‘“Hey, Nigel!” Kev shouted. “We’re going on a boat-trip.” He was already at the gangplank.’

What happens when three drinkers take an impromptu boat trip? And why are the other day-trippers so relieved to get back to port? The title of this e-book comes from a reference in the introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, and a quotation from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. JP Donleavy’s A Fairy Tale of New York also gets a mention.

Get Port After Stormy Seas on your Kindle, PC or iPad for US$0.99 – less than you pay for the coffee you drink while you’re reading it. A link and short extract follow the jump.

Sometimes we walk through the world so full of our own troubles that we don’t even see the world around us. Not even when it includes mangroves and snapping shrimps.

On the spur of the moment the European decided to head north in search of adventure. He hired a hatchback for 29 dollars a day, all inclusive, and at 18:15 on Saturday he found it on top of an ancient Maori fortification, Rangikapiti Pa, just north of Mangonui on New Zealand’s North Island.

The sand dunes at Hokianga were among my first and strongest impressions of New Zealand. They have made a couple of cameo appearances in my stories, but this is the first time they have taken a starring role.

‘THE HIDDEN VALLEY’, said the sign, ‘5km’. An enormous arrow pointed the way. Anna found that amusing. I stopped the car to take a photograph of her — inscrutably womanly in crop top and striped track pants — pulling herself up on taut fingers from its framework. We were half an hour north of Taupo on the shores of Lake
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John Mulgan’s New Zealand literary landmark in a new e-book edition, with a Kindle-only cover that pays homage to the original hardback version: US$3.99. Optimised for Kindle with active Table of Contents, new author biography and corrections to errors in existing public domain texts. (Note: this work remains in copyright in some countries and is not for sale to US customers.)

Don McGlashan’s eagerly anticipated first solo album sounds personal, intimate and — in the best sense of the word — like a great demo.

When we asked The Datsuns for five minutes, we assumed they’d kick our Zimmer frames out from under us and run away laughing. After all, they’ve been hailed as “the future of rock” by the fashion-conscious British music press, and we’re just sad old Boomers who deserve to die.

Peter Gordon (author of ‘Salads – The New Main Course’) was born in Wanganui and moved to Melbourne in 1981, where he cooked for five years before travelling through South-East Asia, which helped to inspire his fusion style. He returned to New Zealand to set up and run the kitchen of The Sugar Club in Wellington for owners Ashley Sumner and Vivienne Hayman, before moving to London in 1989.

Don McGlashan has five entries in the NZ’s Top 100 Songs Of All Time, as compiled by the Australasian Performing Rights Association. ‘Dominion Road’, ‘Anchor Me’ and a number of other McGlashan compositions are radio standards, as well as part of the nation’s cultural fabric and emotional memory. And it isn’t just a Kiwi thing.