May Highlights 2010

Thirty-year-old Theresa Pellikaan is typical of the wealthy middle classes - with her respectable background, successful husband and house in an apparently sleepy, yet powerful, rich village. She works in a gallery, also typical of her type. When her former schoolmate Ruth Ackermann, brought up in the same village, makes waves with an international bestseller, but none of the villagers ever mention her achievement, not even the literary circle of Theresa's father, famous civil rights scholar Randolf Pellikaan, Theresa begins to won... read more

This book has a central proposition: that rugby is not sustainable if it continues down the commercial path it is currently following. Control of the game is being steadily transferred from those who thought they owned it to commercial and media interests who see it purely as a commodity. Of all the great team sports rugby has been the most dependent on tradition, inclusiveness and the notion of the game being more important than the individual. After a century and a half of comfortable conservatism rugby suddenly found itself conf... read more

Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous. Mark gathers around him an impressionable group of students: glamorous Emmanuella, who always has a new boyfriend in tow; Franny and Simon, best friends and occasional lovers; and, musician Jess, whose calm exterior hides passiona... read more

If you haven't heard of the success of 42 Below Vodka you must have been living under a rock! Initially brewed by Wellington advertising man Geoff Ross in his garage, everything about this vodka was audacious, from the very notion of making high-end vodka Downunder to its shock-and-awe advertising campaigns and the fact that it would go on to beat the world's great brands in international vodka competitions. But the most remarkable thing about 42 Below was the way it stole the world's bartenders' hearts and eventually attracted th... read more

'Fiennes has exceptional gifts, and he has written a small masterpiece, a tribute to the power of place, family and memory' - "Sunday Telegraph". William Fiennes' childhood was one of imagination and curiosity, bounded only by the horizon he saw from the roof-tiles of his ancient family home. His older brother Richard, known for his towering presence, his inventiveness, his great passion for Leeds United, and his suffering due to severe epilepsy, was an adored and charismatic figure in his life. Years later, eager to understand his... read more

Father Duncan MacAskill has spent most of his priesthood as the 'Exorcist' - an enforcer employed by his bishop to discipline wayward clergy and suppress potential scandal. He knows all the devious ways that lonely priests persuade themselves that their needs trump their vows, but he's about to be sorely tested himself. Sequestered in a small rural parish to avoid an impending public controversy, Duncan must confront the consequences of past cover-ups and the suppression of his own human needs. Pushed to the breaking point by lonel... read more

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In a frontier society full of colourful characters in early nineteenth century New Zealand, Jacky Marmon, more commonly known as Cannibal Jack, was more colourful than most. Jumping ship off the New Zealand coast, he first lived among Ngapuhi at the Bay of Islands, where he acquired five wives and served his chief as a trader and white priest. Joining Hongi Hika's great Musket Wars campaigns against the Tamaki and Kaipara tribes, he claimed to have served as Hika's personal war tohunga. He survived to settle in the Hokianga from 18... read more

An island in a bleak harbour; an isolated quarantine station where a group of nurses works tirelessly to care for sailors and immigrants recovering from the effects of the long sea voyage to the new land. Kahu swims ashore, searching for a woman. Young nurse Liesel, caught in a passionate triangle, is faced with choices both harrowing and intoxicating. Martha, who oversees the hospital and guides the community, is making a kind of experiment with life. Some on the island are too sick to live. Others flame with life. The island is c... read more

'I said many times I would not write autobiography - partly because it might signal, either to my inner self, or to others, a "signing off" as a writer; and partly because I did not want to mark off areas that were fact in my life from those that might yet be invented. Fiction likes to move, disguised and without a passport, back and forth across that border, and prefers it should be unmarked and without check-points.' - C K Stead. Happily for the many readers of his novels, poems, criticism and essays, C K Stead has changed his mi... read more