In My Fathers Den - Maurice Gee
When Celia Inverarity, aged seventeen, is found brutally murdered in a secluded West Auckland park one Sunday afternoon, Paul Prior, her English teacher and mentor, is suspected of being her murderer.
Celia's death and the violence which follows send Prior back to examine the past - a past that is as secret as his father's den in the old poison shed. Eventually the murderer is exposed, but not before a family has been split apart and old wounds revealed.
Sky Dancer - Witi Ihimaera
Stroppy teenager Skylark O'Shea is on holiday with her mother at a town on the coast. But all is not what it seems. What is the threat facing the town and the birds of the forest? Where do the two old charismatic Maori women Hoki and Bella fit in? Skylark becomes embroiled in a prophecy which, much to her dismay, involves her in an extraordinary journey. Soon she is pitting her wits in a race of breathtaking dimension, a dazzling trip through Maori mythology.
The Adventures of Mr Marigold
The Adventures of Mr Marigold, Michael Tobias's 30th book, a modest tale, is nearest in nuance and thinking to the Middle Ages' voyage extraordinaire genre, to utopian realism of the Renaissance, and to 1930s French existentialism.
The Adventures of Mr Marigold is a groundbreaking fiction - it is at once eloquent, complex, wry, disturbing and forever enchanting. It speaks volumes to the 21st century. Ferociously ambitious, it is little wonder that a work, with major chapters set in New Zealand, should be published in a country internationally noted for its "100% Pure" superlatives - New Zealand's great wines and unprecedented scenery; the biggest gorilla, more sheep, bungee jumpers, sail boats and tattoos per capita than any other country; prolific filmmakers, painters, poets and literateurs, explorers, mountain climbers; and, sadly, its high rate of species extinctions.
Tobias, who in addition to his many other books, has also written, directed and/or produced over 100 films. He is an internationally-renowned author and ecologist and has worked in over 50 countries. However, he feels most poetically at home in New Zealand, where his long-time friendship with Craig Potton - many of whose photographs illustrate the novel - has blossomed into this stunning collaboration.
The Adventures of Mr Marigold, set in near contemporary times, concerns the unabashedly exuberant destiny of an unlikely ensemble of characters. Each is afflicted, in dazzling turns, with that incurable and infectious disease known as 'trying to save the world' - something that many of us think about, but too few actually embark upon.