Regional history
Herries Beattie: Early Runholding in Otago. This is truly a regional history, providing rich information about the early times of the region. It deals with such subjects as the land (and its suitability for pastoral activity), the various stock animals, the settlers, the climate (with its influence on natural phenomena and conditions of life), the people and their life, the particular case of a station (Puketoi), the development of the region and administrative matters, and other subjects.
Robert Pinney: Early South Canterbury Runs. A meticulously documented history of forty runs in South Canterbury and the Mackenzie country, this book amounts to a survey of the pastoral and economic history of the area.
Peter Chandler: Land of the Mountain and the Flood - A Contribution to the History of Runs and Runholders of the Wakatipu District. This is a detailed, well documented work. It is a history of the families and the people, right from their British origins, as well as of the pastoral development of the area.

History of the stations
Peter Newton: Mesopotamia Station - A Survey of the First Hundred Years.
Colin Wheeler: Historic Sheep Stations of New Zealand. Illustrated by the drawings and paintings of the author. A survey of 67 stations throughout the country, with a brief historical account.

Philip Holden's as well as Peter Newton's books, although not dealing specifically with historical matters, provide substantial historical information about the many stations they cover, as well as the general pastoral activity and the people that were engaged in it and lived from it.

Individual histories
Herries Beattie: Mackenzie of the Mackenzie Country and Mackenzie the Sheep Stealer (combined volume). As usual with Beattie this is a very well documented work, perhaps "the definitive account on the Mackenzie Affair", to quote the publisher.
David McLeod: Kingdom in the Hills - Story of a Struggle. To quote the author:"This book is a description of how I became part owner of my little realm at the beginning of a desperate economic collapse and what the life and struggles of a high-country runholder were like under the constant threat of bankruptcy which accompanied it."
Lady Barker: Station Life in New Zealand. "There is no more readable or more faithful account of the way people lived on back-country sheep runs in Canterbury during the 'sixties than Lady Barker's Station Life in New Zealand." The 'sixties mentioned here in the book's preface by the publisher are of course the 1860's.