writing the collection became a journey of historical and geographical discovery for me. This book is the second in a collection of true stories about New Zealand women and their place in our history.
Available: Through Wheeler's and my website: www.judithcrews.co.nz, or directly from Issey Tate Publishing, 33 Oban Road, Browns Bay, Auckland. Price $30 plus p&p
Author’s Bio: Since my retirement, I have had time to dedicate to formalising my writing by pursuing my interest in documenting the real life stories of New Zealand women and their place in the history of this country. There are many fascinating stories out there that will be lost unless they are committed to the written word.
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Chalice
by Robyn M Speed
Kelly is launched on a journey that exposes her as a bright light within the universe—not that she believes it! Untapped, untrained, and under the tutelage of the leader of the Fellowship—those responsible for holding the Earth in balance—she must now learn to control abilities she never knew she had, so that she may assist the Fellowship to defeat the darkness which threatens to swallow humankind. She is their greatest hope.
In the final battle, as the Fellowship are being defeated, she must risk everything. If they are to survive, she must achieve perfect self-mastery. A story of self-discovery, friendship, and—in face of the greatest danger—sacrifice.
Available: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Balboa Press. Robyn also has copies available here in NZ.
Author's Bio: Since childhood Robyn has had a passion for writing, for expressing her fantasies, thoughts and ideas. As an adult she realised another passion of equal intensity: that of finding out who she is, in the deepest spiritual sense. Now she has combined the two, using story as a journey to greater understanding.
Exploring her spiritual evolution for over twenty five years, she has read, studied yoga, health, and martial arts, tested theories, and meditated daily. Her spiritual evolution, her deep understandings, and her connection to something far greater than herself has come as a result of that search.
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Postcards of Hawke’s Bay
Published by John Paston and Safari
Edited by Captain John Paston
The book starts with the history of the postcard and graduated to those early Post Office postal stationery cards of New Zealand. Then to the first of what we would now consider crudely made picture postcards. The book is a history of Hawke’s Bay in postcards and at the same time giving great advertising publicity for the Province.
The book shows picture postcards starting with Napier and it’s Port then Hastings and Art Deco. It shows the Provinces with Havelock North, Te Mata Peak and Waimarama, through the towns to the south - Waipawa, Waipukurau and Dannevirke then north to Wairoa, Waikaremoana and the Mahia Peninsula. Some smaller provincial centres are featured, finishing with the World War I camps of Oringi and Takapau.
It covers events that have shaped Hawke’s Bay such as the Hastings A&P show, and the Hastings “Blossom Festival” that celebrates spring and that “Fruit Bowl of New Zealand” the orchard industry. Then Napier’s Mardi Gras and with other events from around the Province. The section on advertising cards is fascinating, and amusing, from early ones to modern. Recreational activities from the early 1900’s to disasters, both natural as well as man made and on a lighter note, a section on comic and greetings cards. Generous contributions by other writers and collectors are “Clive”, “The Port of Wairoa”, “Napier City through the eyes of Charles and Percy Sorrell” - early photographers. “The Napier Taupo Road”, “Hawke’s Bay Railways and the disastrous “Hawke’s Bay Earthquake - Buildings Destroyed” by courtesy of the Hastings District libraries archive.
The Editor is a retired ship’s Captain with a broad interest in postcards and philately and cards were mostly supplied by Safari his preferred nom de plume, (Tony Dodd). More
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Mantle Convection
by Sava Buncic
This literary fiction novel is about how Mark's lonely and emotionally painful childhood is deeply rooted in his heart and mind as he fights to overcome often opposing, dramatic challenges throughout his life, and molds himself into a professionally and personally successful man. He endures the dark shadows of his inner self but is also enlightened by his revelations. His meditative soul and his journey are influenced by his family, friends and peers, as he explores and grows from lacking to finding personal identity; from missing to gaining confidence; from losing to earning friendships; from betrayal to loyalty in love; from naivety to manipulation in his career; from failures to successes in parenting; from illness to health; and ultimately from the path of ‘do what you have to' towards ‘do what you want to'.
Available: Published by AB-SEES, Hamilton, New Zealand; printed by BookBaby (USA). On Amazon and via: Powell’s Books; Books a Million; Ingram; Wheelers; iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Baker & Taylor, Copia, Gardners, eSentral, Scribd, Goodreads, Oyster, Flipkart, Ciando, EBSCO, Vearsa
Author’s Bio: Sava Buncic is a long-time scientist and university professor in public health and food microbiology. Sava is the author of several scientific books and numerous articles in scientific journals, all published world-wide. This is his first novel; publication of the second one is scheduled for January 2016. He has lived and worked by moving between different countries and continents (including New Zealand, England, Denmark and Serbia) for most of his adult life.
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New Books List Submission Requirements:
Are you an NZSA member? Like to feature your new book in the New Books List? Please email the following to Claire Hill
- A JPG image: The book's front cover (we don't need back cover). And jpg only please - the software we use won't accept anything else.
- A Blurb: 1-2 brief paragraphs about the book. (Max 200 words)
- Available: Don't forget to include relevant information about where your book can be purchased. If your book is available to purchase online, include the html links.
- Author's Bio: A brief paragraph about the author (Max 150 words) A broad strokes description of who and what you are. A bio is usually written in third person and isn't a full CV - just the edited highlights. NB: A link to your website or CV isn't a bio! And please do a final read and spell check before you send!
Next Deadline: 6 November 2015
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