Good Life paperback bundle (NZ ONLY)

The complete award-winning series of four stand-alone romantic comedies.

THE YEAR OF THE FOX (book 1)

When Nancy Myers starts her New Life in the mountains with a wild leap of faith and a cordless drill in her back pocket, she discovers:

a) working stuff out as you go along tends to bite you in the arse

b) men who look good in gumboots are Dangerous

c) it's a good idea to keep an eye out for neighbours when bathing naked in your sheep trough

“This is chick-lit at its best. Merren Tait has written a genuinely funny novel.” – Readers’ Favorite review of The Year of the Fox

Nancy's having a hard time. Her career trajectory has flatlined, she’s just been jilted for a prettier, more limber girl-woman, and her car is starting to look like an attractive housing option.

But Nancy has a secret weapon. Desperation.

Determined to make a fresh start (one that on no account features men of the falling-in-love-with variety), she purchases a rural property on a whim at the foot of the Southern Alps in New Zealand and attempts to settle into country life.

She finds the vista of the mountains healing. She also finds a tall, dark, and gumbooted stranger (who proves to be therapeutic in other ways).

But when she discovers her precious view is about to be taken away, Nancy faces a hard choice. Should she play saboteur to protect her own happiness, even if it means losing the man who just might possibly be the key to it?

Maybe her fresh start is actually a false start. Or maybe she’s learning a thing or two about how to be a kick-ass, self-reliant woman.

BLUFFING FOR BEGINNERS (book 2)

Em never imagined she’d use “covert” and “shameless” in the same sentence. Until she had nothing left to lose.

Em Stewart is no pushover. She can hot wire a car, torpedo a beer in under ten seconds, and make the most curse-hardy trooper blush with her colourful tongue. But when she’s abandoned by her long-time boyfriend twenty minutes into starting their new life together on a remote island, she’s in a tailspin.

Somehow, she must forge their fresh start on her own in a place full of strangers and find her groove within the small island community – even with its songbird-loving eccentricities.

The problem is Em isn’t very good at hiding the truth. Her face syphons blood off her organs every time she meets the local ranger, and she accidentally gives up the island’s greatest secret to the one person most willing to exploit it.

Now Em has to perform the biggest bluff of her life to protect her new home against corporate interest, even if it means ruining a fresh shot at love before it’s had much of a chance.

But Em’s not afraid of going down in a blaze of glory. And one thing’s for sure: She’s about to take the islanders on the ride of their lives.

THE MISDEEDS OF SADIE QUINN (book 3)
Business in ruins: one.
Money in the bank: $4.82.
Crime scene: one and counting.

Sadie Quinn’s been down on her luck before, but never like this, and the moment of folly that forces her to go on the run has pushed her out of the fire and into a thermo-nuclear disaster.

Fleeing to the one place she knows she can get her life back on track – her grandfather’s small-town home – presents a complication: The Misdeeds List.

Her grandfather’s non-negotiable condition for letting her live with him is that she must help him relive the misdemeanours of his youth. The problem is, the wilder the acts become, the more attention she gains from the handsome local cop, and for all the wrong reasons.

At first Sadie thinks the misdemeanours are just random acts of madness brought on by an elderly mind that’s beginning to lose its hold on reality. But as she helps her grandfather tick off the items on his list, she begins to see the pieces of a puzzle slotting together – a puzzle that offers clues to her own troubled past.

Now, not only does Sadie need to redeem herself to win the right kind of handsome-cop attention, she must also commit one last and spectacular misdeed to fit the final piece of the puzzle into place.

Something has to give.

ODD GIRL ROAR (book 4)

When I called the mayor a “cockwomble”, it didn’t go down well.

Jewel Bauer has always been the underdog in whatever situation she lands in, and unfortunately her ‘act now, think later’ approach to life – or, as she puts it, “being the biggest numpty this side of planet Spackbrain” – doesn’t help her chances of beating the odds.

Moving to a small town to kick start her life, she finally finds a place, a family to belong to. The group of fellow oddballs who welcome her into their fold, seem to understand her – the tall, broad-shouldered, quiet one a little more so than the rest.

When a failed politician with questionable ethics and an even more questionable agenda seeks to establish power in her new community, Jewel knows she must stop him, even if the only political experience she has is insulting mayors.

What’s the logical solution? Mount an opposing political campaign with her small family of social misfits, of course.

Jewel and her friends quickly find themselves out of their depth fighting a political veteran who knows all the tricks to win voters over, and the resulting comedy of errors threatens to break the group apart.

But Jewel’s not afraid of casting a stone at the giant – or several – to see which will fell him. The question is: How devious and dangerous a stone does she need? And will it ruin her first shot at love?

"Tait offers an auspicious and cute premise, a scorchingly hot romance, and a highly original setting." – The Booklife Prize review of The Year of the Fox

“This is chick-lit at its best. Merren Tait has written a genuinely funny novel.” – Readers’ Favorite review of The Year of the Fox