OPINION:A New Plymouth old girl was back in town recently, speaking to a mainly female audience about something that would have equally benefited men – how to deal with life. I’m typical of the men who didn’t attend, probably. When I bought Helen Brown’s first book, Cleo, nearly a decade ago I put it down after […]

I’ve always loved New Zealand readers. When I began column writing all those years ago, they became my exacting tutors. They insisted I was better at writing about dog poo than politics. Later on, when times were tough, they embraced me with great kindness. They taught me a person is never entirely alone. Since the […]

Helen Brown lost her nine-year-old son, battled breast cancer and, more recently, found herself lost in her life. But the former Taranaki woman got through hard times with the help of cats and is now a New York Times best-selling author with 10 books to her credit. She has just published her third memoir, Bono, […]

Can’t wait to visit my homeland and share my latest book, BONO THE RESCUE CAT, with new and old friends I’ll be travelling South and North Islands over two weeks, and hope to catch up with you along the way. Glamorous highlights will be bubbles and High Tea events hosted by the Australian Women’s Weekly […]

Join me and the editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly, Michele Crawshaw, for an afternoon of bubbles and laughter. There’ll be two events, one in Auckland, the other in Wellington. Can’t wait to see you there.  

“In her NY Times bestseller debut, Brown wrote of Cleo, the kitten that helped her heal, after son Sam, nine, was run over and killed in 1983. Bono, “a shaved black mini lion”, is the cat with special needs (chronic kidney disease), homeless after Hurricane Sandy, which her US publisher insists she foster. Brown was finding life full of ennui, after […]

Bono’s American launch day, May 29, was living the dream – visiting my editor Michaela and other friends at the publishing house off Times Square before signing books at Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue.

It’s surprising how little has changed in the New York neighbourhood where Bono and I lived. At the time, I had no idea our story would become a book translated into Chinese and Russian. “Seems like yesterday Lydia and I climbed those front steps with a wide-eyed cat inside his carry case. The heart-shaped door […]