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He waited in the wings for 23 years - but Deputy Mayor Dimple Potts, has finally assumed the mayoral chains for Brewster's Neck, and to his great indignation, instantly, there is a challenger. And a murder. He soon discovers that many of his constituents are much more or less than they seem. A very firm hand is required... -
What if you're a manufacturer of electric kettles? And then your company wins a contract to build a top-secret warship? And what if you happen to be the project manager for this frankly foolhardy diversification? Mayhem! -
Jem dreams of his transformation into a toroa - an albatross. An intensely musical boy working on farms in New Zealand's Wairarapa, he joins the army to avenge the loss of Mack Reedy's beloved younger brother in the Italian campaign in 1942. His metamorphosis is not into the bird he reveres, but into a skilled and ruthless sniper. -
The role of the war correspondent is hazardous and ambiguous. Sebastian Smith observes and records conflict in many different lands, but in Trujillo Columbia, his cavalier methods cause him to cross the invisible line between observer and participant. He is no longer the Silent Witness. -
The Persian poet Rumi said, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there." Violin bowmaker, Charles Willoughby discovers that field. But it is a field visible only to him and the schoolteacher with whom he falls in love, Jessica Bates. And it is a field from which it is possible, they may never return. -
Stricken with grief at the loss of his only son, Tom Mahler sets out from Chicago to find the remote and mysterious place in New Zealand left to him by the uncle who had been stationed there during the Second World war. He begins to build the dory he had promised to build with his son but when he meets the formidable Maori, Ringatu, and discovers that the stepfather of the mute boy he has befriended, has been murdered, his isolated life becomes darker than he could imagine. -
Back in 1835, an American Scientist wrote a piece of satire for the New York Sun, in which he described the Batmen living on the Moon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many readers assumed this bizarre information to be true. In 1959, the American military reportedly considered testing nuclear weapons on the Moon. In 1961, the Soviets dropped the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated - in the order of 3,800 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. These apparently unrelated events come together as politician, Dimple Potts, blunders his way to the position of Director of the UN International Nuclear Validation Festival. At the same time, he is 'Founder' of Brainee - a company manufacturing a 'bipartisan' pill purporting to counter the effects of a Pandemic of Alta Stultitia, or Deep Stupidity... -
As wonderful as marriage can be, sometimes it contrives to become a debilitating trap in which the hopes and aspirations of a young wife, might slowly but inexorably be rendered distant memories. The realisation that one has become the metaphorical 'frog in the pot of warming water,' is the theme of 'She Sings,' in which resignation progresses to depression. In her effort to find herself again, the protagonist in this story, falls from grace and is cast aside by her family. She sets out on a reluctant odyssey that takes her closer to the dreams of her childhood and yet to a destination she could never have previously imagined.