Do you enjoy page-turning reads from terrific storytellers? Are you swept away by captivating characters, twisting storylines, and tales full of crime, mystery, and thrills, whether fictional or factual?
The Ngaio Marsh Awards, in partnership with Hamilton City Libraries, invites book enthusiasts to an exciting evening of engaging discussion with four talented Kiwi storytellers. The event is free to attend, and tea and coffee will be served.
Cambridge author Nikki Crutchley chairs a panel with fellow past Ngaio Marsh Awards finalist Angus Gillies, Hamilton comic artist and author Li Chen, and Rotorua debut novelist Zoë Rankin, for a fun and fascinating korero on storytelling, mystery, and thrills.
This is a free event. Tea and coffee provided.
Author Introductions
Angus Gillies is the author of the Ngāti dread series of non-fiction investigations. He has worked as a journalist and producer at TV3 for 20 years, and has written biographies of sports stars Matthew Ridge, Adam Parore, Justin Marshall, and entertainer John Rowles. Most recently, Angus co-wrote Far North, an extraordinary true-crime tale that was also adapted into a six-part TV series starring Robyn Malcolm and Temuera Morrison. The book was a finalist for the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Li Chen was born in Beijing, China, and moved to New Zealand when she was five. She's always loved drawing and has been working as a full-time comic artist since 2012. Her first graphic novel, Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat, was published in 2024, and a sequel, Detective Beans: Adventures in Cat Town, was published last year. A third in the series will be released in June 2026. When she's not drawing, Li likes to hang out with her cats or go on really long walks. Oh, and she drinks a LOT of tea.
Zoë Rankin is a Rotorua writer, adventurer, and former teacher who grew up in a small village in Scotland and immigrated to Aotearoa more than a decade ago. She later won the Rotorua Noir Short Story competition in 2019. Her debut thriller, The Vanishing Place, was published locally and internationally in 2025. It has since been longlisted for the CWA Daggers in the UK and shortlisted for the Barry Awards in the United States.
Nikki Crutchley is a Cambridge novelist, flash fiction writer and former librarian who was a finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Awards for her debut mystery Nothing Bad Happens Here, set in a small Coromandel town. Nikki has written five novels, twice been regional winner of National Flash Fiction Day, and had her short stories published in various journals, magazines, and Australasian crime and thriller anthology Dark Deeds Down Under.