Hibiscus Coast
  • Published: 2 May 2008
  • ISBN: 9781742288321
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 360

Hibiscus Coast

Formats & editions
EBook
2 May 2008
Paperback
2 May 2008
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Called a 'brilliantly complex, noir-esque thriller' by the NZ Listener, this is a gripping read.

A complex, insightful and gripping novel.

Emma Taupere returns to Auckland from Shanghai, where her training as a painter has made her a copyist of incredible skill. Now, Siaki, her ambitious and manipulative ex-boyfriend, has recruited her as a forger, shutting Emma away in a borrowed apartment on Princes Wharf.

Emma works day and night copying one of the most valuable Goldie paintings in the Auckland Museum until a rash act by her damaged young cousin, Ani, exposes her to danger, and Emma has no choice but to flee up the Hibiscus Coast.
  • Published: 2 May 2008
  • ISBN: 9781742288321
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 360
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About the author

Paula Morris

Paula Morris, of Ngati Wai and English descent, was born in Auckland. Her first novel, Queen of Beauty (2002), won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book of Fiction at the 2003 Montana Book Awards and the Adam Foundation Prize. She has published three other novels, Hibiscus Coast (2005), Trendy But Casual (2007) and Rangatira (2011), which was the winner of the Fiction Award at the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and the Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards. She has also published the short-story collection Forbidden Cities (2008), edited The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (2009) and has published three young adult novels in the United States.

Paula holds degrees from four universities, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has worked in London and New York, first as a publicist and marketing executive in the record business, and later as a branding consultant and advertising copywriter. Since 2003 she has taught creative writing at universities in the US, the UK and currently at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

portrait photo of Paula Morris

Also by Paula Morris

False River
New Zealand Girl: Hene and the Burning Harbour
Rangatira
Forbidden Cities
Trendy But Casual
Queen of Beauty
See all

Praise for Hibiscus Coast

Not only is Morris a seriously good writer – the tone doesn’t jar, the characters are satisfyingly complex, and there is an interesting reflection of the way we are now – she can also deliver entertainment … Like Dickens, she can tell a great story but also “catch” the world we live in, with all its complications and ambiguities.

Lydia Wevers, New Zealand Listener

The brilliantly complex, noir-esque thriller Hibiscus Coast [is] set in an Auckland connected both in terms of the plot and her depiction of the city with the “floating worlds” of contemporary Shanghai – an Auckland with even more complicated intersections of race, class, values, backgrounds and personal relationships than you get at a New Yorker’s garden party.

Anna Jackson, New Zealand Listener

Hibiscus Coast continues its predecessor’s strengths of fine characterization and evocative writing; and goes further by adding impressive qualities, such as a dynamic plot and knife-edge storytelling … a weighty and wonderful book.

Siobhan Harvey, Christchurch Press