How do you mend the broken, be it toasters, relationships or people? Julia once re-created broken objects to be better than before. However, a series of earthquakes triggered Julia’s descent into apathy and now she’s lost the will to repair anything, including herself. She’s going to a support group for help – Obsessives Associated. Each member has their own obsession to overcome – eating plasterboard, amassing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, brand-name tattoos. Finding a friend in Lynda, a doll-obsessed marathon runner, Julia feels as though she's finally on the mend until a dilemma fragments the group and threatens to break Julia all over again. Which glue repairs fractured humans?


Broken is Beautiful is a novel about breaking, mending and how to be friends across ideological divides.

*Just search Jane Shearer at your library service of choice.

If your life appears to be royally fucked from your drinking, it probably is. But the good news is Maree MacLean's books is a call to action not a death sentence. The No Bullshit Guide to Getting Sober challenges us to get more honest than we've ever been before about how and why we are fucking up our own lives.

The Pumping Entrepreneur is an honest, raw look into how one entrepreneur navigated becoming a mum, dealing with ‘pregism’, and running a business through some of the hardest times our world has ever experienced. In this sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always authentic book, Laura Heynike shares the ups, downs, and zig zags that she’s experienced while juggling pregnancy, birth, and motherhood with running a business.

*Just search Laura Heynike​ at your library service of choice.

Are you interested in living a more authentic and adventurous life? Would you like to be inspired by incredible outdoor adventures around New Zealand? Instead of making excuses for missing out, are you ready for experiences that will enrich your life? If so, this book is for you. You will be captivated by the ups and downs of real-life shared experiences of Adventurous Women on the Loose (AWOL), hiking up mountains, across golden sandy beaches and through spectacular bush, kayaking across idyllic fiords and busy harbours, exploring an active volcano, and so much more. In Going AWOL you will learn: • how being adventurous boosts our resilience for handling change, disruption and upheavals • when we step outside our comfort zone on stretch challenges, real growth happens • midlife transitions take longer than we think to recalibrate and become fully alive. Discover how being more courageous, choosing your own adventures and trying new experiences rebuild confidence and resilience to navigate through work and personal challenges. Mary Somervell is a transition guide, blogger and outdoor adventurer who lives in Nelson, New Zealand. Mary founded AWOL (Adventurous Women on the Loose) to share her passion for being active outdoors with other women. Including AWOL, she has organised over 70 different outdoor adventures around New Zealand.

Request your free AWOL guide: www.insideoutworks.co.nz/free-going-awol-guide

​A personal, intimate, memoir spanning 70 years, in three parts, describing my childhood in the UK and New Zealand, my 35 years as a New Zealand diplomat, and the hundreds of amazing individuals I met on the way, from farming folk to Kings, Queens and Presidents. Part One is the story of an English boy growing up on a farm in rural Devon and Somerset in an extended family, and then, aged 9, moving to rural New Zealand. It covers my school years, my year as a volunteer teacher, aged 17, at an all boys school, in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga and my year as a university student in a still divided Germany. Part Two describes my career as a junior, then senior, New Zealand diplomat, and my postings in Fiji, Canada, Geneva, Samoa, Germany and Singapore, the last three as Ambassador. Part Three argues that New Zealand should become a republic in the Commonwealth, with its own Head of State. It describes, too, my liberating journey from Anglicanism to freedom from any religion. I have aimed to tell the memoir with a sense of humour, humility and (for the most part) optimism!

*Just search Peter Hamilton at your library service of choice.

Growing little hearts with JillE books.

JillE books focus on important social and emotional skills such as kindness, consideration, perspective-taking, sharing, empathy, and more. These skills can help children build healthy relationships, cope with stress and difficult emotions, and develop a positive sense of self.

At the end of the first volume of Elspeth Sandys’ absorbing memoir, What Lies Beneath, an adult Elspeth has solved the riddle of her birth parents and begun to piece together the events of her early life and find her place in the world. Casting Off begins on the eve of Elspeth’s first marriage. She and her husband will soon depart New Zealand for England, joining a throng of Kiwis who chose to uproot themselves from their native land. New attachments will be formed: new loves – of people; of places – will take the place of the old. But the home country will continue to exercise a pull. Backgrounding the personal story in this deeply satisfying memoir is the story of the Thatcher years and the creeping virus of neo-liberalism, the sexual revolution of the sixties, the beguiling world of books – reading and writing – and theatre. Elspeth Sandys’ refreshing honesty and her skill as a writer of fiction and drama propel the reader through an absorbing life story that is equally a commentary on the meaning of memoir and the peculiarities of memory.

By Kita Mean, Read by Kita Mean
Audiobooks NZ is very proud to have produced this fantastic title for HarperCollins. Download it today.

The hilarious tell-all memoir by the first winner of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under
Hailing from a sleepy eastern suburb of Auckland, Nick Nash grew up feeling like he stood out for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't until he experimented with the art of drag that he found freedom in his fierce and confident alter-ego, Kita Mean. From wild nights partying like there was no tomorrow, to scrounging together delightfully camp costumes on a shoestring budget, buying an iconic cabaret bar with bestie Anita Wigl'it, and competing on the global stage alongside Kiwi and Aussie drag legends in the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under, Kita shares behind-the-scenes goss and important life lessons - many learned the hard way - about fighting your demons and being proud of your most authentic self.
Bursting with outrageous style and cheek, Life in Lashes is a memoir of a lost boy who found salvation as a drag queen, learned to love herself, and went on to share her fabulousness with the world.

The world's first auto-song-ography! Linn Lorkin sat at a piano so that she could read her memoir playing and singing as she went. The result is an audiobook that will make you laugh and cry ... and tap your feet. It’s the fabulously entertaining tale of a farm-girl from New Zealand, a country with no show-business culture whatsoever (at the time), who forges her own path and ends up playing and singing in some of the glittering capitals of the world. A colourful, funny, at times almost unbelievable, story – witness her first professional gig singing for prostitutes and sailors in Copenhagen and her stint in a dire Naples prison – is brought to life by this born performer’s own voice and snippets of her own songs. Prepare to fall in love with Linn Lorkin, her story and her music.


www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/linn-lorkin
www.linnlorkin.bandcamp.com
www.pianobarlady.com

*Just search Linn Lorkin at your library service of choice.

*Just search The Dark That Dwells Beneath Te Aro at your library service of choice.