Fiona Kidman – författare

The scene is Auckland during the Second World War. In the warrenlike old tenement the residents call Paddy’s Puzzle, Clara Bentley awaits the arrival of Ambrose, her black lover, an American marine. She also waits for the bomb that might fall when the air raid siren sounds at night. She waits for visits from the strange inhabitants of the Puzzle—prostitutes; blackmarketeers; old Ma Hollis, who helps her keep body and soul together; and a host of others. She waits, too, for the culmination of an illness that has weakened her irremediably.

This enthralling novel tells the story of the rise and fall of one of the world's greatest aviators, the glamorous, daring and mysterious Jean Batten.

Winner of The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2019Winner of the Ngaio Marsh Crime Writing Awards 2019Winner of the New Zealand Booklovers Prize for Fiction 2019Winner of the NZ Heritage Book Awards 2018Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Awards 2020This multi-award winning novel explores the controversial topic of the death penalty with empathy and a probing eye for injustice.'Magnetic' New York Times The offender is not one of ours. It is unfortunate that we got this undesirable from his homeland.Auckland, October 1955. If young Paddy Black sings to himself he can almost see himself back home in Belfast. Yet, less than two years after sailing across the globe in search of a better life, here he stands in a prison cell awaiting trial for murder. He pulled a knife at the jukebox that night, but should his actions lead him to the gallows? As his desperate mother waits on, Paddy must face a judge and jury unlikely to favour an outsider, as a wave of moral panic sweeps the island nation.Fiona Kidman’s powerful novel explores the controversial topic of the death penalty with characteristic empathy and a probing eye for injustice.

A powerful collection of stories exploring love and longing from the award-winning author of This Mortal Boy.Two mothers fight over who will wear a hat on their children's wedding day. A needle is lost somewhere inside a woman’s body. A writer waits with a suitcase for a man who never comes. This collection brings together Fiona Kidman’s finest and most scandalous stories, vividly depicting the joys of female desire and the pain of heartbreak, the thrill of illicit liaisons and the twists and turns of unconventional love. Sometimes joyful, often devastating and always beautiful, All the Way to Summer is a searing account of love and loss from a pioneering feminist icon.'Tales of loss and betrayal and twisted love abound in this perfect collection’ Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond