Showing results by narrator "Heather Bolton" in All Categories

Owls Do Cry is one of the classics of New Zealand literature, and has remained in print continuously for 50 years. A fiftieth anniversary edition was published in 2007.

When Bob Chappell disappeared from his yacht, moored in the Derwent Estuary near the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania's marina, on the night of 26 January 2009, he left behind his pipe and tobacco - something that his partner of 18 years, Sue Neill-Fraser, knew he would never willingly do. What she didn't know was that despite no body, no weapon, no cause of death and no witnesses, she would soon become the only suspect in Chappell’s disappearance.

As she watches her brother losing the battle with his memories, Rowan wonders how long she can keep her own past at bay. The old family home in Access Road, where Lionel, Roly and Rowan grew up, is crumbling away - but after more than fifty years Lionel and Roly are back. Rowan too, otherwise safe in her 'upper crusty' suburb, is drawn more and more strongly 'out west'. The past is dangerously alive.

A superbly written novel offering an intriguing interpretation of one of the world's greatest aviators, the glamorous and mysterious Jean Batten. Jean Batten became an international icon in the 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn't get enough of her, yet she suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and dying in obscurity in Majorca, buried in a pauper's grave.

The Spare Room tells a story of compassion, humour and rage. The two women - one skeptical, one stubbornly serene - negotiate an unmapped path through Nicola's bizarre therapy, stumbling towards the novel's terrible and transcendent finale.

One of the biggest selling titles of the year, now available in audio. A very special read that is guaranteed to make you laugh and cry. When Delia Bennet - author and domestic advice columnist - is diagnosed with cancer, she knows it's time to get her house in order. Fresh, witty, deeply moving - and a celebration of love, family and that place we call home - this unforgettable story will surprise and delight the reader until the very last page.

Set in an unnamed NZ city in 1953, Fire tells the story of four working-class friends, all employed at Dawsons, one of the country's most glamorous and sophisticated department stores. A historical romance based on the Ballantynes department store fire in 1947 that killed 41 people, most of them store employees trapped in controversial circumstances.

From New York Times best-selling author Helen Brown comes a funny and moving account of her life-changing month as a foster mother - to a homeless cat named Bono. After a brush with cancer, Helen Brown, happily married for 22 years and with three grown children, took stock of her comfortable suburban life and found it wanting. Seizing the day, she headed to New York, the city that never sleeps, where she was talked into fostering Bono, a rescue cat in need of a forever home.

Towards Another Summer is a meditation on the themes of exile and return, homesickness and not knowing where home really is. It is suffused with beauty and tenderness and shot through with self-deprecating humour and frailty. Grace, the protagonist, is taking a break from writing a long novel and seems to be losing her grip on daily life in London. She feels more and more like a migratory bird as the pull of her native New Zealand makes life in England seem transitory.

It is 1905 and brothers Yung and Shun eke out a living as green grocers near Wellington's bustling Chinatown. The pair work to support their families back in China, but know they must adapt if they are to survive and prosper in their adopted home. Nearby, Katherine McKechnie struggles to raise her rebellious son and daughter following the death of her husband Donald. A strident right-wing newspaperman, Donald terrorised his family, though was idolised by his son. Chancing upon Yung's grocery store one day, Katherine is touched by his unexpected generosity. In time, a clandestine relationship develops....

When Heather Delaney is injured in a shocking act of violence, her life is thrown off course. Struggling to return to work, she is haunted by the incident. Was it random or personal? Will they try again? And Heather is not the only one who is rocked by the attack. Her brother, Adam, and his second wife, Jill, already juggling the demands of work and pre-teen children find their marriage is straining at the seams. Adam disappears into his music while Jill attempts to keep all the balls in the air.

On the edge of a small town in New South Wales, far from the battlefields of the Second World War, lies a prisoner-of-war camp housing Italian, Korean and Japanese soldiers. For their guards and the locals, many with loved ones away fighting, captive or dead, it is hard to know how to treat them - with disdain, hatred or compassion? Alice, a young woman leading a dull life on her father-in-law's farm, is one of those with a husband held prisoner in Europe.