Writer: Paddy Richardson.

By The Green Of The Spring is the gripping story of lives changed forever by war, the hurts suffered, the losses borne, and the secrets kept, yet it is also the story of the capacity of the human spirit to endure, to hope and to love.

August 2022 release

Extract from: Keep In A Cool Place: The first winter at Vanda Station, Antarctica by Allen J. Riordan and Simon Cutfield (Canterbury University Press)

‘They say failure is a good teacher; if so I was learning at an astounding rate.’

August 2022 release

Extract from: Should We Fall To Ruin by Harrison Christian (Ultimo Press - a division of Hardie Grant)

New Guinea, 1942: the untold true story of a remote garrison and their battle against extraordinary odds.

August 2022 release

Author: Jennifer Ashton. Reviewer: Dionne Christian.

Thief, Convict, Pirate, Wife: The Many Histories of Charlotte Badger is historian Jennifer Ashton’s determined attempt to unravel the true story behind a fantastical myth.

July 2022 release

Extract: Touring Edwardian New Zealand by Paul Moon (Bateman Books Ltd)

In 1902, the travel agency Thomas Cook published a guide for tourists seeking to explore the wilds of Aotearoa. This remarkable volume, New Zealand as a Tourist and Health Resort, provides a rare insight into this country’s Edwardian past, the burgeoning mass-market tourism industry and the exotification of Aotearoa and its original inhabitants, Māori.

June 2022 release

Interview: Designer Ross Murray and historian Paul Moon talk about the cover for Touring Edwardian New Zealand (Bateman Books Ltd)

June 2022 release

Authors: Ian Barton and Neville Ritchie. Reviewer: David Gadd.

With its detailed research, clarity of writing and richness of illustrations, A History of the Queen’s Redoubt and the Invasion of the Waikato sets the gold standard for how local history should be presented.

June 2022 release

Author: Rowan Light. Reviewer: David Littlewood.

Anzac Nations: The Legacy of Gallipoli in New Zealand and Australia is a fascinating and timely book.

March 2022 release

Author: Renee Hollis. Reviewer: David Christian.

If you’re hoping for a short read before a good night’s sleep, I cannot recommend Voice of World War II: New Zealanders Share Their Stories because once you open it, it will be hours before you can close it. Whether you choose to just dip into it or start a continuous read, it will captivate you.

November 2021 release

Author: Anthony Phelps. Reviewer: Michael Burgess.

Even knowing the context, the images in September 12 – The third test and final protest of the 1981 Springbok Tour

November 2021 release

Author: Monica Tempian. Reviewer: Roger Hall.

Monica Tempian’s Maria Dronke: Glimpses of an Acting Life is a meticulous tribute to a significant but mostly forgotten figure from our theatre history.

November 2021 release

Author: Rebecca Rice and Matariki Williams. Reviewer: Peter Simpson.

Such reminders of the materiality and historicity of the paintings as objects adds another dimension to the psychological, aesthetic and historical connotations of the portraits themselves …

October 2021 release

Editors: Michael Keith and Chris Szekely. Reviewer: Ash Damini.

Te Kupenga: 101 Stories of Aotearoa from the Turnbull will provide precious education for New Zealanders because history is not simply about recalling events, figures and dates but about using what we know to understand our current standings and truths.

November 2021 release

Author: Nicola McCloy. Photographer: Jane King. Reviewer: Sarah Ell.

Nicola McCloy and Jane King capture buildings which were lived, loved, worked and died in, not stuffy museum-pieces or forgotten ruins. Through these seemingly prosaic buildings we can connect with a heritage which goes beyond the grand and lauded and tells the engrossing stories of ordinary Kiwis.

November 2021 release

Authors: Wayne Ngata, Anne Salmond, Natalie Robertson, Amiria Salmond, Monty Soutar, Billie Lythberg, James Schuster and Conal McCarthy. Reviewer: Kennedy Warne.

From 1919 to 1923, at Sir Apirana Ngata’s initiative, a team from the Dominion Museum travelled to tribal areas across Te Ika-a-Māui The North Island to record tikanga Māori (ancestral practices) that Ngata feared might be disappearing. Reading Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu, Treasures for the Rising Generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923 feels like being a part of the expeditions themselves. The range of what was recorded is astonishing. As well as more obvious cultural expressions such as various types of song, haka, chant and poi dance, along with examples of weaving, carving and cooking, there were less well known practices such as string games, divination rites, the making and setting eel traps, the use of cord drills, the manufacture of stone implements and the making of fire.

November 2021 release

Author: John McCrystal. Reviewer: David Hill.

I could never write non-fiction like John McCrystal's. I'm not respectful enough. I don't mean “respectful” as in deferential. I mean as in attentive to detail, meticulous with facts, balanced in viewpoint… McCrystal is one of our most versatile non-fiction writers.

October 2021 release

Author: Alexander McKinnon. Reviewer: Stephanie Johnson.

It is not often in a review of a non-fiction work that care has to be taken not to spoil the plot but the story told in Come back to Mona Vale is worthy of a blockbuster mystery/horror movie – and that is as much as it is safe to say without ruining the suspense.

October 2021 release

Author: Lucy Mackintosh. Reviewer: Dave Veart.

In a city that has forgotten and erased much of its history, there are still places where traces of the past can be found. In Shifting Grounds, Lucy Mackintosh explores three places in Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland where she says, “the landscape is an archive,” places the past can still speak.

November 2021 release

Author: Vincent O’Malley. Reviewer: David Littlewood.

Extracts in Voices from the New Zealand Wars – He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa paint a vivid and, at times, confronting picture. By hearing at length from such a wide range of participants, one gets a real sense of the difficult choices they frequently faced and of the assumptions, attitudes and prejudices that underlay their decisions.

November 2021 release

Author: Elizabeth Pulford. Reviewer: Link Pickering.

In A Definitely Different Summer, Elizabeth Pulford combines the story of a tragic based-on-fact shipwreck with an exciting mystery adventure to craft a tale of unexpected friendship, secret clubs and adventures.

October 2021 release