Peace Stick

Peace Stick is story about children hoping for a future during a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers. It is set during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It was inspired by a former East German schoolgirl now living in Auckland.

Life for 13-year-old Ingrid Richter in Erfurt involves adventures with the Pioneers, walks in the Steigerwald, the Martini festival in the medieval Altstadt. In a few weeks, she will be gliding across the skating rink with dreams of representing East Germany at the Olympics.

Ingrid’s schoolteacher shatters that peaceful existence.

“We are on the brink of World War III”

The Soviet Union is secretly building missile sites in Cuba – minutes from the United States.  Who will launch the first nuclear missile – Nikita Khrushchev or John Kennedy?

The political folly of angry men threatens Ingrid’s existence. Didn’t they learn any lessons from two world wars and the first atomic bomb? Kinder understand there are no winners in a thermonuclear war.

Emotions sway from despair to hopes of survival. Ingrid wants a future: a career, her own family, a long life.  

She enlists the help of her friend, Sylvie Witzenhause. They seek a lucky charm to protect themselves and the world – a peace stick.  

Tugga's Mob

Tugga's Mob is a thriller entwined with the classic antipodean OE. It's set in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

What happens on tour stays on tour was the mantra for southern hemisphere backpackers who swarmed Europe in the 1980s. Waikaot-born Judy Williams worked hard for her Big OE: London, Paris, Rome, Gallipoli; the adventures dutifully recorded in her travel diary. 

A diary that also recorded how the obsessive Tugga Tancred and his Kiwi mates turned Judy's trip of a lifetime into a nightmare of sly sexual harrasment. Their bad behaviour went unnoticed, or was ignored by fellow passengers like Andrew Hackett who chose to party hard with Tugga's Mob. After all, they were in Europe for a good time, not a long time.

And what a time it was, until Tugga's fixation ultimately led to murder; a crime that went unpunished for 30 years.

But few things remain hidden forever. The rediscovery of Judy's diary sparks a trail of revenge that the original perpetrators never see coming.

Boxed

Boxed is the second book in the Spotlight series. It is set in the world of animal rights activism and the media.

A captive woman, a lover betrayed and an idelaistic journalist find their fates aligned by a killer obsessed with retribution.

Melbourne Spotlight reporter Kim Prescott investigates an anonymous tip-off that will horrify the nation all over again. Despite the scandal that nearly closed the greyhound racing industry, it seems live baiting is still going on.

The trail leads Kim and her camera crew to the Victorian gold-mining ghost town of Steiglitz. They find shocking scenes in a trainer's starting boxes - but not what they expect. 

Production assistant Jo Trescowthick becomes the pawn of an activist with a vendetta, testing whether her loyalty lies with him or her current affairs team. 

And, most desperate of all, hope finally flickers for a woman who scratches the record of her capitivity into a cellar wall. 

Kaikōura Rendezvous

The third book in the Melbourne Spotlight series finds an Australian TV crew on a carefree motorhome adventure in New Zealand. It's an idyllic itinerary: whale watching in Kaikōura, mud pools in Rotorua, the stunning Marlborough Sounds. The leisurely trip will take Kim Prescott and Jo Trescowthick from the largest city, Auckland, to the tourist mecca of Queenstown in the deep south.

They won’t make it.

TV reporter Kim survived a bullet in the back from a killer, yet she can’t shake the post trauma stress. It triggers violent reactions.

For Jo, the trip is more than a holiday; it’s a chance to confront family demons.

They don’t know they’re driving into a brewing tempest. Cyclone Gita is on a serpentine path of destruction through the tropics that will see her smash into New Zealand.

Debt-ridden South Island fisherman Gordie Tulloch is offered the deal of a lifetime. It’s a chance to start again after a spell in prison. Is it legal? He doesn’t care. All he has to do is survive the storm approaching the Shaky Isles.

Gordie’s unaware there’s another threat to his big payday. His every move is under scrutiny by Heath Michel whose own secrets are about to spill into public view.

The cyclone, the motorhome, the fisherman and the watcher all face an unexpected rendezvous – in Kaikōura.