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The political years
by Marilyn Waring
In 1975, Marilyn Waring was elected to the New Zealand Parliament as the MP for Raglan. Aged just 23, she was one of only a few female MPs who served through the turbulent years of Muldoon’s government. For nine years, Waring was at the centre of major political decisions, until her parliamentary career culminated during the debate over nuclear arms. When Waring informed Muldoon that she intended to cross the floor and vote for the opposition bill which would make New Zealand nuclear free, he called a snap election. And the government fell. This is an autobiographical account of Waring’s extraordinary years in parliament. She tells the story of her journey from being elected as a new National Party MP in a conservative rural seat to being publicly decried by the Prime Minister for her ‘feminist anti-nuclear stance’ that threatened to bring down his government. Her tale of life in a male-dominated and relentlessly demanding political world is both uniquely of its time and still of pressing relevance today.
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Ghost south road
by Scott Hamilton
The Great South Road was built in 1862 to carry a British army into the Waikato Kingdom. When the British invaded the Waikato in 1863, soldiers shared the road with Māori refugees from Auckland. Today the eroding earthen walls of forts and pā and military cemeteries remember the road's history. They sit beside the car dealerships and kava bars and pawn shops of South Auckland, the most culturally diverse part of the world's most culturally diverse city. On their journeys up and down the Great South Road, Hamilton, Janman, and Powell have learned how the route's tragic past affects its present, and discovered the ways in which the road connects as well as divides the communities that live alongside it.
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Hudson & Halls : The Food of Love
by Joanne Drayton
Hudson & Halls: The food of love is more than just a love story, though a love story it certainly is. It is a tale of two television chefs who helped change the bedrock bad attitudes of a nation in the 1970s and 80s to that unspoken thing - homosexuality. Peter Hudson and David Halls became reluctant role models for a `don't ask, don't tell' generation of gay men and women who lived by omission. They were also captains of a culinary revolution that saw the overthrow of Aunty Daisy and Betty Crocker and the beginnings of Pacific-rich, Asian-styled international cuisine. They captivated an unlikely bunch of viewers, from middle-aged matrons to bush-shirted blokes. Hudson and Halls were pioneers of celebrity television who rocketed to stardom on untrained talent and a dream.
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The Road to Little Dribbling : adventures of an American in Britain
by Bill Bryson
A sequel to Notes From a Small Island stands as the author's tribute to his adopted country of England and describes his riotous return visit two decades later to rediscover the country, its people and its culture. By the author of A Walk in the Woods.
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With our blessing
by Jo Spain
It's true what they say ...revenge is sweet. 1975. A baby, minutes old, is forcibly taken from its devastated mother. 2010. The body of an elderly woman is found in a Dublin public park in the depths of winter. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds is workingthe case. He's convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the notorious Magdalene Laundries. Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent in the Irish countryside. But once inside, it becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them ...and is determined to exact further vengeance for the sins of the past
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This Mortal Boy
by Fiona Kidman
Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society's reaction to outsiders.
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Travelling in a Strange Land
by David Park
he world is shrouded in snow. With transport ground to a halt, Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and is forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret.
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