THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Annabel Langbein Last Saturday was a stunner - sun shinning and no Covid lockdowns - as we  celebrated some of the best from Aotearoa with talks, music and food in Wellington Botanic Garden's Soundshell. It was the perfect place to be for a picnic and many had brought their sammies and bubbly.  The audience was relaxed but engaging.  Our compere also had a bit of a dance competition, a ruse to give away free books and get shots for the Verb website, no doubt!   What a start to day one of this fabulous wo day festival.   We caught sessions with Annabel Langbein chatting about cooking to live and her book Bella: My Life in Food with Bell Brash.   We also saw comedian-turned author Tom Sainsbury talkin rather seriously with Noelle McCarthy on the Kiwi condition, impersonating Paula Bennett and the awful cat - Gingerbread. He went into detail on the subjects of his book The New Zealanders: The Field Guide.   A bit later Church & AP...

Verb Wellington  last November, Pōneke artist and writer  Jo Randerson ONZM  unveiled her six frameworks for how artists and creative thinkers can re-shape our world at this urgent, uncertain moment in history.  Secret Art Powers  is an evolving theatrical lecture series that will culminate in a book due for publication in 2022.  This March, in partnership with the New Zealand Festival of the Arts, Randerson returns with the second instalment  Secret Art Powers: Lies and Fluidity , diving into two of the powers that creative thinking can reveal. Randerson will present this engaging lecture at  7pm on 13 March at Pōneke's St Peter's on Willis.  Tickets are just $29 plus booking fees. Tickets for this exciting events are on sale now. Supporting live events is a hugely important way to show your support for local artists, and enable them to create new and engaging content despite the continuing disruption of borde...

What happens when your crime scene plunges into the sea just minutes after you discover it?  What do you do when your main suspect, a well respected man, beloved by all, has disappeared into the Ethernet?   This is a job for ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson and he's not too keen to take it. This is a story of a village on the edge.  As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast and former set builder Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the North Sea.  But as the headland crumbles away it reveals everything he's buried in the garden over the past years.  Plants, junk, rubbish, and human remains. With the storm at its height, still raging, it’s way too dangerous to retrieve any bodies or do any kind of forensic analysis, not even set up a tent for the DNA 'smurfs'.  Waves are devouring the evidence at this very minute!  No one knows how many have been killed by Smith or how many more he’ll kill.  He needs to be stopped - that's if they can ...