Man Alone by John Mulgan
Man Alone is a literary landmark that has haunted our writing for decades. Set during the Great Depression, with vivid depictions of the Waterfront dispute, John Mulgan's vision of New Zealand society is as detached and unsentimental, with the power to reject and alienate.
There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh
Seven friends gather as adults to reminisce their teen years and remember their late friend Bea at her family's estate, a once glorious mansion straight out of a gothic novel. Best friends, old flames, secret enemies, and new lovers are all under one roof. But when the weather turns and they're snowed in at the edge of eternity, there's nowhere left to hide from their shared history.
As the walls close in, the pretence of normality gives way to long-buried grief, bitterness, and rage. Underneath it all, there's the nagging feeling that Bea's shocking death wasn't what it was claimed to be. And before the weekend is through, the truth will be unleashed. No matter the cost...
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.
But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again...
From a Shadow Grave by Andi Buchanan
In 1931, seventeen-year-old Phyllis Symons was attacked by her lover and left to die in the construction site of the Mount Victoria Tunnel.
From a Shadow Grave picks up the threads of history and explores three alternate ways Phyllis's story might have ended, weaving together historical fiction, urban fantasy and time travel. This is no ordinary ghost story its the story of a young woman reclaiming her life rather than letting her murder be her legacy.
A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman's disappearance twenty-five years ago.
After years of living overseas, Emily Kirkland returns to New Zealand to care for her father, Felix, who suffers from dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time - and to glimpse shattering truths about his past. Truths she'd rather were kept buried.
A missing woman... a town full of suspects. The haunting debut crime novel that transports the reader back to the 1980s and a small rural town in New Zealand.
It's January 1983. During his university summer break, Ryan Bradley returns to the remote town of Nashville in New Zealand's rugged King Country. It's a bittersweet trip- he's working long, punishing hours as a woolpresser, he needs to sell his late mother's house, and he's increasingly feeling like an outcast in his childhood town.
But mostly he's haunted by memories of Sanna Sovernen, a Finnish backpacker and his secret lover, who worked with him in the shearing shed the summer before - then vanished without trace. Now Sanna's sister Emilia has arrived from Finland, determined to get answers - and as he's the workmate who reported Sanna missing, she wants Ryan's help. Because Emilia knows her sister was not the first female traveller in the area to disappear...