True Stories

Rita Harper met her husband in a religious cult in the United States. They are happily married, but Rita is still obsessed with their former leader, Leland Swann, and when Leland invites himself into the family home, and then announces his plan to revive People Under God's Command in New Zealand, Rita believes that he's offering her a last chance at salvation. Leland's arrival coincides with Rita's daughter, Stella, who has retreated home after the end of a relationship and is in no mood to flatter a guru. Rita throws herself into ... read more

In 2008, Robyn Okrant kicked off a year-long experiment to find out what would happen if an average 35-year-old woman put her life in the hands of television's most influential personality, Oprah Winfrey. From her wardrobe to her marriage, diet, spiritual life, finances and more, the author redesigned her life according to Oprah.

Carolyn Jessop was born into a religious cult known as the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, a 10,000-strong community living in Arizona, USA. Aged 18 she was coerced into marriage with a 50-year-old man she barely knew. She became his fourth wife, and had eight children in 15 years. This is the true story of Carolyn Jessop's life in this violent and abusive cult. Half-starved, constantly pregnant, women were denied access to proper healthcare or contraception, and sometimes beaten so badly that they could not hear... read more

The one and a half square meters of footpath space on Broadway, Newmarket, Auckland from which Mark Grantham sells his chocolate bars for charity has to be one of the smallest retail sites in New Zealand. One regular customer jokingly refers to it as Mark's 'office', because it is where Mark - severly disabled with cerebral palsy since birth - has plied his trade for the last seventeen years. For 20 years now, Chris Grantham has been Mark's chocolate admin man. For 33 years he has also doubled as his father and therefore knows him... read more

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - become one of the most important tools in modern medicine. Taken in 1951, these cells became the first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture. They were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered the secrets of cancer, viruses and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilisation, clon... read more

'Here, we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die.' In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. "Three Cups of Tea" is the story of that promise and... read more