Impossible: My Story

 By: Stan Walker

Location: NF 920 Wal

Genre: Stan Walker

A startling and important memoir about family and forgiveness, love and redemption

For the first time, Stan Walker speaks with startling honesty about abuse and addiction, hardship and excess, cancer and discrimination, and growing up in a family where love and violence were horribly entwined.

From one of the finest singers to emerge from Australia and New Zealand Aotearoa in a generation, Impossible is a story of redemption and the power of forgiveness. It's also a story about courage and hope; about a young Maori boy finding his place and purpose, never forgetting who he is and where he came from.

PRAISE FOR IMPOSSIBLE:

As a chronicle of Walker's life, it is gripping, but where the book achieves greatness - and I mean real, true greatness - is as a totem to humanity's capacity for kindness. It's an insight into the soul of a man whose capacity for forgiveness seems boundless.

- Sam Brooks

'This is a can't-put-down read, direct and proud and inspirational, an honest document of life in New Zealand on the wrong side of the tracks...'

- Steve Braunias

'A remarkable, improbable tale of a young Maori man (Tuhoe and Ngati Tuwharetoa) rising to greatness and finding his purpose after surviving horrific childhood abuse and countless other tragic situations.'

- Sebastian van der Zwan

For the first time, the incomparable R&B superstar Stan Walker tells his story of hurt, hope and courage. After definitively winning the 2009 season of Australian Idol at the age of 19, R&B sensation Stan Walker's career went from strength to strength. His first album, Introducing Stan Walker, went platinum in Australia and triple platinum in New Zealand; his second; From the Inside Out, debuted at number one on the New Zealand Albums Charts and number two on the ARIA charts. He's won multiple New Zealand Music Awards, been a judge on The X Factor NZ, and played starring roles in films Mt Zion and Born to Dance.

Yet few knew what he had had to overcome reach these dizzying heights.

Before Australian Idol, Walker had survived a childhood marred with poverty, domestic violence and sexual abuse; dabbled in crime and drug use; and suffered his own personal tragedy. For the first time, he speaks candidly about his rags-to-riches story - and the trials and tribulations he's had to deal with since.

Aue

 By: Becky Manawatu

Location: FIC Man

Genre: Fiction, Aotearoa, Death

“The best book of 2019 – and it really is immense, a deep and powerful work, maybe even the most successfully achieved portrayal of underclass New Zealand life since Once Were Warriors“—Steve Braunias, Newsroom

“Auē is not just the story of two boys, it is the story of a family, people who are born into it and those who become part of it. We travel through past and present, lives come together and are held together by strands of pain, cruelty, hardship, brutality, music and love. Throughout is the image of birds, some broken and battered, some who manage to fly. Some who sing. The writer knows exactly what she’s doing and takes us with her. I could not stop reading.” —Renée

Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home.

But Ārama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there’s aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters.

Here is a novel that is both raw and sublime, a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction. 

"This book has created an ache in my chest that I’ll carry with me for a long time. It is awful in such a way that it is brilliant, sentences so visceral my breath would stop.
It is triumphant too - the spades of sorrow matched by spades of hope.

I have thought long and hard and deeply about my family and my culture and my country and whether it’s possible for people to be right or wrong if they are just doing the best with the tools and the lives they were given.

I have written down lines that made me pause my reading because they were so real or beautiful or accurate or funny or heartbreaking.

How grateful I am for my life and how grateful I am to have read this. Kayla- Goodreads

Watch Over Me

 By: Nina Lacour

Location: FIC LAC

Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, LGBT, Paranormal, Ghosts

“I'm learning that it's good to think about what scares you. To bring it into the light. Even to hold it in your hands, if you can, and feel how it can't hurt you anymore. To think of it and say, 'I am not afraid.” 

Eighteen-year-old Mila has been in the foster system since her mother abandoned her. Now that she’s graduating high school, she has nothing to do and nowhere to call home. So when she gets an offer to work as an intern on the Farm, she readily accepts.

Her main job is to take care of eight-year-old Lee. At first the Farm seems like an idyllic paradise, a remote place on the cliffs with view of the sea far below. But Mila soon realises there’s something more sinister going on. Lee’s recent trauma causes Mila’s own frightening memories to bubble to the surface. And then there are Billy and Liz. What is it they want from her? How much is she willing to give?

Whispered secrets. Sideways glances. A dangerous undertow of violence, complicity, desire, and fear. 

"Sometimes sensitive, delicate, poignant hearted people can see things through with their third eye, connecting with restless souls to resonate with their own loneliness, grief, sadness, abandonment.

Have you ever felt like there is a big rock sit on your chest preventing you to breathe properly and have you ever felt like you are the loneliest person in the world as you stand in the moving crowd, barely restraining yourself not to scream, feeling the hurt of your throat because of sobs that never come out!

This book definitely brings out those feelings and showing you the most painful but effective ways to face your fears, learn to forgive yourself, deal with your demons even though they looked like the ghosts you met in your past!

Intense, heartbreaking, harsh, compelling, dark, depressing but it’s pure, realistic, provocative and rejuvenating!

I cried. I hurt. I sighed. I hurt more. Another brilliant author who directly melt the iced cold hearts and crush our souls with her honest and unique talent.

No more words! My tears still pour down! This book pushed me out from my comfort zone and forced me to meet my own ghosts. It hurt a lot. But eventually I feel better. That’s the magic of great words, remarkable stories, unforgettable characters! - Nina

Where the Crawdads Sing

 By: Delia Owens

Location: FIC OWE

Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery

“I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.”

“His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.

"I can’t get over how perfect this book is. The writing grabbed me from literally the first page and kept me entranced. And the story! How can your heart not help but ache for Kya? First her mother leaves, then her siblings, even her ne’er do well father. Left to her own devices by the entire town, she survives without schooling or any aid. The preacher’s wife calls her white trash and hurries her child away from Kya convinced she carries disease.

The marsh is a character in its own right. Owens does a magnificent job describing it so that we feel we are there, seeing every plant, bird and insect along with Kya. Owens paints the surroundings just like Kya paints, with a fine brush intent on getting every detail right.

There are so many heartbreaking moments in this book. Kya just can’t understand why everyone leaves her. The murder mystery was very well done and I had no clue how it would play out. The suspense was killing me.

So, this is my first five star book of 2019. It has everything - beautiful writing, great characters and suspense. Highly recommend it!"- Review by Liz

American Dirt

 By: Jeanine Cummins

Location: FIC CUM

Genre: Fiction, Historical, 

This book has caused such discussion in our office, who has the right to tell whose story? That has flowed over to our own stories in Aotearoa, who can tell the story of parihaka, who can tell the story of Aroamona?

As a blog on Goodreads so aptly says

"Would they say the same thing to Shakespeare, the greatest English-language writer of all time? After all, he was not a Danish prince, Italian teenagers, or Cleopatra. How dare he write about them?"

Yet despite thst discussion, this book has been in huge demand and it leaves our readers with a book filled anger of justice and a forever knowing...

Whoever tells the stort- it needs to be told!

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times. 

Scrublands

 By: Chris hammer

Location: FIC HAM

Genre: Mystery, Crime, Australia

“If the bookshelves were pews, and the counter an altar, then this might be a chapel.” 

In an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself.

A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation. Martin can't ignore his doubts, nor the urgings of some locals to unearth the real reason behind the priest's deadly rampage.

Just as Martin believes he is making headway, a shocking new development rocks the town, which becomes the biggest story in Australia. The media descends on Riversend and Martin is now the one in the spotlight. His reasons for investigating the shooting have suddenly become very personal.

Wrestling with his own demons, Martin finds himself risking everything to discover a truth that becomes darker and more complex with every twist. But there are powerful forces determined to stop him, and he has no idea how far they will go to make sure the town's secrets stay buried.

A compulsive thriller that will haunt you long after you have turned the final page.

The Secret Game

 By: Scott Ellsworth 

Location: NF 920 ELL

Genre: Basketball, History, Leadership

"The Secret Game was a basketball game played in 1944 between an all-white Duke Medical Student team and the team from North Carolina College for Negros, now NCCU. The game is one chapter of the book - that's really not what the book is about. But it's a shaggy dog story that takes themes that tie together in the game - people's lives, Jim Crow laws, the amazingly bad way that African Americans were treated and the sub-culture that resulted. This book is a slap in the face, a sharp reminder of how badly Americans treated Americans only decades ago. And for that reminder, the book is brilliant and needs to be read. It's well written - one of those pieces of history (and this is a history book) that's a page turner while it's building its themes. It's also a vital reminder of how closely below the veneer of everyday life hate lies in human cultures. It's not a heavy book, not preachy, just good. And definitely worth reading. Very highly recommended, even to non-basketball fans."- Ross from Goodreads

Winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing: The true story of the game that never should have happened -- and of a nation on the brink of monumental change.

In the fall of 1943, at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes, Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing basketball forever. A protégé of James Naismith, the game's inventor, McLendon taught his team to play the full-court press and run a fast break that no one could catch. His Eagles would become the highest-scoring college team in America -- a basketball juggernaut that shattered its opponents by as many as sixty points per game.

Yet his players faced danger whenever they traveled backcountry roads. Across town, at Duke University, the best basketball squad on campus wasn't the Blue Devils, but an all-white military team from the Duke medical school. Composed of former college stars from across the country, the team dismantled everyone they faced, including the Duke varsity. They were prepared to take on anyone -- until an audacious invitation arrived, one that was years ahead of anything the South had ever seen before. What happened next wasn't on anyone's schedule.

Based on years of research, The Secret Game is a story of courage and determination, and of an incredible, long-buried moment in the nation's sporting past. The riveting, true account of a remarkable season, it is the story of how a group of forgotten college basketball players, aided by a pair of refugees from Nazi Germany and a group of daring student activists, not only blazed a trail for a new kind of America, but helped create one of the most meaningful moments in basketball history.

Writers & Lovers

 By:Lily King

Location: FIC KIN

Genre: Fiction, Romance, Contemp

“It's a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”

'Exuberant and affirming, it's funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. I feel bereft now I've finished' Tessa Hadley

Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it’s strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore.

And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, stuck between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.

Lily King's Writers & Lovers follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything - her family, her work, her relationships - comes to a crisis. Hugely moving and impossibly funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman becomes an artist.

“Writers & Lovers” is a triumph of a novel, as witty as it is profound. A queen of nuance, Ms. King hides an arsenal of emotional power behind quiet, intentional prose. Nearly every word of this novel seems carefully and deliberately chosen, rewarding close readers and promising re-readers an even deeper experience. Most significantly, although Ms. King’s portrayal of a writer’s life is brutally honest, it urges all of us to personally take on the agony, but also the sublime ecstasy of the writer’s journey. After all, we all have something to say, it’s merely about finding the right words with which to say it."- Olive fom Goodreads

Bookish and the Beast

 By: Ashley Poston

Location: FIC POS

Genre:  Romance - Retelling

In the third book in Ashley Poston's Once Upon a Con series, Beauty and the Beast is retold in the beloved Starfield universe.

Rosie Thorne is feeling stuck—on her college application essays, in her small town, and on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met at ExcelsiCon. Most of all, she’s stuck in her grief over her mother’s death. Her only solace was her late mother’s library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when they sold it to pay off hospital bills.

On the other hand, Vance Reigns has been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember—with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. When a tabloid scandal catches up to him, he's forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never expect to find him: Small Town USA. At least there’s a library in the house. Too bad he doesn’t read.

When Rosie and Vance’s paths collide and a rare book is accidentally destroyed, Rosie finds herself working to repay the debt. And while most Starfield superfans would jump at the chance to work in close proximity to the Vance Reigns, Rosie has discovered something about Vance: he’s a jerk, and she can’t stand him. The feeling is mutual.

But as Vance and Rosie begrudgingly get to know each other, their careful masks come off—and they may just find that there’s more risk in shutting each other out than in opening their hearts.

Stealing Thunder

 By: Alina Boyden

Location: FIC BOY

Genre: Fantasy. LGBGT

I love things Moughal, having been to India and been to those amazing palaces, photographed the arches, walked the Taj. I loved the book "The Twenthieth Wife" - and I loved walking around Agra Fort afterwards. This book is set in the Mughal time so it is a no brainer from me...

Protecting her identity means life or death in this immersive epic fantasy inspired by the Mughal Empire.

In a different life, under a different name, Razia Khan was raised to be the Crown Prince of Nizam, the most powerful kingdom in Daryastan. Born with the soul of a woman, she ran away at a young age to escape her father’s hatred and live life true to herself.

Amongst the hijras of Bikampur, Razia finds sisterhood and discovers a new purpose in life. By day she’s one of her dera’s finest dancers, and by night its most profitable thief. But when her latest target leads her to cross paths with Arjun Agnivansha, Prince of Bikampur, it is she who has something stolen.

An immediate connection with the prince changes Razia’s life forever, and she finds herself embroiled in a dangerous political war. The stakes are greater than any heist she’s ever performed. When the battle brings her face to face with her father, Razia has the chance to reclaim everything she lost…and save her prince.

 I love this review from Peter on Goodreads

"I was in a cab to the Paris airport when my data plan ran out, so I picked up the manuscript for Stealing Thunder. I figured I’d give it 25 pages as a favor to the editor, then watch Marvel movies on the flight.

The next thing I knew, we were landing in New York, and I was nearly finished with the book. I remember being resentful that it was too dark to read in the taxi home.

I get asked to read a lot of manuscripts, and as a result it has become increasingly difficult to hold my interest. Stealing Thunder was immersive from the very first page. Razia is everything you want in a protagonist. Having given up luxury and power as a crown prince to live life as a woman, the story begins with her in a hijra family with other transsexuals, working as a dancer, prostitute and thief in order to survive.

But Razia isn’t one to let the world dictate who she is. Despite living in a culture that abuses and treats trans women as one of the lowest castes of society, she finds a way to have agency and impact, rising to power again not through the privilege of her birth, but by dint of her own intellect, skill, and strength of will.

And I haven’t even mentioned the dragons.

Her father’s empire is built on the strength of his aerial corps of zahhaks—great serpentine beasts with vibrantly feathered wings, each breed possessing a unique and terrible breath weapon. Stealing Thunder has no shortage of handsome princes and passionate romance, but the greatest love is between Razia and Sultana, the thunder zahhak she raised from a hatchling but was forced to leave behind when she fled her abusive father’s palace to live on her own terms.

But as her confidence in her new life grows, Razia becomes determined to steal Sultana back.

Dragons, politics, fighting, chases, escapes, thrilling aerial battles, true love, and a kickass trans protagonist, Stealing Thunder really has it all.

Worth your time."

The Vanishing Deep

 By: Astrid Scholte

Location: FIC SCH

Genre: Fantasy, Sci Fi

Bestselling author Astrid Scholte, returns with a thrilling adventure in which the dead can be revived...for a price.

Seventeen-year-old Tempe was born into a world of water. When the Great Waves destroyed her planet, its people had to learn to survive living on the water, but the ruins of the cities below still called. Tempe dives daily, scavenging the ruins of a bygone era, searching for anything of value to trade for Notes. It isn't food or clothing that she wants to buy, but her dead sister's life. For a price, the research facility on the island of Palindromena will revive the dearly departed for twenty-four hours before returning them to death. It isn't a heartfelt reunion that Tempe is after; she wants answers. Elysea died keeping a terrible secret, one that has ignited an unquenchable fury in Tempe: Her beloved sister was responsible for the death of their parents. Tempe wants to know why.

But once revived, Elysea has other plans. She doesn't want to spend her last day in a cold room accounting for a crime she insists she didn't commit. Elysea wants her freedom and one final glimpse at the life that was stolen from her. She persuades Tempe to break her out of the facility, and they embark on a dangerous journey to discover the truth about their parents' death and mend their broken bond. But they're pursued every step of the way by two Palindromena employees desperate to find them before Elysea's time is up--and before the secret behind the revival process and the true cost of restored life is revealed.

"What a unique and interesting world! I loved the whole world drowned by water concept! It had a tinge of Waterworld but a hundred times better!

These characters! I especially loved Lor. He had so much guilt going on and he just needed some love! Elysea was seriously a wonderful side character! She was sweet, genuine, and unselfish! Tempe, you couldn’t help but feel for her, especially after being alone for the past two years and struggling to survive!

I swear, Scholte has the coolest worlds, best twists, and excellent writing! I can’t wait to see what she has up her sleeve next" Candance