'Whenever I think of coming to punish my father, it's always in a strong wind, and that's blowing now as I drive up the long, unsealed track to the house and sheds.' So begins one of Owen Marshall's superbly subversive stories. He offers up a wide range of subjects, from untimely deaths to unusual discoveries made about friends or neighbours, from burnishing an overseas trip to a tale about saving a business venture: 'Just in time,' said Paddy. 'I thought I was going to have to resort to giving blow jobs in the office.' It wasn't quite as Jane A would have expressed relief, perhaps, but sincere in its own way . . . With over ten years since his last collection of new stories, Marshall explores his fellow New Zealanders, bringing his wisdom and wry eye to his vivid, insightful scenes: 'Places bring back people, people bring back places, and both conjure the cinema of your past.'

A chance encounter leads to an appreciation of the spontaneous and passing friendship of strangers in this evocative short story from one of New Zealand's finest writers.David Wilson takes a trip around Europe after the death of his wife. With limited funds, he accepts the offer from a stranger to stay in his apartment in Arles. For David it is a chance to put himself on hold and live as someone else.Brilliantly tracking David's shifting sense of himself, this story captures time, place and mood with appealing subtlety and precision.

Chosen by the author from his thirteen previous collections, this latest selection of stories includes 'Coming Home in the Dark', the inspiration for a new feature film. Owen Marshall is regarded as one of our finest living writers. His stories capture the imagination and refuse to let go. From dark to funny, acerbic to warm, they probe our national psyche with clear-eyed insight. This selection from a long career ranges across New Zealand and ventures overseas; the pieces explore both cruelty and love; they look back to childhood and also capture the world we live in today. Full of unexpected turns, lyrical writing, wry observations and intriguing plots, this sampling offers a provocative take on New Zealand. 'I very much envy his ability to lay things down in such a way that each one has its natural weight and place, without any straining and heaving.' - Maurice Gee, Sport 'Owen Marshall has established himself as one of the masters of the short story'...

An intriguing novel revolving around the varied reactions to a new, catastrophic disease.With the advent of the new millennium comes a new disease - Harlequin Rex - and a variety of reactions to it. The men and women in this intriguing novel find themselves caught up in a terrifying novelty, and all must cope as best they can. Their response is influenced as much by the past as by present events, however, those formative things that lie far back in us all: guilt, loyalty, compromise and love - especially love.

Brilliantly tracing the progress of unexpected love and the perils of relationships, this gripping novel is a tour de force.Temporarily in Auckland while her husband is undergoing treatment, Sarah enjoys a walk in the coolness of the Symonds Street Cemetery. As she pauses at the grave of Emily Keeling, murdered in 1886 by a rejected suitor, a stranger named Hartley strikes up a conversation. Before long he arranges to meet Sarah for coffee.So their friendship begins, and soon blossoms into an affair, rich in mutual understanding and sexual excitement. But love may become obsession, which brings with it disquieting demands, even menace.'When love is not madness, it is not love.'

Shortlisted for the NZ Post Book Awards, these 25 stories are at once arresting, moving, funny and full of insight into the human condition.Being a celebrity impersonator, says Aussie Elton John, is like living your life as a moon. 'We give up our identity and become just a reflection of another personality, like the moon having no fire of its own and being just a pale reflection of the sun when it's not there.' This collection of stories from master short fiction writer Owen Marshall is rich with people exploring their identities and how they are affected by others. There is Patrick, whose life is radically altered by a random encounter with a killer; widowed Margaret, who faces a new kind of existence alone; David, who experiences the 'spontaneous and passing friendship of strangers'; Ian, whose wife's demands for a better lifestyle lead him to a new career in telephone sex. Set in both Europe and the Antipodes, these stories will be savoured long after reading.

Beautifully written, brilliantly observed and ultimately optimistic, this novel by one of New Zealand's finest writers powerfully captures those times when death puts life on hold. Sheff is disillusioned with journalism and, with plans to travel overseas, chucks in his job. But first he goes south to Alexandra, where his father is dying. He becomes caught up with his family in the agonising inertia of waiting for approaching death. Slowly he comes to terms with suppressed issues of loss, love, resentment and commitment, and acknowledges he must reach out for new relationships. Sheff's gradual transformation - sometimes darkly humorous, sometimes disconcerting - is handled with insight and subtlety and is totally convincing.

Based on a real love triangle, this fascinating novel is by one of New Zealand's most-loved respected authors.'Dougie's story and mine is not told in the history of William Larnach. It is our private journey, and only we understand how it came about; only we know the fitness and the wonder of it.' William James Mudie Larnach's name resonates in New Zealand history - the politician and self-made man who built the famous 'castle' on Otago Peninsula. In 1891, after the death of his first two wives, he married the much younger Constance de Bathe Brandon. But the marriage that began with such happiness was to end in tragedy. The story of the growing relationship between Conny and William's younger son, Dougie, lies at the heart of Owen Marshall's subtle and compelling new novel. The socially restrictive world of late nineteenth-century Dunedin and Wellington springs vividly to life as Marshall traces the deepening love between stepmother and stepson, and the slow...

What happens when an ordinary man becomes a messiah? A witty, prescient and eloquent satire by one of New Zealand's finest writers.Far into the twenty-first century, Albous Slaven's life is spectacularly and irrevocably altered after he hangs for an instant from a power line. While recuperating, he senses a new-found gift; the gift of oratory.Driven to hold rallies throughout New Zealand, Slaven astounds and alarms the ruling politicians. He too is astounded and often bemused by the response of the tens of thousands who flock to hear him. But what is his message? Is he a Messiah, a political saviour, or an idealist who conjures up forces he can neither understand nor control?Shortlisted for the Montana Book Award for Fiction and described by Vincent O'Sullivan as `Delightfully sardonic; philosophically mischievous', this novel deftly and disconcertingly explores its characters' lives in this lyrical picture of New Zealand.`The world's multiplicity is splendidly...