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4 September 2026
I want to be heard. Read me, see me. These are the murmurs escaping from century-old casebooks and played out across the pages of Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s novel of a Cork asylum: the multitude of women who were committed there, and a female physician L. Strangman. The derelict Victorian hospital is crumbling away, readying itself for a new life as apartments. The ‘For Sale’ sign triggers a response in the researcher. It beckons to her: a sign to act, to delve into the past, or be pulled into it, by the voices that eminate from the archive, from the casebooks. The casebooks, notes made over years, decades, talk to her. They call her back: the more she reads, the more she learns; the more she learns, the more she brings these entries into the light. In Said the Dead, Ní Ghríofa employs the style of archivist, historian, poet, novelist and memoirist to take us into the past, and to the bring the past into the present. Time merges, voices merge, women call to the author, and to the reader from across the divide of time. A ghost story of literary proportions, told with empathy, deep recognition and startling awareness, time and place are overlayed in Said the Dead — there is no straight line. Like her early memoir/autofction , A Ghost in the Throat, the rules of engagement are blurred. Who’s speaking? Is it a woman emerging from the casebook, her story jotted down in the doctor’s quick precise hand, or is it the author’s pencil (only pencils allowed in the archive library) performing an act of seeing, of bringing the patient to life with a richer nararative. Here imagination and fact mingle, yet still feel so accurate. Said the Dead is a work of research — the asylum, a building of vast preportions, is a real place; the abandonned wastelands of the soon-to-be building site really were boarded with sheet iron; and the author, I imagine, did graze her leg inching through to explore. The story of Lucia Stangman (who we get to know well, beyond ‘the facts’, via the author’s pencil), the first woman doctor to enter the asylum service in Ireland is compelling, and the patients are not pretend players. Yet Doireann Ní Ghríofa takes it further. She invokes something within herself, is compelled to write, as we are to read, the stories of these women, to bring them out, to shake off the grime and cobwebs of abandon, to see them as more then the almost forgotten in casebooks crumbling under the narrator’s touch. As with her earlier work, she is a player in her own book, pushing at the conventions of the novel form while embracing the ability of story to compell us to read, to hear the voices and for a moment to be there; whether there is sitting beside her in the archive library or walking in a corridor humming with the activity of asylum’s morning routine.
The man next to me on the plane was so tall he couldn’t fit in his seat. His elbows jutted out over the armrests and his knees were jammed against the seat in front, so that the person in it glanced around in irritation every time he moved. The man twisted, trying to get himself into a comfortable, or at least less uncomfortable, position in which he could hold his book at an acceptable distance from his eyes, a distance about which he was either uncommonly fussy or which was dictated by the possibly narrow focal range of his spectacles. “Sorry,” he said. He explained that he needed to write a review of the book by the end of the week, that he was a bookseller with a small bookshop in a provincial town, and that he and his partner, the joint owners of the bookshop, felt obliged to produce a review each every week for inclusion in their digital newsletter. Some weeks were short on reading time, he explained, what with the demands of the bookshop and of what he termed, somewhat vaguely, family life, so he needed to take every opportunity he could to finish reading his current book, in this case Kudos by Rachel Cusk, reading even in circumstances hardly conducive to reading well, such as in cramped seats aboard what he termed fictional aircraft, a context that not only tended to indelibly dominate whatever activity was performed in it, especially the memory of that activity, even more so than the actual performance in what he called the present tense, using a literary term hardly appropriate to what I would term living in real time, memory being, after all, surely, he remarked, the primary mode of a book review, but also left one vulnerable to conversation with whatever stranger one found oneself sitting next to, quite intimately, for an extended period of time, a period of time which neither party to the conversation has the capacity to shorten. I asked him whether he thought that perhaps the random, or at least seemingly random, encounters with members of what might be politely termed the public might not be in some way enriching, and he visibly recoiled at my choice of word, so I repeated it, to gauge its effect, and I immediately understood his reaction. Well, yes, he thought that such encounters might be a way of not so much generating narrative as of generating whatever might take the place of narrative in a work of fiction from which narrative, the possibility of narrative and even the principle of narrative has been expunged. This was very much, he said, what Rachel Cusk had achieved in Kudos, the taking-away from the novel of those principles, or as many of them as possible, that are generally considered to comprise a novel: plot, narrative, characters, development, interiority, but which are really just a set of conventions by which what we think of as novels expend or release their energy, so to call it, without that energy achieving the potentials of fiction, namely to transfer the experience of awareness between two minds, so to call them, in other words, what we think of as the essentials of a novel are the very things that may well reduce the potency of the novel, and, conversely, he thought, if a writer, such as Cusk, managed, as she has with Kudos, to excise from the novel as many as possible of these, what he termed novelistic antics, the novel could become potentised, “austere and astringent,” he called it, cleansing our faculties and getting them to work properly, not just for the reading of fiction but for the living of life, “whatever that might consist of”. When I suggested that perhaps not writing at all would be the apogee of fiction, he laughed briefly, or snorted, and replied that, yes, he was trying that experiment himself, with some success, even though the results suggested that fiction’s ultimate achievement in destroying itself closely resembled the complete absence of fiction. Cusk in the negativity of her fiction was austere, he said, but not as austere as him, who produced, if anything, less than nothing. “I would like the work to be a non-work,” he said, quoting Eva Hesse without attribution. Of course, he went on - and I realised, looking at my watch, partly in an attempt to estimate the proportion of our flight that remained, partly to implant in him some sort of subliminal message, that it would be hard to stop him talking now that I had succeeded in engaging him in conversation - of course it is the wall between the fictional and the actual, between the so-called subjective and the so-called objective aspects of experience, that it should be fiction’s prerogative to assail, to undermine, to cause to crumble, for it is this wall that is responsible for the maintenance of all manner of errors about identity and reality and, ultimately, responsibility, so to call them, errors that are either traps or crutches, he said, traps and crutches being largely indistinguishable from each other unless you know the nature of your affliction, which can only be ascertained by the removal, at least temporarily, of the crutch upon which one has been leaning. I seemed, I thought, to have triggered in him a kind of mania of exposition, which I was beginning to regret, though I had done little more than make what I thought of as small talk with a man whose enthusiasm for literature must surely be an embarrassment to himself. He did not appear to blame me for this, at least, rather, he had become by this stage oblivious to anything but his own train of thought. In many ways, he said, Kudos resembled the work of Thomas Bernhard, a writer for whom he evidently had a great deal of respect, especially in the layering or nesting of narrative within several levels of reportage. In fact, nothing actually happens in the novel until the very last, memorable paragraph, other than the minimum necessary for the interchange of the series of characters — a man who sat beside her on an aeroplane, various writers and interviewers she encounters at a literary festival, a guide, her editor and her translator, her sons who telephone her — whose conversations with her, or, rather narrations to her, the narrator narrates. For instance, at one stage Cusk, one step more invisible even than her invisible narrator, tells us of the narrator telling of a writer named Linda telling of the woman who sat beside Linda on the plane telling Linda of how she came to break her bones. In another passage, during a conversation with an interviewer, the narrator describes to the interviewer what the interviewer had described to the narrator during a previous conversation. The narrator reveals nothing of herself, he explained with a patience that seemed unpredicated on either my understanding of or my interest in what he was explaining, other than that which is revealed by her function as a conduit for the stories, and voices, of others. By reducing herself to so very little, to almost nothing, the narrator is able to enter and own the stories of others, he said, or, rather, Cusk is able to use the narrator as a device to enter and own stories, the layers of narrative, hearsay and reportage rendering the distinction between fiction and actuality entirely extraneous. Also, this authorial or narratorial intrusion frequently breaches the distinctions between the levels of narrative, he said, what he called the narrator’s first person reduced and sharpened to such a pinprick that it enters and appropriates details in quoted speech and reported speech, in second- and third-person narratives of secondary and tertiary narratives in the second person — I must say I couldn’t follow quite what he was telling me, but, I must also say, I wasn’t trying very hard — sometimes ultimately reporting information that the narrator could in fact have no access to through those conversations, information that could not be at less than a step or two's remove. Although I was by this stage hardly encouraging him, the bookseller was unstoppable. “All fiction is inherently a transgression of the sovereignty of persons, although this transgression is by no means limited to fiction but can also be observed in all attempts at the so-called understanding of, or, rather, representation of, actual others.” The trappings of fiction and the conventions of social interaction try their hardest to mask this unconscionable intrusion and appropriation, but this intrusion and appropriation is at the nub of things, fictional and otherwise, he said, and ultimately destabilise any notions we might have of identity, reality and, ultimately, responsibility. I suggested that he might have gone over this ground before, or so it seemed to me, but he continued. “Who owns whose narrative?” he demanded, not, I think, of me. He was quiet a moment, but not longer. “Listen to this,” he said, and proceeded to quote a passage he had marked in the book: “‘I said that while her story suggested that human lives could be governed by the laws of narrative, and all the notions of retribution and justice that narrative lays claim to, it was in fact merely her interpretation of events that created that illusion. … The narrative impulse might spring from the desire to avoid guilt, rather than from the need - as was generally assumed - to connect things together in a meaningful way; that it was a strategy calculated, in other words, to disburden ourselves from responsibility.’ What do you think?” he asked. I hadn’t quite caught it all, he had been reading too fast and we were sitting near the engines, so I hesitated before he went on, seemingly unaware that I had not replied. Cusk’s work was a work of great clarity, which, he said, as well as being very pleasurable to read, was a work of liberating negativity, a reformulation of the purpose and capacities of fiction, no less. The purpose of art is to turn upon and destroy itself, he said, or words to that effect, and at the same time and by this process to change the nature of our relationship with the actual. He turned to another marked passage, in which Cusk’s narrator, Faye, relates to an interviewer what had been said to her by her son during a telephone call, something about “‘passing through the mirror into the state of painful self-awareness where human fictions lose their credibility,’” a process he appeared to ascribe to the fiction, such as Kudos, that he valued most. I told them that I was sorry, but he had actually managed, by his overcomplicated enthusiasm for it, to put me off buying a book I would no doubt otherwise have enjoyed, having enjoyed the other books in Cusk’s so-called trilogy: Outline and Transit, and he obliged me by keeping quiet for what remained of the flight.
Catch these five books!
Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.
SAID THE DEAD by Doireann Ní Ghríofa $38
Blending detailed research with the sensitvities of a novelist and poet, Said the Dead breaches the boundaries that contain the past to resuscitate the voices of women who were inmates in a now-derelict Victorian mental hospital in the city of Cork. As the narrator follows their traces through the archives and through the corridors, she finds in the murmurings of these women much that resonate with her own life and experiences. Join our online discussion in September!
A GUIDE TO ROCKS by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan $26
Winner of the 2026 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. ”This is the best picture book I’ve come across about feelings and how to unpack them. Clever, funny, honest, and also useful. A Guide to Rocks lets children (and parents) knows it’s okay to be vulnerable, to express your fears and doubts, and that you are not alone.” —Stella
SIMPLE TOO by Yotam Ottolenghi $75
135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.
THE VALLEY OF UNLIKELY ACQUAINTANCES by Terri Te Tau $38
“This is a real deal Māori sci-fi thriller dripping in small-town charisma, rongoā, and twists. Terri Te Tau somehow manages to prove, with eye-watering brains and a bit of Indigenous futurism, that the highest technology in the cosmos truly is our whakapapa.” —Coco Solid
LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann (translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken) $28
Paris, a winter's night in 1983. She is sixteen years old, lost in unfamiliar streets. On a scrap of paper in her pocket is the address of a photographer, K, thirty years her senior. Almost four decades later, as her life and the world around her begins to unravel, the grown woman seeks to comprehend the young girl of before and looks for ways to disclose a long-guarded secret. Set in Oslo, New York and Paris, Girl, 1983 is a genre-defying and bravura quest through layers of memory and oblivion — a raw and haunting exposure of beauty and forgetting, desire and shame, power and powerlessness. [Paperback]
'A masterpiece. It pushes the fused power of memoir and story to a new dimension.' —Ali Smith
'Ullmann's gaze on the power and pain of a teenage girl as remembered and restaged by her adult self is unflinching and startling.' —Deborah Levy
’Linn Ullmann's writing, already distinct for its rare moral clarity, attains a new authority in Girl, 1983. It is the authority of focus, of a grip on life that grows more tenacious as its scope determinedly narrows. In the manner of Annie Ernaux, Ullmann uses the act of attention as a weapon against indifference. It is as though, by reconstructing the disorder of certain realities, she is able to confer sanity on them. Yet there is also a brightness and generosity to her work that seems to turn its themes — the powerlessness of youth and femininity, the intermingling of memory and shame — inside out.’ —Rachel Cusk
>>Pretexts.
Simple Too by Yotam Ottolenghi $75
For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Simple, Ottolenghi brings us 135 brand-new easy recipes that are full of flavour, intensity and creativity. It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution. Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy. [Hardback]
Sunrise by Téa Obreht $38
Three lives, 100 years, one forgotten town. In 2024, Nina's small aircraft crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Lost, freezing and alone on the shore, Nina stumbles upon Sunrise — an abandoned frontier town that is strangely well-maintained. In 2003, Sunrise's golden boy Coll is about to start rehearsals for the town's annual historical reenactment when he is linked with a scandalous incident at a local bar. And when an author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, Coll is forced to reassess everything he thought he knew about the city — and himself. In 1902, town founder, gunslinger and adventure-novel hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and helps the search for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after so many years away? These three are strangers, separated by time. But Sunrise has secrets that lie waiting like gunpowder: quiet, until they encounter a spark. From the author of The Tiger's Wife comes a novel that challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the places we lay claim to, and most of all, of our own lives. [Paperback]
“I've loved every book Tea Obreht has written but I might love this one the most. It's tense and beautifully constructed, and it features Obreht's signature precision when it comes to both language and emotion. Please put this book into the hands of everyone you know.” —Liz Moore
”Sunrise is an engrossing, original and thought-provoking novel, effortlessly readable and beautifully told.” —Nina Allan,Guardian
>>No spoilers.
>>An intertextual tale of the American ‘Wild West’.
Pocket Observology: A field guide by Giselle Clarkson $28
Slip this practical field guide out of your pocket to identify, measure, compare, or find clues to the things you encounter every day in nature This pocket guide is a useful tool and fun reminder of how to look at the world around you with care and close observation every day. Use it to identify whether you've found a bee or wasp, centipede or millipede, moth or butterfly. Compare shapes of seeds, leaves, and feathers to deduce their origin. Notice snail trails and make discoveries by turning over a leaf. Learn how to observe—listen, look, record, and collect. With its how-to guides, comic illustrations, weatherproof cover, and built-in, useful tools—such as a ruler, key, and quick access sections—this handy guide will enliven every expedition. After poring over Giselle Clarkson's rich, oversized books indoors, every observologist and omnibirder can slip this guide in their pocket and set out on small scientific outings every day. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Look inside!
>>Get The Observologist too!.
>>And Omnibird!
Offshore Service, And other stories by Craig Cliff $35
'But I couldn't go home just yet. I would not be a man in anyone's eyes. That's how I wound up working for Anton, servicing the coal ships stranded off the coast.' In Offshore Service and Other Stories, award-winning author Craig Cliff explores the emotional, economic, cultural and climatic forces that drive our decisions.Farmers search for purpose on holiday in Fiji. A well-heeled Dunedin suburb receives an influx of refugees. Tensions flare at an Anzac Day barbecue in Perth. Playing out in recognisable settings these stories follow characters who find themselves beyond familiar shores, struggling to reconcile the passage of time, thwarted aspirations and unexpected responsibilities. What unfolds is explored with humour, heart and hopefulness through a mix of classic storytelling and innovative forms. [Paperback]
'Craig Cliff adds to the canon, but with such ambition, creativity and sheer energy that he shows there's still something new to say about a national narrative that can seem, at times, to hold no surprises.' - Charlotte Graham, New York Times
South Island Māori Rock Art by Philippa F. Graham $90
South Island Māori rock drawings, dating back to early Māori occupation, were examined as scientific curiosities by many early European explorers and, later, museum curators, including Julius von Haast, Alexander Hamilton, Robert Speight, W.H. Skinner and H.D. Skinner. Early on there was the inevitable debate in European circles about the artistic merits of the rock drawings, but their value to both local and international collectors is indicated by the fact that many artworks were vandalised — in 1916, motifs were first cut out of major sites by one Mr Elmore, a visiting American, encouraged by a few acquisitive museum curators. South Island Māori Rock Art: European interest from the 19th century to the present is the culmination of many years of exploring and checking the sites by local farmer Philippa Graham, encouraged by landowners, field staff from the Department of Lands and Survey and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Examination of the Historic Places Trust records revealed numerous past reports about the drawings but little effective protection until recent years, and little has been written about the history of these fascinating sites since Michael Trotter and Beverley McCulloch’s popular 1971 publication, Prehistoric Rock Art of New Zealand. In South Island Māori Rock Art, Graham calls on her research at all of the major New Zealand institutions, in addition to the Thomas Burke Museum, Seattle. She has uncovered a plethora of fresh material about the sites, the landowners, the governments of the times, archaeologists’ contributions, museums’ involvement, library records and attitudes towards local Māori in early days. Accompanied by more than 350 illustrations and maps, an index and a Māori glossary, South Island Māori Rock Art concludes with a chapter focusing on New Zealand artists who have been inspired by the rock drawings. [Exhaustively illustrated hardback]
>>Look inside.
Street, Palace, Square: The architecture of democratic spaces by Jan-Werner Müller $50
Can architecture ever be democratic? Building requires power and resources — then, once created, our built environment structures how we relate to each other. What would a distinctly democratic built environment look like? Should we prioritise an inclusive process by which as many citizens as possible can decide how a building is designed? Or is it about how architecture and urban spaces can best represent democracy to citizens — and how building and city planning can concretely facilitate democratic action by citizens? Political theorist Jan-Werner Müller offers an elegant new account of architecture and democracy that draws on examples from Washington DC to Dhaka, Cairo to Berlin. Ranging widely across political philosophy, history and design, he shows that bringing architecture and democracy together has an unexpected benefit. As we reflect on spaces and symbols on the one hand and our understandings of democracy on the other, we might see possibilities we did not see before: how to create spaces for citizens to make politics their own. [Hardback]
Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf $30
The essays in this collection are, of course, not merely concerned with the self. Virginia Woolf does also discuss the rights of women, the revolutions of modernity, the past, present and future of the novel. She is eloquent on social inequality and the agony of war. She is a robust literary antiquarian, she rakes through the past in search of treasure. She is transfixed, as well, by the aesthetic contests of the present, the dynamic incompleteness of her era. She fights with local demons, she mocks those who mock her, and generally prevails. The essays chosen here were written between 1919 when Woolf was 37 and 1940 when she was 58. During this time, Woolf changed, many times over, her opinions changed, her circumstances too; she was not a fixed entity. With an introduction by Joanna Kavenna. [Hardback]
"The book explores the idea of the self in a very thought-provoking way and is a real treat for Woolf fans who like to analyze the more complex themes and ideas in her works." —Virginia Woolf blog
"Underpinning all of the essays is the question of what it means to have a sense of self. A question that, in the age of the selfie, seems utterly topical." —Julia Bell, University College London
The Drunken Boat: Selected writings by Arthur Rimbaud (translated from French by Mark Polizzotti) $45
Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk — the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud's major poems and letters, including generous selection of Illuminations and the entirety of his lacerating confession A Season in Hell — capturing not only the meaning but also the daredevil attitudes and incantatory rhythms that make Rimbaud's works among the most perpetually modern of his or any other generation. [Paperback]
"Mark Polizzotti is, without any doubt, right there with the very best translators of symbolist or any other French poetry, and here he surpasses even himself." —Mary Ann Caws
Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and hope in modern Iran by Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin $45
Fuelled by Iranians' dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the US-backed shah's ailing repressive monarchy. But the revolution itself was taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist faction led by Ayatollah Khomeini, and the system built by his followers has been repressive of dissent and non-conformity, and has a poor record on human rights and freedoms. Journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a new lens on Iran's recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope. Mehdi Karroubi — a devotee of Khomeini, he rose to the heights of power on the wave of the revolution, before being cast out of its inner circle. Hila Sedighi — a young activist, who gave voice through her poetry to her peers' hopes during the reform years and ultimately immortalised their shattered dreams. Amir Moghadam — an ambitious government bureaucrat, who witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth. Said Rahmani — a successful global tech entrepreneur who returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country, and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself. Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari — both born in the 1990s, they escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran, where they joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price. Stolen Revolution offers a new story of Iran, centring ordinary Iranians' lives, whilst providing understanding of how life is actually lived under a modern authoritarian state. [Paperback]
”This account of the Islamic Republic and its discontents told via six contrasting lives should be required reading. Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati's powerful history of the Islamic republic is a badly needed corrective because it is at once an engrossing story and a balanced, meticulously researched primer on modern Iran (the clearest I've ever read). It is dramatic, personal and often heartbreaking.” —Dina Nayeri, Guardian
Growing Vegetables: A simple guide for New Zealand gardeners by Sarah O’Neil $40
Completely revised edition of the old classic, this is everything a new gardener needs, and this is the perfect season to begin. Packed with tips and techniques, planning charts, and places to record notes, it’s a handy resource of trusted, reliable gardening information, quick to access and easy to understand. Growing Vegetables is like having an expert at your elbow, sleeves rolled up, ready to lend a hand and offer great advice. Illustrated throughout.
>>Look inside.
A selection of books from our shelves. Click through to find out more:
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
”A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.”
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting. What does the relationship between these two characters tell us about the relationship between different aspects of ourselves?
The film star M is one of the most recognisable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away. Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths — about the very experience of living — might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M? In this astonishing novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotised, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world.
We will be discussing Life of M on 13 October in our online session of Talking Books.
Find out more:
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Life of M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. ”A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.” The film star M is one of the most recognisable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away. Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths — about the very experience of living — might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M? In this astonishing novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotised, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world. [Paperback]
>>The confessions of Rachel Cusk.
>>Unhappy cosciousness.
>>The negative space of literary gossip.
>>Tight lipped.
>>Biogossip.
>>Join our online discussion on 13 October!
The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances by Terri Te Tau $38
A remarkable debut novel that follows one close-knit Māori community and the Wairarapa forest they are fighting to restore. Tīria is a revolutionary scientist—or so she likes to think. Her work at the whānau-led Kōpuaranga Research Centre has transformed the valley’s reforestation efforts. But not everyone is convinced that genetically edited cats belong in the ngahere. While Tīria juggles disciplinary hearings and romantic field trips, her best friend Lydia is left trying to hold the hapori together. When human remains are found in a nearby cave, the valley is drawn into speculation. What begins as an isolated discovery soon reveals unsettling ties to the 1800s, when the region’s ecological devastation first began. As rumours spread and tensions escalate, Lydia and Tīria are pulled into a history that promises to redefine not only the research centre, but the future of the community and the forest they call home. [Paperback with French flaps]
“This is a real deal Māori sci-fi thriller dripping in small-town charisma, rongoā, and twists. Terri Te Tau somehow manages to prove, with eye-watering brains and a bit of Indigenous futurism, that the highest technology in the cosmos truly is our whakapapa.” —Coco Solid
“Ethereal and intelligent, it beautifully captures a sense of time that’s grounded in te ao Māori.” —Lauren Keenan
“A celebration of ecology and love. An unputdownable environmental epic of time travel, mana whenua, and entanglement—at once intimate and hilarious, with characters that are now wrapped around my heart. Terri Te Tau is an extraordinary talent. The world needs this stunning debut right now.” —Laura Jean McKay
Sea Now by Eva Meijer (translated from Dutch by Anne Thompson Melo) $42
The catastrophe that everyone knew was coming has arrived — the dykes are breached, the tideline rises a kilometer a day, and the citizens of the Netherlands are forced into gyms and shelters in Germany and Belgium. The foxes and rabbits head inland across the dunes. The politicians make empty speeches and fret the optics. The Hague — ‘the center of peace and justice’ — slips beneath the rising water. Online retailers do flash sale promotions on disaster kits. There is violence and looting, but some people are too tired to start over again and simply walk into the rising tide. Not willing to simply move on, three women get into a small boat and ride back out over the flooded cities, looking for loved ones they know are likely drowned. On the way, they witness a world retaken by seabirds, whales, and kelp forests. The sea has spoken, and there's nothing left to be done but listen. Philosopher and cross-species linguist Eva Meijer's new novel redefines both nature writing and climate fiction by bringing the power and resilience of the natural world to the fore. [Paperback with French flaps]
Broadening both the scope of the novel and the bounds of our understanding and empathy. What sets Sea Now apart from other recent climate fiction, however, is its decentering of the human perspective. It asks us to think more broadly than we are accustomed, to take the time to imagine the lives of rabbits and fish, and to wonder what the sea might feel.' —Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders
'Sea Now unfolds from both broad and intimate perspectives with a voice that, in Anne Thompson Melo's translation, is delightful and terrifying in its simplicity. It isn't just a human story, but one of overfished fishes learning not to be afraid; of shellfishes, birds, rabbits, and 'sea-being'; of horses discovering that 'what they mean by freedom is the seaweed that moves inside you'; of whether, like mussels and octopuses, 'the sea dreams'. In its regard for other-than-human Earthlings, Sea Now joins Meijer's rich oeuvre of novels and philosophical meditations on multispecies coexistence. One could read this novel as the story of two characters — the Netherlands and the sea — posing a question of each other: What am I? What and who is ‘the Netherlands’? What and who is ‘the sea’? The first question implicates uncomfortable stories of value: Who determines the status quo that decides who or what (a foreigner?, a painting?) deserves to be saved, who or what (a US-trained scientist?, the Dutch language?) would count as a loss? Meijer's prose, in Melo's hands, flows quietly with a consistent bittersweetness, and the novel's pervasively dreamlike quality underscores the true horror of this entirely realistic scenario.' — Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Asymptote
>>How the sea might speak.
>>Allowing things to be ambiguous.
Event Horizon by Balsam Karam (translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel) $45
Seventeen-year-old Milde is from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich, where mothers and daughters, banished from society, make their living — without rights, access to care, or legal status. But Milde refuses to accept the order of things and, together with some friends, she revolts against the government's injustice. Arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, Milde is eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or, as part of an experiment, to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass. She chooses the Mass, opting to face its fathomless depth and loneliness rather than hurt the morale of her weary allies back home. Collapsing and expanding myth and reality, Event Horizon is an exquisite existential work of speculative fiction, dark as deep space, woven with reflections on exile, oppression, solidarity, trauma, and loss. [Paperback]
‘If you ever wonder why fiction matters, read this radiant and defiant book. Nothing confronts the realities of our world more powerfully than a story willing to imagine and extrapolate them so fully. That this vision is readable – bearable, even – is only because it is written with such love, care and formal brilliance in both voice and structure.’ —Samantha Harvey
‘Balsam Karam’s Event Horizon is a parable for our times. With the power of myth and the lyricism of an epic poem, the novel grapples with so much of what we are witnessing around us across the globe: oppression, torture, migration, division and humans having to negotiate impossible bargains. This philosophical and existential novel had me gripped from beginning to end. Karam’s voice – urgent and essential – penetrates deep and will stay with me.’ —Joanna Pocock
‘Balsam Karam writes from the fringes of space, the frothing sea, the borders of despair and state-enforced terror. Her prose shines like glass. Fabulistic and dreamy, it lingers long past first reading. Event Horizon exposes the serrated edge of girlhood, plunging into the black holes that consume rebels and outsiders.’ —Momtaza Mehri
‘Event Horizon reminds us that the revolution is always already over and has always not yet begun. It is a moving, domestic novel about how to make a home and a life while displaced and oppressed, and about what might endure when you are forced to leave it for good.’ —Samuel Fisher
>>Inside the Outskirts.
>>The exiled writer.
>>Also available in this edition.
The Tunnel by William H. Gass $67
The Tunnel, William H. Gass's colossal second novel, thundered onto the literary scene after three decades at the typewriter. Hailed by many as an indisputable masterpiece, reviled by others as a suffocating and overwhelming experiment, The Tunnel has been voraciously studied by readers ever since. The story of a middle-aged history professor who, upon nearing completion of his magnum opus, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany, finds himself implicated in his own research, and begins to write a parallel work of history: his own life's story. Fearing that someone might find these confessional pages, he begins to dig a tunnel out from beneath his home in an attempt to hide, or escape, from the past that he has so diligently catalogued. The Tunnel is many things: an awe-inspiring and apocalyptic novel that reckons with the accumulating brutality of the twentieth century; a mirror, asking readers to confront their own potential for darkness; and the crowning achievement by one of America's great prose stylists. [Paperback]
"The Tunnel is maddening, enthralling, appalling, coarse, romantic, sprawling, bawling. The rhythmic pressure of its language is seductive and bears along ever-interesting images and ideas. So much stuff in this novel! We revel in the sheer glory of Mr. Gass's phenomenal prose style, his unflagging energy, in a prose that seems to embrace and swallow everything and make all things live with interest." —Robert Kelly, New York Times Book Review
"Gass allows his narrator to make a world within words, for the concerns of this novel's prose re both poetic and encyclopedic. Gass's prose is musical and inventive" —Philip Graham, Chicago Tribune
"Each paragraph, each sentence, every clause, every phrase, has been burnished breathless, willfully wrought, stippled stark, with an obsessiveness bordering on Brodskey baroque. The eye can't rest, nor the mind mist. Gass has written a splendid, daunting, loathsome novel." —John Leonard, Nation
>>Wilfully written.
Te Onehaumako by Zeb Tamihana Nicklin $30
This is a young adults novel in te reo Māori where we follow the story of Tawa, an inquisitive teenager. With a time-travelling shed located in his garden, Tawa takes a trip through time visiting ancient days, where he meets Mauwhare and his grandmother. Thoughout the story, Tawa meets ancestors and paramount chiefs and soon realises there might be more to his grandmother and Mauwhare than meets the eye. Packed with excitement and unexpected turns along the way, Tawa discovers connections he couldn’t have imagined from the past that impact his world today. The storyline of Te Onehaumako is unpinned by the signficance of mahinga kai, mahi maara and mahi whenua – Māori food cultivation practices and gardening. These practices continue to gain prominence as the knowledge relating to the Māori lunar calendar. [Paperback]
Winner NZSA Best First Book Award at the 2026 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
”Ko Te Onehaumako he pukapuka kua tuhia katoatia ki te reo Māori. He pūrākau whakaoho hirikapo e aro pū ana ki te ao o te rangatahi. Ka mau ngā whatu o te kaipānui ki ngā whārangi o te puka nei. He ngāwari te whai hononga ki ngā kiripuaki nā te ngahau o ngā nuka reo. Waihoki, e kaha whakatauira ana a Te Onehaumako i ngā mātāpono me ngā tikanga hei ārahi i te taiohi i tēnei ao hurihuri. He pukapuka whakahirahira a Te Onehaumako e whakakao ana i ngā kawenga tiaki i te taiao me te ānamata o te tangata.”
”Te Onehaumako, written entirely in te reo Māori, is an original and thought-provoking novella aimed at young adult readers. The engaging story pulls in readers from the start, and sustains their interest throughout with thoughtful pacing, relatable characters and clear themes. It follows a heartfelt journey of discovery, gently guiding readers to understand that to truly thrive, we must respect, nurture, and protect the natural world. Te Onehaumako is an important book that will spark meaningful conversations about sustainability and our shared environmental responsibilities.” — judges’ citation
Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland by Lavinia Greenlaw and William Morris $27
Morris's intimate journals, written for a friend, unconsciously explore questions of travel, noting his reaction to the idea of leaving or arriving, to hurry and delay, what it means to dread a place you've never been to or to encounter the actuality of a long-held vision. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw draws out these questions as she follows in the footprints of Morris's prose, responding to its surfaces and undercurrents, extending its horizons. The result is a new and composite work, which brilliantly explores our conflicted reasons for not staying at home. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Morris's journals... are precious and unique because they are so simply and beautifully written with the informed sense of wonder of a deeply learned and sophisticated man. No one except Ruskin has ever put the case for beauty with such vehemence and clarity." —Guardian
"Greenlaw has brilliantly found a new form for writing about Morris, and for this we can only be grateful." —Tony Pinkney
The Illuminated Man: Life, death and the worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan $55
This book is about J. G. Ballard. This book is also about death, love and time travel. J. G. Ballard possessed one of the most astonishing imaginations of our age, and he had an intense and turbulent history: a childhood spent in the encroaching shadow of World War II, teenage internment in a Japanese prison camp - an experience famously fictionalised in Empire of the Sun. Ballard's novels are among the finest and most unusual fiction that has ever been published. Whether in the hyper-surrealism of High Rise or the erotic violence of Crash, he upended the morality and reality of our world. Christopher Priest knew many of Ballard's friends and colleagues personally. As a young writer, it had been Ballard's stories, most of all, that had helped cement his passion for science fiction. With much of their early work published in the same magazines, Priest knew about Ballard's world from the inside. He set out to write a biography that would make people understand what he already knew: that J. G. Ballard wasn't just a cult writer — he was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. In 2024, Christopher died. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had metastasised into the bones, the same disease that killed J. G. Ballard — the man whose biography he'd spent his last months working on. When Nina and Christopher first met, they bonded over their love for Ballard's writing, rereading his novels and stories together many times. When it became clear that Christopher would not have time to finish this biography, Nina promised him that she would complete it, patching together with her own voice the gaps that remained. If the book began as a tribute from Priest to Ballard, it is now also a love story written by Nina for Christopher. With access to never-before-seen material, The Illuminated Man explores the history and themes of Ballard's life and — with Ballardian strangeness — celebrates and mourns for those that are gone. This is the story of two deaths, three science fiction writers and one attempt to turn back time. [Hardback]
”The best account yet of the life of one of the great English-language writers of the last century. Exemplary in detail and analysis, The Illuminated Mind is a page-turning portrait of an author whose work feels more bracingly relevant than ever.” —The New World
”A deft and necessary negotiation through the lives and masks of a writer fated to become an adjective. Twinned narratives intertwine as biographical pursuit invades and informs the complex journey of the pursuers. Legends of the master myth-maker are interrogated, confirmed and sometimes challenged. An engaging and frequently moving tribute to a writer honouring his self-imposed task to the last breath.” —Iain Sinclair
”J.G. Ballard was one of the five or six genuinely contemporary UK writers of the mid-to-late 20th Century, and perhaps the only one with a completely individual internal landscape, a fully achieved escape velocity from the UK literary establishment as then comprised, and a genuine appetite for writing into the vast social, political and scientific shifts of the century. His awareness was broad yet finely tunable; his conclusions were always his own. He wanted to be aware of the real time in the universe. All of this is noted and developed in Chris Priest and Nina Allan's biography of Ballard. Exciting, too, to see a major UK publisher investing in an unconventional turn on an often stale and trudging genre. Ballard and Priest would both have enjoyed the challenge The Illuminated Man represents to our idea of how a biography should comport itself.” —M. John Harrison
The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin $37
'And try to breathe, man. You gotta remember to breathe. You won't get so panicky if you can remember that.' Eddie Wilkens runs his own house-painting business. Forty-something and living alone, he just wants to take life one day at a time. When his eight-year-old neighbour, Russell, starts hanging around, Eddie sees that this small kid — with his single mother working nights and his violent older brother — is struggling to keep his head above water, and so tries to help. Equal parts heart wrenching and uplifting, The Left and the Lucky is a portrait of this unusual friendship — the ways hurt shatters people and the compassionate acts that can, maybe, hold some of those pieces together. [Paperback]
'Vlautin's characters are a vast chorus of broken hearts, reaching for grace.' —Colin Walsh
'No one writes with such empathy and insight as Willy Vlautin.' —Benjamin Myers
'Vlautin writes about people overlooked by society and overlooked by literature.' —Ann Patchett
>>There’s a lot of luck involved in life.
Plant Fiend by Peter Butler $40
In this memoir Peter Butler explores his relationship with plants, which have always been both a love and a refuge. In the mid 1970s he and his then partner purchased 90 acres of dense rainforest in Golden Bay’s Aorere Valley. Living amongst the nīkau and rātā developed his passion for forest plants but it was gold-mining that helped finance his experimentation with commercial crops. He started with subtropical fruit, before becoming one of New Zealand’s first certified organic kiwifruit growers. When the wet climate and marketing issues put an end to the kiwifruit, growing cannabis was his next venture. It also did not end well for him. Wanting a high value but legal crop to grow, Peter then researched the medicinal properties of New Zealand native plants. The plant with the best supporting science was horopito, one of the world’s oldest flowering plants. His plantation of horopito now covers several hectares and the resulting business, Forest Herbs Research, has developed products utilising the plant’s powerful anti fungal properties. Peter also helped grow a large online retailer of natural health and skincare products, HealthPost, based in Collingwood and owned by him and his family. [Paperback]
Te Anuhe Tino Hiakai nā Eric Carle, nā Brian Morris i whakamāori $20
A sturdy die-cut board-book edition of Eric Carle’s classic children’s book, translated into te reo Māori.
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28 August 2026
It takes approximately an hour and a half to fly from Berlin to Paris. Upon that hour and a half, a human memory, especially one working at neurotically obsessive speed, can loop a very large amount of time indeed, an hour and a half is plenty of time to go over and go over the things, or several of the things, the unassimilable things, for instance, that happened in Berlin, in an attempt to assimilate those things, although they are not assimilable, in an attempt, rather, albeit an involuntary attempt, an unconscious attempt, if that can be called an attempt, to damage oneself by the exercise of one’s memories, to draw self-blame and self-disgust from a situation the hopelessness of which cannot be attributed to anything worthy of self-blame or self-disgust but which is sufficiently involved to exercise the self-blame and self-disgust that seethe always beneath their veneer of nonchalence, of niceness, the veneer that preserves self-blame and self-disgust from resolution into anything other than self-blame and self-disgust. Upon this hour and a half can be looped, such is the efficiency of memory, not only, obsessively, the unassimilable things that happened in Berlin but also much else that happened even into the distant past, but, largely speaking, the more recent things that have bearing upon, or occupy the same memory-pocket, not the best metaphor, as the unassimilable things that happened in Berlin, for disappointment and failure seldom happen in a vacuum but resonate with, even if they are not the direct result of, disappointments and failures reaching back even into the distant past, perhaps especially into the distant past, self-blame and self-disgust having the benefit, or detriment, if a difference can be told between benefit and detriment, of binding experiences, or clumping them, to form what we think of as an identity, and, not only this, upon that hour and a half can be looped also an endless amount of speculation and projection as to what may be occurring in the minds of others, or in the mind of, in this case, a specific other, a German-American pianist and composer with whom the narrator, who has been visiting Berlin with her sister, has had some manner of romantic encounter, so to call it, the extent of which is unclear, both, seemingly, to the narrator and, certainly, to the reader, the reader being necessarily confined to the mental claustrophobia of the narrator, on account of the obsessive speculation and projection and also the inescapable escapist and self-abnegating fantasising on the part of the narrator, together with the comet-like attraction-and-avoidance of her endless mental orbit around the most unassimilable things that happened in Berlin, or that might have happened in Berlin, or that did not happen in Berlin but are extrapolative fantasies unavoidably attendant upon what happened in Berlin, if anything did, untrue but just as real as truth, for all thoughts, regardless of actuality, do the same damage to the brain. Lefebvre’s exquisitely pedantic, fugue-like sentences, their structure perfectly indistinguishable from their content, bestow upon her the mantle of Thomas Bernhard, which, after all, does not fall upon just any hem-plucker but, in this case, fully upon someone who, not looking skyward, has crawled far enough into its shadow when looking for something else. Where Bernhard’s narrators tend to direct their loathing outwards until the reader realises that all loathing is in fact self-loathing, Lefebvre’s narrator acknowledges her self-loathing and self-disgust, abnegating herself, rather, for circumstances in which self-abnegation is neither appropriate nor inappropriate, her self-abnegation arising from the circumstances, from her connection with the circumstances, from her rather than from the circumstances, her self-abnegation not, despite her certainty, having, really, any effect upon the circumstances. Not at all not-funny, pitch-perfect in both voice and structure, full of sly commentary on history and modernity, and on the frailties of human personality and desire, providing for the reader simultaneous resistance and release, Lefebvre shares many of Bernhard’s strengths and qualities, and the book contains memorable and affecting passages such as that in which the narrator recalls playing tennis with her mother-in-law, now her ex-mother-in-law, and finding she is not the type for ‘collective happiness’, or her hilariously scathing descriptions of Berlin’s Sony Centre or of the restaurant in what was Brecht's house, or of the narrator's inability to acknowledge the German-American pianist-composer's wife as anything but 'the accompaniment' — or, indeed, many other passages — but the excellence of the book is perhaps less in the passages than in the book as a whole.
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, classicist and translator. In Wrong Norma, variously described as prose poems or prose pieces, she is confronting writing and ideas. She allows thoughts to take the lead, to follow the other, in sometimes bewildering, sometimes illogical ways to paces where juxtapositions and contradictions segue into each other with a wonderful ‘wrongness’. And what is the idea of wrong? Her description of this project (as most of her published works are: she makes a handmade book, which is then produced as a facsimile by her publisher) is elusive and offers a brief explanation: “...a collection of wrings about different things..” And this collection is wide-ranging in subject matter, from swimming to snow, Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson, riffs on Socrates and violence, observations on poverty and displacement, a piece of writing by the Sky, in fact a week-long journal, my favourite being a conversation on Wednesday with Godot, and an image essay reimagining the meeting of the German philosopher Heidigger and the Jewish writing Paul Celan in 1966. Re-reading any one of these prose pieces is submerging. (The idea of suubmerging also links strongly to the first piece on swimming, so desire to be in water, out of air). They are endlessly curious, striving forward, to what one is never completely sure, and this makes them compelling. You return to discover something new and surprising each time, and it makes you ask questions rather than look for answers. In this work, Anne Carson seems to be asking questions and there are these wonderful scrap paper interludes between each piece. Some with merely a faintly typed comment or questions. Others that are dialogue, questions and answers, the questions often repeated, the answers varied — are they questions put to a host of visitors or characters or the author talking to herself? These repetitive questions include: “ Do you like the films of Eric Rohmer?”, followed by “Do you like jam?”, as if asking these simultaneously is a given. The other question that pops up repeatedly is “ What is yor philosophy of time?” With answers variously being: “I’m quite sure we’ll surrender” to “ how it’s sweet and how it’s moving” and “ a shallow closet with narrow bench and a rope to pull you up”. Are the recipients answering this question or even hearing it? Or are we always in conversation at cross purposes? Many of the text peices are reflecting on the process of writing. What is language, and how does it work? When translation is evoked, what happens to the text, whether this is translating yourself or others? Perspective and observation can be wrong and this wrongness leads to discoveries. Anne Carson calls these pieces wrong and enjoys herself. These is intelligent and playful writing. There is much here to amuse, as well as provoke thinking. But who or what is Norma? There is a reference in one piece to Norma Desmond, a character played in a film by Gloria Swanson, but I wondered if here the translator in Carson comes to the fore. Norma in latin can mean rule or pattern; in Greek, examiner. In an interview with Paris Review, Carson describes writing like seeing and following a fox. “I think about it as something that arrives in the mind, and then gets dealt with if it’s interesting. It’s more like a following of something, like a fox runs across your backyard and you decide to follow it and see if you can get to where the fox lives. It’s just following a track.”
Catch these five books!
Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.
THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT by Chloe Aridjis $38
On the long list for the 2026 Booker Prize. 'Chloe Aridjis is a revolutionary who is quietly changing the whole novel form. She is mining the richest seam in the vast field of fiction and coming up with gold. Her radiantly lyrical and intelligent writing is thrilling to read.' —Neel Mukherjee
THE REVERSE CENTAUR’S GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER A.I.: How to think about artificial intelligence before it’s too late by Cory Doctorow $39
”Cory Doctorow is the most lucid and generous guide I know of, and this book — ostensibly about A.I., but more broadly about the new world of hyper-capitalism and high tech — is stunning in its clarity and breadth of vision.” —Brian Eno
A GUIDE TO ROCKS by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan $26
Winner of the 2026 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. ”This is the best picture book I’ve come across about feelings and how to unpack them. Clever, funny, honest, and also useful. A Guide to Rocks lets children (and parents) knows it’s okay to be vulnerable, to express your fears and doubts, and that you are not alone.” —Stella
THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans $38
Winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. “Subtly told and finely made, The Correspondent is a portrait of a small life expanding. Virginia Evans shows how one woman changes at a point when change had seemed impossible. That change, like this novel, turns out to be a cause for celebration.” —Ann Patchett
ONE DAY A TANIWHA by Tīhema Baker $38
As the pressure of fatherhood tightens its grip, sleepless nights and rising tensions begin to erode Hepa's sense of control. When the line between fear and reality begins to blur, can he be trusted with his own son? What happens when a being from his dreams starts to appear in the real world too? A gripping and relevant novel set at the interface between te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā.
As the pressure of fatherhood tightens its grip, sleepless nights and rising tensions begin to erode Hepa's sense of control. When the line between fear and reality begins to blur, can he be trusted with his own son? What happens when a being from his dreams starts to appear in the real world too? A gripping and relevant novel set at the interface between te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā.
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
One Day a Taniwha by Tīhema Baker $38
The much-anticipated new novel from the author of Turncoat. As the pressure of fatherhood tightens its grip, sleepless nights and rising tensions begin to erode Hepa's sense of control. When the line between fear and reality begins to blur, can he be trusted with his own son? Hepa hasn't slept properly in four months. His newborn son, Wi, cries through the night. The bills keep coming. The pressure to hold everything together is closing in. Hepa tells himself to harden up. Be the pillar his family needs. The only place he feels in control is in his dreams. Since childhood he's been able to shape them, to bend the dream world to his will. Until something begins watching back. A presence with paua-shell eyes starts appearing in his dreams, and then in waking life. In the shadows. In strangers' faces. Whispering to Hepa while he rocks Wi to sleep. It feels like living with a taniwha on his shoulder. Hepa can't tell where the nightmares end and the real world begins — and he's terrified of what he might do... [Paperback]
”One of Aotearoa’s most exciting, innovative novelists.” —pip adam
”A brilliant book that speaks to our time.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
>>Read an extract.
>>Reclaiming the mana of fatherhood.
>>The impact of colonisation on Māori fatherhood.
>>Stella interviews Tīhema Baker about Turncoat.
>>Read Stella’s review of Turncoat.
>>No, no, no!
Iron Lung by Kirstine Reffstrup (translated from Danish by Hunter Simpson) $42
A girl is struck down by polio during the terrifying epidemic of the early 1950s. Paralysed and unable to breathe on her own, she is committed to hospital in Copenhagen and placed in an iron lung. Forty years earlier, near Budapest, a child grows up in an orphanage for boys. The child goes by the name of 'Boy' but is not like the others, as their body seems to transcend the categories of boy or girl. Between these two young people, there is a powerful, enigmatic bond that stretches across time and space. [Paperback with French flaps]
'Reading Iron Lung felt like remembering a past life, at once so foreign and familiar. With her lucid, pulsating sentences, as poetic as they are precise, Kirstine Reffstrup pierces a little hole in history and pulls a thin, but shining thread through it: a vital and very moving connection between two distant young children living at the edges of time and normality. The result is a wonderfully singular novel that is both historically rooted and full of queer fabulation, both violent and brimming with a desire for embodiment and connection.' —Jonas Eika, author of After the Sun
'What if bodies were not told as pathologies or perversions but rather as stories of spiders, rivers, eggs, and laboured breaths? With sensuous sensitivity, Iron Lung imagines the queer twinnings that arise between bodies cast aside by the twentieth century.' —Selby Wynn Schwartz, author of After Sappho
'A wonderful book: writing which is so vital and so visual coupled with a story which is strange, psychedelic, precise and filled with melancholy. Virtuosic work.' —Aidan Cottrell-Boyce
The Given World by Melissa Harrison $38
April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change. In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting — the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease. A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a builder experiences sudden, overwhelming vertigo on a farmhouse roof; across the village, people are plagued by the same vast, strange dream. And alone in the converted priory, overlooking watermeadows unchanged for centuries, Clare Grey receives devastating news which will force her to reconsider her family's past and the fresh weight of her solitary existence. [Paperback]
”A novel that reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives. I can't think of a writer better at evoking the English countryside in all of its strange beauty.” —Evie Wyld
”A brilliantly acute social portrait of English rural life now. The best piece of serious fiction I've read this year. Extraordinary. An elegy for the death of the English countryside and also a beautiful demonstration of how a piece of realist literary fiction can subtly borrow from the fantastic, weaving in threads of the mythic and the unearthly that enrich the this-worldly sense the book is making.” —Francis Spufford
”A wonderful reading experience. It is careful and full of care and I loved learning the rhythms and concerns of the characters and understanding their connections. It's an authentic and deeply observed multiperspective portrait of a village. An Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century.” —Amy Liptrot
”A truly groundbreaking novel, setting the day-to-day rhythms of rural life against troubling and sinister shifts in nature's calendar. Melissa Harrison's forensic portrayal of the village and its residents — wild and human, old and new — deserves a place at the very heart of the English post-pastoral canon.” —Stephen Moss
>>Spreading narrative weight.
Everyday Tang: On what we can learn from a dynasty by Xiaolu Guo $27
After decades living in England, writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo travelled to her native China with her daughter. Her objective was twofold: to show her eleven-year-old where she came from, and to discover what remained of an enigmatic period that had long fascinated her: the magnificent and cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty (618-907). As they wander through the great cities of Xi'an and Luoyang, and cross the Wei and the Yangzi Rivers, Guo ponders the unique artistic, intellectual and social achievements of the Tang Dynasty and its influence on Western culture. Part travelogue, part historical reflection, Everyday Tang is an often startling meditation on China's Golden Age. [Paperback]
”Xiaolu Guo reveals how this pivotal era continues to shape the culture, imagination, and identity of China today.” —Paul French
>>They continue to dream.
>>Call Me Ishmaelle.
Too Little, Too Hard edited by Lucy Mercer and Livia Franchini $45
In recent years, countless arguments have been made for and against the enduring value of literature: reading improves mental health and offers refuge from the news cycle; the novel is dead, poetry obsolete, writers replaceable by AI. Too Little, Too Hard adds nuance to these discussions by examining a topic that tends to be left unexplored: the working conditions of professional writers. What does it mean to write under a neoliberal economy? What can writers afford to work on — and what can't they touch? What side-work sustains them, and what does it cost? What does the publishing industry want, and what does it quietly refuse? And what has happened to literary criticism, to the university, and to the conditions that once made writing possible? In this wide-ranging anthology of essays, fifteen of our most important writers reflect on their experiences of writing under — and against — capitalism. At once practical and utopian, Too Little, Too Hard seeks to reckon with the material crises in the present state of literature while proposing collective action as the way to secure a future in which a writing life becomes possible once again. Contributions from Rachael Allen, Sanah Ahsan, Anthony Anaxagorou, Julia Bell, Emily Berry, Sarah Brouillette, Helen Charman, Claudia Durastanti, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Will Harris, Amber Husain, Dizz Tate, Lara Williams, Holly Pester, Andy Perluzzo, Omar Robert Hamilton. [Paperback with rench flaps]
>>Brtual economics.
>>The something in things.
Deliverywoman by Eva Wyles $39
Thirteen short stories that dive into the complexities of human connection, the pursuit of meaning, and modern-day loneliness. Across a diverse cast of characters — from teachers and gas station workers to hedonistic revellers and wealthy gamers — Wyles explores the strange dimensions of our world and the dangers of ordinary life in small-town Aotearoa and elsewhere, with needle-sharp writing both real and surreal. [Paperback]
”Only someone with an astute understanding of the human condition and an ability to write a freshly turned phrase could have written it. Eva Wyles is the real deal.” —Linda Burgess
>>Ruthless in Waikanae.
Hush by Anna Scaife $40
In eleven stories, Anna Scaife describes the sudden fear, the macabre, the middle-age feminist rage, and the unexpected tragedies which befall everyday New Zealanders. “We turned and sprinted until our lungs stung in our chests. I kept my eyes on the road. I tasted acid, like the candied ginger Nan served at Christmas that burned your throat. If she knew we were out there with a knife getting mixed up with the Mitchells, she’d have killed us.” [Paperback with French flaps]
>>The Jeweller’s Replacement.
Bird Land: Te Kāhui Manu $60
The islands of Aotearoa New Zealand were once inhabited by birds. Shrieking, warbling, tinkling, booming. Poised, strutting, gliding, dancing in scribbled loops through the air. Forest, river, marsh, mountain, ocean, shore—everything charged with their mauri, life force. Across centuries, artists have strived to capture the essence of these birds, creating a rich dialogue that traces human and avian histories in parallel. This new book is an immersive visual exploration of the cultural, ecological and imaginative breadth of the realm of birds—from ancient rock art and taoka Māori, to colonial and scientific drawings and paintings, to modern and contemporary sculpture, weaving, carving, ceramics and photography. This is bird land, through the eyes of many of New Zealand’s most significant artists, from the collections of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
The Castle: Adventures in a world of unravelling men by Jon Ronson $40
When Jon Ronson received a series of disquieting texts from his son Joel who’d been lured to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England late one night, it sets Ronson Sr. off on an extraordinary adventure into an underworld of unmoored and disaffected men. As Jon follows his instincts and deepens his investigation into the castle and the wider ‘man crisis’ – some of whom are feeling tossed around in a sea of conflicting ideologies of what it means to be a man – urgent questions come to light. What exactly is ‘Princessing’? Why did a charming lawncare influencer dress as a baby in front of billions of online viewers, with catastrophic results? And more pressingly, why are two recently released murderers on their way to pay Jon a visit? From the death of utopian factory towns to the false promise of YouTube influencer culture, Jon shows us our rapidly changing world like never before, and the men caught in the middle. A world drained of purpose, of collapsing institutions, where a new era of disinhibited behaviour has taken hold of our online and real-world selves. And as the castle mystery twists and turns into a cat and mouse story, will Jon be able to discover its terrifying secret hidden from the world? [Paperback]
”Fantastic and intensely of-the-moment, The Castle explores the nature of male anxiety, the spiralling delusions of the internet, the destructive allure of anti-woke defiance, the obsequious flattery of AI chatbots, the impunity of the mega-rich and so many other subtle (and not so subtle) currents that are currently roiling our existence. One of the scarier aspects of this book is the way the ante seems always to be upping, across its various stories and characters. It's a dogged feat of investigation from one of our greatest non-fiction storytellers.” —Patrick Radden Keefe
”Ridiculously compelling and wonderfully weird, this is a book that helps us understand why so many men seem to be unravelling, filling their lives with ill-conceived dreams and self-performance. The Castle is vintage Ronson: wise, timely and extremely funny.” —Louis Theroux
”Every Jon Ronson book has made me see the world differently. Nobody tells an unbelievable-but-true story like him. He's done it again with The Castle: I was utterly gripped from page one. If you want a totally compelling live mystery that will make you burn for justice, READ THIS BOOK URGENTLY.” —Marina Hyde
>>101 princesses.
>>This is not a book about the Manosphere!
The Vegan Creamery: Plant-Based Cheese, Milk, Ice Cream, and More (A Cookbook) by Miyoko Schinner $70
A delectable collection of over 75 plant-based recipes for vegan butters, creams, cheeses, desserts, and more. Imagine enjoying a batch of fresh strawberry ice cream on a hot summer day. It tastes just as delicious as the beloved classic, but at its creamy core it's actually plant-based. Now you can make all the dairy products you love-milks, creams, cheeses, savory spreads, and rich desserts — with nuts, seeds, and other plant-based ingredients instead of animal products. Miyoko Schinner, a vegan dairy expert, has figured out the best way to make these plant-based milk products mimic real dairy over the past three decades and is ready to share these meticulously curated recipes in The Vegan Creamery. This book encourages people to dig deeper into what various plant milks can do. You'll learn to use the age-old concepts of culturing to make French-Style Soft Truffle Cheese, perfect on a charcuterie board, and fermenting plant-based milk to create Reggie Goat Cheese, a tangy spread that is delicious atop a pizza. You'll use atypical plant-based ingredients like watermelon seed milk to make Mozzarella and mung beans to make Halloumi. Alongside these delectable dairy-free cheese creations, you'll learn to make Pumpkin Seed-Oat Yogurt to serve with a bowl of fresh fruit or Salted Maple Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream to satisfy your cravings for a rich dessert. Miyoko Schinner has become a leader in the evolution of plant-based dairy, and through her recipes and stunning photography you can learn how to craft beautiful vegan food for everyday life that will expand your palate and help save the planet. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Browse our cookbook sale.
Big Bang Bread: A 13.8-billion-year adventure by Lilu Uivel $21
In this time-travel storybook and cookbook with a cosmic twist, take a journey through time and space to discover the secrets of baking! Did you know that bread is made from stardust? Board the rocket and blast off on an adventure through time and space to discover the secrets of a home-baked loaf! Big Bang Bread is a kids' time-travel adventure cookbook with a cosmic twist. Take off with the Big Bang, and drop in dinosaurs, Ancient Egypt and other times and places to collect the ingredients for a delicious loaf of oven-baked bread. Encompassing physics, biology and chemistry, children aged five to nine will be blown away to discover the world history and science of bread making. With a recipe to make their own loaf at home, Big Bang Bread is a great way to kickstart delicious experiments and cooking adventures in the home kitchen. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Look inside.
A selection of blue-titled books from our shelves. Click through to find out more:
A stack to inspire – just a few of the titles in this special offer
It’s time for us to make room on our cookbook shelves in anticipation of new treats ahead. That’s good news for you! Whip up a sweet dessert, make a hearty meal, explore a cuisine, or discover new flavours and add some new favourite recipes to your repertoire. Spice up your shelves with superb cookbooks (over 50 titles to choose from) offered to you at deliciously reduced prices. Make your selections quickly, as there are only single copies available at these prices.
Read our latest newsletter and find our what we’ve been reading and recommending.
21 August 2026
Blending detailed research with the sensitvities of a novelist and poet, Said the Dead breaches the boundaries that contain the past to resuscitate the voices of women who were inmates in a now-derelict Victorian mental hospital in the city of Cork. As the narrator follows their traces through the archives and through the corridors, she finds in the murmurings of these women much that resonate with her own life and experiences.
"Said the Dead is one of those rare books where a reader encounters the writer and her characters at a dazzling and bewitching height, at a place where essence meets essence. A piercingly beautiful book that is wounding sometimes and consoling at others, the work, in the end, is life confirming: encompassed in the volume is the unparalleled expansiveness and depth of human minds and hearts." —Yiyun Li
Please join our online discussion of Said the Dead at our next Talking Books session at 7PM on Tuesday 15 September.
We all have times when things are too much, when we fall out with friends, or we have to be brave even when we are scared. For children, story-telling can be a perfect way to recognise emotions, articulate feelings, and unpack complex situations. A Guide to Rocks is excellent story-telling; employing humour as well as heart and opens doors to conversations, understanding, and empathy.
From the pen and brush of the excellent Bomb and Dazzlehands, comes A Guide to Rocks. This is the best picture book I’ve come across about feelings and how to unpack them.
Charlie has a rock. It’s a beautiful pink crystal, but there’s something about it which worries Dad. As Dad tries to instruct Charlie on the way to deal with his rock — hide it, ignore it, deflect attention from it — it just keeps getting bigger! Eventualy the rock gets so heavy and large it joins with many others and pushes Dad and Charlie apart. It’s going to take some effort to turn this rock over, but possibly together they can do it. This is a stand-out picture book. The text is great, Dad and Charlie are excellent characters, and there’s plenty of heart and humour. The illustrations are delightful, full of the same energy and humour as the award-winning Bomb. Clever, funny, honest, and also useful. A Guide to Rocks lets children (and parents) knows it’s okay to vulnerable, to express your fears and doubts, and that you are not alone.
This week the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults winners were celebrated, and Read NZ Te Pou Muramura launched its inaugural New Zealand Children’s Book Week. These things matter.
Firstly, book awards. They highlight the best in children’s writing and illustration in Aoateroa. Congratulations to Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan for taking out the top prize with their excellent A Guide to Rocks. (You can read our review here). The judges said: “With A Guide to Rocks, Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan have created a book that tackles a serious topic and yet maintains a sense of humour and joy, without a hint of glibness. This captivating book belongs in every home, school and library in Aotearoa.” And congratulations to local author Mat Tait for Kupe me te Wheke Nui a Muturangi, taking out two awards: for a book originally written in te reo, and the esteemed Illustration prize (you can see some internals here). With its punchy graphics this is excellent illustration, typography and story-telling. The judges said: “This is a skilfully designed and engaging book that maximises use of vibrant colour and illustration to make the story pop off each and every page.”
Secondly, they place books and reading for children front and centre. The theme of this year’s book week is Reading Around Aotearoa. There have been activations, media, resources, and events during the week encouraging ‘parents, teachers, caregivers and whānau to make reading a priority for children in their lives’. These campaigns happen for a reason. Children’s literacy is declining (in line with literacy generally). This is something we all should be concerned about. I think the single best thing you can do to turn this around, is to read to children and give the book a visual presence in your home. Studies show that having books in the home, even a few, makes a difference to education and life outcomes. Whether you own the books, find them in your community’s Little Libraries or borrow them from the public library, engaging with books is vital.
In a world where there are many distractions from the news feed to gaming to what’s happening on instagram, or the general pressure of trying to keep up or pay the bills, carving out a niche for reading can seem daunting. Yet making reading a daily habit can take as little as a few minutes, and reading aloud with your children can be the activity in your day that will be the most rewarding. Here’s a selection of some of our favourite children’s books. Warm-hearted Brown Bird by Jane Arthur – we keep recommending this one. The always excellent Kathrine Rundell’s Rooftoppers (and all her other books). You know the His Dark Materials series from Philip Pullman, but you may not be aware of the feisty Victorian detective Sally Lockhart in The Ruby in the Smoke. And great as a read-aloud or read on your own, the story of Ping and some fiery dragons, all set in the Han dynasty should be on everyone’s reading pile. Start the series with Dragonkeeper. And for children who enjoy words and image on the page, try these cat detective graphic novels– adventures told with verve in Miss Cat from French duo Jean-Luc Fromental and Joëlle Jolivet, and plenty of fun in Detective Beans from New Zealand comic artist Li Chen.
Not sure what to read next, or to give to the children in your whānau? Just ask. We can find the right book for the child and for your storytime reading. If you would like to expand reading horizons further, explore our reading subscriptions.