Passages by Linda Trubridge

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Sam Hunt: Off the Road by Sam Hunt; Colin Hogg

$50.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Thirty years after Hogg and Hunt collaborated on the now-legendary Angel Gear: Off the Road with Sam Hunt, the pair have decided to throw caution to the wind and proceed without doctors' certificates, to create an older, possibly wiser twin to that earlier book. A backstage pass to the private side of o ne of our most public people, Sam Hunt: Off the Road is a wild, hilarious, no-holds-barred book about the non-stop life and poems of a man New Zealand thinks it knows, until now. Part conversation, part story-telling, part poems, it's also a book about friendship, solitude, love, death, self-destruction and endurance. With photographs and poems, some old, some new. ...Show more

Being John Lennon by Ray Connolly

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

John Lennon was a rock star, a school clown, a writer, a wit, an iconoclast, a sometime peace activist and finally an eccentric millionaire. He was also a Beatle - his plain-speaking and impudent rejection of authority catching, and eloquently articulating, the group's moment in history. Chronicling a t roubled life, from that of the cast-aside child of a broken wartime marriage to his murder by a deranged fan, Being John Lennon analyses the contradictions in the singer-songwriter's creative and destructive personality. A leader who could be easily led, he was often generous and often funny, but sometimes scathingly cruel. As a journalist, author Ray Connolly had a close working relationship with Lennon, and the entire Beatles coterie. In this biography he unsparingly reassesses the chameleon nature of the perpetually dissatisfied star who just couldn't stop reinventing himself. Drawing on many interviews and conversations with Lennon, his first wife Cynthia and second Yoko Ono, as well as his girlfriend May Pang and song-writing partner Paul McCartney, this complex portrait is a revealing insight into a restless man whose emotional turbulence governed his life and talent. ...Show more

Peter and Me: When a love story becomes a carer's anguish by Helen Ritchie

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

When a love story becomes a carer’s anguish They first met when Helene was 18 years old. Together for nearly 40 years, this is the story of their relationship through Peter’s intense last four years involving 24/7 care, the impact of a horrible illness and a shameful and ad hoc health system . It aims to give a voice to isolated and exploited carers, especially those in private homes, and to expose fundamental issues about humanity and failed systems. It calls for and it calls a Royal Commission inquiry and a ‘bipartisan’ Parliamentary response to produce viable solutions. ...Show more

Andris, Where Are You? From Latvia to New Zealand: The Family Story of Andris Apse by Ron Crosby

$20.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Andris, Where Are You? tells the family story of renowned New Zealand photographer Andris Apse, who when middle aged, discovered that his father Voldemars, believed to be dead for 40 years, was still alive in Latvia. Told largely through insightful pre-war diary entries by Voldemars Apse, as well as cor respondence between Voldemars and his wife Kamilla, both before and during the war, this book describes the horrendous effects of war and the Soviet and German occupation on an ordinary rural Latvian family. For years after the war Kamilla and her baby Andris lived in West Germany in a refugee camp, but came to understand that Voldemars had died in the war, or in the Soviet gulag prison camps. Consequently, Kamilla and five-year-old Andris emigrated to New Zealand as refugees. Over time Andris became one of New Zealand’s most successful landscape photographers, and raised his own family. Following the breakdown of the Soviet Union, Kamilla and Andris miraculously discovered that Voldemars was still alive in Latvia. Andris arranged to take Kamilla, who was now in her seventies, back to Latvia. When they reunited in Riga, husband met wife, and son met father for the first time in over 40 years. This story of heart-rending separation and joyful rediscovery will touch a chord with all parents and everyone with a sense of history and the importance of family. Andris’s remarkable tale was first published as a large format photographic book, which was serialised by National Radio, and his life and photography has also featured in a 2010 TVNZ documentary ‘Through My Eyes’. ...Show more

The Choice: Even in Hell Hope Can Flower by Edith Eger

$28.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

THE AWARDWINNING, INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'The Choice is a gift to humanity. One of those rare and eternal stories that you don't want to end and that leave you forever changed' DESMOND TUTU, Nobel Peace Prize LaureateIn 1944, sixteen-year-old Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. There she endured unimagin able experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. Over the coming months, Edith?s bravery helped her sister to survive, and led to her bunkmates rescuing her during a death march. When their camp was finally liberated, Edith was pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.In The Choice, Dr Edith Eger shares her experience of the Holocaust and the remarkable stories of those she has helped ever since. Today, she is an internationally acclaimed psychologist whose patients include survivors of abuse and soldiers suffering from PTSD. She explains how many of us live within a mind that has become a prison, and shows how freedom becomes possible once we confront our suffering.Like Viktor Frankl?s Man?s Search for Meaning, but exceptional in its own right, The Choice is life changing. Warm, compassionate and infinitely wise, it is a profound examination of the human spirit, and our capacity to heal. ...Show more

Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoir by Tom Scott

$37.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Riotous, ripping yarns from a polymath who can't add or subtract but who has won awards for cartooning, print journalism, documentary film-making and writing dramas.

Chasing the Rose: An Adventure in the Venetian Countryside by Andrea Di Robilant

$37.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

From the author of the best-selling "A Venetian Affair," here is the charming chronicle of his search for the identity of a mysterious old rose. Andrea di Robilant's tale takes us back to the time of Josephine Bonaparte, as well as into some of the most delightful rose gardens in Italy today, brought to colorful life on the page in the watercolors of artist Nina Fuga. In his 2008 biography of the Venetian lady Lucia Mocenigo (his great-great-great-great- grandmother), di Robilant described a pink rose that grows wild on the family's former country estate, mentioning its light peach-and-raspberry scent. This passing detail led to an invitation for an audience with a local rose doyenne, Eleonora Garlant. She and other experts wondered if di Robilant's unnamed rose could possibly be one of the long-lost China varieties that nineteenth-century European growers had cultivated but which have since disappeared. On the hunt for the identity of his anonymous yet quietly distinctive rose, Di Robilant finds himself captivated by roseophiles through time--from Lucia and her friend Josephine Bonaparte to the gifted Eleonora, whose garden of nearly fifteen hundred varieties of old roses is one of the most significant in Europe--and by the roses themselves, each of which has a tale to tell. What starts out as a lighthearted quest becomes a meaningful journey as di Robilant contemplates the enduring beauty of what is passed down to us in a rose, through both the generosity of nature and the cultivating hand of human beings, who for centuries have embraced and extended the life of this mysterious flower. ...Show more

Memory Pieces by Maurice Gee

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Memory Pieces is an intimate and evocative memoir in three parts. `Double Unit' tells the story of Maurice Gee's parents - Lyndahl Chapple Gee, a talented writer who for reasons that become clear never went on with a writing career, and Len Gee, a boxer, builder, and man's man. `Blind Road' is Gee's st ory up to the age of eighteen, when his apprenticeship as a writer began. `Running on the Stairs' tells the story of Margaretha Garden, beginning in 1940, the year of her birth, when she travelled with her mother Greta from Nazi-sympathising Sweden to New Zealand, through to her meeting Maurice Gee when they were working together in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1967. Design by Keely O'Shannessey ...Show more

A Beer in the Loire by Tommy Barnes

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Crossing the Floor: The Story of Tariana Turia by Helen Leahy

$45.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir | Reading Level: Very Good

"This biography of Tariana Turia sees family members, iwi leaders, social justice advocates and politicians share their experiences of this remarkable woman. While parliament was not originally part of her life plan, Tariana Turia was involved in many community initiatives. A turning point came in 1995, when Tariana's leadership was evident in the reoccupation of Pakaitore. Here was a woman with the courage to care, the determination to speak up and a deep commitment to whānau. Inevitably, she was invited to stand in the 1996 general election. In her eighteen years as an MP, she advanced thinking in the disability area, advocated for tobacco reform and spoke out about sexual abuse, violence and racism. She also led the Whānau Ora initiative. In 2004, she crossed the floor, leading to the birth of the Māori Party"--Publisher information. ...Show more

These Two Hands : A Memoir by Renee

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Renee was born grumpy (Ngati Kahungunu/Scot) and nothing has changed. She is an avid and faithful reader, who enjoys cooking and gardening. Everyone, she says, should grow leafy greens. Renee always thought she would die at forty-two but for some reason this didn't happen. She considers herself very luc ky to still have most of her marbles, and credits reading, writing, walking and teaching for this. She has written eight novels and eighteen plays, among which Wednesday To Come is probably her most loved work. Iris: I remember when Dad died we stayed up all night. About one in the morning Mum made scones. Crazy the things you do. Ted: Like singing round a coffin? Iris: Hang around Ted - that's just the start. Renee lives in Otaki and teaches her Your Life, Your Story and her Poem a Week workshops there. This is just one version of her life, her story, told in patches, like a quilt. ...Show more