Jenny Pattrick: 9 books

This tender and amusing novel is set in New Zealand in the nineties, with the Springbok Tour still a recent memory, and as the country debates whether to adopt MMP. Letter-writing is about to give way to email, but elderly Grace will resist the trend. Through letters and stories, we learn of her friendships,...

A terrific historical novel full of compelling events, vivid communities and the irresistible character of Conrad Rasmussen. In this companion novel to the bestselling Denniston novels, the free spirit is pitted against the forces of tradition.On the run from an unfortunate 'indiscretion', young Conrad...

A number one bestseller, this favourite New Zealand novel captures a real 19th century community.The bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston, isolated high on a plateau above New Zealand's West Coast, is a place that makes or breaks those who live there. At the time of this novel - the1880s - the...

Heart-warming and compulsive reading, this is an entertaining, lively and moving novel from one of New Zealand's favourite authors.*'Donny Mac was released at Eastertime, about a month before Pansy Holloway, also known as Nightshade, disappeared for good.'*After a short stint in prison on trumped-up...

A compelling sequel to the best-selling novel The Denniston Rose.Eighteen years have passed since the child Rose arrived on Denniston, riding up the terrifying Incline on a stormy night. She has now grown into a young woman, intelligent and talented, with an outrageous zest for life. The trauma of...

**Vivid and evocative, this is a moving novel of a unique time and place from one of New Zealand's favourite authors.**The Whanganui River at the turn of the twentieth century is a busy thoroughfare, taking sightseers through the spectacular landscape by paddle steamer and acting as highway for the...

**A novel that explores love and lies amidst the tropical beauty and exuberance of Samoa.**Elena catches a glimpse of her friend Jeanie Roper in a New Zealand art gallery. It is twenty-three years since Jeanie suddenly disappeared. They had been close when Jeanie lived in Samoa with her bullying husband...

**A vivid novel about ingenuity and hard slog, crooks and dreamers, bootleggers and love.**Billy is a young, impressionable dreamer. In 1907, he strikes off on his own, keen to prove himself an able worker on the new railroad. It's being cut through steep mountainsides and across deep gullies to join...

A lively, unconventional love story set amid real figures from nineteenth-century theatre, from the author of the best-selling The Denniston Rose. The little French girl, Lily Alouette, was singing and dancing almost as soon as she could walk, and performing became as much a part of her as breathing....