A High Country Life by Pip Cameron

$45.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

A High Country memoir of life through the seasons on a large sheep station, with delicious recipes. Life on Otematata Station, a 40,000 hectare high country station in Otago, is busy and varied. Philippa Cameron and her husband, Joe, who is the fifth generation to work the farm, help care for this vast tract of land with 30,000 merino sheep and 500 head of cattle. It's a sparse environment completely at the mercy of the elements, bringing with it many challenges and seasonal demands. Told through the eyes of Philippa in her role as station cook, this is the story of mustering in autumn, lambing in spring, the freezing days of winter and the scorching heat of summer. Along with looking after her two small girls, her garden and various animals, Philippa feeds the teams of workers. She collects and shares a selection of delicious, hearty recipes with other farm cooks on her popular Instagram page @whats_for_smoko. This book also features Philippa's most trusted recipes, tested on many approving musterers. ...Show more

Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends. But when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VIII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between Elizabeth and Margaret was dramatically altered. Forever more, Margaret would have to curtsey to the sister she called ‘Lillibet’. And bow to her wishes.Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister’s antics with a kind of stoical amusement but Margaret’s struggle to find a place and position inside the royal system – and her fraught relationship with its expectations – was often a source of tension. Famously, the Queen had to inform Margaret that the Church and government would not countenance her marrying a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend, forcing Margaret to choose between keeping her title and royal allowances or her divorcee lover.From the idyll of their cloistered early life, through their hidden wartime lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father’s death and Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, this book explores their relationship over the years. Andrew Morton’s latest biography offers unique insight into these two drastically different sisters – one resigned to duty and responsibility, the other resistant to it – and the lasting impact they have had on the Crown, the royal family and the way it has adapted to the changing mores of the twentieth century. ...Show more

Unposted, Autumn Leaves - A Memoir in Essays by Stephen Oliver

$30.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Oliver's Unposted, Autumn Leaves-A Memoir In Essays, begins with his childhood growing up in the hilly suburb of Brooklyn-west, Wellington, New Zealand, in the 50s and 60s. He attended St. Bernard's Primary School, Brooklyn, then Marist Brothers, Newtown, and finally, St. Patrick's College, Cambridge Te rrace. This period is extensively covered, including his post-schooldays, right through to the close of the 60s, in a Wellington that no longer exists, captured in the essays Talk, Chalk And Asphalt Days, 'A Big Fruity Guy ...', A Small Matter Of Demolition, A Nostalgia For Books, and Gnosis, A Spark.   There are essays on travel. One Day in the Life of Richard Ramos recalls San Francisco in 1979, and One Day In the Life of Vicki Viidikas covers Sydney from the mid to late 80s. Gulls Dreaming at the Mast, and The River Runs Backwards considers Irish cultural history as it relates to the life and times of Oliver's great grandfather, Thomas McCormack, who emigrated from Ireland to Australia, and later as a young man, sailed from Melbourne aboard the S.S. Ringarooma to Port Chalmers, Dunedin, in 1877. Unposted, Autumn Leaves counterpoints much that can be found in his epic poem, Intercolonial (2013) which 'reaffirms Oliver's status as our leading transtasman poet.'   ...Show more

Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me - Her Life and Long Loves by John Sutherland

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

'A brilliant biography - John Sutherland has brought Monica Jones to life as she deserves.' Claire Tomalin 'I couldn't put it down. Vivid and penetrating, it's a brilliant portrait of a confounding, complex woman.' Cressida Connolly Monica Jones was Philip Larkin's partner for more than four decades, and was arguably the most important woman in his life. She was cruelly immortalised as Margaret Peel in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and widely vilified for destroying Larkin's diaries and works in progress after his death. She was opinionated and outspoken, widely disliked by his friends and Philip himself was routinely unfaithful to her. But Monica Jones was also a brilliant academic and an inspiring teacher in her own right. She wrote more than 2,000 letters to Larkin, and he in turn poured out his heart to her. In this revealing biography John Sutherland explores the question: who was the real Monica? The calm and collected friend and teacher? The witty conversationalist and inspirational lecturer? Or the private Monica, writing desperate, sometimes furious, occasionally libellous, drunken letters to the only man, to the absent man, whom she could love? Was Monica's life - one of total sacrifice to a great poet - worthwhile? Through his careful reading of Monica's never-before-seen letters, and his own recollections, John Sutherland shows us a new side to Larkin's story, and allows Monica to finally step out from behind the poet's shadow. ...Show more

Life as a Novel: Biography of Maurice Shadbolt Volume 2 1973-2004 by Phillip Temple

$45.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

What You Made of It: A Memoir 1987-2020 by CK Stead

$50.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

The third and final volume of C. K. Stead’s memoirs, from leaving the University of Auckland to write full-time until today. ‘These are my encounters and engagements with the world of books and writers, and of teaching and writing about them,’ C. K. Stead writes in this third and final volume of his mem oirs. Having left the university to write full-time at the end of volume two, Stead throws himself into his work. In novels like Sister Hollywood and My Name Was Judas, criticism in the London Review of Books and the Financial Times, poetry and memoir, Stead establishes his international reputation as novelist, poet and critic. It is also a period when Stead’s fearless lucidity on matters literary and political embroil him in argument – from The Bone People to the meaning of the Treaty to the controversy over a London writer’s flat. What was it like to be Allen Curnow’s designated ‘Critic across the Crescent’; or alternatively to be labelled ‘the Tonya Harding of NZ Lit’? How did poems emerge from time and place, sometimes as naturally as ‘leaves to a tree’, sometimes effortfully? And how did novels about individual men and women retell stories of war (World War II, Yugoslavia, Iraq) and peace? Covering Stead’s travels from Los Angeles to Liguria, Croatia and Crete to Caracas and Colombia, as New Zealand poet laureate and Kohi swimmer, What You Made of It takes us deep inside the mind and experience of one of our major writers – and all in Stead’s famously lucid ‘story-telling’ prose. ...Show more

Fifty Years a Feminist by Sue Kedgley

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

A pioneering New Zealand feminist reflects on fifty years of feminism

Kate Edger: The life of a pioneering feminist by Diana Morrow

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

In 1877, Kate Edger became the first woman to graduate from a New Zealand university. The New Zealand Herald enthusiastically hailed her achievement as 'the first rays of the rising sun of female intellectual advancement'. Edger went on to become a pioneer of women's education in New Zealand. She also w orked tirelessly to mitigate violence against women and children and to fortify their rights through progressive legislation. She campaigned for women's suffrage and played a prominent role in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and in Wellington's Society for the Protection of Women and Children. Later in life she advocated international diplomacy and co-operation through her work for the League of Nations Union. Diana Morrow tells the story of this remarkable New Zealand woman's life and, in the process, provides valuable insights into the role of women social reformers in our history and Edger's place within a distinctive strand of Christian feminism. ...Show more

Flash Jim: The Astonishing Story of the Convict Fraudster who Wrote Australia's First Dictionary by Kel Richards

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

The astonishing story of James Hardy Vaux, writer of Australia's first dictionary and first true-crime memoir If you wear 'togs', tell a 'yarn', call someone 'sly', or refuse to 'snitch' on a friend then you are talking like a convict.These words, and hundreds of others, once left colonial magistrates b affled and police confused. So comprehensible to us today, the flash language of criminals and convicts had marine officer Watkin Tench complaining about the need for an interpreter in the colonial court.Luckily, by 1811, that man was at hand. James Hardy Vaux - conman, pickpocket, absconder and thief, born into comfortable circumstances in England - was so drawn to a life of crime he was transported to Australia ... not once, but three times!Vaux's talents, glibness and audacity were extraordinary, and perceiving an opportunity to ingratiate himself with authorities during his second sentence, he set about writing a dictionary of the criminal slang of the colony, which was recognised for its uniqueness and taken back to England to be published.Kel Richards tells Vaux's story brilliantly, with the help of Vaux's own extraordinarily candid memoir of misdeeds - one of the first true-crime memoirs ever published. Kel's book combines two of his favourite subjects: the inventiveness, humour and origins of Australian English, and our history of fabulous, disreputable characters.With echoes of The Surgeon of Crowthorne as well as Oliver Twist, Flash Jim is a ripping read - especially for those who appreciate the power of words and the convict contribution to our idiom.PRAISE'One of the strongest bonds binding the people of Australia together is the Australian language. We speak a dialect of English richer and more colourful than most. When we call someone a "hoon" or invite a friend to a "barbie" we know immediately what we're talking about - but we have to translate for overseas visitors. This powerful cultural bond was, as Kel explains, built on four foundations. And the most colourful of those four was convict slang. The role that it played, and still plays, in the Australian language, and the story of the man who first recorded it is - as we used to say - a "ripping yarn". It makes a page turning story' - Alan Jones, broadcaster and columnist   ...Show more

Times Like These — On Grief, Hope & Remarkable Love by Michelle Langstone

$37.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

A stunning collection of moving and beautifully written personal essays from Michelle Langstone. 'These essays about love, loss, and memories of night voyages with her dad glow from within, like phosphorescence on the sea. Just what we need in times like these.' - Diana Wichtel 'Evocative, lyrical, sur prising, Times Like These is built from a heart that bursts out of every page.' - Toby Manhire Childhood, family, and death; anxiety and release; grief and the hope of new life: these are some of the themes that underpin Michelle Langstone's debut collection. Michelle is interested in the way the concept of identity is shaken during a major event, and in the feeling world at its most raw and intimate. These essays speak to one another across a timeline, examining her world before the death of her father, and life after his passing, when she recalibrates the shape of a universe without him. Essays on acting, fertility and IVF, and intergenerational love round out a collection that is full of candour and humour. Tender, poignant and moving, these intimate essays are perfectly formed and offer a shimmering portrait of the human condition. ...Show more

Kamala's Way by Dan Morain

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Synopsis coming soon.......

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant ride, it's in those wildflowers dancing on their way to the shared grave of two men in love, and it's in caring for that young man who just needed information without judgement.' In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Corker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. And in doing so, Ruth's own life changes forever. As word spreads in the community that she is the only person willing to help the young men afflicted by the growing AIDS crisis, Ruth goes from being an ordinary young mother to an accidental activist. Forging deep friendships with the men she helps, Ruth works to find them housing and jobs, and then funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She prepares and delivers meals to 'her guys,' supplementing her own income with discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets. She defies local pastors and the medical community to store rare medications for her most urgent patients, and teaches sex education to drag queens after hours at secret bars. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis, and in doing so becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of society. Ruth kept her story a secret for years, fearful of repercussions within her deeply conservative community. But at a time when it's more important than ever to stand up for those who can't, Ruth has found the courage to have her voice - and the voices of those who were stigmatised, rejected and abandoned - heard. ...Show more