From the acclaimed author of Cloud and The Dutch Wife, an early novel of Gothic terror that creeps into the blood and captivates with hypnotic fascination. On his deathbed, Ezra Stevenson's grandfather bequeaths him a macabre tale of domestic violence. Driven to investigate his grandfather's account of the four Mackenzie children and their monstrous family history, Ezra embarks on a horrific voyage of discovery, deception and revelation.

In the city of Chicago there is a school named Hellen High School where the students are out of control. They don't listen to any adult figure. Knife fights, gun shots, teachers getting stabbed, principals getting shot, kids having sex in the bathrooms and anything else mischievous the students at Hellen High School can pull off, they will do. Gangs run rampant over the high school, causing fear among the students who are not affiliated with any gangs. Willis Miles, a police officer, knew he would need a teenager to work undercover at the school with him to find out why the school is so corrupt. He recruits an eighteen year old vigilante from California named Quintin Morrieson. He has a reputation of getting to the truth and bringing criminals to justice. Although there isn't anything that scares Quintin, attending a high school with a history of violence will be his biggest obstacle. He will quickly learn things are not always as easy as he thinks.

A collection of 24 short stories by one of New Zealand's top living writers of short stories. Funny, affectionate, astute and touching, they explore the worlds of small-town communities, their loves and losses, and their dreams. Owen Marshall possesses a matchless ability to move easily from sharp comedy to elegiac sadness, from the delightfully accurate pricking of pretensions to the moving examination of the deepest human emotions and frailties. Marshall is never content to mine old ground. His familiar small-town and rural landscapes have their place in WHEN GRAVITY SNAPS but so, too, do smart urban parties, the pettiness of school and university hierarchies, the perspectives of elderly men and women with long, rich lives behind them, the search for human connection and warmth in an often capricious world. Funny, moving, challenging and memorable, this new collection of beautifully calibrated stories will be welcomed by Marshall fans, and new readers, everywhere.

When John Summers moved to a small town in the Wairarapa and began to look closely at the less-celebrated aspects of local life &– our club rooms, freezing works, night trains, hotel pubs, landfills &– he saw something deeper. It was a story about his own life, but mostly about a place and its people. The story was about life and death in New Zealand.Combining reportage and memoir, The Commercial Hotel is a sharp-eyed, poignant yet often hilarious tour of Aotearoa: a place in which Arcoroc mugs and dog-eared political biographies are as much a part of the scenery as the hills we tramp through ill-equipped. We encounter Elvis impersonators, the eccentric French horn player and adventurer Bernard Shapiro, Norman Kirk balancing timber on his handlebars while cycling to his building site, and Summers' s grandmother: the only woman imprisoned in New Zealand for protesting World War Two. And we meet the ghosts who haunt our loneliest spaces.As he follows each of his preoccupations, Summers reveals to us a place we have never quite seen before.&‘ Clever, funny, boundlessly curious, The Commercial Hotel is a dazzling New Zealand opportunity shop, floor to ceiling with lost books and impos

Travel Back to a Time of Innocence and Adventure "Until Kirby Mellen was ten nothing very exciting had ever happened to him or his father or his mother or his little sister Bitsy." All of this changes very suddenly with the death of far-distant Uncle Hiram, who leaves his Florida motel-painted pink-to Kirby's mom. People like the Mellens, from Minnesota, do not paint their buildings pink. And these seven buildings are not just quietly pink-they are outrageously PINK. "It was pinker than Kirby's necktie or Bitsy's hair ribbon. It was pink, pink, PINK." It isn't long after the Mellens arrive at the motel that things go even more off kilter with regulars (and some irregulars) taking up residence in the cottages. There's old Miss Ferry who talks to crabs and other beach creatures, Marvello the magician, the two gangsters Locke and Black, and jolly Mr. Carver, who has a knack for uncovering the secrets left by Uncle Hiram. Carol Ryrie Brink's classic children's tale evokes a time of innocence and adventure in the lives of the Mellen children and their friends. Written long before the introduction of the internet, it speaks of people solving problems through understanding and coming together. With delightful illustrations by Sheila Greenwald, this story will capture the imagination of children of all ages.

"Ronald Hugh Morrieson (1922-1972) lived all his life in the same house in the small Taranaki town of Hawera, and yet created a bizarre and brilliantly funny fictional world which constitutes one of the most distinctive contributions to New Zealand fiction. However, his originality and his isolation from a sustaining literary community meant that his work wasvirtually ignored during his lifetime. His first two novels, though well received in Australia, sank almost without trace in New Zealand, and Morrieson was unable to find a publisher for his two later noivels, both of which were published posthumously. ... Simpson provides an illuminating biographical sketch, and discusses each of the novels in detail to demonstrate the compelling mixture of comedy, pathos, suspense and violence of which Morrieson was master."--Back cover.