Works by
Elizabeth Knox
(Writer)
[1959 - ]

Adult Fiction

• Daylight (2003)
  Brian “Bad” Phelan, a New Zealand policeman and bomb disposal expert, likes to live dangerously. Bad is an expert climber and caver and, while on vacation on the French/Italian border, he helps bring a body out of a rocky, wave-swept cove. Curiously, the dead woman bears striking similarities to a young woman he met years ago, shortly before she disappeared in a flooded French cave. Haunted by the strange connection, Bad is compelled to investigate.
  
  In following a series of increasingly eerie leads, Bad learns the story of the Blessed Martine Raimondi, a World War II resistance heroine and martyred nun. He also meets Eve Moskelute, the beautiful widow of a celebrated French artist; Daniel Octave, a Canadian Jesuit who investigates miracles; and most surprisingly, Dawn Moskelute, Eve’s twin sister, who just may be a vampire.
  
  Sensuous and heavenly, Daylight combines Elizabeth Knox’s greatest gifts: her wildly imaginative storytelling and her clear eye for atmosphere and place. Daylight is set in one of the most beautiful regions on Earth, from the unspoiled beauty of the Cinque Terre to the antiquities of Avignon, yet much of the action takes place in a world the tourist never sees, a world of caves and secret passages, of hidden cloisters and the rooms behind doors in the vaulted tunnels of medieval streets. It is in this “world beneath the world” that Bad Phelan finds himself face to face with history and myth, with phantoms whose hearts are still beating, and hungry, and able to break.

• Billie's Kiss (2002)
  In the spring of 1903, a ship explodes as it docks on a remote Scottish island, drowning many of the passengers and crew in the icy waters of the harbor. Young, pink-haired Billie Paxton is among the only survivors. Clumsy, illiterate, and suddenly alone, she will not say why, moments before the explosion, she leapt from ship to shore—and so she falls under the immediate suspicion of her fellow passenger Murdo Hesketh, who is determined to discover the truth behind the ship’s fate.
  
  As Billie attempts to come to terms with an uncertain future, she acquaints herself with the eccentric inhabitants of Kiss Castle: the enigmatic Lord Hallowhulme, who owns the island; his beautiful wife and worldly children; Geordie Betler, a spinsterish gentleman’s gentleman; and the fierce, fair-haired Murdo Hesketh, who inspires in Billie equal amounts of rage and passion.

• Black Oxen: A Novel ( 2001)
  Black Oxen is the story of Carme Risk's pursuit of her beautiful and not quite human father through two worlds and three changes of identity.In her forties, in the year 2022, Risk has entered narrative therapy. Her memories and her father's journal take her from the Eden of her earliest childhood to dusty, poor Lequama, a Latin American country, where she and her father become involved with the slightly mad young leaders of a recent revolution and where everyone seems to practice black magic. And, finally, to life in northern California, where Risk, still in thrall to her elusive father, is now the widow of Lequama's most notorious torturer.
  
  Black Oxen features romantic intrigue, machete murders, battles, and bacchanals. Full of unforgettable characters -- from an unusually lucky Taoscal chief, to a sexually ferocious therapist, to a frail billionaire who wants to live forever -- it is a deliciously entertaining and beautifully written novel.

• The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood (2000)

• The Vintner's Luck (1998)
  One summer evening in 1808, Sobran Jodeau stumbles through his family's vineyard in Burgundy, filled with wine and love sorrows. As Sobran sways in a drunken swoon, an angel appears out of nowhere to catch him. Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be far more mysterious than angelic. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner's Luck is a decidedly unorthodox love story, one that presents angels as fierce and beautiful as Milton's, and a vision of Heaven, Hell, and the vineyards in between that is unforgettable.

• Tawa (1998)

• Glamour and the Sea (1996)

• Pomare (1994)

• Treasure (1992)

• After Z-hour (1987)

Young Adult

Dreamhunter Duet

1. Dreamhunter (2005)
   Also known as The Rainbow Opera, 2005 and NHK, 2006)
   Laura comes from a world similar to our own except for one
   difference: it is next to the Place, an unfathomable land that
   fosters dreams of every kind and is inaccessible to all but a
   select few, the Dreamhunters. These are individuals with special
   gifts: the ability to catch larger-than-life dreams and relay them
   to audiences in the magnificent dream palace, the Rainbow
   Opera. People travel from all around to experience the benefits
   of the hunters’ unique visions. Now fifteen-year-old Laura and
   her cousin Rose, daughters of Dreamhunters, are eligible to test
   themselves at the Place and find out whether they qualify for
   the passage. But nothing can prepare them for what they are
   about to discover. For within the Place lies a horrific secret kept
   hidden by corrupt members of the government. And when
   Laura’s father, the man who discovered the Place, disappears,
   she realizes that this secret has the power to destroy everyone
   she loves . . .
   
   In the midst of a fascinating landscape, Laura’s dreamy
   childhood is ending and a nightmare beginning. This rich
   novel, filled with beauty, danger, politics, and intrigue, comes to
   a powerful crescendo, leaving readers clamoring for Book Two.

2. Dreamquake (2007)
   Also known as The Dream Quake
   The dreamhunting began as a beautiful thing, when Tziga Hame discovered that he could enter the Place and share the dreams he found there with other people. But Tziga Hame has disappeared and Laura, his daughter, knows that the art of projecting dreams has turned sour. On St. Lazarus’s Eve, when elite citizens gather at the Rainbow Opera to experience the sweet dream of Homecoming, Laura, determined to show them the truth, plunges them into the nightmare used to control the convict workers. The event marks the first blow in the battle for control of the Place, the source of dreams. Then, when Laura’s cousin, Rose, uncovers evidence that the government has been building a secret rail line deep into the Place, Laura follows it to find out what lies at its end. As she struggles to counter the government’s sinister plans, a deeper mystery surfaces, a puzzle only Laura can unravel, a puzzle having to do with the very nature of the Place. What is the Place, after all? And what does it want from her?