Hibiscus Coast

Description

Emma Paupere has just returned to New Zealand 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 Prices Warf. In a room housing the owner's prize possession - a lost painting by Gauguin - Emma works day and night copying on eof the most valuable Goldies in the Auckland Museum. Lost in memories of the two men who shaped her life in Shaghai - her Chinese painting teacher, and the charismatic New Zealander with whom she had a passionate affair - Emma finds herself increasingly exposed to danger. And when talent, hubris and greed collide with disastrous consequences, Emma has no coice but to try to flee up the Hibiscus Coast ...

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.