Welcome
Welcome to Rose and Fern Publishing, based in Auckland,
New Zealand. The imprint used by Author Diane Robinson. Est 2021. Thanks so much for taking the time to look up this website.
Who knew accounting could be dangerous?
Could Claire Connor’s first day at her new job get any worse? Hostile staff, an embarrassing skirt incident …
But then the body of her friend Anne is found at a honey-producer client, apparently stung to death. Anne wasn’t due to start the audit for a few days, so why was she there?
​
When another colleague dies in unusual circumstances, Claire’s firm finds itself under siege from the media, and losing clients.
​
Accident prone and inclined to recklessness, can Claire uncover what really happened to her colleagues without suffering a similar fate?”
Hive of Lies is set in late 2019 before the covid pandemic arrived in New Zealand. Much of the ‘action’ takes place in a public accountant’s office in Auckland’s central city. (It should be admitted there is more action in this office than any accounting office the author has ever worked in!) Other locations include Britomart, Onehunga and Orakei train stations along with Auckland Hospital and Tamaki Drive. The honey company is located somewhere near Waimauku which is about 35 kilometres north west of central Auckland.
​
For overseas readers, Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city bordered to the east by the Waitemata Harbour and to the west by the Manukau Harbour.
Hive of Lies available digitally on Amazon, at select good book stores, and in hard copy delivered to New Zealand doors. (Physical copies exclusive to New Zealand).
​
​
​
​
Signed copies available on request.
Please contact us using the contact form at the bottom of the page.
"Thanks, heaps, for your interest in this, my debut novel. ‘Hive of Lies.’" - Diane Robinson
How do you move forward if you don't know where you started?
Russia 1996. 11-year-old Nikolai and his 9-year-old sister, Anna, have lived most of their lives in an orphanage inside a 300-year-old former monastery. Their city has changed its name from Leningrad back to St. Petersburg. The teachers and other staff at the orphanage are always grumbling about ‘too much change.’ Some children are being adopted by people from New Zealand; adoption seems like a good escape. Just when Nikolai and Anna are on the brink of being adopted, a stranger tells Anna that she looks like her mother, but disappears. Could it be that their birth parents are not really dead after all? Nikolai and Anna can’t solve the puzzle alone, but who can they really trust to help them?
Nikolai’s Quest is set in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The story takes the readers to some of that city’s famous sights such as Palace Square and the Summer Gardens. Most of the action takes place in a fictional orphanage inside an actual monastery. The Alexander Nevsky monastery includes the graves of a number of famous people, such as the composer Tchaikovsky and the chemist Mendeleev. What writer could resist setting one or two scenes in such an atmospheric graveyard? Being 300 years old it seems (to a creative mind) that the monastery just has to have a secret underground tunnel for Nikolai to discover. The book’s front notes also include a map. This is the kind of story I enjoyed when I was aged 9-12. Discussion questions are included to reflect the themes of the story; finding identity and belonging.
