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If you enjoy beautifully-seductive witches, dastardly-evil monks and lustily-grateful humans, then this book should be on your reading list.

Edwards looks at the ways in which a female would have tried to thrive in this kind of environment. She also links it to trends of women taking over men's jobs in the war years.

Teenagers are all too familiar with being strangers in their own bodies; change is never easy. It is even harder to cope when you feel alone and unwanted. The apt title — Dispossessed — plays on losing who you thought you were in a world you thought you knew...

Vivien Edwards pays tribute to English-born Mary Sutherland (1893-1955), the first female forestry graduate in the world. She frames the personal story in the context of the forestry situation in both New Zealand and Britain at the time.

Set in New Zealand, Saving Grace is the poignant autobiographical account of surviving an abusive twelve-year relationship with a violent and selfish man.

The alliteration and descriptive language that Rachel Weston plays with - “teetered... tottered... greedily guzzled” - made Boo Goes Tutti Frutti such a fun read, and excellent for tamariki who are learning language and eager to add to their vocabulary.

This is a collection of short stories that all have something in common: three sisters. Except they’re not all necessarily alive.

The mountains are erupting. The citizens have been evacuated…except for a handful of scientists and a busload of prisoners. The army is sent in to round up the stragglers, but the prisoners aren’t so keen on being caught.

Nina M.C. Payne is a woman who has spent a lifetime reaching out to others with empathy and compassion in the hope of understanding them better. Much of this ethic comes from her love of travel and adventure...

This final book in the trilogy, Golden City, brings Freya’s epic journey to a satisfying conclusion while leaving room for more adventures in SR Manssen’s world of myth and magic.

Set mostly in suburbia, in upstairs flats and at kitchen tables, Argante’s focus is on her characters, particularly their inadequacies, as they navigate marriages, divorces, parenthood. There are stories about loss and disappointment. Regret. Acceptance.

This book, by Tauranga historian Trevor Bentley was published in 2004 and is just one of a long line of excellent local history books by Bentley which focus the intersection of Māori and European cultures since the latter arrived on these shores.

Two stories that will leave you mulling long after you close this book are Cave Fever and Lifeblood. Cave Fever is set in an unknown future, where science has perverted biological nature for society to survive long after their good intentions have lost all meaning.