High jinx on the High Seas - NEW ZEALAND, MADEIRA, SOUTH AFRICA

Close to the Wind by Zana Bell set in New Zealand, Funchal and Cape Town

"It doesn't seem fair that New Zealand should have quite so many beautiful corners tucked away...." (from Close to the Wind)

Click on the cover to find out more

The year is 1868. This is the story of Georgiana da Silva, living with her Aunt, and betrothed to Jasper. But she soon overhears a conversation that turns her world on its head. Her brother Charlie is, it seems, terribly ill in New Zealand, and based on what she has heard, she determines to flee to his bedside, as he could be in mortal danger - it is the time of the Gold Rush, and Jasper and his cronies certainly have a plan to make the gold theirs.

From England, she leaps aboard the 'Sally', disguised as a young lad. First land stop is Funchal, where she beings to bond with handsome Harry, the captain in command of the rather rickety ship, and now the dance of romance can begin. On to Cape Town, and the final stop, via Christchurch, is Dunedin. Oh, the vagaries of true love, handsome men, whose muscles ripple and whose bodies are as 'taut as a drawn bow'. Horses, adventure, rakish pursuers, swashbuckling fights and fisticuffs, blind alleys, and villains who are rotten to the core - the story, as it moves along, is told with aplomb. Formulaic in plot progression, it nevertheless offers a comforting, feel-good factor as our heroine marches forward with determination and sharp thinking.

Georgie is a charming and feisty heroine, Harry is a morally upstanding beau. Much of the novel takes place on the high seas, but offers delightful vignettes of period life in Madeira and South Africa, as well as the final destination of New Zealand. On the cover of our copy, it does says 'Love, Passion and Adventure in 1860s New Zealand', which is actually rather misleading, as arrival in the country only happens about three-fifths of the way into the book.

If you like romps that cover the world via the high seas, we have reviewed another novel, also from the ChocLit Uk stable, and it's here on our archive: The Gilded Fan by Christina Courtenay.

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Our top reads for 2012

Looking back over our (almost) first year of Tripfiction, one of the wonderful things we can say is that we have been introduced to glorious novels that we might never otherwise have encountered. 

Here we choose some of the books that have crossed our path this year, and that have really caught our imagination - both because they are evocative of location and offer a great storyline. These are the TripFiction top books of the year!



NO. 1. In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. (UK release 3rd January, 2013)
Set in Hawke's Bay and Napier, New Zealand





 
NO.2. A young woman travels from Edinburgh to Peking in the early 20th century,and writes about her experiences in diary form. She is trapped in a loveless marriage to a stiff and conventional man, and then falls in love with a Japanese warrior and pays dearly for that passion. It is then that Mary's real journey begins, as she begins to forge a new life for herself in Tokyo.
Set in Peking, China and Tokyo, Japan







NO.3. Harmattan (from an Arabic word meaning destructive wind ) tells the story of Haoua, a young girl growing up in a remote village in the Republic of Niger. Spirited, independent, and intelligent, Haoua has benefitted from a stable home life and a loving and attentive mother. She finds contentment in her schoolwork, her dreams of becoming a teacher and in writing assiduously to the family in Ireland who act as her aid sponsors. But for her, there are new storm clouds on the horizon. Haoua's mother's illness is much more serious and further advanced than anyone had recognised and her father's plans are turning out to be far more threatening than she could have ever imagined. Approaching her twelfth birthday, Haoua is alone and vulnerable for the very first time in her life.
Set in Niger, Africa


NO.4. Having left her job and boyfriend, thirty-year-old Sandra decides to stay in a Spanish village in order to take stock of her life and find a new direction. She befriends Karin and Fredrik, an elderly Norwegian couple, who provide her with stimulating company and take the place of the grandparents she never had. However, when she meets Julian, a former concentration-camp inmate who has just returned to Europe from Argentina, she discovers that all is not what it seems and finds herself involved in a perilous quest for the truth.
Set in Javea, Spain




NO.5. For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival.
Set in Cambodia

Please add your personal top reads for this year - evocative of location together with a great storyline - in the Comments Box below.

Menace and Malice in New Zealand

WHAT A FIND THIS BOOK IS! We have singled out this novel because it is superb on many fronts. A small family is confronted by an accident to one of their children in the opening chapter, and the storyline, as it goes back and forth is handled in a supremely competent way. It charts the family's move from Bedfordshire in England to New Zealand, and the story is set beautifully and evocatively within the country, a beautiful writing style and a good story.
Click on the cover for more information. You can help ordering a copy through our website (we get a small percentage which helps us to finance development of the TF site) or it is available from your local bookshop.

And - inevitably what drives us here at TripFiction - this novel really takes the reader into the New Zealand way of life, absolutely evokes the country, (love the little observations - like a Smoko is a tea break). Great descriptive prose through the eyes of the newly arrived family will surely transport readers to Hawke's Bay, this glorious part of country:... "For miles the road wound through New Zealand's native bush: subtropical rainforest complete with giant ferns, creepers and cabbage trees that looked like palms. Every bend brought another sharp-intake-of-breath view of raw-boned mountains and white waterfalls. These weren't quite English hills.They were angular and rock-strewn, like a Chinese painting; jagged peaks and drifting swathes of cloud".

And just look at this great description of Napier. We, for sure, at Tripfiction are now so tempted to visit! As a destination it hadn't come onto our radar before reading this book: "Napier was a small city - about  fifty thousand people - with a Mediterranean climate, a thriving port  and pacific beaches. That much we knew from the guidebook.  What we hadn't expected was its picture-postcard beauty. Flattened by a catastrophic earthquake in 1931 , it had risen phoenix-like  from the ashes. The result was an art-deco town with wedding-cake  buildings and a seafront boardwalk." And this for us, sums up what TripFiction is all about: it is the opportunity to explore a place through fiction, enjoy a some great prose and truly, enjoy seeing "a location through an author's eyes". Already a couple of reviews of this book are up on our site extolling its virtues.

Do talk to us via the Comments Box below. Share with other the books that have really inspired you to visit a place, or have captured a place so well that you can immediately connect. We know what we will be putting into our Top Ten reads at the turn of the year - what would your top read(s) of this year be, which is the book that has really transported you to a location?