New Zealand Fiction

Jane Harper's Force of Nature meets the wild and atmospheric setting of The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah in this twisty, stay-up-all-night thriller about family, love, and loyalty, and the fight for survival in the most beautiful but dangerous New Zealand wilderness. On the remote West Coast of the South Island, vast forests stretch out between mountain ranges and rugged...

A powerful literary debut from an astonishing new Kiwi voice, focusing on the Indo-Fijian indenture system and how it affected generations across the Pacific.Rajasthan 1888: Avani Rathod, a nomad of the Banjara community, is summoned to teach a blue-eyed colonial officer the trees of her region, but instead is misled into indenture to the sugarcane plantations of Fiji. While on...

The latest novel from Charlotte Grimshaw, best-selling author of The Mirror Book. A woman haunted by family denial, secrets and a shadowy figure . . . While her brother Cedric spirals into addiction, Alice Lidell finds herself confronted not only by his decline, but by memories of the past. From their chaotic Auckland childhood to her present day life, Alice...

An always hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking new novel from the publishers of Marian Keyes and Dolly Alderton. Seed is raw, hilarious and so lifelike I kept forgetting I wasn't reading about real people. I felt every frustration, every high and every low as if these women were my friends. A heartfelt, funny, unforgettable read. I loved it. - Rachael Johns Four...

Rita considered the dead. Shut her eyes. Rolled their names around her brain. Stacked each person in order like folded laundry, warm and crisp from the sun. She wondered how her name would sound amongst them. In the rural reaches of Auckland, the women of the eclectic Gordon family gather for Christmas. They may push each other's buttons, but know...

With an expert eye for light and shadow, Shapiro traces the contours of sorrow, regret, and the luminous moments of bliss we hold close. Poignant, redemptive, electrifying. - Catherine Chidgey After the death of their young daughter, Penny Whittaker and Adam Riggs are struggling. Penny's lifelong dream of becoming a successful artist has stalled, and Riggs, battling an addiction to...

1942 in Wellington, and the war has never felt closer. Lorna's older brothers are overseas fighting for their lives, and as the war in the Pacific rages on, 20,000 American troops are sent to keep New Zealand safe. Few are happy about it—the locals want their own boys back, and the Americans find their post at the end of the...

See How They Fall by Rachel Paris is a gripping thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The novel masterfully weaves together suspense, intrigue, and unexpected twists, creating a story that is impossible to put down. In the quiet town of Ashford, secrets begin to unravel when a mysterious stranger arrives. With each turn of the...

When Grace inherits her late father's beloved restaurant in Maiden's Cove, it feels like a lifeline. Escaping her controlling husband, she returns to her enchanting childhood hometown with her young daughter. In the magical surrounds of Maiden's Cove, where rumours of mermaids abound, Grace reconnects with her best friend Isla. Grace and Isla were inseparable until the summer that tore...

From the bestselling author of Turncoat comes a powerful new novel. As the pressure of fatherhood tightens its grip, sleepless nights and rising tensions begin to erode Hepa's sense of control. When the line between fear and reality begins to blur, can he be trusted with his own son? Hepa hasn't slept properly in four months. His newborn son, Wi,...

A twisting, richly atmospheric crime novel set within the gothic splendour of St Paul's Cathedral in Dunedin.When organist Sybil Marsden plunges from the cathedral's loft to the stone floor below, her death is ruled a tragic accident. Only Ivo Hart - a lowly police administrator more comfortable with filing systems than people - senses something amiss. Armed with a single,...

If you and I are in the same ='entertainment venue' for this ='stand-up comedy special' and I am ='my body' and you are ='my audience' I run to you and shout your name into the dark, in the hope you are there. Yes, you='dear reader'='attentive listener'. This is a story about the end days of a tech company and its...

A ghost moves into a woman's apartment and begins to cough up teeth. A town keeps building as the sea prepares to take it back. A daughter inherits hunger like an heirloom. In this collection of short stories set along a shifting coastline, the boundaries between body and memory, human and nonhuman, landscape and ocean begin to slip and strain....

As a rumour spreads about a teacher sleeping with a student, a group of teenage girls are jolted into new awareness of their own vertiginous sexuality. Ripples move outward in unexpected directions: the saxophone teacher directs the girls in rehearsing their desires, and the local drama school adapts the scandal for a show. Every action is a performance, and every...

A child disappears in broad daylight—and no one sees a thing. Three-year-old Oliver, known as Apple Man, vanishes from a remote car park while his young father, Scott, carries fishing gear down to the beach. When he returns, the car is empty. His son has vanished without a trace. Apple Man's mother, Fae, gets the call that shatters her life....

Tim Corballis’s first novel since Our Future Is in the Air  (2017), NOVA is an inventive, genre-defying, funny novel that imagines a future in which people and their worlds talk to each other.Set on NOVA, a self-contained world launched into deep time, the story unfolds through conversations between Kalla, a former councillor uneasy with consensus and ceremony, and System, the voice of all NOVA’s...

'We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.' The separating seas in these fourteen beautiful and thought-provoking stories are variously wide, wild and deadly. They segregate islands that are both physical and metaphorical, and isolate the disparate characters that inhabit them. And yet, beneath the surface of each uniquely individual tale lies...

A melting glacier gives up its secrets, a man is murdered in his ritzy beachside home, and the Christchurch detectives get to work. Two mysteries, two separate investigations... or are they? A handful of Christchurch rich listers start eyeing their assets and shaking in their Jimmy Choos, but the police are cold on the trail until once again Detective Jack...

It’s the 1990s, and Paper Husbands are finally making headway – they’ve got a song on high rotation on student radio and have been given the opportunity of a lifetime to open for UK legends, Shimmer. The disappearance of frontman Pete shatters those plans, leaving the rest of the band to lead decidedly non-rock ’n’ roll lives in the years...

A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...

Nate, a grieving widower, is determined to honour his late wife and find a way to have the child they were desperate to raise together. After various attempts to identify a suitable surrogate come to nothing, Nate is compelled to try something radical.He travels to London to take part in a groundbreaking medical trial. As things progress, he becomes caught...

One busy afternoon in her studio, Auckland fashion designer Deirdre Smythe receives a phone call from the police. The remains of a mountaineer, killed 30 years earlier in a fall on Mount Tasman, have been discovered on a glacier in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. The body could be that of a ski-mountaineering instructor who was Dee’s one-time lover. While coping...

Enter the realm of the Astromancer... In this award-winning illustrated series for younger fans of Percy Jackson, Māori myths and monsters come to life! Join the Astromancer and her apprentices on a time travel adventure to Hawaiki and meet Ruapakanga and his albatross warriors! 'An epic fantasy quest' - Magpies 'Chock full of danger, heroes, old wisdom and new blood'...

Malachite is the start of a dark academia romantasy series that gives you enemies-to-lovers, slow-burn, elemental powers, forced proximity, found family and the perfect amount of spice...     Malachite. Opal. Agate.   Three stones, three powers, three magical units.   Choose your unit ... and hope that it chooses you back.     Arianell Nocthare has been waiting her...

A new novel from the best-selling author of The Space Between. Two worlds, two women, one story . . . In 1793, eighteen-year-old Catherine is sentenced to transportation on the Tempest, a convict ship bound for New South Wales. Trapped below deck with scores of women, she endures storms, brutality and loss, while dreaming of freedom on the shores of...

Another case to solve for the number-one bestselling Bookshop Detectives. When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we'd made a terrible mistake. The one thing they didn't warn us about was the murders . . . The Bookshop Detectives are on the case! In this rollicking new adventure, Garth and Eloise (and Stevie) must sniff out a prolific...

Other People's Bodies is a tender exploration of the complex boundaries between love, desire, trust, and control, and the healing power of female friendship. Megan Nicol Reed's sophomore novel is thought-provoking, insightful, and full of heart. - Rachel Paris, See How They Fall When five very different women join a gym run by the magnetic Lars and his elusive wife...

At the start of the war, eight-year-old Max Bernot lives with his sister and parents in Lauterbach, Saarland, a narrow strip of territory between the French and German defence lines. His German father, Anton, and his French mother, Marguerite, do their best to shield Max and his sister, Anna, from Nazi violence. However, in late 1944, their beloved godfather is...

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 Longlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction Named one of the best NZ books of 2024 by The Spinoff and Newsroom In the Bookety Book Books Reader's Choice Top 10 'I couldn't put it down - a moving, heartbreaking (and repairing) family drama. The...

The Fast and the Furious meets Bridgerton in this delightfully fun Regency romp from debut New Zealand author R.M. Caldwell. Lucy Elliott, the young neurodivergent daughter of wealthy socialites, sneaks out every full moon to watch the illicit Night Races, where class doesn't matter—only the fastest carriage does. When she finds out that the newest suitor in town, Captain James...

I am the wish child, the future cast in water.Germany, 1939. Two children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power. Sieglinde lives in middle-class Berlin, where her father censors books, cutting out forbidden words like ‘love’ and ‘mercy’. Erich tends beehives in the countryside near Leipzig, under the shadow of questions no one will answer.Watching...

Movement One in The Starlight Symphony series Opposing forces have clashed, alliances have been tested, and the genesis of many a destiny is thrown into the arena of the world of Astralheim. Disaster has struck for Marcus and Theresa, even as they struggle to become new students at the luminary Amberforth Arcane Academy. Together with their unlikely companion Ronin, they...

Movement One in The Starlight Symphony series Many people in this world achieve their Kindling by the time they are sixteen. It is an astonishing phenomenon where a human conjures magic for the very first time in their lives. But there are those who struggle, people who are late to their Kindling. People like Marcus, who has only just turned...

A perfect summer read from bestselling author Erin Palmisano, set in a lush vineyard in Argentina and featuring her trademark warmth and romance. A secret inheritance. A lost vineyard. A love story that refused to fade. Victoria Bishop always knew she was adopted - but just as she is shattered by the news that her fiancé is leaving her, a...

The perfect escapist beach read from No. 1 bestselling author Erin Palmisano, set in a magical seaside village in the sultry Chesapeake Bay. When Grace inherits her late father's beloved restaurant in Maiden's Cove, it feels like a lifeline. Escaping her controlling husband, she returns to her enchanting childhood hometown with her young daughter. In the magical surrounds of Maiden's...

The page-turning third novel featuring intrepid heroine Tatty Crowe and the fascinating world of Sydney's Victorian funeral business, from bestselling historical fiction author Deborah Challinor. Sometimes death is just the beginning ... Late 1872. When twenty-five-year-old Sydney undertaker Tatiana Crowe travels to Auckland to embalm the body of Evan Hunter's father, events go horribly wrong, leaving Tatty stricken. Back at...

Marco is stressed. On one hand, he’s a cook in a progressive city bar, a married father of three, doing all he can to raise his boys right. On the other (slightly burnt) hand, his life is chaos. Every day seems full of cruel and unusual obstacles, from temperamental arancini balls to a car breakdown at the worst possible time....

In a world fractured by geopolitical tremors, Lines of Conscience plunges readers into the raw, moral heartbeat of the conflict in Ukraine. This is not merely a chronicle of war, but an intimate exploration of the impossible choices forced upon ordinary individuals when survival becomes a moral battleground.The narrative follows the interlocking lives of those caught in the crossfire: Taras,...

Perfect Family. Perfect Weekend. Perfect Crime. Stay up all night with this twisting thriller... perfect for fans of Lucy Foley, Liane Moriarty, and Ali Lowe. Turner Corp, a luxury goods empire, has been rocked by the death of its founder. As his three sons gather at the family's opulent estate for a long weekend, tensions rise when an illegitimate heir...

We follow the story of Tawa, an inquisitive teenage boy. With a time-travelling shed located in his garden, Tawa takes a trip through time visiting ancient days, where he meets Mauwhare and his grandmother. Throughout the story, Tawa meets ancestors and paramount chiefs and soon realises there might be more to his grandmother and Mauwhare than meets the eye. Packed...

Folly exists because good literature should turn you on a little. Intellectually, emotionally – sometimes viscerally. We’re not here to bore you. We’re here to dazzle you, disturb you, make you snort into your coffee and send screenshots to friends with a ‘WTF’ caption. This third annual issue is culturally charged with works from emerging and established voices across Aotearoa...

Sam Mahon, Christchurch artist, activist, conservationist, writer, and subversive known for his sculpture of Hon Nick Smith nude and squatting over a glass of water. Mahon is sure to cause controversy with this wonderfully written, yet dangerously close to reality fiction set within the real world of the Canterbury art scene in the year of the earthquake. The story centres...

What would you sacrifice for your family? A plague ravages the Fringe, but a chance encounter with orcs from Bogan Island gives Boele hope for a cure. With his lad, Willem, a dodgy crew, and a huge pair of stones, he sets off on a mission to once again unite the humans with the horde. Or he could screw up...

There are two victims, one message, and a truth that has been buried since the war. At the beginning of summer, a young Lotto millionaire is found dead in the clay pit of a renowned pottery retreat. The body is laid out in the shape of an X, with markings in the earth that resemble an angel—deliberate, unsettling, and inexplicable....

All Her Lives follows women across generations as they resist, nurture, and transform. These are lives shaped by love and politics, motherhood and memory, constraint and defiance. From girls raised in the garden of Plunket founder Truby King, to a queer university student at a mid-2000s Berlin rave, to a mother facing the cost of her son's climate rebellion, the...

In the dark, uncanny world of Dead Ends, our ghosts live alongside us, break-ups come with a grisly cost, and there really are monsters under the bed. Laura Borrowdale’s sophomore collection is full of the horrors of domestic banality, parenting, relationships, and womanhood. With deft and exacting prose, Borrowdale’s stories reflect our own lives back at us told slant, revealing...

Hooked Up

You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind. Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker's childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her. After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory,...

Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro tells the story of Mickey Bloom: five-foot tall, dyslexic, and bullied at school. Mickey knows she's nothing special. Until one day, she discovers running. Mickey's new-found talent makes her realise she's everything she thought she wasn't—powerful, strong, and special. But her success comes at a cost, and the relentless training and...

Marketing executive Alison Morris bets her reputation on a project to sell empathy in a perfume bottle. Her husband, Jim, is inspired to try a similar thing in a game he's developing - sinking all their money into EmPath, where people progress by learning to understand one another without direct communication. All at once Alison's fragrance develops dangerous effects and...

In Pastoral Care, Auckland writer John Prins gives us nine clear-eyed, witty and beautifully written stories centred on daily life in twenty-first-century Aotearoa New Zealand. On the shores of Lake Pukaki; in kitchens, bedrooms and Lego-strewn living rooms; at school events; walking the dog, pushing a buggy, or stuck in traffic with a child kicking the back of the driver’s...

'There's no better storyteller in the thriller game than Pomare' HERALD SUN 'Shocking, twisty and impossible to put down' CHRISTIAN WHITE 'Pomare's gift for complex plots and drum-tight tension shines' BENJAMIN STEVENSON 'A raging river of twists and turns' WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN 'Flawlessly plotted . . . breathless suspense' ANNA DOWNES The violent slaughter of the Primrose family while they slept...

Tall tales and fishing lore from Kiwi fishing personality Cliff Barnes. As he looks back over his adventurous life, Cliff Barnes muses that he must have used up eight of his nine lives while fishing along the Northland coast but, on a recount, concedes he has used up the lot. Among his many scrapes with death was the time his...

A sweeping, captivating WWII story of enduring love and extraordinary bravery from the No. 1 bestselling author of The Girl from London. In 1942, a group of young women arrive in Cairo, Egypt. The Tuis, named after the beautiful New Zealand songbird, are the first women from their country to serve overseas. They are to provide respite and a touch...

Colonial survivor, farmer's wife and horse whisperer Kitty Kirk is the central figure in this historical novel that looks at her colourful life. She lived from 1855 to 1930 during the turbulent period of the goldfield's history in Central Otago.

Set in this Alexandra Gold Rush A murder, a mystery illness, a fire at the Chinese boarding house, a shared kiss and a dark family secret with the powerto destroy everything Ginny thought she knew " A heartbreaking tale of two immigrants from different cultures falling in love in a time steeped in racism, prejudice and judgement.

From famine-ravaged Ireland to the glittering goldfields of Australia and New Zealand comes the captivating true story of Julia Eichardt, a woman who defied every hardship life placed before her. Born into poverty and shaped by loss, Julia's fierce determination and unbreakable spirit propel her on an extraordinary journey. In the rugged chaos of the gold rush era, Julia courageously...

Short, short stories, sometimes known as flash fiction or microfictions, are one of the trickiest forms to write. Create a resonant world in fewer than 300 words? Not so easy! In this collection of 100 stories, a range of New Zealand writers, both well known and emerging, deliver emotionally charged stories that punch well above their weight and length. And...

Fangs for Nothing is a cosy paranormal romance featuring a grumpy vampire and a sunshine human, a meddling book club, a compelling murder mystery – and endless cups of tea. Lord Alaric Valerian has a problem. His mother is visiting his castle for the first time, but she doesn’t know that Alaric has filled every room with centuries of his...

When the bones of a mother and her child, wrapped in a Shetland lace shawl, are dug up from a forgotten graveyard, two worlds collide. Ariel is rural tough, raised in the defiant republic that is Whangamomona. When her childhood nemesis is found decapitated in a sports car beneath the bull bars of Ariel's ute, her world implodes. She has...

In the cold Wellington winter, Omar’s grades are slipping, his mum is unwell, and his best friend is growing distant. Two decades earlier in Mogadishu, Asha and Yasser are falling in love and starting to build a life together while a burgeoning war threatens to take it away. Before the Winter Ends explores the relationship between mother and son across...

In a sinisterly skewed version of England in 1979, thirteen-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a New Forest home, part of the government’s Sycamore Scheme. Each day the boys must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. Children who survive are allowed to move...

Best-selling author Dominic Hoey's much-anticipated third novel. It's 1985 and Obi is on the cusp of teenagehood, after a childhood marked by poverty, dysfunctional family dynamics, (dis)organised crime, and street violence. His father is delusional, his mother is dying, the Rainbow Warrior is bombed, and it's time for Obi to grow up and get out of the arcade. When he...

Te Motu Kairangi Miramar Peninsula, Wellington 1912. Doctor Matti Loverock spends her days and nights bringing babies into the world, which means her daughters—seven-year-old triplets Ada, Oona and Hanna—have grown up at Wonderland, the once-thriving amusement park owned by their father, Charlie. Then a grieving woman arrives to stay from the other side of the world, in pain and incognito,...

Tenacious Māori investigator Hana Westerman returns in this stunning new thriller from the award-winning author of Better the Blood. In the depths of the bleak New Zealand winter comes the rising of Matariki – a sacred constellation in Māori culture, heralding a time of new beginnings. For former Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman, life is good: her work in her...

Three will unite to awaken him. The reader will know the intentions. The scion will bear the mark. The prophecy is the lifeblood of the child. Their death will be one. A world built on perfection. A warlord whose return could shatter it all. Four lives bound. For six centuries, the utopia of Elusis has thrived—a society of supernatural Gifts,...

In a future world, supplies of drinkable water are depleted, except for a few hydrospheres. A huge gulf grows between the water-rich few with watercards and the water-poor scavvos. Alex is a mnemopath, a memory machine for a senior manager in water export trading, feeding facts into her boss’s earpiece and eavesdropping. Her job isn’t noble, but she needed the...

The second captivating novel featuring intrepid heroine Tatty Crowe and the fascinating world of Sydney's Victorian funeral business, from bestselling historical fiction author Deborah Challinor. Sydney, 1871. Twenty-five-year-old widow Tatty Crowe is the owner of a busy undertaking firm, Crowe Funerals. Life and business are good until Tatty notices how many women are dying after unlawful abortions. After a terrible...

A tsunami has devastated a small Kapiti Coast community. The government mandates managed retreat—a decision manipulated by Adrian Stokes, a powerful businessman with an agenda of his own. A resourceful and colourful collection of villagers defy the order to retreat. They persuade reclusive Lorna, blind Toddy and young, traumatised Eru to join them as their properties are key to Stokes's...

Two small-town booksellers (and their cowardly dog) solve a decades-old murder mystery in this witty debut novel, full of literary clues, sparkling dialogue, and comedic insights into the world of bookshops. "When we opened Sherlock Tomes, people warned us that we'd made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we'd never compete...

A True NZ Story Join Danny Fisher, his granddaughter Pru, and his dog Kiwi as they take you back in time... To 1919, when our national emblem—the KIWI—was carved into the chalky slopes of Beacon Hill, above Sling Camp in Southern England by NZ soldiers at the end of WW1. Discover how our Kiwi was saved from extinction by Danny...

The Girl from Sarajevo Young and self-assured immigrant Katia will do anything to become a writer. When she encounters her neighbour, an aging novelist from the old country, she embarks on an audacious plan to represent Dragan’s new novel as her own. Weaponising her sexuality, she enters into a cynical, twisted affair with the elder wordsmith. But Dragan holds a...

Three Dogs, Two Murders, and a Cat by Rodney Strong Nicolette Briggs doesn't do humans. As Wellington's premier, and possibly only, animal detective, Nicolette mostly investigates missing pets and cases of animal cruelty. So when her latest client asks her to investigate a case of a poisoned cat, it seems right up her alley. Until a body shows up, then...

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF BETTER THE BLOOD COMES ANOTHER CASE FOR NEW ZEALAND'S BEST INVESTIGATOR, HANA WESTERMAN. ‘Another cracking, page-turning journey into another culture’ VAL McDERMID Two murders. Two decades apart.One chance to get justice. Hana Westerman has left Auckland and her career as a detective behind her. Settled in a quiet coastal town, all she wants is a...

Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine's sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes...

Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is...