New Books
These are some of the latest audio books produced in the Blind & Low Vision NZ studios. You can find them in BookLink, or you can ask Alexa for them by author, title, or book number. To request a particular book on Daisy Direct or CD, please call us on 0800 24 33 33.
The way it was: A farming, shearing, hunting life by Tom Brough
A down-to-earth account of the author’s life. After a challenging childhood in the King Country backblocks and minimal schooling, Tom Brough became a champion shearer, successful farmer (turning unproductive country into a model farm) and noted hunter of pigs, deer and more exotic animals on several continents.
Adult reading level
Book number 119460
When running made history by Roger Robinson
This book is a cross-over of literature, history and autobiography providing a close-up account of the modern running movement from the American running boom, the defiant emergence of women’s running, the glorious dawn of Africa’s ascendance, the sport’s redefinition of ageing, and its important role in environmental conservation.
Adult reading level
Book number 130005
Smelly Louie by Catherine Rayner
Louie the dog has just had a bath – and he is NOT happy about it. He thinks he smells all wrong and is determined to get his Special Smell back. Will he succeed and more importantly, will he be able to keep it this time?
Primary reading level
Book number 128828
The price of integrity: Memories of Stephen O’Connell by Phaline Keenan
The story of Stephen Doran, who grew up in India, joined the British Army, and served in the Calcutta Fire Brigade for many years, then emigrated to New Zealand after India became independent.
Adult reading level
Book number 119720
Sing no sad songs: Losing a daughter to cancer by Sandra Arnold
The author’s daughter was diagnosed with a rare and vicious cancer and dies in thirteen months at a very young age. This memoir is a haunting story of bereavement, survival, courage and acceptance, as well as a tender account of a close mother-daughter relationship cut far too short.
Adult reading level
Book number 120884
Becoming by Michelle Obama
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States of America and one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As America’s First Lady – the first African-American to serve in that role – she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. An inspiring and deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations.
Adult reading level
Book number 128521
Bread and roses: Sonja Davies – her story by Sonja Davies
Elected NZ Federation of Labour Vice-President in 1983 Davies writes of some of the major events and personalities from the 1950s to 1990s.
Adult reading level
Book number 129999
Photos of you by Tammy Robinson
Ava Green is told that her twenty-eighth birthday will be her last. The cancer is back, and this time she won’t be able to beat it. As her friends and family rally to help deliver her dying wish for a party to end all parties, the media get involved and her story spreads around the country. But when photographer James Gable arrives, Ava has to decide whether she is brave enough to let love in and strong enough to say goodbye when it is time.
Adult reading level
Book number 126136
Uncommon enemy by John Reynolds
An imaginary story of what life in New Zealand would be like if it had been occupied by Nazi Germany. The novel paints a chilling picture of what so easily might have been.
Adult reading level
Book number 126477
Listen to me!: Taking the conflict out of child discipline by Anna Martin
If you are confused by all the different parenting advice on how to discipline your child, here is a guide to parenting that will change the way you think about discipline altogether. The author has turned traditional methods on their head to come up with effective strategies that put listening and the well-being of children before lecturing. Whatever your child’s age, the clear step-by-step methods in this book will help minimise conflict in the family and encourage a secure relationship between you and your child.
Adult reading level
Book number 126825
Women now: The legacy of female suffrage
A collection of twelve dynamic essays by leading New Zealand thinkers to mark 125 years since New Zealand won the right to vote and the legacy of female suffrage.
Adult reading level
Book number 128517
Bullseye Bella by James T. Guthrie
A twelve-year-old darts prodigy secretly enters a darts competition at the local pub when she finds out that her little brothers special schooling is at risk because of lack of money. The old boys network of darts players are not happy and some will do anything to stop her from qualifying for nationals.
Primary & Intermediate reading level
Book number 129287
Brian’s return by Gary Paulsen
As millions of readers of Hatchet, The River, and Brian’s Winter know, Brian Robeson survived alone in the wilderness by finding solutions to extraordinary challenges. However now that he’s back in civilization, he can’t make sense of high school life. Brian feels disconnected, more isolated than he did alone in the North. The only answer is to return to the wilderness for only there can Brian discover his true path in life, and where he belongs.
Young adult reading level
Book number 120048
Home child: A child migrant in New Zealand by Dawn McMillan
True story of a young girl and her three siblings whose father had to make the heart-wrenching decision to send his children from London to New Zealand for a better life. The four siblings enjoy their ship voyage from Britain – not knowing they will never be going home again – nor that they would be fostered by Kiwi families. Told in the voice of that young girl, now a grandmother, telling her granddaughter about the experience of coming to a strange but welcoming country and making a new life in New Zealand.
Primary reading level
Book number 129304
Song for Rosaleen by Pip Desmond
A memoir of a family coping with their mother’s dementia. It is, both, a celebration of Rosaleen Desmond’s life and an unflinching account of the practical and ethical dilemmas that her six children had to face. This book raises important questions about who we become when our memories fail, how our rapidly ageing population can best be cared for, and what this means for us all.
Adult reading level
Book number 127148
It’s a small world by Emma Uren
What if the universe is somebody’s science experiment? Somebody with a strange sense of humour. How many of us get to build a universe for a school project?
Primary & Intermediate reading level
Book number 129221
The rift by Rachel Craw
For generations, the Rangers of Black Water Island have guarded the Old Herd against horrors released by the Rift. An apprentice Ranger with a rare scar and even rarer gifts and a girl returned to her childhood home, together, save the Island from disaster?
Young adult reading level
Book number 129295
Memory pieces by Maurice Gee
An intimate and evocative account of the author’s life in three parts.
Adult reading level
Book number 126140
Swim: A year of swimming outdoors in New Zealand by Annette Lees
New Zealanders have a deep connection to swimming in the outdoors, one of the things that defines Kiwis. The book is about the author’s personal quest to swim every day of a full year in the natural waterways of New Zealand – from Northland to Fiordland in rivers, lakes, ponds, the sea, estuaries, wetlands, springs and outdoor lido pools. It also includes stories of urban swims, night swims, forbidden swims, swimming in the dead of winter, Maori legends of swimming feats, the endurance swimmers of the Depression, and the swimming ANZACs, going back hundreds of years.
Adult reading level
Book number 128519
Two slices of bread: A memoir by Ingrid Coles
A true story. Ingrid Coles was born in Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), on 28 November 1942, during the Japanese occupation of WWII. Three months after her birth, her family were incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps. Her father died, aged 43, in a prison camp. Her 6-year-old brother died of starvation and pneumonia en route to Holland. Orphaned at age 16 in 1958, she immigrated to New Zealand to become a nurse. This memoir traces Ingrid’s background, revealing the secret of her successful life in New Zealand.
Primary & Intermediate reading level
Book number 120020
The Famous Five and the stately homes gang by Claude Voilier
Based on the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. In this story, the Five are holidaying once more at Kirrin Cottage.
Primary reading level
Book number 129597
Assassin’s quest by Robin Hobb
The king is dead and the heir, Verity, is missing and declared dead. Prince Regal has seized the throne, stripped the kingdom of its riches and retired to the inland city of Tradeford abandoning the north of the kingdom to the Red-Ship Raiders. Regal’s torture has left Fitz more dead than alive, and more closely than ever bonded with his wolf. Unless Fitz comes back to the human world and finds Verity, the Six Duchies will perish and there will be no safe place to live.
Adult reading level
Book number 102103
A change of key by Adrienne Jansen
The story of a multicultural group of migrants living in an inner-city block of social housing flats in New Zealand. It explores themes of social change and the hardships associated with existing in isolation from one’s family and culture. Marko has come to the ends of the earth to escape a once illustrious past in Bulgaria. But a Polish bookstore owner call him a traitor and his photograph is in a Newspaper. So someone knows who he is; is trying to expose him in his new country and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.
Adult reading level
Book number 128499