From Earth's End: The Best of New Zealand Comics by Adrian Kinnaird

$75.00 NZD

Category: Comics | Reading Level: very good

The first major book dedicated to New Zealand cartoonists, and a well researched celebration of New Zealand comics and graphic novels. New Zealand has a rich history of comics and cartooning and has produced award-winning, internationally recognised creators such as Dylan Horrocks and Roger Langridge. T he very active community of respected writers, artists and designers is becoming more prominent, and gaining mainstream recognition: Ant Sang's best-selling Shaolin Burning and Chris Grosz's New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards finalist Kimble Bent being recent examples. From Earth's End: The Best of New Zealand Comics reveals, for the first time, the history of one of the country's most enduring, and subversive artforms. Discover the origins of New Zealand comics, from the pioneering local cartoonists of the early twentieth century, to the rebirth of local comics in the 1970s, through to the bestselling graphic novels of today. The collection showcases comics from 30 of New Zealand's best cartoonists, ranging from internationally acclaimed creators, to emerging new talents. Handsomely designed by the award-winning Alan Deare, and lavishly illustrated, it's a 'must-have' for every art lover's bookshelf. ...Show more

American Gods Illustrated ed. by Neil Gaiman

$75.00 NZD

Category: Science Fiction & Fantasy

The bestselling author of Neverwhere returns with his biggest, most commercial novel yet--a tour de force of contemporary fiction A master of inventive fiction, Neil Gaiman delves into the murky depths where reality and imagination meet. Now in American Gods, he works his literary magic to extraordin ary results. Shadow dreamed of nothing but leaving prison and starting a new life. But the day before his release, his wife and best friend are killed in an accident. On the plane home to the funeral, he meets Mr. Wednesday--a beguiling stranger who seems to know everything about him. A trickster and rogue, Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job as his bodyguard. With nowhere left to go, Shadow accepts, and soon learns that his role in Mr. Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous and dark than he could have ever imagined. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought --and the prize is the very soul of America. ...Show more

Cork of War - Ngati Toa and the British Mission: An Historical Narrative by Ray Grover

$150.00 NZD

Category: NZ Literature | Reading Level: very good

Nick Cave Mercy on Me by Reinhard Kleist

$32.99 NZD

Category: Comics

Musician, novelist, poet, actor: Nick Cave (b. 1957) is a Renaissance man. His wide-ranging artistic output--always uncompromising, hypnotic, and intense--is defined by an extraordinary gift for storytelling. In Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, Reinhard Kleist employs a cast of characters drawn from Cave's music and writing to tell the story of a formidable artist and influencer. Kleist paints an expressive and enthralling portrait of Cave's childhood in Australia; his early years fronting The Birthday Party; the sublime highs of his success with The Bad Seeds; and the crippling lows of his battle with heroin. Capturing everything from Cave's frenzied performances in Berlin to the tender moments he spent with love and muse Anita Lane, Kleist's graphic biography, like Cave's songs, is by turns electrifying, sentimental, morbid, and comic--but always engrossing. ...Show more

Together by Luke Adam Hawker

$39.99 NZD

Category: Comics

A beautiful book to connect us after such a challenging time.'Dark clouds were looming in the distance. We watched them gather, and we wondered... When will it come? How long will it last?' A monumental storm brings huge and sudden change. We follow a man and his dog through the uncertainty that it brin gs to their lives. Through their eyes, we see the difficulties of being apart, the rollercoaster of emotions that we can all relate to, and the realisation that by pulling together we can move through difficult times with new perspective, hope and an appreciation of what matters most in life. ...Show more

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

$24.00 NZD

Category: Classic Fiction

'It never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.' The May of Teck Club 'exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years'. Nevertheless, and though there is a war on, th ey find the time between elocution lessons to jostle one another over suitors (some more suitable than others) and a single Schiaparelli gown. But can a love of literature, fine clothes and amorous young men save these young ladies from the horrors of the real world? 'Unsettling and exhilarating' William Boyd, Daily Telegraph 'An enduring genius' Guardian ...Show more

The Double Rainbow: James K. Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune by John Newton

$40.00 NZD

Category: NZ Literature

'When Maori and Pakeha do these things together the double rainbow begins to shine.' In 1969, New Zealand's best-known poet, James K. Baxter, moved to Jerusalem on the Whanganui River and established an intentional community under the mana of the local hapu, Ngati Hau. The Jerusalem commune proved a mag net for disaffected and damaged young people. As the setting for Baxter's celebrated late works, Jerusalem Sonnets, Jerusalem Daybook and Autumn Testament, it quickly became the country's most famous hippie community, as well as a media byword for the idealism and excess of the emerging youth culture. But what was life really like at Jerusalem, beyond the popular stereotypes? And what did it mean, for Ngati Hau, to be deluged with long-haired strangers and with the media attention which followed them? Here, for the first time, events are reconstructed from the point of view of James K. Baxter's followers and of the local people who accepted them. The story told in this book is unique: nowhere else has a Pakeha community submitted so comprehensively to the authority and generosity of a Maori one. The events described are exceptional in our nation's colonial history. But they also convey an image of what a bicultural Aotearoa might yet become. The true story of the Jerusalem commune is Baxter's undiscovered masterpiece. Now this scrupulous and evocative book allows us to read and to begin to interpret it. First published April 2009. ...Show more

A Preliminary Bibliography of Works by and Works about James K. Baxter by John E. Weir (Editor); Barbara A. Lyon (Editor)

$17.50 NZD

Category: NZ Literature

Station Life in New Zealand by Lady Barker

$25.00 NZD

Category: NZ Literature | Reading Level: very good

Written in 1870, STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND is a fascinating account of the time Lady Mary Anne Barker lived on a sheep station on the south island of New Zealand. It is just a series of letters that she wrote back to her family in England, starting with her arrival in Melbourne Australia en route to C hristchurch. It gives the reader a real insight into life as a settler in the 1860s, with all its highs and lows.I gripped my chair in sympathy as she is careened at high speed along the highway by a drunken passenger coach driver. I chuckled at her first attempts at cooking and I cried with her when her naughty dog has to be put down and when she has to help dig dead lambs from a snowdrift after a huge blizzard. Mary Anne writes in a light-hearted style, and she vividly portrayed the lives of genteel sheep farmers (and the not so genteel) the weather and the beautiful scenery and wildlife.Born in Jamaica, educated in England, her first husband Lord George Robert Barker was knighted for his role at the Siege of Lucknow in India. He died 8 months after receiving his title, however when Mary Anne arrived in New Zealand she was with her second husband, Frederick Broome. For her writing Mary Anne retained her Lady Barker title although later in life her second husband was knighted and she became Lady Broome. During her life Mary Anne lived in England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Mauritius, Australia and Trinidad. A well travelled lady with some eighteen published works.STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND is considered the best of the settlers' tales from the years of colonization of New Zealand, and is a classic of early New Zealand literature. ...Show more

After the Fireworks: A Life of David Ballantyne by Bryan Reid

$21.50 NZD

Category: NZ Literature | Reading Level: very good

Ballantyne’s life as a writer brought him little more than disappointment, despair and an urge to self-destruction by alcohol. Yet at least two of his novels can be regarded as classics. At 23, he was the earliest of the new young post-war New Zealand writers to have his first novel published †” not here, but in the US. The Cunninghams, an uncompromisingly realistic portrait of New Zealand working-class life, was praised by American critics, but greeted almost with shock in his own country. He did not publish another novel until 15 years later and it was another five years before his best work, Sydney Bridge Upside Down, appeared but, most undeservedly, attracted little attention. This lack of recognition and the feeling that he was a ‘one-book writer’ eventually plunged him into the depths of alcoholism. Miraculously, he recovered in 1973 and went on to write two more novels, and to achieve distinction as a kind of literary ‘elder statesman’. Whatever his disappointments as a writer of fiction, Ballantyne, in his parallel career as a highly talented journalist, earned professional admiration and respect both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where he had considerable success also as a writer of television plays. This biography by a life-long friend and former colleague uses personal knowledge and recollections, which fleshes out his account of Ballantyne's life, and illuminates the rollicking days of their careers in newspapers and the exciting literary scene of the immediate post-war years. ...Show more

Mihi and the Last of the Moas

$47.50 NZD

Category: NZ Poetry

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Caxton Press) by Oscar Wilde

$185.00 NZD

Category: World Poetry