Jonathan M Barrett: 7 books

When Brett pays his weekly visit to his mother at her retirement home, he’s annoyed to see a vase of agapanthus – now a weed in their new home – next to her bed. But his protests set off long suppressed memories for her. As Brett’s wife Suzie asks: is Mom confusing or confessing? If you've enjoyed this free short story, please rate it and leave a review. Thanks, Jonathan.

When Kim and David go house hunting, they’re hoping for a Once in a Lifetime Opportunity. But is their relationship strong enough to survive the rigours of house hunting in the gentrified suburbs of Wellington?

Miss Davis’s class have been studying measurement all term. Today, they will measure each other’s normal walking speed. But class misfit Gary Mooney has other plans. This playground tale reveals much about social conformity, betrayal and punishment. The Measure of Gary Mooney was awarded third place in the New Zealand 2007 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition.

Jim Croft is a young priest in crisis. Burnt out from his work in a Cape Town township at the end of the Apartheid era, he escapes to the relative Eden of Zimbabwe for a break. But this Eden has its own temptations.

Paul has the unenviable task of investigating the death of a young crop spraying pilot. As he travels from the crash site to a tavern run by an eccentric old flyer, Paul reflects on being a father, and how he became estranged from his son.

Antoine Maercx is ranked 73rd in the Time Benelux edition list of 'Most important contemporary thinkers’. He arrives in Wellington to make the keynote address at the biennial Australasian Nietzsche Society conference. But from the moment he is picked up at the airport, things do not go to plan for the eminent professor.

Rob Hamilton, a disaffected insurance lawyer, and Toni Haast, a quietly ambitious claims clerk, are sent to Exmouth, a small town on New Zealand's West Coast, to investigate the suspicious death of Artemis Washburn.On family holidays in Exmouth, Rob's father had filled his young son's...