DENIS DWYER
AUTHOR
BOOKS
The Town That Couldn't Trust
High Play Publishing 2025
Of Three Families
High Play Publishing 2025
The Walking Frame War
High Play Publishing 2023
Contact: books@copypress.co.nz
Billy Wallace - A True Rugby Legend
David Bateman Ltd 2022
Group Tours Unveiled
Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie Publishers 2020
The Good Citizen
New Holland Publishers 2018
New Zealand Adventures By Rail
New Holland Publishers 2018
New Zealand On Foot
New Holland Publishers 2017
Black Jersey Silver Fern
Grantham House 2015
Fancy That
Pacific Publishers 1987
The Rugby Quiz Book (with Craig MacFarlane)
Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd 1972
ABOUT DENIS
Denis Dwyer was born on 11 December 1943 and raised in Oamaru. He has an MA (Hons) in English and History from the University of Canterbury and diplomas in teaching and journalism. He has worked as a teacher, in communications roles for New Zealand Crown Research and health institutions and as a newspaper sub-editor and features writer. In 1997 he was a finalist in the Qantas Media Awards for newspaper feature writing (sports). He is married to Dale and has three children and five grand-children.
THE TOWN THAT COULDN'T TRUST
‘The town that couldn’t trust’ is contemporary fiction. Steve Polson is the beleaguered owner/manager of a construction company in the town of Tumanako in the central North Island of New Zealand. His company, the major employer in the district, is battling a saboteur who is endangering the health of the community. Bethany Callendar, the town’s mayor, has declared war against a scorge of illegal drugs which has enveloped her son Rob. Felicity Spratt, reporter, is probing the district’s drug scene. Simon Hurley is the dedicated leader of an environmental group which is striving to raise awareness of climate change amidst hostility and apathy. ‘The town that couldn’t trust’ explores the issue of destructive forces within the individual, within society, and within the world.
OF THREE FAMILIES
‘Of Three Families’ is historical fiction, set in the stormy political and social period of the 1890s and early 1900s in New Zealand. Toby Page, a brilliant horseman, and his mother Minnie, an artist and prominent suffragist, interact with two farming families of the Rangitikei, the McAlistairs and the ‘rural aristocrats’, the Drakes. Amid the battered egos of others and their craze for power, the resilience of Toby and Minnie is tested to the limit. ‘Of Three Families’ is a gripping, life-affirming family drama.
THE WALKING FRAME WAR
Rose Finch is the owner/manager of the Sunset Rest Home. She is determined the home will not be the loveless mausoleum of a retirement home where her grandparents, Tom and Marjorie, saw out their days. Rapacious property developer Kyle Skinner craves the rest home’s prestigious waterfront site on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. Rose is also being hounded to sell by her son and daughter, Ken and Caroline, who want ‘seed’ money for their business enterprises. The private lives of the leading characters begin to influence events in unexpected ways.
BILLY WALLACE - A TRUE RUGBY LEGEND
In the history of New Zealand sports, few players have achieved the legendary status of Billy Wallace. Not only was he a great rugby player, he was an outstanding coach and a national administrator. Wallace was born in the age of horse-trams and lived to see man walk on the Moon and his life is set against his times. The author has had the advantage of being able to draw on Wallace's own reminiscences and on the family archive of photographs, besides copious contemporary records.
GROUP TOURS UNVEILED
A light-hearted look at the many and varied aspects of the group tour. Group Tours Unveiled offers insights and advice into the pleasures and perils of the tours alongside a detailed travelogue of the author’s journeys to the northern capitals and Russia. There is assistance in helping the traveller deal with sensory overload and too great an abundance of food and cheer as well as some fascinating dips into the history of group travel. Group Tours Unveiled is both a nostalgic look back and an anticipatory look forward to a time of safer travel.
THE GOOD CITIZEN
As a baby, Thomas Ryan was sent from Ireland with his family ‘by arrangement’ to New Zealand at the far end of the earth. He went on to become one of the finest rugby players of his time, score the first points for the New Zealand rugby team, become a distinguished artist, win one of the first inter-colonial yachting contests and have a huge influence on tourism in Taupo by establishing a regular steamer service, helping stock the lake with trout and set up and service fishing camps. He married the daughter of a Maori chief and became a devoted family man.
NEW ZEALAND ADVENTURES BY RAIL
Denis Dwyer has loved train travel since he travelled by steam train as a boy from Oamaru to Invercargill. Here he travels by rail through New Zealand, bringing the journeys alive with telling detail and humour. The journeys include the celebrated ‘Northern Explorer’ and ‘TranzAlpine’ as well as the spectacular ‘Oamaru Seasider’ and ‘Taieri Gorge Railway’. ‘New Zealand Adventures By Rail’ pays homage to those who built the railways and trains and those who maintain and run them.
NEW ZEALAND ON FOOT
Denis Dwyer sets off to see his country afresh on foot in a series of day walks. He traverses a vast array of landscapes, sometimes on tracks face to face with wilder nature and sometimes on manicured paths and walkways. Many of the walks are on historic sites. The walks are nearly all two hours or less on easy terrain, intended for the traveller who wants exercise amidst interesting surrounds.
BLACK JERSEY SILVER FERN
The story of Tom Ellison, the ‘Mr Rugby’ of his era. He successfully moved at a meeting of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in 1893 that the All Blacks wear a black jersey with a silver fern. Tom Ellison captained Wellington and the All Blacks, coached and selected Wellington teams and wrote an influential instructional book on the game. One of the first Maori lawyers, he had a myriad of interests and brought great energy to them all.