Our congratulations to two writers with significant Randell Cottage connections whose works have just been published by Vintage, an imprint of Penguin Random House New Zealand.

So Far for Now

Dame Fiona Kidman, Randell Cottage’s founding trustee and long-time supporter, has released her latest book, So Far for Now. This is a new volume of Dame Fiona’s memoirs, recording her busy life filled with significant changes, new writing and fascinating journeys. It’s just out in bookshops around the country.

From being a grandmother to becoming a widow, from the suitcase-existence of book festivals to researching the lives and deaths of Jean Batten and Albert Black, she has found herself in new territory and viewed the familiar with fresh eyes. She takes the reader to Paris and Pike River, to Banff, Belfast and Bangkok, searching for houses in Hanoi and Hawera, reliving her past in Waipu and creating new memories in Otago.

Dame Fiona comments, “When I wrote my last memoir I thought nothing much would happen from there on in. But life keeps on happening and if anything it gets more interesting with every year that passes. There is nothing dull about old age; there may be griefs and  losses but there is also the triumph of survival.”

The Frog Prince

Christchurch-based James Norcliffe was the Randell Cottage writer-in-residence in 2018 and celebrated the experience in an article: At Home in the Randell Cottage.

During his stay, he worked on his debut adult novel, The Frog Prince, which has now appeared in print. Described as an intriguing multi-layered novel with a dual narrative, it carries one storyline set in Kassel, Germany, in the early years of the nineteenth century, when the brothers Grimm were beginning to collect the folk stories they would later publish as Household Tales.

The second storyline revolves around the mysterious disappearance of Cara, a young teacher at an international school in Northern France, who writes her own version of the classic fairy tale of the frog prince and the princess. The book embraces historical fiction, is a love story and a mystery all rolled into one.

James Norcliffe is renowned for his award-winning children’s books and for his poetry. His latest children’s fantasy Mallory Mallory: Trick or Treat was released under the Puffin imprint of Penguin Random New Zealand.