Orem Library

Eight-year-old Kahu craves her grandfather's love and attention, but he is focused on his duties as chief of a tribe that claims descent from the legendary "whale rider," a title to which there is currently no male heir.

When Henry Oades accepts a post in New Zealand, his wife and children follow him to the exotic land only to be kidnapped by native Maori. Henry searches for months until all hope is lost and his family is presumed dead. He eventually picks up the pieces of his life in a new country with a new family but his happiness is short-lived when his first wife and children arrive causing Henry and both families to face persecution for bigamy. Based on a real-life...

Contemporary novel about Maori participation in World War II.

In the award-winning film The Piano, writer/director Jane Campion created a story so original and powerful it fascinated millions of moviegoers. This novel stands independent of the film, exploring the mysteries of Ada's muteness, the secret of her daughter's conception, the reason for her strange marriage and the past lives of Baines and Stewart.

Meredith Winstone is lost but not in the physical sense. Ever since she left her small town to come to Auckland to study law, the attractive young woman has rejected all Church activity. Now she devotes her time to other important things like studying and saving lives as a surf lifeguard. But as she embarks on her legal career, Meredith begins to question who she hhas become. At her first job as an attorney she meets Grant Bascombe, an initially off-putting...

"Anahera Rawiri left New Zealand at twenty-one, fleeing small-town poverty and the ghosts of her childhood with no plans to look back. But eight years later, she returns, seeking familiarity as respite from the shattered remains of her new life. And despite the changes brought on by a bump in tourism--the shiny new welcome sign at the town line and a decidedly less shiny new police presence--Golden Cove appears much as it ever was: a small settlement...

Driven by the dream of creating a new life in the South Sea colonies, a small group of immigrants (among them several recent converts to the Mormon Church) becomes part of the surging tide of immigrants leaving the British Isles. Facing the perils of life at sea, their lives become inextricably intertwined as they make their journey to a new home.

Someone wants Elizabeth Clark dead and she doesn't know who or why. She is forced to search for safety in a strange land- a place where the only person she has known for more than a few hours is Michael Royden, her brother's childhood friend. Will she be able trust him?

In Faces In The Water, Janet Frame responded to her doctor's suggestion that 'as I was obviously suffering from the effects of my long stay in hospital in New Zealand, I should write my story of that time to give me a clearer view of my future'. The 'documentary' evolved into an intensely imagined fictionalised account in which Istina Mavet moves in and out of mental hospitals, facing the terrors of electric-shock treatment and the threat of a leucotomy....