New Zealand Books : NZ Biography

"It's now a year exactly since my urologist told me I had an aggressive cancer that was incurable. I was rushed into hospital and thus began a year of chemotherapy, radiation and all the ups and downs of a sickness that arrived in my life with the noise and terror of an old fashioned train. During that time I wrote about my experience on my iphone, on Facebook, and I received in return an explosion of aroha on that most cynical of mediums - the internet. There was advice, commentary, encouragement, accompaniment. The posts became the basis for Hello Darkness.

I made something out of nothing - if near-death experiences can be said to be nothing. I learnt a lot. I am a different person to who I was then. And so a year passes and today I am grateful to be in good health. I no longer walk with a stick. I am gardening at the moment. The terrible pain of my last radiation vanishes in a glow of anticipation. So what is Hello Darkness exactly? It's really my record of a remarkable year in which I found I had incurable prostate cancer that had metastised in my bones. I wanted my posts to express the minutest aspect of what I was feeling, seeing, experiencing.

I am - for better or worse - ruthlessly observant. There were highs, and lows. I felt remorse for some things I had done in life as I looked backwards. But I felt this strange, almost bewildering pleasure in being alive. I had this crazy optimism that kept me going each morning. The fact is I felt lucky to be alive. I think when you state a general truth, it had a startling effect. We live in such a f*cked-up world, truth is like a prism falling into a vat full of crap and that single drop changes what it comes into contact with and things become crystal clear.

Steve Braunias at The Spinoff posted my FB writings. The posts went viral. Then Hello Darkness won the 2018 Media Voyager Award for best personal essay. "Wry, acute and confessional, but most of all wise." Was I wise? All I was doing was trying to tell my truth.

Hello Darkness is full of colour photos and is my lively letter to the future, written under the shade of death but always grasping towards what's essential, true, real. That's what this book is: my report on experience, my personal diary made public. My survival guide. My truth.

ISBN: 9780473451622
Publication date: 01/03/2019
Price: $39.99
Author: Wells, Peter
Format: Paperback

Stand-up comedian Michele A'Court rekindles the passion, with a brilliant collection of 'How We Met' stories. How We Met is based on a collection of 'How We Met' stories - those lovely stories couples love to tell (and we all love to hear) about how they got together. The author's theory: that these stories of how couples meet - the romantic, absurd, serendipitous, convoluted, scandalous, breath-taking moments of connection - help to weave their lives together. Partly as 'proof' that they were meant to begin this couple-journey, and also because in each retelling they go back to those first falling-in-love feelings and rekindle the passion.The theory is based on a hunch, which itself is based on nothingmore than the author's observations of watching couples as they talk. Michele then tests her thesis out on a neuroscientist and a psychologist, and by the end of the book, has some useful things to say not only about how great love starts,but how it stays great.

ISBN: 9781775540939
Publication date: 19/03/2018
Price: $35.00
Author: A'Court, Michele
Format: Trade Paperback

An extraordinary memoir about family, love, belief, redemption and the power of forgiveness

Stan Walker is one of the finest singers to emerge from Australia and New Zealand Aotearoa in a generation. When Stan won Australian Idol in 2009, he was thrown head-first into the deep end of the music industry. What followed were some of the highest highs, and the lowest of lows. Few knew about the darkness in Stan's past - the violent upbringing, the sexual abuse and the struggle to be more than just a survivor.

Impossible is a personal reflection on life growing up in a family where love and violence were horribly entwined. It's a story about forgiveness and a journey to redemption. It's a tale of a young Maori boy from Tauranga finding his place on the world stage while never forgetting who he is and where he came from.

Stan's is a story of survival against impossible odds. Abuse and addiction, hardship and excess, cancer and discrimination - Stan tells it all with startling honesty and insight, and with a wonderful sense of warmth and hope. It's an important and un-putdownable read.

ISBN: 9781775541479
Publication date: 07/10/2020
Price: $39.99
Author: Walker, Stan
Format: Trade Paperback

Nigel Latta is a forensic psychologist. He spends his working life with the sort of people most of us would prefer to pretend didn't exist. In this new edition of his ground-breaking book, which is the inspiration for the TVNZ series Beyond the Darklands, Nigel takes us inside the minds of some of the most chilling characters to walk our streets. As writer and presenter of Beyond the Darklands, Nigel has updated his book to include new material on significant recent cases since it was last released in 2005. Now a respected media commentator and recognised expert in sexual abuse, sexual crimes and for his work with severely disturbed children and young people, Nigel is a regular columnist with Littlies Magazine and has a parenting slot on National Radio. The television series Beyond The Darklands will be screening post July 2007 and will be marketed and publicised by TVNZ as a major local documentary series, further increasing Nigel's profile.

ISBN: 9781869506698
Publication date: 14/09/2007
Price: $30.99
Author: Latta, Nigel
Format: Paperback