July Book Competition

10 years ago

IF YOU WERE ME

By Sheila O’Flanagan

Published by Hachette New Zealand, 08 July 2014 $37.99 RRP

An unputdownable heart-searching novel from the No.1 bestselling author of Someone Special and Things We Never Say.

For every woman who still remembers her first love.

Carlotta O'Keefe is happily engaged, and the wedding plans are coming together. She's clear about her future path, both personally and in her busy career.

Maybe Chris doesn't make her heart race every time she sees him, but you can't have that feeling for ever. Then, on a trip to Seville, Carlotta runs into Luke Evans.

Luke broke her heart so long ago she'd almost convinced herself she'd forgotten him. Now, he's not that boy any more, but an attractive and intriguing man. And he can explain everything that happened way back when.

Suddenly Carlotta's not so sure of anything anymore. Except that what she decides now will shape the rest of her life.

‘Sheila has the knack of mixing light and frivolous with the tender and real.’ – New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.

Click here to be in to win…

WAYFARING STRANGER

By James Lee Burke

Published by Hachette New Zealand, 08 July 2014 $37.99 RRP

Weldon's education in the evils that men and women are capable of continues as we move to the Ardennes Forest and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, where Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland saves his sergeant, Hershel Pine. Weldon and Hershel survive the executions of the wounded by the SS and escape on a freight train deep into Nazi Germany. There, they stumble into an extermination camp deserted by the SS, and discover among the stacked bodies a young woman named Rosita Lowenstein ‐ the second woman to change Weldon's life.

Weldon goes all the way to the Elbe River in the war's brutal climax, but afterwards he is determined to find Rosita ‐ eventually tracking her down in Paris, where they get married. But Hershel has also found gold in the dross of conflict, it looks as if the two friends have not merely survived; they're going to be rich.

But as the two form a pipeline corporation and enter the oil business, they are about to encounter ‐ amidst the super‐rich of Huston ‐ levels of greed and cruelty they thought they had left far behind in the blood and horror of war.

‘Crime Writing of the highest order.’ – Herald on Sunday

Click here to be in to win…

THE STORMS OF WAR

By Kate Williams

Published by Hachette New Zealand, 15 July 2014 $37.99 RRP

For fans of Atonement, Birdsong and Downton Abbey.

In the idyllic early summer of 1914, life is good for the de Witt family. Rudolf and Verena are planning the wedding of their daughter Emmeline, while their eldest son, Arthur, is studying in Paris and Michael is back from his first term at Cambridge. Celia, the youngest of the de Witt children, is on the brink of adulthood, and secretly dreams of escaping her carefully mapped-out future and exploring the world.

But the onslaught of war changes everything and soon the de Witts find themselves sidelined and in danger of losing everything they hold dear.

With gripping detail and brilliant empathy, Kate Williams tells the story of Celia and her family as they are shunned by a society that previously embraced them, torn apart by sorrow, and buffeted and changed by the storms of war.

'One of our finest young historians.' – The Independent