Böcker av Robert Philip Bolton

From an Auckland slum to the heights of a New York boardroom and, eventually, an obscure and unhappy old age, It's What Eddie Did records the rise and fall of Eddie Purvis, a rich and successful New Zealand advertising man, and his relationship with one of the world's great international airlines and its New York advertising agency. However, obsessed with his own mid-life success, Eddie later discovers the importance of family, and that wealth can't protect him and them from life's troubles and disappointments.

In a park in an antipodean city in the 1930s a teenaged boy starts work as an apprentice nurseryman.It's an idyllic world. Patient and unhurried, with a pace as predictable as the seasons. A miniature version of the pre-war colonial empire lying just beyond the park gates. But as secure as the park may seem it can't protect anyone, least of all Tommy, from the changing world outside.There's a war coming. An unwanted baby and heartbreaking changes at home. Through it all the park is a constant. A companion, a teacher, a home and a friend. With it he grows, learning wisdom and patience, as the park brings him friendship, love, knowledge and family. Friendships that will take him far away from home; family that will nurture him throughout his life; and the knowledge to finally understand the park's mysterious white gate.

Nothing much ever happens in Robinson Street, Blythewillow, and for Phyllis, Graham, Karen, Charlie Downs and Monkey Oldfield, and most of the other residents of the New Zealand town, that's just the way they like it.With The Arclight cinema, The Record Reign, Wake's butchers, the garden, and Monkey Oldfield's brand new chicken coop, the residents of Robinson Street have everything they need. So when Clint appears in the garden one night and tells Phyllis that it's all about to change she doesn't know what to think.Within days there are changes at The Arclight, and Clint's isn't the only ghost making its presence felt. Long forgotten events from the past bring visitors from the outside world; from the city, Australia and from Los Angeles, with news, offers and veiled threats.Are these the changes promised by Clint? And can the residents of Blythewillow save their town's bucolic charm?Only time will tell as Karen and Graham and Jehoiada Hartsfield - the charming young city lawyer - peel back the layers of Blythewillow's forgotten history to discover Clint's secret treasure.

My Marian Year is about the daily life of a ten-year-old boy growing up in a Catholic working class family in suburban Auckland, New Zealand, in 1954. The story's interest lies in the way the narrator, John 'Johnny Boy' Little, gives us the petty details of his simple life, and of Catholic life, in the 'fifties, month-by-month, and how he - curious and sceptical - saw and related to his family, school, church, shops and the people of the Auckland neighbourhood he called home. That everyone and everything in his little life during this one year was so undistinguished, ordinary and typical of the times - except perhaps in its climax - means that the modern reader receives a simple, unvarnished, plain-language taste of life in the suburban New Zealand of the past. As a result My Marian Year appeals equally to the old and young: the old recognize themselves in the story, with poignant reminders of their own childhood, while the young are fascinated if not astonished by how much life in New Zealand has changed in just fifty-odd years. My Marian Year takes its title from the fact that Pope Pius XII declared that 1954 was to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary and called a 'Marian Year'. Catholics all over the world were then required to direct their devotions to the Virgin Mary throughout the year, in particular by daily praying the rosary.

When Faith and her husband accidentally get involved in the weird life of Ponytail O'Gorman - a beguiling old fraudster - they have no idea how much he will disrupt their peaceful life in suburban Wellington, New Zealand. But he convinces them to help him in his strange quest to find both his friend from prison, Simple Simon, and his own missing cell phone which is being sought by a bunch of desperate crooks as well as by the head of Wellington CIB. Determined to help the strangely charming little con-man - and so discover the truth about the notorious Welly Alley Strangler - they get carried along to a secretive location in beautiful Martinborough. In the process Faith confronts a collection of odd characters - including the rich Widow Partridge, the terribly nasty Big Ben Pye and his two young henchmen - who unknown to her were part of her husband's life as a prison guard.

The Tapu Garden of Eden is the story of an old man and his garden which occupies some now valuable real estate on the slopes of Maungawhau (Mount Eden) in Auckland, New Zealand. That a property developer is scheming to buy the land to build apartments is accidentally discovered by the old man's young neighbour and friend, Hone Wihongi, a student at the local high school. Over the years the old man's kindness has won him many friends among the local Maori and so Hone works with them, and against the wishes of the local borough council, to protect the old man and his garden. He is unknowingly helped in his project by a mysterious boy, unknown to others and unseen by anyone, who secretly visits the old man. The clash of cultures is resolved and the old man's garden - protected by tapu - is saved. But not as a garden.The book is written for adults but teens love it. It's funny, mysterious, sad, exciting. Even struggling readers want to keep reading. That's why it's so popular with teachers and parents.

Early in the twenty-first century a series of viruses killed eighty percent of the world's population. Famine loomed.In New Zealand there was plenty of food but too few people to process it. The surviving city folk therefore fled to the countryside where they provided labour to the remaining farmers in return for a share of the food they helped produce. As a result the country's towns and cities were abandoned.Into this vacuum came the invading Vandiers, so numerous and wealthy they dominated the small Kiwiland population whose traditions, culture, religion and language they despised.The Fable of Flitcroft Point is set in a typical Kiwiland village where, in 2177, the land-grabbing Vandier government has taken village land for its own purposes. The Kiwilanders, angry and frustrated, want their land back. But can their feeble protest succeed against the overwhelming power of central government?