In the apparently quiet Waikato of the 1930s and 1940s a number of lives connect in a complex web of family ties, desire and violence. Things are often not what they seem. The events of this story also take in boxing and farming, devotion and perversion, ranging as far as Tasmania and the Spanish Civil War.

Fiona Farrell's first novel – always moving, often hilarious – is a breathtakingly accomplished debut. It presents a head-on confrontation with a New Zealand psyche rarely found in history books. Skinny Louie, daughter of Shanghai Lil, has a baby in the Begonia House on the day of the royal visit. Maura finds the baby and takes it home. Tia grows up with magical powers into the brave new world of the twenty-first century. Fiona Farrell's first novel – always moving, often hilarious – is a breathtakingly accomplished debut. It presents a head-on confrontation with a New Zealand psyche rarely found in history books. The Skinny Louie Book won the 1993 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction.

"From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantánamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares." --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America A Penguin Classic From the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Singing Whakpapa is a tale for our time - a compelling historical detective story in which the truth is stranger than any fiction, and in which the present becomes a backseat driver to the past. What is the truth of history, what are the facts - and how are we to know them? This powerful novel is the story of John Flatt - missionary agriculturalist, witness to Waharoa's war of the 1830s against the Arawa, to the murder of the young woman Tarore and to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - and his great-great-grandson Hugh Grady, who more than a hundred-and-fifty years later tried to make sense of his own life by exploring all that has gone before. It is a story laced with passion, betrayal and revenge, at many levels, as greed overtakes good intentions and the cloak of history is pulled aside. The Singing Whakapapa won the New Zealand Book Awards in 1995.

The Burning Boy is a vivid picture of life in a provincial town in times of disturbance and change. Certainties collapse in the face of violence. People start along strange ways, some to loss or ruin, others to unexpected happiness. The Burning Boy won the New Zealand Book Awards in 1991. 'Written with verve and economy, Maurice Gee's novel has a wealth of penetratingly observed incidents, some spectacular and dramatic, some distinctly unpleasant. Most, however, are ordinary, everyday events from which Gee builds an engaging narrative and a detailed picture of the life of the city - a city which, under different names in successive novels, he is steadily making into his equivalent of Hardy's Wessex.' - Times Literary Supplement

The classic French novel written by a soldier, who would later die during World War I, tells the story of Auguste Meaulnes and the "domain mysterieux."

A generous selection from New Zealand's foremost writer of short stories. Peter Simpson in reviewing Owen Marshall's stories in the New Zealand Listener wrote: 'Marshall is held in uncommon affection by New Zealand readers - generally we admire and respect rather than love our writers.' This love is perhaps evoked not just by the superb quality of Marshall's writing but because his stories so precisely capture his fellow New Zealanders and their country. From the provinces to the cities, the remote landscapes to journeying overseas, Marshall's stories show a deep understanding of who and where we are. Sometimes he skewers the locals with sharp and sly comedy, in other stories there's an elegiac sadness or a grim reality, but always an insightful exploration of human emotions. From the substantial body of work created over the last thirty years, critic, writer and academic Vincent O'Sullivan has selected sixty stories that give a wide representation of Marshall's range. He once wrote that short stories should aspire to a combination of 'intransigence and poetry', both of which are evident in this fine selection. 'Marshall is a writer who speaks with equal intensity to the unbearable loveliness and malevolence of life.' - Carolyn Bliss, World Literature Today

**Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year** The Penguin Classics Book is a reader's companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world. Spanning 4,000 years from the legends of Ancient Mesopotamia to the poetry of the First World War, with Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas, Japanese epics and much more in between, it encompasses 500 authors and 1,200 books, bringing these to life with lively descriptions, literary connections and beautiful cover designs.

An anthology of classic poems by twenty-seven New Zealand poets, accompanied by two CDs on which the poets themselves read the poems. The recordings have been selected from the Waiata Recordings Archive (collected in 1974) and the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive (completed in 2004).

Directory containing updated bibliographic information on all in-print New Zealand books. 33nd edition of an annual publication. The 12,500 book entries are listed by title, and there is an index to authors. Also provided are details of 975 publishers and distributors, and local agents of overseas publishers. The book trade directory includes: contacts for trade organisations, booksellers, public libraries and specialised suppliers; NZ literary awards and past winners; and sources of financial assistance for writers and publishers.