Books
What Lies Beneath
A Memoir
By Elspeth Sandys
Writer Elspeth Sandys was born during World War II, the result of a brief encounter between two people who would never meet again. The first nine months of her life were spent in the Truby King Karitane Hospital in Dunedin, where she was known by her birth name, Frances Hilton James. This would change with her adoption into the Somerville family. A new birth certificate was issued and Frances James became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville.
Tom and Alice Somerville, Elspeth's new parents, lived with their son John in Dunedin's Andersons Bay. While Elspeth was happy among the ebullient and welcoming Somerville clan, she had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother, who was frequently hospitalised with mental health problems.
Elspeth's search for her birth parents did not begin until much later in her adult life. What she discovered after an exhaustive search provided answers that were both disturbing and, ultimately, rewarding. What Lies Beneath is a searing, amusing, and never less than gripping tale of a difficult life, beautifully told.
White Ghosts, Yellow Peril
China and New Zealand 1790-1950
By Stevan Eldred-Grigg
with Zeng Dazheng 曾达峥
White Ghosts, Yellow Peril is the first book to explore all sides of the relationship between China and New Zealand, and the peoples of China and New Zealand, during the whole of the seven or so generations after they initially came into contact.
The Qing Empire and its successor states from 1790 to 1950 were vast, complex and torn by conflict. New Zealand, meanwhile, grew into a small, prosperous, orderly province of Europe. Not until now has anyone told the story of the links and tensions between the two countries during those years so broadly and so thoroughly.
This book is a highly readable portrait of the lives, thoughts and feelings of Chinese who came to New Zealand and New Zealanders who went to China, along with a scholarly, but stimulating, discussion of race relations, government, diplomacy, war, literature and the arts.
For further information:
Otago University Press
Website otago.ac.nz/press
Email university.press@otago.ac.nz
Books by Otago Alumni
Transforming Pentecostalism: The Changing Face of New Zealand Pentecostalism 1920-2010,
by Brett Knowles, Emeth Press, Lexington, Kentucky.
The Soil Underfoot: Infinite Possibilities for a Finite Resource,
edited by G. Jock Churchman and Edward R. Landa, CRC Press, April 2014.
Albatross,
by Carolyn McCurdie, Rosa Mira Books, 2014.
Unfair Fight: Give Your Small Business the Winning Advantage,
by Sam Hazledine, Random House, 2014.
The Laws of Spaceflight: A Guidebook for New Space Lawyers,
by Jenifer Lamie, American Bar Association, 2012.
The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry,
edited by Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier, Brisbane: IP, 2014.
We Rest on Thee: A History of Middleton Grange School,
1989-2014, by Michael Reid, Middleton Grange School, June 2014.
Why Marketing to Women Doesn't Work: Using Market Segmentation to Understand Consumer Needs,
by Jenny Darroch, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Rough on Women: Abortion in 19th-Century New Zealand,
by Margaret Sparrow, Victoria University Press, July 2014.
Different Stars For Different Times: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor,
by Margaret Guthrie, August 2014.
Picaflor: Finding a Home in South America,
by Jessica Talbot, June 2014.
If you have recently published a book, please email the magazine editor.