Fiction > New Zealand & Pacific Island Fiction > New Zealand Short Stories

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This second anthology from Graham Lay again reflects the power of the beach to inspire, rejuvenate and occasionally, to seduce us. First published September 2008.

The cream of New Zealand's fiction writers with a thematic anthology that is perfect for summer reading. Stories are from established and new award-winning writers. A number of stories have been specially written for this collection Authors are Rhonda Bartle, Norman Bilbrough, Sue Emms, Charlotte Grimshaw, Witi Ihimaera, Kevin Ireland, Annamarie Jagose, Lloyd Jones,Shonagh Koea, Graeme Lay, Katherine Mansfield, Owen Marshall, Bruce Mason, Victoria McHalick, Linda Niccol, Emily Perkins, Sarah Quigley, Frank Sargeson, Jenah Shaw and ... read more

A new edition of the short stories from the father of modern New Zealand writing and the man who introduced the speech of ordinary New Zealanders to our literature and took it to the international stage.

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A son worries he is becoming too perfect a copy of his father. The co-owner of a weight-loss camp for teens finds himself running the black market in chocolate bars. A man starts melting and nothing can stop it, not even poetry. This terrific collection of stories by an exciting new talent moves from the serious and realistic to the humorous and outlandish, each story copying an element from the previous piece in a kind of evolutionary chain. Amid pigeons with a taste for cigarette ash, a rash of moa sightings, and the identity c... read more

This debut collection observes a subtle unravelling of social etiquettes. Often hopeful, always moving, these darkly quirky stories demand the reader's attention beyond the final page. Etiquette for a Dinner Party showcases the breadth of this new writer's talent - from the oh-so-recognisable and desperate efforts of a homesick tourist to enjoy the 'perfect' holiday, to the descent into madness of a lonely high-country farmer. Varied and accomplished, this book is entertaining, stimulating and original.

This is a complex, bittersweet collection of short stories. Her tales combine characters and occurrences that are at once cripplingly dark and yet also tinged with a quiet beauty and optimism and she deftly covers subjects such as identity, addiction, devotion and abandonment.

A collection of stunning depth and playful breadth. It's comic, sardonic, capricious and strange, and it takes us on some wild journeys through elemental environments. the almost possible and the barely imaginable.It's Keri Hulme..back again. Three of the 19 stories have appeared in Sport. First published 2004.

Scintillating tales for women of a certain age. The wonderful, wise and witty women Tessa Duder has created will strike a chord with their tales of loves and dreams they have lived and lost, their tragedies and their triumphs and most of all, their enduring spirit and often unexpected strength. Is she still alive is a question women of a certain age hear all too often - in Tessa Duder's wonderful new stories the answer is a resounding yes. First published May 2008.

A book of humorous stories with a distinctive Kiwi flavour, both true and definitely not true, compiled through Radio Pacific. Spinning a good yarn is a time-honoured tradition in this country, the stories about the larrikin, the local colourful identity, the tall tales and the fact is stranger than fiction true life tales of the absurd and the barely believable. We're in danger of losing them in this era of the internet joke that you read rather than tell. After all, half the skill and hunour in a good yarn is in the telling and t... read more

In this richly textured collection Isa Moynihan weaves a tapestry of places and times, past and present. In New Zealand on a Sunday afternoon in spring the serpent whispers fantasies of murder, cross-dressing, adultery and exotic lovers. On a summer beach a couple recognise the end of the golden weather. On another beach a child watches a drowned girl being carried ashore. A country grandmother fights back against family and other threats to independence. A mother is tempted to destroy her adult daughter's image of Daddy dearest, a... read more

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a half-day holiday decree; a well-known poet pursues his elusive muse; a Kiwi makes himself indispensable in Oz; a revolutionary fast-food franchise revs up Russia's economy; a racing-car driver is airborne; temperate Otago exports its kiwifruit worldwide; a Frenchman called Foucault puts in the hard yards at an antipodean dairy farm - all while water laps at our feet, our homes, our lives . . .>br>With Tim Jones' stories you should expect the unexpected. This remarkably refreshing collection uses a lively ... read more

Widely admired and regularly cited as our best living writer of short stories, Owen Marshall turns the focus on his contemporaries. He has searched the country for the finest selection of stories being written today by a variety of local writers. Their current preoccupations range from a dog with no head, to reproducing reproductions, to amateur drug-dealing, to a little liar talking big; their lively characters experience the clumsy conflicts of adolescence right up to a defiant old age. As our writers travel overseas, so their in... read more

Among the numerous pieces of writing that Katherine Mansfield produced during her short life, there were fifteen stories that were not completed on her death but which she had intended for inclusion in her collection named after one of them, The Dove's Nest. This fourth volume of her stories, reproduced here, was published posthumously in 1923. J.B. Priestley wrote of them: 'the merest beginnings are capital reading. Even though we never come to the point, and do not know what the stories are about, it does not seem to matter very ... read more

This popular series continues with a new editor, Fiona Farrell, who has scoured the country and beyond for a sampling of the best stories being written by our writers today. She has selected a variety of voices and styles, with vivid images as diverse as a giant turtle burying its eggs in the sand, children rummaging through piles of kerbside inorganic rubbish and an eel landing on a crisp, white shirt. There are moments of tenderness and revelation, humour and insight, each story reverberating beyond the confines of the page, ... read more

For over two decades, the judges of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition have had the daunting task of selecting, from up to eighteen-hundred entries, one winning story. This prestigious competition has lauded a range of New Zealand writers as diverse as the stories they've penned, honouring many of our best-known authors and launching talented new voices. The competition's twenty-two winning stories have now been brought together to form this powerful collection. Varied, startling and above all entertaining, each story is... read more

A collection of 24 short stories by one of New Zealand's top living writers of short stories. These stories explore the worlds of small-town communities, their loves and losses, their dreams and everyday lives.

From their very first words, Adrienne Frater's original and compelling stories draw you in and her vividly realised characters stay with you long after you stop reading. Meet, in these pages, a frustrated legal clerk who goes to bed as Pauline and wakes up as Pohutakawa, a sociology professor moonlighting as a graffiti artist, a woman finding liberation in a Turkish bath house and many more, in settings ranging from small-town New Zealand to Norway. Adrienne's work has already delighted a large audience through radio broadcasts; no... read more

These stories happened decades ago or yesterday, in a pulpit, garden, airport, cupboard, train or bed. Twenty-six women, young and old, talk about moments when sex (or abstaining from sex) changed their lives in some way. Today, they all live in New Zealand's most prim and proper city ...but their sexual epiphanies occurred all around the world. First published January 2010.