We are very pleased to be giving away two copies of Patricia Donovan’s book, ‘Rita Vegas’, to our GrownUps members.
All you need to do to enter the draw is be a GrownUps member, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter and fill in your details near the bottom of the page!
About Rita Vegas
Patricia Donovan is arguably one of New Zealand’s most diverse novelists. Having tackled historical, thriller and dystopian novels, her fourth novel is an edgy crime thriller with a woman’s journey at its core.
Dead bodies were only the start…
The Serenity Centre in Cambodia was full of secrets, of skeletons, bones in the closet, things unrevealed and undisclosed. You sensed it. There was an atmosphere.
The discovery of a dead body only added to the tension, and triggered in Rita painful memories of events in New Zealand five years earlier. A woman had been found dead at Rita’s workplace, and compromising material related to the death dumped in Rita’s bag. Who put it there? Why? Finding herself under suspicion, Rita is compelled to track down the answers.
In this engrossing novel, Patricia Donovan weaves together two crime stories to explore memory and the stickiness of emotional triggers, and how necessity drives us to find strengths we don’t know we have.
‘Donovan delivers an edgy, intriguing crime story.’ —Jan Jordan, author and criminologist
‘Rita Vegas swaps Wellington’s mean streets for a Cambodian rehab, but the bodies keep piling up. In this taut, elegant thriller, Donovan keeps us endlessly entertained.’ —Redmer Yska, author and historian
Author Note
‘In an earlier life, and in another country, I worked as a communications consultant. A long and rewarding association with one of my clients came to an end when he asked me to purchase airline tickets for him and his wife, and to recoup the cost by inflating a few of my subsequent invoices to the government department in which he worked. This was one of those surprising incidents that stay with you although I had no inkling at the time that it would one day provide the seed for a novel.
Rita Vegas is the result of my blending imagination and memory to create a story, one in which I use two events, five years apart, to explore memory and emotional triggers. Its eponymous narrator, hunting down the facts behind one mysterious death, recalls the horrors of another. When Rita was a young newbie in a government agency, she found herself implicated in a crime and to prove her innocence embarked on a dangerous chase to expose the truth.’
About the Author
Patricia Donovan is the author of three previous novels, including The Remarkable Miss Digby which in 2022 was shortlisted for a NZ Booklovers Award.
Rita Vegas continues her notable exploration of genre. Donovan says that while her novels span numerous genres, they do share a common theme: a woman’s journey and her quest, in the face of obstacles, to find her strengths and make her way in the world.
‘I like to challenge myself as a writer, to find new and unfamiliar ways to address that theme.’
‘What inspires me to start writing is a situation or a dilemma of some sort – such as a troublesome sibling (The Madison Gap), or draconian governance (The Collections) or, as in Rita Vegas, an unexplained death – because this gives me something for my characters to respond to. The circumstances determine the genre, and once they are established, my stories quickly become about the characters, what happens to them, what they say and do, what drives them. This is why I write, to explore the human experience.’
After graduating from the University of Canterbury, with an MA (Hons) in English Literature, Donovan worked in corporate communications, in Australia and New Zealand, and is the author of a highly regarded best practice guide to the profession. She is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors and of the New Zealand Writers’ Guild. Patricia lives on the Kapiti Coast.
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Terms and conditions
- You must be a GrownUps member and receive our newsletter to be eligible to win.
- Competition closes on the 12th March 2025, winners will be notified via email by 13th March 2025.
- It is your responsibility to ensure you correctly enter a New Zealand postal address where the prize can be sent. GrownUps will not take responsibility for prizes sent to incorrect addresses.
- Winners are drawn at random by the GrownUps administration team.
- GrownUps employees and family are not eligible to enter.
- By entering the giveaway, you approve for GrownUps to use your name on social media as winner of the competition.
- One entry per household.
- Prize in non transferrable.
- You must reside in New Zealand – the prize can only be redeemed within New Zealand.
- You must be over 50 years of age to enter, please check your details are correct in your membership dashboard.
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