Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Pru has been married to Guy for a quarter of a century. She hasn't had sex for ten years. 'Why the hell do I live my life this way' she says to herself. 'I mean - really ' Change comes from out of the blue when odd old Uncle Bertie dies in Samoa and leaves his property to Guy. On a whim, the couple decide to go and take a look at what they know must be a tropical paradise. Not their usual stamping ground, you understand. Daringly, they fly to Apia. Pru soon finds herself thinking things, feeling things, doing things she's never till now come close to thinking, feeling, doing. 'Are we just an ornamental waste of space, d'you think' she asks Guy in Samoa. 'I rather think we are, darling.' 'Oh dear.' Pru Goes Troppo is a comic novel about the ups and downs of two people who are privileged parasites, yet curiously innocent. Among the themes explored in the story are class, gender, colonialism and neo-colonialism, ageing and belonging. And pratfalls.

The best-selling novel about twin girls growing up in New Zealand is back - with zombies We all know about the zombie virus that ravaged New Zealand between the two world wars, but little has been written about how the biters it created affected the lives of women, especially working-class women. Stevan Eldred-Grigg's best-selling novel about twin sisters growing up during the depression has been updated by Helen Mae Innes to include the previously ignored and despised minority, zombies. A black comedy, the story shows us how the sisters, their sharp and shrewd mother and many other women struggle to avoid being bitten by biters, care gingerly for hunches who don't want to eat their brains (yet) and watch as the 'cured' lurkers start to take their jobs. Even in times of pandemics girls still grow up, worry about boys, go out to work, get married and have babies, all while trying to keep their brains safe inside their skulls. At the beginning the twins are small, fearful and helpless. By the end of the story they're armed and ready to go after the enemy. But who is the real enemy? A novel about survival in extraordinary times, Oracles and Miracles and Zombies is an inspiration to women of all generations.

Rain on iron rooftops. A radio streaming the latest hit songs. It's the early 1950s. The baby boom. Valarie is a talkative, singing, slanging, pregnant daughter of the slums. Gilbert, her husband, is a well-spoken son of a landed family. They already have three kids. Gilbert has just taken a job as paymaster at a coal mine. The family is about to start life in a green and black and red township on the West Coast. A little boy is born, almost in a taxi, and named Stevan.Green Grey rain tells the story of the first years of a little boy dreaming and singing, wondering and wishing, in the bush, rain, rust and sooty streets of 1950s Blackball. A story told by the boy. A story told too by the hit songs he hears on the radio. And a story told by his mother - someone who, with her sister, has already spoken to us in the pages of Oracles and Miracles. Stevan is one of New Zealand's most prolific writers with 24 books published (including histories, novels, and true tales) and numerous articles, essays, and short stories. He is an award-winning author, a best-selling author, yet still a humble and engaging author.

Phoney Wars looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders' hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humor, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.

White Ghosts, Yellow Peril is the first book to explore all sides of the relationship between China and New Zealand, and the peoples of China and New Zealand during the whole of the seven or so generations after these two countries initially came into contact. The Qing Empire and its successor states from 1790 to 1950 were vast, complex, and torn by conflict. New Zealand, meanwhile, grew into a small, prosperous, orderly province of Europe. Until now, the story of the links and tensions between the two countries during those years hasn't been so broadly and thoroughly presented. The book is a highly readable portrait of the lives, thoughts, and feelings of the Chinese who came to New Zealand, as well as the New Zealanders who went to China. It is a scholarly but stimulating discussion of race relations, government, diplomacy, war, literature, and the arts. For some years to come, White Ghosts, Yellow Peril will be the key general text in the field of the early history of New Zealand and China.