Holiday reading

Wellington author and high school teacher Bernard Beckett’s novel Genesis is recommended by American bookseller Roxanne J. Coady on the Women On The Web site, which also includes an excerpt from the first chapter of the book. Beckett wrote the young adult novel Genesis while on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations. It won the young-adult fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2007 and the 2007 Esther Glen award. In 2008 the book made publishing history when UK publisher Quercus Books offered the largest advance ever put forward for a young adult novel in New Zealand. Beckett teaches at Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt.