This comprehensive, landmark book surveys products our society has made since pre-European times. Begining with ingenious Maori tools, traps, lures and more, it moves to pioneer-era inventions, the industrial and agricultural inventions of early entrepreneurs such as Hayes Machinery and the products of the housewife's fri... read more

Briefcase, the first book of poems by District Court Judge John Adams, is a collection presented as a briefcase of lost documents and poems, allowing the author to play with a wide range of stylistic ideas around a central narrative theme, producing a melange of poems - in traditional and experimental forms - and other texts:... read more

A collection of vivid, accessible stories, which are modern in setting or sensitivity, entertaining and New Zealand in focus - and this collection can be read purely for the immense pleasure they offer.
However, the stories can also be read for the way they explore elements from earlier stories from Maori myth and fairy... read more

Auckland, June 1886. Ngati Wai chief Paratene Te Manu spends long sessions, over three long days, having his portrait painted by the Bohemian painter Gottfried Lindauer. Hearing of Lindauer's planned trip to England reminds him of his own journey there, twenty years earlier, with a party of northern rangatira. As he sits for... read more

Fiona Kidman has a genius for peeling back the lives of ordinary people to reveal their hidden passions and complexities. In this brilliant new collection, she explores - with her customary subtlety and insight - how we are all touched and sometimes scarred by the flames of emotion - whether it be the impossible love of a pre... read more

In Bligh, the story of the most notorious of all Pacific explorers is told through a new lens as a significant episode in the history of the world, not simply of the West. Award-winning anthropologist Anne Salmond recounts the triumphs and disasters of William Bligh's life and career in a riveting narrative that for the first... read more

Graham Percy is one of New Zealand's highest achieving illustrators on a global scale. Though he lived in London from 1964 until his death in 2008, he grew up here and never ceased thinking of himself as an expatriate Kiwi. A Micronaut in the Wide World re-discovers the life and work of this talented, original artist/illustra... read more

"I love doubters: of a truly honest doubter I have great hope." Printer, botanist and missionary, William Colenso was a nineteenth-century maverick, a true original. He protested at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that Maori did not fully understand its implications. He became a troubled conscience during the ... read more

The brutal, premeditated murder of Honorah Parker in 1954 in a lonely park by her 16-year-old daughter Pauline and Pauline's 15-year-old friend Juliet Hulme made shock headlines around the world. International media flocked to New Zealand to follow the trial. Still today, the murder remains one of the most interesting crimina... read more

Weaving is more than just a product of manual skills. From the simple rourou (food basket) to the prestigious kahukiwi (kiwi feather cloak), weaving is endowed with the very essence of the spiritual values of Maori people. The first Maori settlers brought the knowledge of weaving with them. In Aotearoa they found new plant ma... read more

At the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival recently, Fiona Farrell was the star of the opening night with her stories of the Christchurch earthquake - this book takes those stories and gives them weight and heft and context. Fiona Farrell's meandering travel book shows how an earthquake can change everything in a flash: the... read more

The age of cinema began in Paris in 1895. Within a year New Zealanders saw their first films and in fewer than five they were making their own. In the years since, New Zealand has produced almost every conceivable type of film, from home movies to arthouse flicks to Oscar-winning wide-screen epics, building a rich and varie... read more

This book is a celebration, a miscellany that acknowledges with enthusiasm the wonderful and exciting sub-culture of 50 years of studio ceramics and pottery in Auckland. This period has been quite a ride for many of us - clay has completely taken over our lives, and we hope that this book will help to keep the momentum going ... read more

New Zealand's native trees are truly remarkable. From the massive kauri - the third-largest tree in the world - the showy pohutukawa and rata, and the ubiquitous cabbage tree to rare and endangered species found only on offshore islands, our glorious and diverse trees deserve to be recognised, understood and celebrated. New Z... read more

Welcome to the Empty Quarter, the domain of Djinn, ghouls, demons and the effrit who take the shapes of beasts. You used to walk among us, and we among you. Now things are different. Now we are Unseen.
 
Alif is a 23-year-old Arab/Indian hacker working in the Arab Emirates. His job is to provide security to ... read more

Rhian Gallagher's second collection - her first with a New Zealand publisher - encompasses a departure from London, where she lived for 18 years, and a return to her country of birth. In three parts, Shift takes us both back and outwards - from the poet's early history out towards the wider world - London, Europe, New York - ... read more

In Anna Jackson's fifth collection of poetry, a rich and leafy life is closing in on the poet. Anna Jackson constantly turns her attention to the brambled path, the track less followed, the subterranean presences in everyday life.

There is a remarkable range of poems in The Leaf-Ride as it travels along in its 'down-welling, up-welling drift': poems that range from the power of a single word to the horror of violence to the joy of a newborn child. At the heart of the book are three sequences to stand alongside those that have formed the backbone of Din... read more