New books on display at the Hurunui District Library from 31 Dec 2009 – 14 Jan 2010

  ‘The girl who played with fire’ by Stieg Larsson

“Special report: Mikael Blomkvist investigates: the Millennium publisher has launched the most explosive and far-reaching expose of the multi-billion kronor sex-trafficking industry in Sweden, and its international links.  Double killing in Stockholm apartment, two found dead. Suspected murder weapon recovered close to the scene. Police are baffled by apparently professional killing in residential neighbourhood. Lisbeth Salander sought by every police force in Sweden. The chief suspect in three killings, former security analyst Salander eludes nationwide search. Inspector Bublanski leads the Stockholm team. The sequel to The girl with the dragon tattoo “ [cover].

‘A song in the daylight’ by Paullina Simons

“Nothing is what it seems… Larissa Stark is a beautiful woman who plays many roles in her life: wife, mother, devoted friend. She has everything she ever wanted, until a chance encounter with a stranger changes Larissa’s idyllic existence forever, leading her to question all the things she once believed were true. Faced with impossible choices and contemplating the unthinkable, Larissa struggles with an eternal mystery: how does one woman follow a divided heart? Spanning the upscale suburbs of New Jersey, the slums of Manila and the desolate beauty of the Australian outback, this is a story of the bonds that unite us and the desires that drive us apart. From the author of Tully and The bronze horseman comes another unforgettable novel of passion and heartbreak ” [cover].

  ‘Peter Gordon: a culinary journey’

“Growing up in a small town in New Zealand, Peter Gordon didn’t discover avocados or sushi until he moved to Australia in his late teens. From there he travelled to Asia where a whole new culinary world opened before his eyes. Often dubbed ‘the father of Fusion cuisine’ – a culinary style that integrates various regional flavours and cooking techniques in order to create innovative new tastes – Peter reveals in this book how he developed his unique culinary philosophy, influenced by his travels around the world, exploring different cuisines, foods, tastes and cooking  ideas. Illustrated with stunning photography from renowned photographer Jean Cazals, Peter takes us on a journey through Asia, Europe and the Pacific and presents delicious recipes plus the key ingredients that epitomize Fusion cuisine “ [cover].

  ‘Ned & Katina: a true love story’ by Patricia Grace

“A true story of love in wartime and in peace. In Crete during the Second World War a wounded Maori Battalion soldier and a young Cretan woman fall in love when the infantryman is sheltered by her family. After marrying in Crete, Ned and Katina come back to live in New Zealand, settling in the Far North. They live a long, rich and happy life together, raising a family and involving themselves in community affairs there and in the Wellington region. Ned dies in 1987, Katine in 1996. Year later, the whanau of Ned and Katina approach writer Patricia Grace to compile their parents’ story and this book is the result. This warm, beautifully written true story is impossible to put down” [cover].

  ‘The story of Danny Dunn’ by Bryce Courtenay

“Brenda didn’t see the beautiful boy who caused a young woman’s knees to tremble. She didn’t care about the brilliant young sportman. All Brenda saw was her boy standing in cap and gown in the Great Hall of Sydney University holding a parchment scroll, proving her mum and dad hadn’t left Ireland for nothing and that her family could hold their heads up high. Danny would reach down and pull them all up out of the gutter” [cover].

  ‘Driven to distraction’ by Jeremy Clarkson

“Brace yourself, Clarkson ‘s back. And he’d like to tell you what he thinks about some of the most awe-inspiring, earth-shatteringly fast and jaw-droppingly gorgeous cars in the world (alongside a few irredeemable disasters…). Or he would, if there weren’t so many things competing for his attention. And so much to get off his chest, because the world according to Clarkson is a perplexing place, filled with thorny subjects… Fearless, independent, surprising and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is full-throttle Clarkson at his best, a unique look at the joys, absurdities and frustrations of modern life. With wheels. Buckle up, get comfortable, and hold on tight. There’s no one who writes about cars like Jeremy…” [cover].

Other titles on display this week:

‘Work your wardrobe’ by Gok Wan

‘Handling Edna’ by Barry Humphries

‘Right to the edge’ by Charley Boorman

‘Under the dome’ by Stephen King

‘Last night in twisted river’ by John Irving

‘Little bird of heaven’ by Joyce Carol Oates

To reserve any of these items, please contact your local library or email info@hurunuilibrary.govt.nz

Susie and Sylvia

New books on display at Hurunui District Library from 17 Dec – 31 Dec

 ”Monuments men” by Robert M. Edsel

From 1942 to 1951, 365 men and women from thirteen Allied nations served as the men and women of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives section (MFAA) of the Allied armed forces, the eyes, ears and hands of the first and most ambitious effort in history to preserve the world’s cultural heritage in times of war. They were known simply as Monuments Men. But during the thick of the fighting in Europe, from D-Day to V-E Day, when Germany surrendered, there were only 65 Monuments Men in the forward operating area. Sixty-five men to cover thousands of square miles, save hundreds of damaged buildings and find millions of cultural items before the Nazis could destroy them forever. “The Monuments Men” is the story of seven of these men. Six of them were in the forward operating theatre: America’s top art conservator; an up-and-coming young museum curator; a sculptor; a modestly successful portrait painter; a straight-arrow architect and a highly cultured, openly gay infantry private with no prior knowledge of or appreciation for art, but first-hand experience as a victim of the Nazi regime. They built their own treasure maps from scraps and hints: the diary of a Louvre curator who secretly tracked Nazi plunder through the Paris rail yards; records recovered from bombed out cathedrals and museums; overheard conversations and behind-enemy-lines interviews; and, a tip from a dentist while getting a root canal. They started off moving in different directions, but ended up heading for the same place at the same time: the Alps near the German-Austrian-Italian border in the last two weeks of the war, where the great treasure caches of the Nazis were stored – the artwork of Paris, stolen mostly from Jewish collectors and dealers; masterworks from the museums of Naples and Florence; and the greatest prize of all, Hitler’s personal hoard of masterpieces, looted from the most important art collections and museums in Europe and hidden deep within a working salt mine – a mine the Nazis had every intention of destroying before it fell into Allied hands. How does the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History end? As is often the case, history is often more extraordinary than fiction.[Cover]

 “The burning land” by Bernard Cornwell

The latest in the bestselling Alfred series from number one historical novelist, Bernard Cornwell. In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in failing health, and his heir is an untested youth. The Danes, who have failed so many times to conquer Wessex, smell opportunity. First comes Harald Bloodhair, a savage warrior leading a Viking horde, who is encouraged to cruelty by his woman, Skade. But Alfred still has the services of Uhtred, his unwilling warlord, who leads Harald into a trap and, at Farnham in Surrey, inflicts one of the greatest defeats the Vikings were ever to suffer. This novel, the fifth in the magnificent series of England’s history, tells of the final assaults on Alfred’s Wessex, that Wessex survived to become England is because men like Uhtred defeated an enemy feared throughout Christendom. [Cover]

 “Palms and cycads” by David Squire

Provides information on care and cultivation, as well as advice on determining the perfect location for the plant you have chosen. This book profiles 99 palm and 17 cycad species that are suited to a variety of climates and soil types. It includes a section that provides guidance on matching palm species to indoor and outdoor settings. [Cover]

 ”U is for Undertow” by Sue Grafton 

Sue Grafton’s “U is for Undertow” takes place in 1988, with flashbacks to 1967, the “Summer of Love.” Kinsey Millhone, thirty-seven, is the veteran of two failed marriages. Most of her time is devoted to her work as a private investigator, and she occasionally socializes with a small group of friends, including her eighty-eight year old landlord, Henry Pitts. Kinsey’s latest case involves Michael Sutton, who claims that he recently recalled an event that occurred when he was just six years old. In July of 1967, four-year-old Mary Claire Fitzhugh was abducted from her home in Horton Ravine, California. Although her parents agreed to pay the ransom demanded by Mary Claire’s kidnappers, the money was not picked up and the child was never seen again. Sutton remembers playing in the woods when he saw two men digging a hole and burying a bundle in the ground, and he cannot help but wonder if the pair was burying the corpse of little Mary Claire. Michael hires Kinsey to reconstruct the past and find out if his memories are accurate. [Cover] 

 “No other home than this” by J R H Andrews 

When Europeans landed in New Zealand in the nineteenth century, they brought with them a culture that had been shaped over thousands of years – a culture that determined their values and attitudes, their food and dwellings, their occupations and recreation. In the crates and portmanteaus carried off the ships were the material trappings of that culture. While many excellent general histories begin with the arrival of Maori and Europeans in New Zealand, this epic and fascinating book goes back to the beginning to address some fundamental questions about European New Zealanders: Where did they come from? What sort of people were they? What does the heritage of Europe mean to New Zealanders? How did the Europeans become ‘Pakeha’ and gain a sense of place? Starting with the ancient journey of proto-Europeans from Africa to the Middle East some 160,000 years ago, No Other Home Than This then describes the development of Europe and the eventual expansion of settlement, through exploration and migration, to the farthest parts of the earth. He looks at the adaptations and changes made by Europeans after their arrival in New Zealand and how, in time, these remote islands became the only place they called home. [Cover]

To reserve any of these items please contact your local library or email info@hurunuilibraries.govt.nz

 Avril

New books on display at Hurunui District Library from 10 Dec – 17 Dec

 “Villa : from heritage to contemporary” by Jeremy Hansen

Despite the interest in contemporary architecture it’s a fact that more people in inner-city suburbs throughout New Zealand end up living in a villa than a house of any other architectural style. Everyone at some stage finds themselves doing some renovation work, and that has tended in recent years to revolve around “blowing out the back”. In recent years architects have come up with far more interesting solutions to turn villas into a workable house for 21st century living. This book looks at around 25 of those solutions as well as at villas that have remained untouched over the years and at villas that are down on their uppers, including a spectacular and infamous student flat. Photographed by Patrick Reynolds, the text on each house is written by Home NZ editor Jeremy Hansen. In addition the book kicks off with a substantial survey of villa architecture by leading heritage architect Jeremy Salmond, whose late 1980s book on old New Zealand houses is the gold standard text for restorationists. Magnificently designed and crammed with photographs of everything from the original photos of villas in the 1890s and fragments of glorious old wallpaper, from totally untouched interiors to the most innovative additions, this book is a must-have for villa dwellers and villa lovers. [Cover]

 “To heaven by water” by Justin Cartwright

Now that his wife is dead, retired television news anchor, David Cross, believes that he is more himself than he has been for forty years. When Nancy was alive, he had secrets that he kept from her. Now he has a secret that he must keep from his children, Ed and Lucy, namely that he is in some ways happier now than he was when their mother was alive. To Heaven by Water is a touching and hilarious portrait of the Cross family, trying in their own fashion to come to terms with their loss. David knows that his children are perplexed by his increasingly compulsive behaviour while Ed’s marriage to the lovely Rosalie, a former ballet dancer, is suffering strain, and Lucy is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. Both children worry that their father will soon find a new partner. Over all three of them hangs the memory of Nancy. The book opens as David is taking time out with his brother in the Kalahari Desert, re-living his tumultuous and uplifting memories of Rome where he worked on a film with Richard Burton. Back home in London, Ed is trying to balance his affair with a young woman in his office with his real love for his wife, who is unable to conceive the child she longs for. And Lucy, who has just been voted No. 6 in the Evening News section devoted to beautiful and brainy women, is a young woman in pursuit of her real self. To Heaven by Water is a wonderful story of friendship, forgiveness and of love that comes from unexpected directions; it is an exploration of what we might hope for from this life and. in particular. the possibility of transcendence. Into the beautifully observed and subtly composed texture of this tale of middle-class London life, Justin Cartwright weaves sudden shocks that tear it apart, moments of sex and revenge that appear from a cloudless sky to take the reader’s breath away. [Cover]

 “An hour in the garden” by Meredith Kirton

Presents simple gardening ideas that can be put into action in an hour. It is full of imaginative ideas and achievable projects that require minimum effort, so you are left free to sit back and enjoy your garden. [Cover]

 “An empty death” by Laura Wilson 

Summer, 1944. After almost five years of conflict, London’s exhausted inhabitants, pounded by the menace of Hitler’s V1 bombs, are living in a world of dereliction. War-weary DI Ted Stratton is no exception, but he cannot help being drawn in by his latest case. Called on to investigate when a doctor is found dead in Fitzrovia’s Middlesex Hospital, Stratton soon realizes that someone involved is not who they appear to be. Someone who has discarded their own identity and can move and kill freely. Meanwhile Jenny, Ted’s wife, is working at the local Rest Centre, although her spirit of make-do is wearing thin. When a bombed-out woman appears at the centre, declaring that the man claiming to be her husband is an imposter, Jenny thinks that it must be due to shock. The reality, however, is much stranger and far more dangerous…Ultimately, for Stratton and Jenny perhaps there is only one thing they can trust: their fear. And for one of them, that fear may prove all too real. An Empty Death is a compelling exploration of identity, memory and trust and is perfect for fans of Foyle’s War. [Cover] 

 “Replenishing the earth” by James Belich 

Pioneering study of the anglophone ‘settler boom’ in North America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand between the early 19th and early 20th centuries, looking at what made it the most successful of all such settler revolutions, and how this laid the basis of British and American power in the 19th and 20th centuries. Why does so much of the world speak English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a ‘settler revolution’ that took place from the early nineteenth century that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and its forgotten twin, the British West, comprising the settler dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Between 1780 and 1930 the number of English-speakers rocketed from 12 million in 1780 to 200 million, and their wealth and power grew to match. Their secret was not racial, or cultural, or institutional superiority but a resonant intersection of historical changes, including the sudden rise of mass transfer across oceans and mountains, a revolutionary upward shift in attitudes to emigration, the emergence of a settler ‘boom mentality’, and a late flowering of non-industrial technologies -wind, water, wood, and work animals – especially on settler frontiers. This revolution combined with the Industrial Revolution to transform settlement into something explosive – capable of creating great cities like Chicago and Melbourne and large socio-economies in a single generation. When the great settler booms busted, as they always did, a second pattern set in. Links between the Anglo-wests and their metropolises, London and New York, actually tightened as rising tides of staple products flowed one way and ideas the other. This ‘re-colonization’ re-integrated Greater America and Greater Britain, bulking them out to become the superpowers of their day. The ‘Settler Revolution’ was not exclusive to the Anglophone countries – Argentina, Siberia, and Manchuria also experienced it. But it was the Anglophone settlers who managed to integrate frontier and metropolis most successfully, and it was this that gave them the impetus and the material power to provide the world’s leading super-powers for the last 200 years. This book will reshape understandings of American, British, and British dominion histories in the long 19th century. It is a story that has such crucial implications for the histories of settler societies, the homelands that spawned them, and the indigenous peoples who resisted them, that their full histories cannot be written without it. [Cover]

To reserve any of these items please contact your local library or email info@hurunuilibraries.govt.nz

 Avril

New books on display at Hurunui District Library from 3 Dec – 10 Dec

  ”Seasons : the best of Donna Hay magazine”

Seasons builds on the trend for cooking with whichever ingredients are in season, which means you will always be eating beautifully fresh food. Designed with Donna Hay’s usual flair for food styling, Seasons features more lifestyle than Donna’s previous books, giving readers tips and suggestions for how to enjoy the best of each season. [Cover]

“Last train to Liguria” by Christine Dwyer Hickey

From the bestselling Irish novelist comes a sweeping historical novel, a tale of consequences that spans from the 1930s to the 1990s. “Last Train from Liguria” takes us on a journey from claustrophobic Dublin and the tense formality of London, to the heat and bustle of the Italian Riviera. Bella lives a cosseted life with her father in London. So when he announces that he has arranged for work for her as a governess in Italy, she is shocked, angry, and terribly scared of what lies in store…But as she boards a train for the northern Italian port of Bordighera, her fear soon gives way to her burgeoning sense of adventure. Bella eventually finds her young charge, Alec, at the Villa Lami, where he lives with his music teacher Edward. She delights in her relationship with the young boy, and discovers unexpected comfort in Edward who, like Bella, seems to be hiding a secret. But the atmosphere in Italy is changing quickly. As fascist laws take effect, Bella, Edward and Alec must escape the mounting threats around them, and face a rapidly changing world. [Cover]

 “Dust to gold” by John Perriam

Shrek may be the star of Bendigo Station, but the back-story of the station is rich and fascinating, from its earliest days as the scene of New Zealand’s richest quartz reef gold strike in the 1860s to its establishment as a 11,000 hectare sheep station producing many of New Zealand’s highest quality top price Merino clips. As well as this it’s now home to several leading Pinot Noir vineyards, public walkways, a historic reserve and fishing and game hunting. None of this recent development would have come about if it weren’t for the far-sighted, entrepreneurial and innovative owners, John and Heather Perriam. They took on Bendigo in the late 1970s after the Clyde Dam project forced them off the nearby family farm. They had spent several years in ultimately fruitless battles with bureaucracy, trying to stop the dam project from going ahead. Things weren’t easy at Bendigo Station either. Chief among their problems was a rabbit plague which was costing the station close to $120,000 a year in poisoning and shooting. In the late 1990s the property was the centre of farmer-led initiatives that led to the formation of Merino New Zealand. Added to that has been the multi-million-dollar transformation of the lower slopes into what’s now seen as a significant new wine area. But the Perriams still run merinos on their higher country and John says that’s something he hopes will never change. His latest venture is developing a company to promote the strong wools of New Zealand in the same way that his earliest organization did for merino wools. [Cover]

 “Family album” by Penelope Lively

A big shabby Victorian suburban house, the smell of raincoats and coq au vin in the hall, the six mugs for the children slung from the kitchen dresser hooks: for destructive Paul, difficult Gina, elegant Sandra, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare, Allersmead was the perfect place to grow up. But was it? Now grown-up and off in different directions, one by one the children return to Allersmead, to their home-making mother and aloof writer father and a house that for years has played silent witness to the secrets of a family, and one particular secret of which no one speaks… In her sixteenth novel, Penelope Lively shows her extraordinary understanding of what makes us human as she delves into the mystery of family life. [Cover]

 “Just in time to be too late” by Peta Mathias

With Just in Time to be Too Late, Peta Mathias turns her attention to what it means to be a man in the 21st century. What makes men cry? Why are bad boys so irresistible? What exactly is the point of sport? To what extent is a man’s self worth connected to his job? What do men look for in a relationship? Does a man ever get over his first love? Why do men lie? What does he need to be happy? And, of course, why are men like buses? These are just some of the vexing questions Peta looks for answers to. Though she has been married and has had her fair share both of meaningful relationships and flirtatious dalliances, Peta is the first to admit that she knew very little about the opposite sex when she began work on this book – ‘A virgin would know more about men than me because she’s probably listened more.’ Consequently Just in Time to be Too Late is an account of Peta’s own discoveries as she delves deeper into the mysterious world of men – a highly personal and frequently hilarious pilgrimage that will resonate with women everywhere. [Cover]

To reserve any of these items please contact your local library or email info@hurunuilibraries.govt.nz

 Avril