New Zealand

Ali Williams breaks the mould as an All Black tight forward. A confirmed urbanite, Ali Williams switched his Super 14 allegiances from Auckland to Christchurch in 2007 after a much-publicised bust-up with Australian coach David Nucifora. In this book Williams will take a light-hearted look at rugby at the very top in New Zealand and will touch on some of the more controversial aspects of his...

Denise L'Estrange Corbet is one half of the dynamic husband and wife team that makes up WORLD, one of NZ's leading fashion businesses. This is Denise's honest and frank account of her turbulent life - from her difficult childhood through to her successful business life today. She covers the emotional landscape of her childhood, her malevolent grandmother, her dysfunctional family and most of all...

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE is the second book of Janet Frame's three-volume autobiography, described by Michael Holroyd as 'one of the greatest autobiographies written this century.' It follows her life as a student and years of incarceration in mental hospitals. First published in 1984, it won the Non-fiction Prize of the New Zealand Book Awards. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Janet Frame was born in Dunedin in...

Around the world Sir Edmund Hillary is a legendary figure - climber, bold adventurer, practical philanthropist and one of the most widely respected persons of our time. He has survived extremes of human experience - from historic triumphs to crushing personal loss - but he sees himself as an ordinary man, persistent rather than heroic. This book focuses on the highlights of his life, including:...

Sam Hunt's life as a poet and performer has always strayed far off the straight and narrow, more akin to following a series of winding backroads that have led to places and people away from the mainstream. As a child, Hunt was surrounded by 'a lot of words, a lot of poems,' and from the age of eight, he knew he wanted to live the life of a poet. His parents and grandparents were his earliest...

Billy T James was a larger-than-life comedian who gave us some of our best belly laughs. An accomplished singer and musician, he created enduring characters, poking the borax at the oh-so-delicate state of race relations in New Zealand in a way that stood him head and shoulders above other performers of his era. Like John Clarke's Fred Dagg, Billy T's characters were Kiwi through and through and...

No woman has ever risen as far in the corporate world as former Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung. Her appointment, at such a young age and from the marking ranks, astounded the country, and her leadership of the big telco that Kiwis love to hate was never far from the headlines. This no-holds-barred memoir tells of her ambition, her determination, and her rise to business power. It tells of the highs...

Dan Vettori took over from Stephen Fleming as New Zealand's one-day captain at the start of the 2007-08 season. It is hard to believe, though, that the 28-year-old has been on the international scene now for 11 seasons. The youngest man to play Test cricket for New Zealand, at the age of 18, he sits beside Richard Hadlee and Chris Cairns as New Zealanders to take 200 Test wickets and score 2000...

Hayley's first performance as 'Little Star' in a Christmas play was perfectly pitched, beautifully sung and enthusiastically received. She was six years old. Now, at the tender age of twenty, she is the fastest-selling debut classical artist ever. Her string of musical accolades is astonishing and her audiences range from royalty to premiers. This is her story, from her first performance, through...

Even by the versatile standards of Victorian pioneers, Charles Heaphy had an unusually varied career, as a draughtsman, explorer, surveyor, gold agent, geologist, soldier, war hero, politician, land commissioner and judge. Most importantly, however, for decades Heaphy painted and sketched what he saw. From his earliest surviving watercolour of birdlife in the Marlborough Sounds in August 1839 to...

Helen Clark led the Labour Party for 15 years, resurrecting it from the rifts of Rogernomics before becoming one of New Zealand's most successful Prime Ministers. Her term as Prime Minister lasted nine years. In 2006 Forbes magazine listed her as the 20th most powerful woman in the world. Clark's time in politics stretches from the anti-war protests of 1968 through the rise of feminism,...

Pragmatism, humour, stubborn bloody-mindedness - what else does a woman need to carry her through the ups and downs of her life's work? Her Life's Work chronicles the extraordinary life stories of five New Zealand women - Jacqueline Fahey, Merimeri Penfold, Anne Salmond, Gaylene Preston and Margaret Mahy. As artists, writers, teachers, filmmakers and thinkers each has carved out an impressive...

Sir Edmund Hillary became famous by being the first, with Tenzing Norgay, to climb Mt Everest in 1953. Though this was clearly a remarkable feat, Sir Edmund came to be regarded by many as a great man for the way he chose to use his fame, which was to dedicate much of the rest of his life to building schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people of Nepal. Himalayan Hospitals tells the remarkable...

'Inga the Winger' - Va'aiga Tuigamala, one of the most imposing and explosive wingers New Zealand rugby ever produced - has decided to tell his full story for the first time. This is the fascinating, inspirational story of overcoming hardship, reaching the heights of All Black hero status and the debacle of the amateur/professional era, the excesses of UK rugby league, and finally of returning to...

'One of the greatest autobiographies written this century." MICHAEL HOLROYD Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here in a single edition and complemented by previously unpublished photographs. From a childhood and adolescnece spent in a materially poor but intellectually intense railway family, through its...

Since his tragically early death from cancer in 1995, John Britten has taken his place as a New Zealand hero. He and his dedicated team in Christchurch, designed and built from scratch the Britten V-twin motorcycle. For a time this machine was probably the fastest four-stroke bike in the world. It could wheel stand at 150 miles per hour simply by opening up the throttle. After five years of...

The first of two volumes celebrating New Zealand's champions on two wheels. More World Championships have been won by Kiwi motorcyclists than by competitors in any other sport in this country, with nine riders winning 35 World Championships. Others have come breathtakingly close, with four riders second in Moto GP, and victories in the Isle of Man, still the world's most demanding road race....

Steve Gurney is an exceptional athlete. He has been in 19 of the epic Coast to Coast races in a row, and he has won nine of them. He has represented New Zealand twice at the World Mountain Bike champs and has spent a lot of time adventure racing in far flung jungles, caves, mountains and deserts. Steve says people joke about his "Lucky legs" ..."lucky they don't snap off and poke...

Charles Upham was the great New Zealand war hero. He was one of the few people in history to have won the Victoria Cross twice, setting new standards of personal heroism during World War II. A quietly spoken sheep farmer from Canterbury, at the front in Crete and North Africa, he destroyed enemy machine-gun posts single-handed and led a frontal assault on enemy guns. He then spent the rest of the...

A true story of love in wartime and in peace by one of New Zealand's finest writers. In Crete during the Second World War a wounded Maori Battalion soldier and a young Cretan woman fall in love when the young infantryman is sheltered by her family. After marrying in Crete, Ned and Katina come back to live in New Zealand, settling in the Far North. They live a long, rich and happy life together,...

'There is no place in normal New Zealand society for the man who is different', wrote William Harrison (Bill) Pearson. One of New Zealand's most distinguished fiction writers and sharpest critics, Pearson's life was also fraught with contradiction and secrecy, largely because of his homosexuality. Born in Greymouth in 1922, he grew up in a society dominated by a rugged ideal of New Zealand...

Rebel With a Cause is the inspiring story of a true Kiwi hero who overcame childhood neglect and abuse to become a successful scientist and businessman, and who has saved millions of lives in the third world. Ray Avery is the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year 2010 and the recipient of the Sir Peter Blake Medal for Leadership 2010. He has invented inexpensive lenses for cataract sufferers,...

Richie McCaw's standing within the All Blacks team is unmatched. The captain of Graham Henry's team since 2006, McCaw has carved a niche for himself as the modern-day great within the All Blacks - the charismatic, never-say-die leader whom fans of the Men in Black have come to hold in the same light as many of the most revered captains of yesteryear. Richie McCaw: A Tribute to a Modern-day Rugby...

Rita Angus was a pioneer of modern painting during the 1930s and 1940s who went on to become one of New Zealanda??s leading 20th century artists. Today, more than 100 years after her birth, works such as Rutu (1951) Central Otago (1940) and Portrait of Betty Curnow (1941-1942) have become national icons, while Angus is perhaps New Zealand's best-loved painter. Yet the story of her life remains...

Sir Peter Blake was perhaps the greatest competitive yachtsman of all time ? the man who seized the America's Cup and won the Whitbread. In his later years he turned away from international competition and used the yacht Seamaster to draw attention to the threats to the world's environment. It was in pursuit of this cause that Blake was tragically murdered in 2001 at the mouth of the Amazon while...

'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...

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was one of the great educational innovators of the twentieth century. Working predominantly with small New Zealand country schools, particularly with Maori youth, at the furthest edge of the 'civilised' world, she established classroom techniques that unlocked a storehouse of imagery native to each child. Through the use of 'key vocabulary' her pupils learned that language...

Beloved television star of Fair Go, Kevin Milne's memoir is funny, insightful, incisive, moving and all-round entertaining. He talks of his long television career - 40 years - including 25 years of the long-running, top-rating Fair Go. Kevin writes in a relaxed, laconic style that draws the reader in immediately - he's an excellent story-teller and raconteur. He includes many wonderful anecdotes...

Michael Hill's step-by-step guide to fulfilling your dreams - any dreams - easily. Michael outlines all the key lessons he has learned over the years. His wisdom covers these topics in great detail with lots of helpful examples: * Clearing the clutter of your mind * Positive day-dreaming * Letting go and thinking bigger * Change - Making a negative a positive * Working smarter not harder * How to...

To rattle off the hits of Neil and Tim Finn reads like a checklist of recent pop history. And to think it all began in sleepy rural Te Awamutu - a town whose name had a 'truly sacred ring', as Neil would famously recount - where Brian Timothy Finn fell in love with the Beatles, an obsession that would also work its way straight into his younger brother Neil's DNA. Success for the brothers was a...

Corporal Willie Apiata became the first New Zealander since the Second World War to be awarded the Commonwealth's highest military award for his actions with the NZ SAS in Afghanistan. From his early life in small town East Coast New Zealand to his actions in the deserts of Afghanistan, this is his story in his words. Inspiring, and heart warming, this is the story of an ordinary Kiwi facing...

Barbara Kendall will go to her fifth Olympics this year. She's 40 and it's incredible that she's still competing, let alone winning, when most of her competitors are in their 20s. It's a harsh environment, and a gruelling physical challenge. Her years of experience in racing, tactics, knowledge about wind and tide conditions, equipment and board handling skills play a big part in her success. But...