Our New Zealand nonfiction section features books and eBooks about travel, history, law and more. This list updates when we add new titles to our collection.
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A brilliant collection of personal essays from a quietly subversive writer. 'Linda Burgess can make you laugh and break your heart, often in the same sentence. Clear-eyed and wise, these elegant essays are the stories we share to survive.' Diana Wich...
The Geological Evolution of Australia and New Zealand focuses on the stratigraphy of Australia and New Zealand.
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"In this original second collection, Lynley Edmeades turns her attention to ideas of sound, listening and speech. Listening In is full of the verbal play and linguistic experimentation that characterised her first collection, but it also shows the poet...
The true story of two similar shipwreck tragedies off Auckland Island in 1864 that have drastically different outcomes. Award-winning maritime historian Druett tells a gripping cautionary tale about leadership, endurance, human ingenuity, and the tenuous...
"Losing her daughter to the Christchurch earthquake sends Lily back to her childhood village in Northern England to scatter Charlie's ashes. It's a place of ghosts for Lily after the mysterious drowning of a school friend at the old village well - a ...
"Eileen Duggan (1894–1972) was New Zealand’s best known poet while she was writing and publishing – for many years her reputation outside New Zealand exceeded that of any other New Zealand poet – but today her work is largely out of print. Duggan’s...
"In this collection of poems, A. Davida Jane writes with a sharply honed honesty. She writes of sleepless nights, of days spent alone, but also of the reasons to keep fighting--be it poetry, a girl, the sky, or even the promise of one day feeling okay...
"This is the second memoir of a remarkable Maori writer and of the living myths that inspired him at the beginning of his career. Look at him, the young man on the cover. The year is 1972, he is 28, his first book is about to be published, and he has...
"'...Christmas Day 1847 we were in a gale of a wind in the Bay of Biscay, the ship being deeply laden made rather bad weather of it. One of the boats was struck by a heavy sea and smashed and the First Mate had his leg broken. The Cook... told me that...
The Point Chevalier Sailing Club was established in 1919 when a group of enthusiasts acquired a piece of land in the area of Joan St and Harbour View Road. In 1922-23 the club tendered for the defunct Isolation Hospital building and used the timber for...
Membrane roofing systems come in a wide variety of types, each with their own substrate and installation requirements. Achieving a durable membrane roofing system depends heavily on using the correct approach to the design of the substrate supporting...
"Specifying and fixing internal linings demands a high degree of skill to ensure that the finished installation will perform in the environment the internal linings are installed in and meet the end user's expectations. There is a wide range of internal...
At just 12 years of age, Kirsty Salisbury experienced a rare brain malformation that would change her life dramatically. Emergency surgery took her on a Near Death Experience (NDE), and left her paralysed down her left side, with a myriad of questions...
"Chiefs of industry explores Maori entrepreneurial activity in the early colonial period. Focusing on coastal shipping and flourmilling, which were spectacularly successful in the 1840s and 1850s, it shows how quickly and effectively Maori adapted to...
"This beautifully-produced book has been written specifically to empower learning communities to create change in their learning spaces. Combining over-arching design principles with technical advice, and informed by the very latest research on human...
"This definitive history, based on extensive archival research, explodes previous myths from the story of the choir's first 150 years. Its activities are set in the context of the social and artistic fabric of the developing city and country. The Dun...
"David Russell is a raconteur in 'Barry Crump' style. In this memoir of his life, he yarns about his deer stalking exploits in the Kaimanawas and around New Zealand, his pioneering jet boating up the Whanganui River and his record breaking competitive...
A New Zealand squadron leader, flying-boat captain and airliner pilot on a life of aerial adventure. Though rarely seen above the small sheep farming town called Ranfurly in Central Otago in the 1940s, Tom Enright developed a fascination with planes from...
A reader of various articles and content from nineteenth-century Maori newspapers. For easy use and comparison, the Maori and English texts run alongside one another illustrating a range of tone, style and subject. The book contains an introduction...
"A brilliant collection of personal essays from a quietly subversive writer. These pieces read like the freshest of recent novels: clever, restrained and wittily observant. They range across the personal and the observational. There are essays on Lin...
The long poem gives Wedde room to explore these themes in detail, weaving back and forth, accumulating phrases, images and sounds, always with characteristic exuberance and humour. The central 'Hymn to Beauty' is a kind of zany calendar of a search for...
An authoritative demographic history of the New Zealand family from 18402005, this reference is a collection of statistics that interprets the changing role of the family and its members. Using detailed research spanning 165 years, the authors chart the...
"A Carved Cloak for Tahu tells the story of the northern Hawke's Bay hapu of Ngai Tahu Matawhaiti. It is a history that blends old and new, land and people, traditional stories and modern issues." "The carvings of the wharenui Te Poho O Tahu at Iwitea,...
For more than 25 years Practical Beekeeping in New Zealand has been the bible for New Zealand beekeepers. The only comprehensive guide to keeping bees in New Zealand, it provides both amateur and professional beekeepers with details on honey bee mana...
What would move you to ditch your life and take off into the wild for six months? For Melbourne woman Laura Waters, it took the implosion of a toxic relationship and a crippling bout of anxiety. Armed with a compass, a paper map and as much food as she...
"Ancient Māori creation myths, portrayals of larger-than-life heroes and tales of engrossing magical beings have endured through the ages. Some hail back to Hawaiki, some are firmly grounded in New Zealand and its landscape. Through countless generations,...
"Emma Gilkison is thrilled to be pregnant. She and her partner Roy have been trying for a year and finally it's happened. But during a routine twelve-week ultrasound she notices something strange: it looks as though their baby has a marble rolling on...
"A dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker's compulsive hunger to make sense of things"--Publisher information.
"The abduction and murder of teenager Jane Furlong is one of New Zealand's most enduring mysteries. Jane was 17 when she disappeared from Auckland's Karangahape Road in 1993. She was a girlfriend, a daughter, a sex worker, and the mother of a...
"The author was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1904. His father wanted him to become a lawyer. Before starting his legal training, he was given the opportunity to spend some time as a fledgling shepherd on a sheep station called 'Stonyhurst.' He...
A comprehensive handbook to the planets, stars and constellations visible from the southern hemisphere. 6 pages for each month covering January-December 2020. Diagrams drawn for the latitude of southern Australia, but including events visible from New...
"While recovering in hospital from a collapsed lung, Kerryn Levy was unexpectedly visited by a nun who glowed from within. When the nun mysteriously disappeared, Kerryn needed to know who she was. Discovering the nun resembled an Italian saint from t...
"The story of how James Cook charted Aotearoa New Zealand, lavishly produced and richly illustrated. Since it was published by the Admiralty in 1816, James Cook's chart of New Zealand has long been regarded as one of the most extraordinary achievements...
"Elizabeth Coleman's father and eldest brother were killed in the Hyde railway disaster, another brother was injured, and the resources of their small community severely strained. From then on, life for Elizabeth and her family was forever changed."-...
"[This] is a tale of poison and how it was allegedly used in two deaths by New Zealand woman, Jane Smith / Baikie. In the early 1900s Jane was charged with the murders of two male 'friends', using arsenic and strychnine. The book examines the use of...
"When Alan Stevens was a boy in the 1960s, his brother would write him letters describing deer roaming the tops and river flats of Reefton. Without having ever lifted a rifle, Alan caught the hunting bug. Since then, he has spent many happy (and quite...
"The Godzone Dictionary is a concise A - Z of the words and phrases that make our New Zealand language and speech patterns so different. Language expert Max Cryer examines a wide range of words and phrases, shedding light on their origin and offering...
"It's hard to know how to be with a mother who is a mountain. It's hard to feel how to be with a father who is a mountain. It's hard to explain the luminous bond and the bewilderingly stretched distance. Anxious, the mountain-daughter holds what is bright...
"Hayden Paddon was just a boy growing up in Geraldine - in love with racing and dreaming big. Starting with nothing, and wholly determined to beat the odds, he set out on a remarkable 20-year pathway to the World Rally Championship, where he footed it...
"Pip Murdoch's memoir is a raw and honest account of 'getting knocked up' and placing her first-born up for adoption in New Zealand during the narrow, judgmental sixties and seventies. Pip reveals the challenging and agonising process of having to move...
Airline pilot, Everest mountaineer, adventurer and extreme marathon competitor Mike Allsop is an ordinary family man proving that anybody can accomplish extraordinary things. Mike Allsop grew up in a single parent home in Auckland. Life wasn't always...
The All Blacks have had a brilliant run of brothers in the last decade, with the Barretts, Whitelocks, Saveas and Franks, but there have also been many more standouts throughout New Zealand rugby history like the Meads, Whettons, Gears, Bachops and B...
New poetry by Ockham 2018 longlistee, Tom Weston.
'Disaster man' Lloyd Homer photographed events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and landslides around New Zealand for over 35 years. This book features a selection of spectacular colour aerial photographs, including high-altitude panoramas, from...
"The war story of a young Kiwi sailor with a bird's eye view of the 'Big Show' -- D Day 1944'--Cover.
"A hilarious tale of optimism and positivity in the face of one of life's greatest challenges, by a self-proclaimed Genetically Modified Optimist. With special contributions from Michele A'Court, Willy de Wit, Paul Ego, Jon Bridges, Wade Jackson, Jer...
"Carol White's first teaching job was to lay the groundwork for the rest of her career - it was at the liberal and multicultural Wellington Technical College (later Wellington High). She went on to teach at Kawerau and Northcote Colleges before landing...
Includes substantial selections from the poetry of Carolyn DeCarlo, Sophie van Waardenberg and Rebecca Hawkes. In poems about limpets and mangroves, beauty and hunger, `love, actually' and earthquake preparedness, the poets' work stands out for its f...
"Denis Glover wrote New Zealand's most famous poem, yet his work has fallen in and out of print over the years. First published in 1995, Bill Manhire's selection is based on Glover's own 1981 Selected Poems, and includes 'The Magpies' along with a wide...
A Good Joke tells the story of New Zealand's only convicted art forger, Karl Fedor Sim (aka Carl Fedor Goldie) and his associates; and provides an insight into the shady side of art dealing and the incompetent side of art expertise in New Zealand, Au...
There's an astounding number of brothers playing in top level rugby in New Zealand. How is this so? What's it like for the siblings: do they compete with each other or do they support each other? Is there a particular climate in some families that en...
What happens when an accomplished adventurer becomes a father? Does he continue his solo adventures? Is there a way of having it all, family time plus adventures?
"A history of the New Zealand trucking industry, dating back to the early 20th century. Bill spoke to many people during his Talking Trucks TV series and this book looks at some of our trucking history as told by the people who remember it."--Publish...
The Shearers is an account of the men and women, past and present, who have committed their life to shearing and farming in New Zealand. Author Ruth Entwistle Low travelled throughout the country interviewing those involved in the industry- shearing....
"... on the application for Aotea/Great Barrier Island to become the only island in the world with International Dark Sky Sanctuary status..."--Publisher's description.
"A new poetry collection that takes readers among 'the unsilent women', from Hipparchia to J. K. Rowling. 'Women who speak have always been monstrous. That twisty sphinx, those tempting sirens; better plug your ears with wax, boys. 'Where are the fem...
This is a collection of stories from 25 New Zealand young people, with an introduction by youth health specialist Dr Sue Bagshaw, and a poem (to a young patient) and commentary by poet and Youth Clinic GP, Dr Glenn Colquhoun. All the young people have...
Te hā tangata - the breath of the people - is a Human Library project on Homelessness. This initiative aimed to elevate their voices and challenge the stereotypes and stigma surrounding homelessness. This extraordinary book documents the project's journey...
"Garage Project-The Art of Beer is a one-of-a-kind book celebrating the art, the creativity and - of course - the craft of the world's most experimental brewery, New Zealand's own Garage Project. Since its earliest days in Wellington's Aro Valley, Ga...
"Richard Emerson is one of our pre-eminent brewers, a trailblazer who is often lauded as the godfather of craft beer in New Zealand. Born profoundly deaf in 1960s Dunedin, Emerson triumphed against all odds to launch Emerson's Brewery in 1992. He went...
Catalogue accompanies exhibition 'Guy Ngan: Habitation' held at The Dowse Art Museum, 18 May – 15 September 2019, curated by Sian van Dyk, and 'Guy Ngan: Either Possible or Necessary' at Artspace Aotearoa, 7 June – 17 August 2019, curated by Remco de...
"In 2008 Graham Clayton published Last Stand in Singapore: The Story of 488 Squadron RNZAF. After the fall of Singapore, the squadron was disbanded, then subsequently reformed in the UK in June 1942 as an RAF unit, 488 (New Zealand) Squadron. Its role...
"In the spring of 2015 Paula Green walked Queen Charlotte Track, her poets eye taking in the beauty of her surroundings and the history of the land. Early on the final day she slipped and injured herself, and had to walk out for nine hours on her broken...
The story that bonds Ernest Rutherford and Marcus Oliphant is as extraordinary as it is unlikely. They were kindred souls, schooled and steeped in the furthest frontiers of Britain's empire, whose restless intellect and tireless conviction fused in t...
New Zealand women have published poetry for over 150 years. In this landmark book, poet and anthologist Paula Green celebrates and makes connections between 201 of them, from emerging poets and those who are household names to those who have slipped ...
A ground-breaking and original collection that celebrates Australia and New Zealand's leading performance poets, direct from stage to page. Over the past decade, Spoken Word has established itself as a central part of contemporary Australian & New Ze...
"In the years since writing his second book, The Trout Bohemia, Derek Grzelewski has returned to guiding, sharing his passion and secrets for fly fishing with enthusiastic anglers from around the world. But his life is about to change when he is contacted...
"This hand-picked selection of Dylan Horrocks' short comics from 1986-2012 introduces a lively menagerie of melancholy cartoonists, mysterious men in top hats, levitating women and even a superhero or two. Painstakingly unearthed from crumbling photo...
Girl from Glendene is the story of a young girl growing up in West Auckland in the 1970’s-1980’s era. Glendene was a relatively new sub-division where many young families including English emigrants settled at this time. There are fun tales of frien...
Historical Frictions explores the role of the courts and of various types of commissions in mediating and reinventing historical narratives of colonisation. Author Michael Belgrave shows how the courts became from 1840 places where different narratives...
Four quite separate periods or episodes in Edmond's life are linked by a number of themes and are often the excuse for discussions of historical figures, typically on society's margins, or reflections on the nature of art and its relation to personal...
Though French's voice and interests are familiar, this book pushes into new territory. The title suggests the unknown and uncultivated, the world outdoors, the distant past, the hidden power of passion, the bush and the ocean: all these aspects of the...
In the first part of Catullus for Children, Anna Jackson adapts some of Catullus's famous verse to the playground, sharply noting the obsessions and the preoccupations of her children in poems with titles like 'War' and 'Party'. 'The Treehouse' is a ...
Traditional Songs of the Maori is the classic collection of Maori waiata. These songs in many different styles embody the fundamental values of traditional Maori culture and form a vital part of marae ceremonial. Most common song types are represente...
These recordings have been of great importance in revitalising Maori music in many tribal areas and have preserved the songs and the voices of many great kaumatua. McLean travelled throughout New Zealand, often in primitive conditions, showing extrao...
By bringing together the views of employers, unions and academics, the wholly new edition of Employment Relationships provides an unrivalled introduction to current trends and issues in New Zealand employment relations. Ten years after the passage of...
Treasury is the official commissioned history of our most important department of state, founded with the nation in 1840. It is a rich and textured story: it shows the perennial jousting of officials with ministers, the rise and fall of the accountants...
The Plunket Society, founded in 1907, has been heralded as New Zealand's most successful and famous voluntary organisation. Run by women for women, it played a vital role in the care of mothers and babies for most of the twentieth century, becoming a...
Whetu Moana is the first anthology of contemporary Polynesian poetry in English edited by Polynesians. It collects poems written over the last twenty years from more than 60 poets in Aotearoa, Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue and Rotuma. ...
"Peat starts out as Lynn Jenner's study of the Kapiti Expressway, built between 2013 and 2017 and passing, at its nearest point, about a kilometre from her own house. She decides to create a kind of archive of the construction of this so-called Road ...
"On an unlikely pilgrimage, a cycling tour to find a poet's unmarked crib, Jane Simpson discovers a landscape at once less Romantic, and more lyrical than the 'unspoilt Nature' seen by tourists at scenic spots. Unexpected turns draw the reader into the...
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