THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

It's the early days of WWII. Evelyne Redfern is working in a munitions factory and trying to avoid talking about her past.  Her father is a high profile aristocrat.  Her now departed mother, was a French lady, swayed by her swanky father and used and abused.  Now Redfern has the reputation of both parents and it's a tarnished halo she must wear as the 'Parisian Orphan', as dubbed by the Brittish press.  A bitter custody battle between her father, Sir Reginald Redfern and mother resulted in her attending a private school in England.  And when her mother died, her father ignored her.  And so, went to live with her rich but over bearing aunt. Her only escape, crime fiction.  She's A sharp observer and great reader. A chance promotion through a tentative family, Lionel Fletcher, a shady character,  connection puts her in Churchill’s war cabinet operation in a bunker under Whitehall. Initially she's in the typing pool.  Merely secretarial, living ...

In a novel loosely based on actual people five real-life crime fiction luminaries from the golden age of detective fiction (the years between the wars),  team up to solve a murder.  Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Baroness Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, all under appreciated crime writers the emerging new genre widely considered the realm of male writers, decide to prove their wealth and prowess by joining the newly minted Detection Club (a society of mainly male crime writers led by Father Brown creator GK Chesterton) by solving an actual murder. Their original motive was to prov themselves equals to their condescending male counterparts in the club.  But soon they become embroiled in a mystery more real and exciting than any theory exercise or parlour game of 'Cluedo'. ,  They turn their attention to the mysterious disappearance and murder of nurse May Daniels, who'd  vanished 5 months earlier during a day trip in October 1930 from a railw...

The six book in this remarkable and unique koreo series, edited by Lloyd Jones, features the text of Jan Medicott Acorn Fiction winner Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) and the incredible graphic works of Peata Larkin (Te Arawa, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) in a collaboration like nothing we've ever seen before.   Both are cousins and have wanted to collaborate on an art project or some time.   "Being cut from the same cloth enables the threads of the fabric to shine through and hopefully we achieved that," says Peata Larkin.  There was once a book for kids called 'Zoom' by Istvan Banyai that moved out revealing more and more of a scenario and building a potential story as the imges become more and more intertwined.   Well, in many ways this book is the same.  Hereaka's words literally spiral out from the centre, like strands of a fibre or cotton being flug out as a missle into the universe.  Or as a web, 'stringing' ...

We’re hoping you might like to contribute to the campaign to save the Randell Cottage Writers Fellowship , whose CNZ grant has been pulled.  The Cottage Trust is urgently seeking donations to allow Saraid de Silva (author of Amma, longlisted for both the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2025 prize for fiction and the Women’s Prize) to take up her residency.  You can donate to the Boosted campaign here .