They say that truth is stranger than fiction; this month’s clutch of new books draws heavily on events that really happened to tell some incredible stories.
The making of another major motion picture masterpiece
Tom Hanks
Penguin Random House
RRP $37.00
Everyone knows Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks. But did you know he’s a writer too? His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. The Making Of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is his first collection of fiction, and it’s a goodie. An insider’s look into film making, it takes readers on a special journey showing the momentous efforts it takes to make a movie. The Making Of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece tells the story of the making of a colossal, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film, and the humble comic book that inspired it all. Spanning 80 years of a changing America, the story culminates in the opening of the film, and readers meet a colourful cast of characters that together create Hollywood magic. Funny, touching, and thought-provoking, the story is at once a reflection on America’s past and present, on the world of showbusiness and the real world we all live in.
Wildlife Compendium of the World
Tania McCartney
Hardie Grant
RRP $37.99
From amphibians and reptiles to monotremes and pilosa, discover a world of enchanting fauna in this stunningly illustrated book. Divided by continent, and with a handy map opener, you can explore some of the wildest, weirdest and cutest animals that call Earth home. Each animal profile includes the Latin name, type, diet, size, weight, conservation status, curious facts about the species, and the collective noun or baby name for that animal. Did you know that a group of bears is called a sloth and a baby lizard is a hatchling? Wildlife Compendium of the World also features sections on animal types and environments, animal rights, a word glossary and the conservation status of each animal. With a lustrous textured cover, this book is a wonderful resource and is a great read for children and adults alike, and a perfect travel companion on the road for the family.
The girl with the red hair
Buzzy Jackson
Penguin Random House
RRP $37.00
This debut novel tells the story of the thrilling life and heroism of Hannie Schaft, a young-woman-turned-Dutch-Resistance-fighter in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Hannie didn’t train to be a soldier: she had dreams of her own. But dreams die in wartime, and her friends are no longer safe. Hiding them is not enough. Hannie is young but she won’t stand aside as the menace of Nazi evil tightens its grip on her country. Recruited into the Resistance, she learns to shoot and is notorious for not missing her targets. As she draws deeper into a web of plots, disguises and assassinations, whispers spread like wildfire amongst enemies and friends alike. She’s “the girl with the red hair”. A match for any Nazi soldier, a true threat, a target. The Girl With The Red Hair is a page turner, and tells a tale of love, loyalty, and the limits we confront when our deepest values are tested.
Not set in stone
David Vass
Potton & Burton
RRP: $39.99
Between the 1980s and 2015, David Vass became one of New Zealand’s leading mountaineers. Not Set in Stone is the brave, compelling story of this elite mountaineer who ended up having to find a new life after a catastrophic accident. David recounts the beginning of his outdoor life caving and rafting, before turning to climbing, first around Arthur’s Pass and Aoraki/Mount Cook, and later the hard routes in Mount Aspiring National Park, before the huge granite walls of Fiordland’s Darran Mountains captured his imagination. However, in 2015, everything changed, when a fall resulted in a broken neck and incomplete tetraplegia. After a dramatic rescue, nearly dying of hypothermia, and then battling persistent lung infections, Dave had to come to terms with this catastrophic event, and a life now lived in a wheelchair, far from the mountains. This work is, at its heart, about connection to the natural world, to each other and suggests that ultimately, nothing, not even the work of a lifetime, is indeed set in stone.
Violet’s Scarf
Colleen Brown
Lighthouse
RRP $25.00
Violet’s Scarf tells the extraordinary World War I true story of two New Zealand siblings and a very special scarf. Author Colleen Brown heard the story when visiting the Te Hikoi Museum in Riverton, where she watched a video of early settlers speak about their lives in the 1900s. One of the speakers was a woman called Violet. In 1915, Violet is eight years old, when a Red Cross worker asks her class to contribute something for the soldiers serving overseas. She knits a scarf. The scarf is wrapped and the parcel has a tag with Violet’s name on it. The parcel joins 250,000 others sent to New Zealand soldiers in France in 1916. The journey takes more than a year and when the Red Cross parcels are thrown randomly to the soldiers, Violet’s scarf is caught by her brother George serving near the frontline. George brought the scarf and Violet’s tag home. The tag is now in Dunedin’s Hocken Library.
The Spanish Garden
Cliff Taylor
Quentin Wilson Publishing
RRP $37.50
This moving multi-generational novel by New Zealand author and journalist Cliff Taylor is set on a single day in 2016, and tells a story of memory and loss, the fatal history shared between two families, Pākehā and Māori, and a man’s enduring obsession with love. In his Spanish garden overlooking the Kaipara Harbour, Sidney King reluctantly prepares to mark his hundredth birthday. At the same time, a discovery is made in Spain that could unlock a mystery that has haunted him since he fought in the Spanish Civil War. As the tides come and go, and visitors arrive and depart, the old man walks with his ghosts and makes peace with the past. The Spanish Garden is about memory, how it serves and deceives us, and is about the casualties of war – both the dead and the living – and buried secrets and their patient wait to be told.
