Huia Publishers

Like every year, the summer brings new people to Tolaga Bay. It’s been a full year since Charlie saved his hometown from destruction at the hands of gods, warring sea creatures and natural disasters. Charlie and his younger brother, Robbie, are enjoying their normal lives – fishing off the wharf and helping out at their mum’s store – that is, until a visiting scientist is stabbed at the local campground, days before a meeting between local iwi and the government. So begins Charlie’s quest to uncover a mystery taking place in the hills above the town. Like every year, the summer brings new people to Tolaga Bay. It’s been a full year since Charlie saved his hometown from destruction at the hands of gods, warring sea creatures and natural disasters.

The Eldest Girl is a family drama spanning three generations. It moves between the 1960s with Tom, fresh off the boat from England who falls in love with the seemingly unattainable Ngahere, and 2010 where Cassius, their son, is grieving the death of his wife, Mere, and barely able to parent their children. When Mere’s twin sister returns home a successful film producer and her troubled director husband leaves, she enlists Cassius’s help with her three children. Tensions grow when Kiri, Cassius’s daughter, becomes jealous and rebels, a daughter Tom never knew he had turns up, and the pressures of juggling a film project, a drunk husband and children increase. But when Tom has a heart attack and family secrets emerge, relationships are examined, and connections are retied.

As the whangai daughter of Te Puea Herangi, an inspiring leader of the Waikato, Tiahuia Te Puea Herangi witnessed and took part in some of the major events that changed Aotearoa New Zealand. Merenia Gray, Tiahuia’s daughter, explores Tiahuia’s life and her whakapapa. Using stories, poetry, letters and interviews, Merenia retells the stories of how her ancestors survived Te Rauparaha’s raids, signed the Treaty of Waitangi, and came from Norfolk and Aberdeen to settle in Nelson.Tiahuia was a teacher, an artist, a Wellington City Councillor, a graduate of Victoria University, a nurse, a lifelong member of Ngati Poneke, and a skilled practitioner of a range of Maori performing arts, particularly karanga.She was a unique woman whose life drew together te ao Maori and te ao Pakeha.

This book details the background to the Kingitanga and also tells the story of the first king, Potatau Te Wherowhero. It details all the momentous events of Te Wherowhero's life from around 1775 to his death in 1860, including his status as Lord of the Waikato and the famous battles and conflicts with other tribes, his raising up as the First Maori King, and Mana Motuhake, the Maori Kingship, set apart as the symbol of the spiritual and cultural life of the Maori. Pei Te Hurinui's biography of King Potatau tells this story in a Maori voice employing waiata, poetry and whakapapa as well as prose text in English and English translations so that the book is accessible to both Maori language speakers and those with no knowledge of Maori.