NEW BOOKS
OUTLIERS, EIGHT ANTIPODEAN TALES Michael Jackson
The Harvard-based emeritus professor, author of BEGINNINGS, returns, with eight short stories which, he writes speak 'to my double life, shuttling between the southern and northern hemispheres, and blurring the line between fact and fiction. Although the stories in this book are situated in the antipodes, I am mindful that in ancient geomythology, antipodean referred to people and places at the far side of the known world who walked with their feet facing backward. Accordingly, antipodean may be construed as a metaphor for being estranged by temperament or accident from mainstream society.' The Outliers are maverick New Zealanders Jackson encounters.
Publishing October 2025.
HOW TO PAINT A NUDE
Sam Mahon
Sam Mahon needs no introduction - Christchurch artist, activist, conservationist, writer, subversive who, using cow dung, sculpted Hon Nick Smith nude and squatting over a glass of water. This beautifully written book which he calls 'a fiction', is set within the real world of Canterbury art in the year of the earthquake, with real Canterbury people. It centres around a Belarus refugee who fled his country to find freedom. Sam and Gregor meet weekly to discuss art's purpose, and critique Lukashenka from a distance, but there is a pervading enemy in the book which can best be described in the words of architect Peter Beaven, and by the end, Gregor departs, disillusioned.
Publishing October 2025.
Includes art by Mahon.
THE ART OF COLONISATION - IMAGES OF EUROPE'S ENCOUNTERS WITH NEW ZEALAND AOTEAROA
Paul Moon
Professor Paul Moon is one of New Zealand's most prolific authors; his latest biography on photographer Ans Westra garnered glowing reviews. In this book his meticulous research shows, through selected art works, how imperial art became a form of colonisation by colour. However, 'artists in New Zealand in the colonial era, not tied to a state vision, tried to flex their individual aesthetic and ideological perspectives.' A spectacular production both historically and aesthetically with 20 short, fast-paced chapters. Artists include Holle, Sporing, Hodges, Earle, Tupaia, Heaphy, Watkins, Steele, and more.
Publishing November 2025.
Approx 25 colour plates.
KIM - A JOURNEY BETWEEN TWO WORLDS Kim Rangiaonui Logan
Born Māori (Ngātikahungunu), raised Pakeha, Kim Rangiaonui Logan's father was commander in D Company, 8th Māori Battallion, but returned from the war a damaged man. He and his wife were unable to cope with two small boys, Kim and his brother Wilfred. Their childhood was bleak and cruel. But this is no misery memoir. Kim climbed and climbed - Everest, Aorangi Mt Cook, anywhere, he climbed away from his pain to success with mountaineers like Peter Hilary, and later as a guide and survivor, notably the chopper crash in the Mark Inglis/Phil Doole rescue. Always climbing, his marriage crashed, but then he met Glennys and his life turned around. Now in his seventies, living in Queenstown and reconnecting with his Māori world, this is not just another mountaineering book.
Publishing November 2025.
