Extracts

“Anything strange or startling?” That’s how my da, Bob, opens our conversations.

The meeting was held in a room with no windows.

Ki nga whakaeke, haumi. Join with those who connect the waka together. Find your place, you are part of the action. Our entrance onto Hina’s moon stage begins our lunar journey. This is our whakaeke.

Henry Appleby shook his head and flapped the page with disgust, reaching for his glass of ale nearby.

If you had set out in the summer of 1660 to travel the four miles from Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first house you would have come to after crossing the Charles River would have been the Gookins’.

On the way to school in the car is an opportune moment to use te reo Maori with the kids because they can’t go anywhere! You have a captive audience! Having fun while learning, especially with kids, always works best.

‘Is it a hanging?’ an eager newspaper delivery boy asked no one in particular.

If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad.

I initially considered writing a book about resilience for personal reasons.

Number two highlight of my thirty-ninth birthday: an extremely fit policewoman calling me interesting in front of some very hard to impress neighbours.

I’m in love with MagePants69. Which is a huge problem

The Seven Stages of Grief

My entire life’s work rests on the outcome of this match.

‘I don’t need make-up,’ says Ron. He’s in a straight-backed chair because Ibrahim told him you mustn’t slouch on television.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who describes herself as an “incredible mother, rather a good mistress, but not a very good wife” to billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith, is hosting a birthday party.

So, no doubt you’re wondering what came first: the music, or the photographs of Robert Plant’s trouser snake

Starbursts blink from streetlights like they’re sharing a secret as I wake to find myself slumped in the back of a cab, without any recollection of how I got here, or where I’m going.

Growing up, Kate Sheahan played football as the only girl in boys’ teams.

'Barry was an awesome dad to many children, just not his own.'

Thea’s scream rips through the clearing, startling the birds from the trees in a flurry of flapping wings.

It wasn’t the happiest of beginnings. Tilly tried to pretend it would be okay . . .