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.

U.X.O. by Brannavan Gnanalingam $30
An Indian soldier recounts to his young grandson in Aotearoa his time as a member of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War (1987-1990). As his narratives develop, the novel digs deeper into a very contemporary problem: what it means to be complicit in violence during wartime. As the book progresses, readers are confronted with the question of whether this is a grandfather’s stories for a curious grandson or an honest recounting of life during wartime? Or maybe it is a great confession, told in fragments? U.X.O. is a powerful investigation into the mind of an occupying soldier, and the extent to which people — through literature — can be held to account for war crimes, decades later in a country on the other side of the world. [Paperback]
“Brannavan Gnanalingam has become well known for gripping, occasionally gristly, writing about New Zealand society. From the first page U.X.O. he ups the stakes by writing about the Sri Lankan Civil War. And yet, somehow, the book is a page tuner.” —Murdoch Stephens
>>Other books by Brannavan Gnanalingam.

Pākehā Metaphysics by Murdoch Stephens $30
Perhaps best known for his work on refugee protection, Murdoch Stephens turns his mind inwards with a new book Pākehā Metaphysics. In this new book, he employs fresh introspective and speculative thought in a table turning attempt to better understand the unique identity of the Pākehā people. In turn, the book aims to revitalise some aspects of metaphysics which have been ignored with the rise of scientific explanations. These aspects include the relation between appearances and essences, the three omnis — omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience and whether metaphysics can be grounded in something other than universals or specific places. The book is structured around the old rhyme used to direct a bride’s comportment for a wedding: something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. These four chapters both describe the implicit Pākehā metaphysics as they have come to exist while also gesturing at what direction Pākehā metaphysics should take for optimal existence. Not content to survey the past or dabble in futurism, the book also asks: How Pākehā can escape the metaphysical blues of the West? And, what, if anything, can Pākehā legitimately borrow from place-based and indigenous metaphysics? [Woodgrain paperback (each copy unique)]
"A witty and entertaining antidote to the navel-gazing angst of recent Pākehā accounts of living in Aotearoa. Stephens uses the decidedly unfashionable philosophical branch of metaphysics to re-cast how we all could think about how we engage with our place in this country." —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“What does it mean to be Pākehā? In a way, Stephens takes a very un-Pākehā approach to answering this question — by completely avoiding the placement of himself and his experiences at the centre of it. Instead, Pākehā Metaphysics is a refreshingly existential unpacking of Pākehā being. Incisive, funny, and somehow nihilistically hopeful, this is a welcome addition to Pākehā identity discourse.” —Tīhema Baker (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira).

La Tarttoria: Intuitive Italian cooking by Dara Klein $85
Rustic southern Italian cooking inspired by la cucina povera of Puglia. Raised in the hustle and bustle of her parent's Italian restaurant, Dara Klein, the chef behind Tiella trattoria & bar, has been helping to build lasagne and stealing spoonfuls of tiramisu since early childhood. After her two-year stint as resident chef at London's famous Compton Arms pub, Dara returned to her home kitchen ready to distil a life of culinary experience into unfussy, honest recipes like Sugo di pomodoro (slow cooked tomatoes), Braised Ox Cheek and the perfect seasonal side salad. A natural teacher, Dara presents her kitchen know-how in the same way she trained her team of chefs to really interrogate how to build flavour into your cooking. You'll enjoy the process and learn how to cook instinctively, just like an Italian mamma. Featuring insights into life behind the scenes at London's buzziest eateries and the tips and tricks you can use to get exceptional quality food at home, La Trattoria is an indispensable guide to Italian cookery and an ode to family restaurants around the world. Dara Klein has a New Zealand connection: her childhood shaped by her family’s restaurant in Wellington, before heading to Melbourne and then London to cook. This is her story, her heritage, and in these pages she will teach you how to use all your senses to improve your cooking knowledge and bring to the table irrestistable eating delights. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Browse other cookbooks.

Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason $38
Sophie Pattison is such a lovely person. Warm, kind, amazingly positive. She works as a freelance sound technician for literary festivals. She is a massive reader and was recently forced to moved house. She is bracingly lonely. But then, Sophie discovers an author through work, and comes to adore her. Her books, her interviews, podcasts, and wisdom and brilliance, her beautiful words. It's like, solace and company. It's almost like love. And Sophie would love to meet her, although she never will, obviously. The author would never come to her festival. She's too famous for that. Too brilliant, too beautiful. And in a way, thank goodness, because that would change everything. Sophie's entire life. But ... what if she did? From the author of Sorrow and Bliss. [Paperback]
'So smart, so funny, so moving — Mason has done it again, this time using behind the scenes of a literary festival to reveal the complexity of loneliness and how one woman attempts to dig herself out. I absolutely loved it.' —Bonnie Garmus
>>Can books save your life?

A Fortunate Man: The story of a country doctor by John Berger and Jean Mohr $28
In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man — his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal. With a new introduction by writer and GP, Gavin Francis. [Paperback]
”It's one of my favourite books in the world, an ongoing inspiration as to how books should be written (and photography used).” —Alain de Botton
”A genuine tour de force. The intimate portrait of one man and his microscopic world reveals the faults and strains of a whole society.” —Observer
”This extraordinary book unravels the tangled branches of the everyday to reveal the brightness within. It inspires me to think more slowly, more deeply, to wear acquired knowledge lightly, to open my senses more fully to the wonders in the plain and close-at-hand.” —James Meek
>>Look inside.

Mrs. Orwell by Andrea Chalupa and Brahm Revel $49
The Roaring Twenties are over, fascism is on the rise across Europe, and the dream of a workers' paradise is all but dead. But in the midst of these turbulent times, a love story unfolds — one that will forever reshape our political language and how we view the future. Mrs. Orwell follows poet Eileen Blair and her husband, George Orwell, as they forge the professional and romantic partnership that will eventually bring us Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. From a honeymoon fighting in the Spanish Civil War to narrow escapes from Stalin's agents and the London Blitz, the Blairs' campaign against fascism brings them face-to-face with some of the greatest threats of the 1930s. But while George struggles to make his voice heard despite political censorship, Eileen must fight to preserve her own voice within a marriage that threatens to consume her. This sweeping account of Eileen Blair's brief but dazzling life casts a light on a long-overlooked figure and her persistent defense of that most beloved, most vulnerable principle: the power of the pen. [Hardback]
"This energetic portrait brings to vivid life a critical influence on the work of Orwell — and the personal costs of activism." —Publisher's Weekly
>>Look inside.
>>Wifedom.

How to Resist Guilt: On what’s holding women back by Mona Chollet (translated from French by Emily Boyce) $39
A powerful exploration of self-blame, where it comes from, why women are prone to it, and what we can do about it. Many of us regularly hear a sarcastic, malevolent voice echoing in our heads, attacking us, lecturing us, putting us down. It tells us that whatever we do, we’re wrong. It says we’re worthless. We don’t deserve anything good. We’re fundamentally flawed. Our very existence is unjustified. It’s a voice that rings out particularly loudly if we’re women and belong to a minority group. In How to Resist Guilt, Mona Chollet shines a light on this enemy within. What exactly are these fears that have managed to enter the deepest recesses of our minds? How can they be identified? And, importantly, kept at bay? Exploring the guilt-tripping of women, especially mothers, the cult of work, which indexes our worth strictly in terms of our productivity, and the resurgence of mindsets intent on punishment or retribution, this is a powerful book about that little voice inside us and how to silence it. [Paperback]

Loneliness is a Molecule by Helena Fox $35
Miri was whole, once. She had a best friend, once. She knew who she was — or she thought she did. But now she is a million lonely molecules, flying through the air to a new life on the other side of the world. Rome is light and loud and cobblestones and gelaterias and ancient buildings next to modern ones. Rome is new people and a chance to get out of her head. Or is it into her head she needs to go, to find herself again? A poetic novel about friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, love and happiness. [Paperback]

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti (translated from French by Hildegaard Serle) $38
Painted in Vienna in 1910, Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of a Lady' was purchased by an anonymous collector in 1916, retouched by the master a year later, then stolen in 1997 before reappearing in the gardens of an Italian modern art museum in 2019. No art experts, museum curators, or police investigators actually know the identity of the young woman in the painting, nor the mysteries that surround the turbulent history of her portrait.  From the streets of Vienna in 1900 to Texas in the 1980s, and from Manhattan during the Great Depression to contemporary Italy, de Peretti imagines the destiny of this young woman as well as that of her descendants, and creates a masterful fresco that intertwines family secrets, disappearances, and thwarted loves. [Paperback with french flaps]
"A remarkable melange of mystery and art crime malfeasance." —Financial Times
"A magnificent and unforgettable adventure." —Buzz Magazine

Against Identity: The wisdom of escaping the Self by Alexander Douglas $32
Modern life encourages us to pursue the perfect identity. Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world — hoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. We achieve these identities but want others to imitate us. We disagree with those whose identities contradict ours — leading to polarisation and even violence. And yet when they thump against us, we are ashamed to ring hollow. In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers — ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard — he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth. Through their worlds and radically different cultures, we discover how, at moments of historical rupture, our hunger for being grows: and yet, it is exactly these times when we should make peace with our indeterminacy and discover the freedom of escaping our selves. [Paperback]
”A profound meditation upon the way we perceive ourselves and the pits we frequently fall into, either as individuals or as groups, from the schoolyard to the nation state. Against Identity is revelatory, written with singular clarity and granite purpose, using little-known philosophies to think better and live with less turmoil, self-torture and aggression. In times of pessimism and chaos, it is a welcome voice of optimism and possibility.” —Richard Whatmore
”A philosophically rigorous yet impassioned critique of identity as both metaphysical error and social pathology. What the book offers is not an ethic of self-expression but a practice of disidentification: a way of letting go that is neither defeatist nor escapist, but attentive to the costs of identity and the possibilities that open up when we cease to grasp. Against Identity is generous, incisive, and quietly radical.” —Christine Tan

Aviarium by Dominic Couzens and Teagan White $60
Aviarium is a stunning showcase of the world of birds, in all their diverse glory. Fly high with gulls and terns, swoop and dive with swallows and flycatchers, go hunting with owls and eagles, swim with penguins and ducks, and take a stroll with kiwis and ostriches. Written by renowned bird expert and nature writer Dominic Couzens and breathtakingly illustrated by the artist Teagan White, Aviarium is a must-have gift for all bird lovers! [Large-format hardback]
>>Look inside!

A selection of books from our shelves that aim for at least the 600-page mark. Click through to find out more:

• Caret

• The Beginnings

• The Wayfinder

• The Tunnel

• Malarkoi

• Crossroads

• Ulysses

• Schattenfroh

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS

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18 September 2026

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You may well ask why I am only reading the second in this series, when four have already been translated. I’ve been saving it, and I am pacing myself, becuase i know I will be disapppointed when the seventh and final instalment arrives and is read. I was captivated by the premise of Solvej Balle’s books. A woman stuck in a repeating day; well in fact her day doesn’t repeat — everyone else’s does, her days go on, but the date remains the same. As soon as I was back in November 18th Iwas hooked all over again. I love the mundanity of this book, her endless time, her inabiliity to hold onto things unless she sleeps in them or she tucks them under her pillow. Luckily, after a while objects stay with her. In this segment of her strange life, she is craving Christmas and New Year, and turns up at her parents, explains her predicament, and insists on Christmas. The next morning, they having forgotten about her being there and what happened, she explains her situation again. This time (her next day, their ordinary November 18th) there are only Christmas leftovers. As I was reading, I had all sorts of questions. Why didn’t her parents call her partner to alert him to Tara’s strange behaviour? Why did they not attempt to interfer in her, for what must have seemed to them, pyschological episode? But then I had the answer: they have forgotten. And then Tara is gone, in their minds never been there. She keeps moving, chasing the winter, going north looking for the cold, wanting to wear a winter dress. On her travels, she at first remains outside of others’ lives, but slowly she is allowing herself to become part of other people’s happenings. I wondered, is this dangerous? How will it change another’s experience, or will her interaction leave no residue? Or will Tara Selter end up divided across time and space if everything returns to normal? if we can understanding time at all, that is. Eventually she tires of this endless quest. She knows, despite her written record of the days that are going by, that it is November 18 and she can no longer pretend a winter that does not exist. She heads to warmer climes, and at the close of this book we find her settled in a flat, an invisible person, attending lectures at the university. She has a new hobby: an obsession with the Romans. Here we leave her and she teases us with her knowledge that there are others just like her. Tempting to read book three right now!

Fresh cookbooks for your hungry shelves have arrived at VOLUME. What’s not to like about a new Ottolenghi or exploring the delights of vegan cheese? The excellent Jeremy Lee dishes up another delicious morsel, and you can head to Italy with La Trattoria.

In SIMPLE TOO, Yotam Ottolenghi and colleague Verna Lochmuller embrace the simple act of cooking as a panacea to our noisy world, and for the pleasure of good food. From breakfast to supper, Simple Too is packed with everyday recipes rooted in good ingredients, time-saving tips and onepot wonders, alongside that Ottolenghi innovation.

In KITCHENING, Jeremy Lee brings us his signature style in writing and cooking through the seasons. You know you will have a delighful time submerged in this cookbook when the author’s opening notes state: “When it comes to adding salt, pepper and aromatics to dishes, caution is advised at all times as seasoning can happliy be adjusted if required, though woe betide the cook who blithely seaons too much for, as with life, it is the very devil to correct”. His previous book, Cooking, took out a swathe of awards, so expect more good food, enthusiasm and impeccable taste in this one.

Delve into classsic Italian dishes with chef Dara Klein. LA TRATTORIA: Intuitive Italian Cooking is packed with fresh, Pugliese-inspired cuisine. Hearty and comfortable, this is food to cook together, slow down with, and share. Dara Klein has a New Zealand connection: her childhood shaped by her family’s restaurant in Wellington, before heading to Melbourne and then London to cook. This is her story, her heritage, and in these pages she will teach you how to use all your senses to improve your cooking knowledge and bring to the table irrestistable eating delights.

Vegan diary expert Miyoko Schinner shares her knowledge and philosophy in THE VEGAN CREAMERY: Plant-based Cheese, Milk, Ice Cream and More. Keen to try your hand at plant-based milk, yoghurt, soft and hard cheeses, ice cream and butter? This is a superb book with excellent instructions and delicious recipes. Ingredients include watermelon seed kernels, chickpeas, barley and potatoes, as well as the expected nuts ranging from almonds to walnuts, so there’s plenty to explore. The 75 recipes include a paneer (soy and watermelon kernels), a truffle cheese (almonds and pumpkin seeds), a sharp cheddar (made from potato), and cashew-rice icecreams.

“I am inexhaustible on the subject of myself,” states Édouard Levé in this book which is nothing less than an attempt to exhaust everything that he can think of to say about himself, no matter how banal or embarrassing, with relentless objectivity. In one long string of seemingly random declarative statements without style or development or form (other than the form of the list, if a list can be said to be a form), the details accumulate with very fine grain, but the effect is disconcerting: the author comes no closer to exhausting his observations, and the idea that there is such a thing as a 'person' beyond the details seems more and more implausible. The list is not so much an accumulation as an obliteration: facts obscure that which they purport to represent. “I dream of an objective prose, but there is no such thing.” Levé’s style is deliberately and perfectly and admirably flat throughout (all perfect things should be admired (whatever that means)), like that of a police report. “I try to write prose that will be changed neither by translation nor by the passage of time.” The constructions often feel aphoristic but eschew the pretension of aphorisms to refer to anything other than the particulars of which they are constructed. There is no lens formed by these sentences to ‘see through’, no insight, no intimation of personality other than the jumbled bundling of details and tendencies assembled under the author’s name, no ‘self’ that expresses itself through these details or is approachable through these details, because we are none of us persons other than what we for convenience or comfort (or, rather, out of frustration and fear) bundle conceptually, mostly haphazardly, and treat as an entity or ‘person’. The more fact is compounded (or, rather, facts are compounded), the stronger the intimation that any attempt to exhaust the description of a person will approach what we usually think of as a person. “If I look in mirrors for long enough, a moment comes when my face stops meaning anything.” As well as demonstrating the impossibility of the task that it attempts, description also cancels itself by implying for each positive statement a complementary negative statement. Each statement of the self-description of Édouard Levé functions to include those of us among his readers who are similar and to exclude those who are dissimilar. We find each statement either in accord or in disagreement with a statement we could similarly (or dissimilarly) make about ourselves. The reader is charted in the text as much as the author. The reader is continually comparing themselves to the author, finding accord or otherwise, exercising the kind of judgement concealed beneath all social interaction but typically hidden by content and mutuality. In Autoportrait, the author’s self-obsession is matched by our fascination with him, with the kinds of details that may or may not come to light in social interchange. Because the author is not aware of us and is not reciprocally interested in us, or feigning reciprocal interest in us, as would be the case in ‘real life’ social interaction, we feel no shame in our fascination, our fascination is dispassionate, clinical. He is likewise unaffected by our interest or otherwise in him. But as well as bundling together an open set of details that we may conveniently think of as facts (“Everything I write is true, but so what?”) about Édouard Levé (or ‘Édouard Levé’), the text also conjures an inverse Édouard Levé (or inverse ‘Édouard Levé’) who is the opposite to him in every way, the person who nullifies him (in the way that all statements call into being their simple or compound opposites, their nullifiers). Levé’s obsession with identity, facsimile and the corrosive effects of representation reappear throughout the book, and towards the end he mentions the suicide of a friend from adolescence, which would form the basis for Levé’s final book, Suicide (after which Levé himself committed suicide). Édouard Levé was born on the same day as me, but on the other side of the planet. In Autoportrait he writes, “As a child I was convinced that I had a double on this earth, he and I were born on the same day, he had the same body, the same feelings I did, but not the same parents or the same background, for he lived on the other side of the planet, I knew that there was very little chance that I would meet him, but still I believed that this miracle would occur.” We never met. 

‘Chloe Aridjis’s mysterious and free-wheeling novel begins with an unsettling image: a seemingly disembodied hand, waving in mid-air, which is swiftly bitten by a confused Alsatian. The subsequent story, which follows the jewellery polisher Flora as she recovers from the attack in Mexico City before returning home to London, is similarly rich in strange imagery that slips us between the real world and dream-states. There’s darkened figure in a hospital corridor; figures flickering on a wall; a vignette from the point of view of a mouse. We were charmed by the novel’s meditation on friendship and grief, and its suggestion that the most meaningful truths can be found in the shadows.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation

”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

”Clandestine, compassionate, and ever so slightly off-kilter, Chloe Aridjis's magnificent sleight of hand reshuffles the novel and places before us a beautiful and mischievous magic lantern of a book that casts out a multitude of unforgettable scenes, while shining a steady granular light on the hidden depths of the human psyche.” —Claire-Louise Bennett

• Technologies of illusion.

• Through the magic lantern.

• The fewer the props the greater the magic.

• Objects, projection, and transformation.

• Disembodied voices.

• Impossible to dislodge.

• The echo of the playlist.

• Other books listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

Catch these five books!

Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.

PRIMEVAL AND OTHER TIMES by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times

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.

THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END by Rebecca Solnit $37
”The optimism of this book arrives like a breath of fresh air. Solnit is adamant that positive change — social, political, climate — is not only a possibility but inevitable.” —Irish Times

THE END OF EVERYTHING by M. John Harrison $33
’The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation

HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY: The story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple $40
”Vast in scope, elegiac in prose, this book brings to life the profound humanity of those who stood up to the blood soaked ethno-nationalisms that led to so many of the twentieth century's storied horrors. All the while, Crabapple never lets us forget that they were also fighting for a world that would not give rise to such evil. This book is many things: an ode to the grand legacy of anti-Zionist Jewishness; a profound reflection on whether history has morals; and an essential resource for anti-fascist history, concepts and tools.” — Jason Stanley

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.

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
“People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else.” Primeval and Other Times is the story of three generations of a small Polish village called Primeval, from 1914 to the beginnings of Solidarity in 1980. Centered around the fate of the Niebieski family (Michał, Genowefa, Misia Boska, and Izydor), whose struggles and loves during a century of war and occupation determine the book’s dramatic arc, Primeval and Other Times is structured into short chapters, the “Times” of the novel’s title. Each Time tells the story of a different character or locale—human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and spirit. Some of the Times are interrelated, as in the case of the Niebieski family; some closely peripheral, like that of Cornspike, a witch-healer who lives in the forest with her daughter Ruta; and some emerge only once, such as the Time of Kurt, a German officer stationed to Primeval during the occupation. Bloodshed, betrayal, and the dramas of daily life mark the birth, life, and decline of Primeval's little world and Times, making us consider afresh the stories by which we comprehend our own. [Paperback]
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality. The “times” that cover the annihilation of Primeval’s Jews are stark and unsparing.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times
‘A constellation of eerie fables, focusing on the inhabitants of a single village, from a soothsayer to a coffee grinder…. If Tokarczuk’s work does have a single binding philosophy, it is one centred on all-encompassing empathy, and it therefore manifests in rich, authentic characters.’ —Sam Corbett, The Times
>>Territory and terroir.
>>Other books by Olga Tokarczuk.

The Fall by Penelope Curtis $39
The Fall traces three paths taken through one small village in Lincolnshire – by Isaac Newton, who received his first schooling there in the mid-17th century; by the Rev. Charles Hudson, who was vicar in the 1860s; and by the actor David Niven, who visited his mother-in-law there in the 1940s. Each is intent on his own preoccupations – on understanding the physical world, on conquering the Matterhorn, on conquering women – but there is a thread which binds them. An insignificant village becomes the unwitting centre of life-changing events and inevitable tragedy. Told from the margins – through the experience of a questioning child, and of wives and mothers who live as helpmeets to their men – The Fall is an act of vivid observation and reclamation. [Paperback]
‘It is a rare pleasure to read such beautifully clear prose, with its attractively poignant mixture of sadness and calm.’ —Gavin Bryars
‘Rich and spare, idiosyncratic yet full of big currents of life and history. The times feel simultaneous, all here at once on the surface of the present, as well as reaching and echoing across centuries. Young Isaac will live in my mind – wandering about planning his sundial – but the whole works as a sort of astronomical clock with its moving parts aligning in different ways.’ —Alexandra Harris

Book of Wills edited by Reem Ghanayem $49
'To write a will under siege is not surrender — it's defiance. It says: I existed. I felt. I belonged. I am not yours to erase.' —Reem Ghanayem. In Book of Wills, eighteen Gazan writers share their last will and testament. Several of the writers who contributed to this collection — including Rifaat Al-Ara'ir, whose poem 'If I Must Die' brought home the realities of war to so many — have since been killed. A profound exploration of the written word as an act of resistance, Book of Wills commemorates the lives and memories of the Gazan people, ensuring their stories are recorded. Forewords by Judith Butler and Alberto Manguel. [Paperback with French flaps]
'There is almost no politics in Book of Wills, which brings together the testimonies of Gazan writers from the heart of the war. This is an emotional portrait of life in the shadow of horror and death, where every moment may be the last.' —Suha Taweel Kadry
'These writings invite us to think and ask very important questions. What can language do in the face of this existential catastrophe?' —Karim Mohamed
'It seems that the Palestinian has nothing left to offer the world except his will.' —Karim Mohamed
'This book isn't just for reading, it's a book for history. It's important for the words in this book to stay alive.' —Yasmine Hassan
'Timely, relevant, and powerful. Book of Wills is part of the remedy as it gathers Palestinian voices with the invitation to speak, to love, and to connect and be heard.' —Ibtisam Barakat
>>”I refuse to let news of my death pass without notice.”

Early Light by Osamu Dazai (translated from Japanese by Donald Keene and Ralph McCarthy) $34
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. “Everything's gone, the father explains to his daughter: Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up, Yeah, they all burned up, she said, still smiling.” ‘One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji’, another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: “Goodbye, he hisses through his teeth, Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click.” And the final story is ‘Villon's Wife’, a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that “There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.” [Large-format glazed papered boards]
"It is here that themes explored throughout the series — identity's abnegation under the weight of art and history, the attendant wish for an alternative that fails to arrive — appear in their most unvarnished form." —J.W. McCormack, The New Left Review
"I like Dazai a lot." —Wong Kar-Wai
>>No Longer Human.

Glasses by Adam Gleczy $23
Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer than correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us. Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main identifiers in a face (think John Lennon), and they signify extremes from nerdy and brainy to cool and sleazy. They are alternately the most mundane of things on our bodies and potentially the most glamorous. Adam Geczy explores this most pervasive and accessible accessory and shows that it is both a conduit to and a barrier between ourselves and the world outside. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Glasses offers an insightful and engaging reflection on optics as aesthetics, asking what it means to look, and to be looked at, through and within lenses. With clarity and ease, it explores how glasses shape not only what we see but how we are seen. Sharp, focused, and full of vision.” —Ania Malinowska
”A brisk pop meditation and manifesto, Adam Geczy's Glasses finds the poetry in prosthesis. As an unrepentant four-eyed nerd myself, I loved it.” —Jessica Glasscock
>>Other interesting books in the ‘Object Lessons’ series.

Front Row Seat: How sciencde can (and can’t) shape public decision-making by Juliet Gerrard $35
Responding to the terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque and a global pandemic, the volcanic eruption at Whakaari/White Island, and the occupation of Parliament grounds, for six years Juliet Gerrard stood next to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successors to provide the insights that science might bring to decisions on issues of public importance. Sometimes these were emergencies: How fast will Covid spread? How many people are likely to die under different policies? Will the mosque terrorist produce copycats? And sometimes they were longer-term issues: What does the science say about cannabis? Should we worry about 5G or genetic engineering? Will it be easy or hard to get rid of plastic bags? Through case studies like these, Gerrard reflects on the realities of providing evidence to inform policy in the political arena, unpacking the tensions and drawing out general principles. [Paperback]
'Juliet Gerrard's Front Row Seat offers a comprehensive look at what was a very challenging period for New Zealand, one in which science advice played a crucial role. It is to Gerrard's credit that the more exceptional events (a terrorist attack, an eruption, a pandemic) don't dominate the book. Indeed, she offers a wide range of case studies, and in doing so, traverses almost all the terrain a science advisor could be expected to encounter. I found the text very readable. Gerrard's warmth and sense of humour also come through strongly.' —Shaun Hendy
'For six momentous years, Dame Juliet Gerrard provided a vital bridge, linking the worlds of science and policy at the highest levels of government. Drawing on this unique experience, together with her deep scientific expertise and practical wisdom, Front Row Seat explores the challenge of harnessing robust evidence to improve decision-making and protect the public interest. In this disturbing era of populist mantras, industrial-scale misinformation, and post-truth politics, her book provides a sober, perceptive, inspiring, and highly accessible corrective.' —Jonathan Boston
'Front Row Seat is a masterclass in the practical application of evidence-based policymaking, bridging the gap between academia and the high-stakes reality of governance. Dame Juliet Gerrard offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how science navigates the world of politics. Part memoir and part manual, this book is an essential resource for leaders, researchers, and anyone looking to understand how science advice can help solve the most varied and complex challenges of our time. It is a timely reminder that the most effective decisions in science diplomacy are not made in isolation but are built on a foundation of rigorous evidence and collaborative expertise.' —Jan Ludert

Kitchening: Day-to-day good food, come rain or shine by Jeremy Lee $85
From Jeremy Lee, always good company in the kitchen, comes a new seasonal cookbook on the day-to-day kitchening of good food. In this follow-up to the multi-award-winning Cooking, Jeremy shows you how to make the most of local produce while finding joy in the simple act of being in the kitchen. With wit and expertise, he spotlights the finest offerings from each month of the year. There are spring classics like leeks vinaigrette and baked asparagus with parmesan; summer delights such as pickled mackerel with gooseberries or quail with artichokes and broad beans; autumn feasts like spiced chickpeas with a pot of polenta; and practical tips like how to joint and preserve a goose for a variety of winter dishes. Each season includes indispensable guidance on which cheeses to buy and essential pudding recipes, including peach and redcurrant trifle; pear and ginger tart; and lemon, ricotta and olive cake. There is plenty of clever advice on how to use a glut of produce, including compotes and preserves, and suggestions for swapping ingredients to make recipes work throughout the year. Kitchening is a beautifully packaged collection of timeless recipes, charming anecdotes and culinary wisdom. [Hardback]
'Overflowing with deliciousness.' —Margot Henderson
'Gorgeous recipes in an equally gorgeous book, written with Jeremy's innate intelligence and wit.' —Stanley Tucci
'Jeremy's simple dishes are glorious and his endearingly enthusiastic, poetic, witty and authoritative words are a joy to read.' —Claudia Roden
>>Look inside!
>>Also recommended: Cooking: Simply and well, for one or many.

Heresies: Occasional pieces by Richard Flanagan $40
From Manus to MONA to birds to Australia’s Black Summer, from the destruction of our natural world to the hope offered by Indigenous Australia to the growing corrosion of democracy, from Salman Rushdie to the Segal Report, family and love, Flanagan's non-fiction writings carry the author's trademark elegance, subversive wit, and humanity. This showcase of Richard Flanagan's heretical brilliance over twenty years speaks to the heart of our troubled times now. 'Heresy allows a writer to write freely, allows writing to be an act of joy that arises from the same deep place where laughter lives, countering the farce of dogma with the reality of life. Perhaps for any of us to write of hope, to write of love, we must learn once more to be free, and to embrace heresy.' Flanagan is the only author ever to have won both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Read our reviews of Question 7.

Ngā Hapa Reo by Hona Black and Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell $35
He Iti Te Kupu: Ngā huahuatau me ngā kupu whakarite by Hona Black $35
Fully te reo Māori editions of these two useful and popular works.
Surging interest in te reo Maori in recent years has led to a range of errors becoming common in classrooms and everyday use, many caused by language interference (following the patterns of English rather than te reo). Ngā Hapa Reo sets out to correct that trend with easy-to-follow, fun examples of language errors.
He Iti te Kupu contains nearly 500 sayings that draw a comparison between something (often the natural world) and people, events or contexts. This accessible guide explains the use, meaning and context of a host of the principal figures of speech in te Reo.
>>Get Ngā Hapa Reo.
>>Get He Iti Te Kupu.

The Newer World by Sebastian Barry $38
”I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things were gone forever.” In the aftermath of the American Civil War, Tennyson Bouguereau — freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man — journeys to find meaning and belonging.  From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.The Newer World is a novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way. [Paperback]
"A beautiful, sweeping, intimate tale awash in miraculous language. That Tennyson's perspective is conjured so vividly, without any pretense, is the enduring triumph of this book." —Kirkus
"A mix of Larry McMurtry's novels of the West and Terence Malick's film The Tree of Life. Barry creates precise and stirring images that make the time and locations come alive, and the examination of what it means to be free creates excellent fodder for discussion." —Library Journal
"There's a beautiful looseness to the novel, almost a wildness, the mark of a true, natural storyteller. It's easily among his best works." —Kevin Barry
'A masterly work of historical witness and moral reckoning.' —Observer

The Bone Cave: A Highland journey through myth and memory by Dougie Strang $30
A vivid account of a journey through the Scottish Highlands, The Bone Cave follows a series of folktales and myths to the places in which they're set. Travelling mostly on foot, and camping along the way amid some of Scotland's most beautiful and rugged landscapes, Dougie Strang encounters a depth of meaning to the tales he tracks one that offers a unique perspective on place, culture, land ownership and ecological stewardship, as well as insights into his own entanglement with place. Dougie sets out on his walk at the beginning of October, which also marks the start of the red deer rut. The bellowing of stags forms the soundtrack to his journey and is a reminder that, as well as mapping invisible landscapes of story, he is also exploring the tangible, living landscape of the present. [Paperback]
’The Bone Cave is a meditation on the move; a listening to the voices of bird, wind and river, a holding onto tree and stone, a watching of deer. As Strang pitches his tent across the Highlands, kindling fire and memory, he draws us into the enfolded layers of landscape, wildlife and folktale that tell us who we were and yet might be. Wise and wonderful.’ —Merryn Glover, author of The Hidden Fires
'A fascinating insight into the ways in which landscape and folklore are intertwined in Scotland. The ways in which these stories are linked to the landscape — and to the daily lives of the people who used to inhabit it — are expertly teased out by Strang.' —Roger Cox, The Scotsman

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11 September 2026

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Cruelty is never too far from the surface of Rachel Cusk's novel, Second Place. M owns an idyllic home on the marshland with her second husband Tony. They have rescued the land and built a home for themselves in this remote and abundant place, and share it, that is the cottage—the Second Place—by invitation. M has been fascinated by the art of L since an early encounter with his work in Paris after a nightmarish experience on a train, an experience that the reader is never fully informed about, yet the spectacular—a devil, metaphorical or real—remains as a threat throughout. So when M, after years of obsession with L, finally convinces the artist to come and stay, to retreat and paint, her expectations, as you can anticipate, are high. Her expectations of fulfilment, creatively and psychologically, are painfully ridiculous in a middle-aged, privileged sense. What does she expect from this special bond with L? When L arrives—by private jet of a friend’s cousin—with said friend in tow, the beautiful and young Brett, M is miffed. You can’t help but feel little empathy for her. Her desires are unreasonable and ethically questionable, let alone uncomfortable. M’s obsession with a self-seeking, seemingly loathsome and churlish fading artist is misguided at best. Add to the mix M’s daughter Justine and her German boyfriend Kurt, arrived from Berlin as their jobs pack in due to a downward economy (and Covid—although this isn’t mentioned by Cusk), and the perfect pressure cooker for a melodrama is set. The novel is told as to ‘Jeffers’ by letter. We never meet Jeffers and have little knowledge of who Jeffers is and why he plays such an important role as confidant to M. What we can decipher later, from the afterword, is that the novel is inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, published in 1932 (there’s a contemporary review in the New York Times archive) about D.H.Lawrence’s stay at her artist retreat in New Mexico. Here too, is a story of obsession and delusion, and letters to Robinson Jeffers about Mabel’s experience with the Lawrences. Yet you don’t need to know this to find the writing compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical (the storyline of Kurt deciding to be a writer and his ‘reading’ is priceless) and unsettling. It will make you squirm. This is a novel about ownership—who owns whom—and the power or agency of one over the other or the ideas of the other. M will come to despise L and L already despises M, and sets out to destroy her. Yet his ability to do so is compromised by his own weakness, according to M. And here lies the dilemma: the narrator. You can’t like her. Her complete preoccupation with herself and her property, whitewashed, much like the walls of the cottage, with a veneer of care, is revealed in her asides to Jeffers and by her knowing attitude about the creative process within the isolation of someone basically just talking to themselves. Yet, the novel reverberates within its cliches and set-ups to bring the reader to the eye-watering conclusion that Cusk has cleverly played a game of cards where most of the best cards are hers—and the reader is in second place.

A puzzle, he said, noticing that I was attempting a rather easy and common sort of puzzle, one which I nonetheless was finding challenging, possibly due to the fact that he was observing me, a puzzle I was in any case doing only to fill in the time as I waited for him to stop talking, a puzzle is a poor sort of puzzle because everyone recognises it as a puzzle, he said, unlike language, which is a stronger sort of puzzle because it is not obvious whether it is a puzzle or not. I knew better than to ask him what he meant by this statement, partly because I didn’t really want to encourage him to deliver one of his long-winded explanations but mainly because I knew that once he had made a statement like that he would deliver one of his long-winded explanations whether he was asked to explain it or not; it seemed not to occur to him that any long-winded explanation delivered by him might not be received with the enthusiasm with which it was delivered. At least it was good to see him enthusiastic. He had just finished reading Rachel Cusk’s novel, Parade, and was now, it seemed, ready to explain it to me, although not yet having finished it had not stopped him explaining it to me as he was reading it, or at least from frequently exclaiming about it in such a way that was not sufficiently coherent to pass as an explanation, not that his explanations were in themselves generally in any case coherent. Parade, he explained, splices a series of observations by a narrator who exists only as a gap in the text with a carousel of ‘biographical’ sketches of artists (fictional — all named ‘G’ — but often sharing qualities and trajectories with identifiable artists in the ‘real world’) to explore, distil, and complicate issues of narrative, character, gender politics (especially as transacted in the arts), the irreconcilable ambivalence of intergenerational relations (here he made that irritating gesture in the air with both hands about and throughout the phrase as if to indicate that if anybody were to transcribe the phrase they should put it in inverted commas (even though italics would be to my mind more appropriate)), the problem of subjectivity, and the performance of power and persona that both characterises and occludes collective life on both the intimate and societal scales, or so he said. Parade, he said, continued Cusk’s project of the ‘Outline Trilogy’, of withdrawing the narratorial involvement from the novel, sometimes perfecting an entirely non-participatory, characterless ‘we’, without assuming, or presuming, really, access to the minds of any of the characters other than as evidenced by their actions or their words. “To see without being seen: there was no better definition of the artist’s vocation,” he read suddenly from a place he had marked in the book. Cusk achieves a wonderfully clean and perfectly flat style, he said, achieving an impeccable neutrality, almost an anonymity, on the most passionate and involving subjects, reporting conversations without contributing to them, but from a near perspective, like the parent in the novel filming her child in the school play so closely and so exclusively that, at least in her representation of it, the play itself made no sense other than that contingent upon the performance of her child. “Pure perception that involves no interaction, no subjectivity, reveals the pathos of identity,” he read again, or had memorised, or was pretending to read or to have memorised in order to give his opinions more authority. There is no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive, he shouted, I think now lost to his own metastasising speculations, at best only barely suppressed, no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive other than as they exist in language! There are no persons, no characters, he said, and I think he was referring to our lived reality as much as to the book that he had read. It reminds me, he said, calming a little, of Nathalie Sarruate's Planetarium, in that persons are unimportant or are at least shown to be entirely constructed by phrases and thoughts and attitudes clustering together and adhering to each other, a phenomenon that is more the province of language than a property of any living actuality. Again, the impulses, motivations and attitudes that may or may not exist in the unconscious, so to call it, he said, or in the preconscious, and we cannot say anything about these states, which cannot be said even to be states because to do so would be to make them or at least their existence to some extent conscious, he claimed, these impulses, motivations and attitudes require and are also formed by the language that is used to express them in order to be expressed. Was he even making sense, I wondered, but he did not pause, seemingly untroubled by such a possibility. Cusk’s practice, kicking away the novelistic crutches, so to call them, he said, removing the distractions of plot, the illusions of character, or at least by demonstrating that plot is a distraction and character an illusion, helps us to see more clearly, to be both present and not present, both involved and uninvolved, both when reading a novel and when reading our own lives, for want of a better term to call them. Language contains the inclinations, he said, that we usually and by mistake apply to persons. I suppose that this is what he may have meant when he spoke of language being a puzzle of a stronger sort, but he did not give me a chance to ask him this. Undermining our expectations of cohesion on personal, artistic and societal levels, he continued, and with regard to the forms of what we think of as fiction, Parade provokes and enlivens the reader’s own literary faculties and makes them an active participant in this exercise of awareness and destabilisation. I exercised my concentration, finished my rather easy and common sort of puzzle, which at least was readily identifiable as a puzzle, and left the room despite his continuing explanation. 

‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
‘Many of M. John Harrison’s previous novels warn about the fantastic as a consolation, and the risks of exceeding the appropriate prescription, and I think The End of Everything may also be read as a depiction of a world subject to overdose, where lives have been saturated by the unreal. There is a grain of ambiguous hope in one character’s declara­tion that it doesn’t matter that the world has ended, “because another one will be along soon enough,” but what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s bril­liance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists.’ —Niall Harrison, Locus Mag

• Read an extract.

• Taking it inland.

• Without cultural scaffolding.

• Uncanny little blighter.

• No clue.

• Wrong UK.

• What we used to know has fallen apart.

• Our imaginatgions are in service to the wrong ends.

• Always romantic.

• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again.

• The Course of the Heart.

• Wish I Was Here.

• Other books long-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

Catch these five books!

Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.

THE FINEST HOTEL IN KABUL: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet $40
The Winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction ”plays to all Lyse Doucet's strengths: clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four decades of Afghanistan's proud and sometimes unbelievably painful history. This is a most readable account of joy, despair and resilience in one of the world's most fascinating countries.” —Michael Palin

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.

ORDINARY PEOPLE LIKE US by Kelly Ana Morey $38
’Ordinary People Like Us explores much of what was important to Morey in her own life and heritage, including her love of history and her deep empathy for the landscapes and communities of the Far North. She celebrates her characters’ mixed heritage, as well as the strength of women, the bonds that link us and, true to her own interests, the significance of art, architecture and objects. But what makes this novel so different is KAM’s inspired imagination, which takes us up to the rafters, where kēhua watch, bitch and comment on their descendants below.’ —Harriet Allan

SWITZY by Emma Cline $38
’A perfect novel, one that goes to the places only novels can go.’ —Samantha Harvey

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.

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison $33
Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. It's been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscure. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end. Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can't keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artefact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows. The End of Everything is a slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure into the limits of human understanding from the peerless master of contemporary fiction. [Paperback]
‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
‘This is a formidable book: dusky, casually horrifying, unexpectedly compassionate. Its ending takes a deceptively conventional form, but the blank pages that follow invite the reader either to accept the end of everything as the title conveys, or imagine a continuous, ambiguous present — one that extends beyond the unexpected survivor of this particular story.’ —Catherine Taylor, Financial Times
‘Many of M. John Harrison’s previous novels warn about the fantastic as a consolation, and the risks of exceeding the appropriate prescription, and I think The End of Everything may also be read as a depiction of a world subject to overdose, where lives have been saturated by the unreal. There is a grain of ambiguous hope in one character’s declara­tion that it doesn’t matter that the world has ended, “because another one will be along soon enough,” but what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s bril­liance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists.’ —Niall Harrison, Locus Mag
>>Read an extract.
>>Taking it inland.
>>Uncanny little blighter.
>>No clue.
>>Other books long-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices from Gaza by Samar Yazbek $38
Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza asking each one of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like since that pivotal date. She has selected twenty-six of these narratives to share with the world. Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged thirteen to sixty-five, who have witnessed what history may one day remember as one of the most savage military offensives of our time. Their stories reveal a nightmarish dystopia, where each survivor has endured unimaginable loss — homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated — and many have been treated in hospitals ravaged by Israeli attacks. But these survivors remain determined to share their stories, and cling to the hope that their voices will resonate. The title,  Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life, is adapted from one of the flyers dropped on the residents of Gaza minutes before a bombing. [Paperback with French flaps]
'While narrating death and destruction, the witnesses Yazbek spoke with still found a way to illustrate that, in the words of Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah, they taught life. Many insisted on showing Yazbek pictures of their families and of themselves when their bodies were still whole; some entrusted her with a list of names of the people they lost; they defied erasure by every means available to them. Yazbek's collection of testimonies, spanning the shattered lives of children as young as thirteen to the weary wisdom of the elderly, refutes the diminishment intended by the airdropped leaflets. If the leaflets claim their presence is a danger, Yazbek proves their erasure is the true catastrophe.' —Ibtihal Rida Mahmood, Arab Lit
'A work of profound ethical significance, a direct offering of words from voices that should never be silenced.Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life is almost too painful to read, but so deeply humane and important that it compels us not to look away.' —Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath
'This is a remarkable, shattering book that holds its voices with dignity and care. It speaks to us from a red world of absolute loss, yet is suffused with an extraordinary persistence of love. Beyond geopolitics, rhetoric, territory and leaders, there remains the bare fact of broken lives and the unbearable weight of human love.' —A.L. Kennedy
'Since the start of Israel's genocide against Palestinians, I have been grasping for words. Yazbek has done something extraordinary. She has captured the vocabulary we have all been searching for by turning to the people who witnessed this violence first hand in Gaza. The book does not make heroes of genocide survivors, nor does it romanticize their struggle. Instead, we are invited to mourn with them, to marvel at their endurance, and to be sobered by humanity's capacity for barbarism. Yazbek shows us what it means to bear witness, to make space for grief, pain and suffering too vast to be contained, and how to do so with dignity, respect and humility. She has once again modelled what it means to be a keeper of humanity's memory.' —Tareq Baconi

The Bridge by Colm Tóibín $35
Miquel and his father are living an uneasy life together in his mother's house in the Pyrenees, the house she had been returning to on the day she died. A new bridge, connecting the two valleys, is almost complete, which will end the valley's isolation and create an easier route to smuggle contraband deep into the mountains. Where Miquel's father imagines opportunity, Miquel foresees disaster and an exposure to the outside world for which his father is desperately unprepared. Colm Toibin's novella contains vast inner and outer worlds. With meticulous precision and an unerring eye, Toibin captures lives caught between the past and the present, and the journey of a young man seeking connection, haunted by loss. [Hardback]
”Tóibín’s unsentimental prose is flawlessly matched to the austere worlds of people enduring, in their different ways, lives stripped back to the bone.” —Guardian
>>Betrayal and survival.

Panics by Barbara Molinard (translated from French by Emma Ramadan) $33
A haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience. A close friend and protégé of Marguerite Duras, Barbara Molinard (1921–1986) wrote and wrote feverishly, but only managed to publish one book in her lifetime: the surreal, nightmarish collection Panics. These thirteen stories beat with a frantic, off-kilter rhythm as Molinard obsesses over sickness, death, and control. A woman becomes transfixed by a boa constrictor at her local zoo, mysterious surgeons dismember their patient, and the author narrates to Duras how she was stopped from sleeping in a cemetery vault, only to be haunted by the pain of sleeping on its stone floor. In the unsettling tradition of Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, Leonara Carrington, and more, Panics recovers the work of a tormented writer who often destroyed her writing as soon as she produced it, and whose insights into violence, mental illness, and bodily autonomy are simultaneously absurdist and razor-sharp. [Paperback]
"These surreal, claustrophobic stories bear similarities to the works of Samuel Beckett and Leonora Carrington, but Molinard writes in a voice that is entirely her own... Through Ramadan's spare and exacting translation, Molinard presents a terrifying portrait of violence and mental illness." —The New York Times
"Barbara Molinard's strength is her ability to evoke our collective nightmares: being naked, losing a limb, being lost, and being unable to reach safety or love. Hers (and ours) are dreams in which others act with unexplained malevolence while we struggle towards something we'll never attain." —Barrelhouse

Green Sea: Lost in the New Zealand bush by John Summers $40
John Summers's worst nightmare is getting lost in the bush. He has always carefully — myopically, even — followed the track. Death lurks at the edge of his fear, as well as cold, hunger, loneliness and even humiliation. But what is the experience of being lost in the New Zealand bush actually like? Summers talks to those who have survived — from a man who was found near death after 29 days in Kahurangi National Park to a woman who covered herself with earth to stay warm in the Orongorongo Valley. He explores what 'lost' really means, a metaphor for everything from addiction to a midlife crisis. Part reportage, history and personal reflection, Green Sea looks closely at what keeps us going through the tangle of ordinary life — and at the mercies others show us when we feel most alone. [Hardback]
'A compelling investigation into human vulnerability in the face of nature's indifference. Haunting, absorbing, and deeply close to home.' —Naomi Arnold

Great Hearts: First ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook by Hazel Phillips $45
From the 1870s, a generation of bold women made mountaineering history around Aoraki Mount Cook. They claimed space in the mountains, defying conventions and forging a legacy that shaped every woman who followed. Then their stories were quietly erased. Drawing on scattered records, oral histories and forgotten stories, Great Hearts resurrects their extraordinary achievements, blending nonfiction with reimagined fiction in a tribute to their resistance, courage and grit. [Flexibound]
'Filled with courageous women who spring to life on the page, Great Hearts is an accessible and essential addition to outdoor literature.' —Naomi Arnold
'The extraordinary endeavours of women battling prejudice, sexism, male ego and ill-suited clothing to win their place in New Zealand mountaineering history.' —Graeme Dingle
>>Look inside.
>>In their Sunday best.
>>Silences and erasures.

The Beginnings by Antonio Moresco (translated from Italian by Max Lawton) $45
The first book in Antonio Moresco's colossally disruptive 'Games of Eternity' ('Giochi dell'eternità') trilogy, translated into English for the first time. Upon its publication in Italy in 1988, The Beginnings was exactly that: the dawning of a new era. Like a photo-negative of Franz Kafka, or Virginia Woolf, Moresco's sweeping novel turns the stream-of-consciousness inside out, and offers nothing interior. Here, much like in real life, you will not be privy to the thoughts and feelings of others. Everything must be experienced as it happens. From our narrator's undergraduate years in seminary school, to his activities as a member of various Italian political factions, to his attempts to become a writer, The Beginnings is a shapeshifting journey across the 20th century, and across all of literature itself. [Paperback]
"Shifting beneath the reader's feet, The Beginnings is a vertiginous, feverishly compelling work, offering a feast of surreal imagery and inventive language to those who approach it patiently." —Brock Covington
"The prose of The Beginnings is a camouflage that wants nothing more intensely than to fully reveal itself in all of its disruptive possibilities." —COM-POSIT
"Moresco was asking the question every writer should be asking themselves: How can I invent a language to describe my reality?" —Harold Rogers
"The Beginnings achieves something of considerable difficulty, and something deeply liberating, in times in which explanatory writing, philosophical and existential musings risk to be re-branded as escapism for adults: he manages to build a deeply philosophical book through the sheer energy of literary presentation." —Reading in Translation
>>An Unidentified Fictional Object.
>>Not a peaceful man or a peaceful writer.
>>A word or two from the translator.
>>If the author goes off-road.
>>A pearl in the wound.

Waka Aroha: He kohinga pakipoto nā Atakohu Middleton $35
He rangatahi ngakau whiwhita ki nga waka tetere. He kairapuhara wahine Maori e mahitahi ana ki roto i te ao kikokiko me te ao atua. He kaihoahoa humarie ka tukirae atu ki tetehi manuwhiri i te rarangi hariru. Na te kairipoata rongonui a Atakohu Middleton tenei kohikohinga tuatahitanga o nga pakipoto ka tuhia katoatia ki te reo Maori. He rereke nga wa. He matatini nga momo pakipoto. He tini nga reo. Ka kite nga kaipanui i nga korero pirihimana, nga paki a-whanau, nga korero pohewa me nga pakipoto e pa ana hoki ki te huringa taiohi hei pakeke. He mea tuhi ki te reo ngawari kia pai ai ma nga tauira wharekura me nga tauira kua eke ki te taumata waenga. He pakipoto whakaihiihi, he mea titi ki te ngakau hoki mo Aotearoa o naianei. Ma te tuhinga a Atakohu Middleton ka ngahau nga tangata matatau ki te reo tae atu ki era ano tangata i runga i to ratou ara reo Maori. / A car-crazy rangatahi with a need for speed. A tenacious wahine Maori detective whose work straddles the worlds of humans and gods. A mild-mannered architect who headbutts a manuwhiri in the hariru line. From well-known journalist Atakohu Middleton comes Aotearoa's first collection of short stories written entirely in te reo Maori. The stories span time, genres and voices — readers will find police procedurals and family dramas, fantasy stories and coming-of-age yarns. Written in accessible reo Maori aimed at wharekura students and language learners from intermediate level up, this is gripping and exciting writing for contemporary Aotearoa.  [Paperback]
”Kei te hunga e iri maro nei ki te reo Maori, e hiamo nei kia rere ona karu i nga kupu reo Maori kua tangia ki te wharangi, waiho ma a Atakohu kupu to ngakau e arahi ki ona kapuhipuhitanga me ona retotanga. Ko Hirikapo i rere, ko Whatumanawa i rewa, ko Kare a-Roto i pupu kau noa ake i taku panui i te kohinga kuru pounamu nei.” —Donovan Te Ahunui Farnham
”There has been a noticeable gap between children's readers in te reo Maori and the more advanced, high-end translated works — Waka Aroha begins to fill that space beautifully. The reo is of high quality and I think it will connect fluidly with intermediate readers while still offering depth and challenge for those more proficient in te reo. This is a taonga that I can engage with to continue my own reo journey. Further, my tamariki and all our mokopuna are eventually going to be beneficiaries of this work, na kona, e kore a mihi e mutu ki a Atakohu me tona kaha ki te poipoi i te ora, i te mauri o te reo Maori, mo nga mokopuna te take.” —- Takuta Valance Smith
”Ki pai tenei kohinga i nga momo aroha katoa. Ko te murimuri aroha ki nga mahi me nga tohe a nga tupuna. Ko te mateoha ki te hunga e tamia nuitia ana me ratou kei te tu hei pou tautiaki i te wa pokaikaha. Ko te aroha nui ki nga korero a-whanau me nga papa haututu rawa. Nei ano nga mihi e rere nei ki te waka i taraitia ai e Atakohu. Koia hei kawe i ona ake wawata ki te hunga ngakaunui ki te reo Maori: kia reo Maori te paki, kia tuhia nga paki ma te hapori reo Maori, me te aha, kia toia mai te hunga kaore i te matatau rawa kia paku matatau ke atu i te mutunga o te panuitanga. E tino mihi ana ki tana i koha mai ai hei waka eke noa ma tatou. Tangohia, hokona, panuihia!” —Takuta Darryn Joseph

The Village on the Edge of the World: Writing and surviving Ceaușescu's Romania by Herta Müller (translated from German by Kate McNaughton) $40
From her childhood in Romania, in a village 'as small as a thimble on the edge of the world', through to life in exile in Germany, Herta Müller's story unspools against the tumultuous history of Romania in the latter half of the twentieth century. Here, the Nobel Prize laureate reflects on cultural history, memory and trauma, and on what it was to live and write during Ceaușescu's regime: on the friendships that buckled under the weight of fear and paranoia; on the experience of being surveilled and interrogated; and on the unique blend of fear and tedium borne through life under totalitarianism. The Village on the Edge of the World is a book that chronicles the minutiae of life under both fascism and the Soviet Union, while charting the existential questions posed by these regimes of the twentieth century — and how they remain with us in the twenty-first. [Hardback]
”A profound delight. In this seemingly casual tour inside the mind of one of the century's great writers there are frequent, electrifying moments of immense insight — each one feels like a trapdoor opening into a reality you realise you were, till now, just skimming the surface of. Müller's thinking is glorious to share in, and her thoughts have never been more relevant.” —Anna Funder

Dance-Floor Romance by Chris Tse $30
Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Chris Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy — and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. Words hit the page like light on a mirrorball as Tse takes us from come-up to comedown, between the spotlight and the shadowy corners, penning both sadbangers and straight-up bangers that are generous, alive and shot through with the magnetic urgency of a club classic. But when the lights come up after the last dance, how do we brace ourselves to face the world outside? Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that 'Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future', and amplifies it. [Paperback]
”These poems are warm and lush; they will bring a room together.” —Sophie van Waardenberg
”This collection is comfortable in its own poetic skin and prepared to slip out of that skin when required. Tse is in control of his inheritance: he is in the workshop, at play, busying himself with the tools to hand and knowing what to do with them. He is producing variations and, with each variation, a new pleasure and a new insight comes into view. Is it surrender or ecstasy? Yes, please.” —Dougal McNeill
>>The lyric within the civic.

He Kete Kīwaha: A Practical Guide to Māori Idioms by Hona Black $45
Idioms — manners of speech and common sayings — are a key part of speaking a language fluently, and te reo Māori is rich in their usage. Based on extensive research of common te reo idioms, and consultation with some of the leading reo experts in the country, teacher and language advocate Hona Black presents this comprehensive guide. Like his previous books, this is bilingual with Māori on one page and English on the other, and will become an essential reference for speakers and students of te reo. [Paperback]
>>Other clear and useful books by Hona Black.

A selection of books from our shelves about Katherine Mansfield. Click through to find out more:

A Strange Beautiful Excitement

Katherine Mansfiled, Illness, and Death

Katherine Mansfield: A hidden life

Woman in Love

Mansfield and Me

All Sorts of Lives

Thorndon, Wellington and Home

Katherine

Katherine Mansfield’s Europe

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.

Ordinary People Like Us by Kelly Ana Morey $38
”And here I was thinking we were just ordinary people.” From the landscapes of the Far North, through inner-city Auckland and to London in the 1970s and 90s, Ordinary People Like Us follows five generations of Māori women through a century of profound social and cultural change. Bird. Kaa. Annie. Lorna. Jen. Pax. Where should we start? What is there to know? Some fall in love easily, while others wait half a lifetime for their person. One walks a thin line between the land of the living and the call of the void. Some listen to the ghosts of the past, and each forges their unique way in the world. Gifted with an otherworldly instinct, in their most ordinary lives, they are all extraordinary. Expansive and intimate, exploring the bonds that endure through generations, Ordinary People Like Us is a celebration of family and a powerful reminder that no matter how far we travel, it is the people who love us that keep us whole. [Paperback]
”A remarkable, generous novel.” —Catherine Chidgey
”E taku Atua, auē! My God, what a book!” —Witi Ihimaera Smiler
>>The final, magnificent novel.
>>Catherine Chidgey on bringing the manuscript to publication after the author’s death.

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams $35
In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal threatens to rupture her carefully managed routine: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe remains unmoved. But when her boss instructs her to turn double agent and gather information by befriending Adam, Agathe finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth? Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity's most intimate contradictions and reflects them back through a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning. [Paperback]
‘A bracing antidote to the cosy campus and the dark academia novel, The Vivisectors instead imagines higher education as a transparent citadel where human axolotls masquerading as professors and students are bent on drawing and quartering each other with no mercy, as their nameless city is overtaken by relentless vegetable growth. No one is protected, everyone is exposed, it is highly doubtful anyone is learning anything, and on top of all that vines are coming up your legs. Genuinely experimental, relentlessly and rollickingly told – in places truly menacing – The Vivisectors is the rare title that actually earns its name.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
'Williams writes with a singular brand of Ballardian ferocity — she revels in the wretched and the craven.' —Guardian
'Part love story, part ecological fable; a bleakly funny study of ideological certainty.' —The Times
'A compelling exploration of love, whether with another person or with God.' —Financial Times
'Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh.' —Our Culture
'This is the modern rupture — our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other.' —Paul Lynch
'Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing.' —Sara Baume
>>Read an extract.
>>Twisted love.
>>Strange institutional power.
>>Locked within subjectivity.
>>Any reality.
>>Never needing to think again.
>>The Doloriad.
>>Other books long-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

Hafni Says by Helle Helle (translated from Danish by Martin Aitken) $35
Hafni says: I don't want to be me. I want to change who I am. I don't know how to change who I am. Hafni says she's getting divorced. To celebrate, she sets out across southern Denmark on a smørrebrød tour, to sample Danish classics, open-faced sandwiches, and afternoon teas. A month later, she makes a phone call from a rest stop to the novel's narrator (a main character from Helle Helle's previous novel they) to explain how she went wrong, and why a trip that was meant to take a week has ended up consuming an entire month. Her storytelling seems to incarnate how Hafni herself digresses, how her past unfolds as one long series of accidents and mishaps, the accumulation of which somehow became the life she is living. Infused with Helle Helle's subtlety and dark humour, and brought into English in Martin Aitken's virtuosic translation, Hafni Says explores the desire to be anyone but yourself and what it means to try to make yourself anew. [Paperback]
”Helle Helle will enchant readers with the terse transfiguration of the ordinary into poetic strangeness.” —Sydney Morning Herald
>>Read an excerpt.
>>they.

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple $40
Here Where Live Is Our Country is the story of a revolutionary movement — the Jewish Bund — which played a part in nearly every major conflict in Eastern Europe from 1900-1945, but still remains an almost unknown part of twentieth-century history. The movement's central philosophy of ‘herenes’ — the belief that Jews had a right to freedom and dignity in the countries where they lived — led them to fight the Tsar, reject Zionism, resist the Nazis, and ultimately help lead the Warsaw ghetto revolt. It is also a philosophy that immediately resonates with the political situation all over the world today. In this book, Molly Crabapple tells the story of the Bund through the lives of the bold and brilliant individuals who were pivotal to carrying out the doctrine, including her own great-grandfather, through whom she first discovered the movement. [Paperback]
”Molly Crabapple is a time traveller, a necromancer and an unclassifiable genius. She beckons readers through a portal to an irresistible, lost world, one bound together by passion, solidarity, and a burning hunger for justice. Here Where We Live Is Our Country is that rarest of books: a gripping, human story of love, idealism and betrayal — and an immense, rigorous contribution to the historical record. Reading it feels revolutionary.” —Naomi Klein
”In 380 lush, high-tempo, strikingly poignant pages Crabapple documents the Bund's extraordinary rise and fall. The relevance of her material for our present moment is impossible to ignore.” —Guardian
”Crabapple's terrific Here Where We Live is Our Country unearths the story of a Jewish political movement that opposed ethnic nationalism of all stripes. Thrillingly energetic, delightful, vivid.” —New York Times Book Review
”Vast in scope, elegiac in prose, this book brings to life the profound humanity of those who stood up to the blood soaked ethno-nationalisms that led to so many of the twentieth century's storied horrors. All the while, Crabapple never lets us forget that they were also fighting for a world that would not give rise to such evil. This book is many things: an ode to the grand legacy of anti-Zionist Jewishness; a profound reflection on whether history has morals; and an essential resource for anti-fascist history, concepts and tools.” — Jason Stanley
”Molly Crabapple not only recounts, with a novelist's mastery of detail, one of the most extraordinary rebellions of the human spirit in modern history. She animates, too, elegantly and boldly, a political and spiritual tradition that the zealots of ethnonationalism had managed to suppress for too long. In the long battles ahead for truth and dignity, her book will be an indispensable resource.” —Pankaj Mishra
>>Back to the Bund.
>>Solidarity across difference.

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry $38
She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur. He is a reluctant ruler with no hunger for power, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his older brothers. But it isn’t long before whispers begin to fly around the court. And with the growing belief that the King is not fit for the throne comes the idea that another might rule in his stead. May We Feed the King dances between the lives of a historical subject who risks the future of his kingdom and a woman who turns to the past to hide from her present. [Hardback]
‘Perry combines the story of a reserved museum curator who recreates historical banquets, using a careful array of fake pies and pomegranates – with the story of a medieval king, reluctant to occupy the throne (and possibly unfit for it anyway). It’s a wonderfully enticing, and eye-opening, combination of themes, woven together with an extraordinary delicacy of touch. You can’t read May We Feed the King without reflecting on the fragile boundary between the present and the past. What’s the difference between historical fiction and historical fact? Can history ever be a safe place we can go to escape the present?’  —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
”Perry combines effortless exactitude with canny ambiguity to create a novel that is always as stimulating as it is enchanting. May We Feed the King is a rare achievement, I absolutely loved it.” —Claire-Louise Bennett
”The historical fiction I have always wanted to read. Surreal and dreamlike, with an eye on the tiny, overlooked details of worlds long gone, this book felt like something hidden come to life — what is real, and what is true, and in the middle of all that, what really matters?” —Jessie Burton
”Meditative, compelling and intricate as a puzzle box — I found myself turning it over and over, admiring and wrong footed and dazzled.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave
”May We Feed The King floored me with the precision of its emotional insights and eccentric view of history-as-narrative... A sort of perfect snow globe, presenting a decadent world in miniature that surprises us with the depth of its reflections on power, yearning and loneliness.” —A.K. Blakemore
”A gemlike take on historical fiction, moving between a curator who creates luscious and historically accurate tableaux in historic buildings, and the life of a reluctant king. It's intricate and uncanny and beautiful.” —Sophie Mackintosh
>>Read an extract.
>>Somewhat outside of the genre.
>>Leaving gaps.
>>The colour of patience is grey.
>>Other books long-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

Katherine Mansfield: A hidden life by Gerri Kimber $45
On the fringes of Bloomsbury, and friends with D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot and many others, Mansfield was at the heart of literary London at its most experimental. By the time of her death in 1923, aged just 34, she had broken boundaries and created new ways of writing that led her literary sparring partner Virginia Woolf to later admit that Mansfield's 'was the only writing I was ever jealous of'. Based on compelling new research, Gerri Kimber challenges previous conceptions surrounding the author's life, uncovers friendships and relationships formerly barely acknowledged and offers innovative readings of Mansfield's most celebrated stories. [Hardback]
”Kimber, whose prodigious scholarship (often in collaboration with others) has given us Mansfield's letters and poems as well as unedited versions of the collected fiction and of archival discoveries that tell us more about her sexuality and relationships. In 2016 she published an account of Mansfield's early life; now we have this full, studious biography, whose claims rest on complexity and nuance, on hidden facts over rumour.” —Sophie Oliver, Literary Review
”You will find [the Mansfield story] here in its brilliant light and terrible shadow, its weird Kiwi mix of the banal and the marvellous.” —New Zealand Listener
”The book provides a wealth of new material and insights. Kimber is good at making connections, at filling out and tightening the narrative. Readings of the stories often provide information when other sources are missing. Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life expands the Mansfield story, and gives us a writer who is feisty, sexually adventurous, confounded in her 'messy life' by disasters of her own making, experiencing extremes of despair and wild exultation, and finally, impressively, making her own reckoning.” —Janet Wilson, Katherine Mansfield Society Newsletter
>>A civet-cat taken to street-walking.
>>Some other books on Mansfield.

The Spinster Cookbook: Culture, politics and pleasure in the single woman’s kitchen by Eli Davies $40
The Spinster Cookbook is a piercing exploration of what it means to cook for one in a society designed for couples and families. With sharp cultural insight, Eli Davies takes us on a culinary tour of the single woman's kitchen, a space shaped as much by a search for freedom as by appetite. The kitchen has always been a complex space for women: a place of labour and gendered expectations, as well as a site of nourishment, care and company. But how does this change when you're alone, not cooking for family or friends, but simply for yourself? Eli Davies explores what happens when food is uncoupled from domestic duty and romantic relationships and what it means to cook (or not) for yourself and by yourself. How does this shape your mealtimes, the way you shop for food, the kitchen equipment you use, and your relationship to cleaning up and looking after yourself? With warmth, humour and insight, The Spinster Cookbook explores shopping and leftovers, solo meals and dinner parties for one, joy and grief and the politics of living on your own. This is a book about making a home in the face of housing precarity, loneliness, heartbreak and social norms, and finding independence, pleasure and self-expression through cooking. It's a cookbook of sorts, and a manifesto for living differently. [Hardback]
'Eli Davies has written a profoundly relatable culinary memoir of 00s life — of drinking in a rented kitchen while a Nigel Slater dinner bubbles on the stove on the eve of moving house (again) after your landlord has sold up — that will be familiar to so many. An immensely pleasurable and companionable enquiry into what it means to cook for oneself, alone — full of delicious references and research that never burden the lively writing. Barbara Pym's heroines would approve!' —Rebecca May Johnson, author of Small Fires
>>Gendered expectations.

Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn $28
A young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to St Valentine's bones. Bouquets are found all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect a human body. Brimming with compassion and thrumming with energy, these stories are scrupulous in their attention to detail, epic in their scope. In this bravura debut collection, Liadan Ní Chuinn delivers a blend of the personal and the political. [Paperback]
”Here's a writer who knows how to swerve gracefully from the expected. Her work is instinctive, intriguing and truly exciting. I cannot wait to see what's in store for her.” —Lisa McInerney
”It's a long time since I've read a short story collection where I've felt such an aching tenderness for the people within its pages. These stories are rich. They have heart and weight. This is singular, controlled, dextrous writing from someone who is now one of my favourite writers.” —Wendy Erskine
”These are exceptional stories, stark yet richly textured and told in a voice that is at once plain-spoken and lyrical. Liadan Ni Chuinn is the real deal.” —Louise Kennedy
”An extraordinary book by an extraordinary author who refuses to look the other way. Ni Chuinn's incantatory sentences quiver like seismographs, registering the quakes and ruptures that can crack a life in two.” —Thomas Morris
>>Causing harm, or failing to prevent it.
>>Or this edition.

The Disappearers by Marlon James $38
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: all of them are gay — a ‘batty man’ in Jamaican argot — and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare. One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical: as their bodies heal, each man must grapple with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution. The Disappearers is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s. [Paperback]
”James has written a masterpiece, the novel of the decade and possibly of the century thus far. It deserves to be talked about alongside Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, for its tumult of language and its crisscrossing post-colonial themes; Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (James picks up on a revenge scenario from that novel); and William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! The Disappearers was one of the signal reading experiences of my adult life. It sank knives deep into my heart. I'm still in recovery from it: You don't finish The Disappearers. It finishes you.” —New York Times
”A scorching expose of homophobia in Jamaica. Few books have mapped the beleaguered realities of queer existence with such psychological depth, harrowing realism and searing condemnation. James makes room for the contradictions of queer life, its intimacies, estrangements and hungers, in utterly indelible ways. His prose is a consistent triumph: bitter and hilarious, lyrical, bawdy, pugnacious and scorchingly, ravishingly queer. The Booker judges have described this novel as a ‘reckoning’; it is incontestably also a haunting. A remarkable novel.” —Guardian
”The Disappearers is among Marlon James's most ambitious and history-making works, a novel that examines territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy. James is a singular literary talent. His dialogue is sharp and propulsive, his phrasing is poetic, visceral and capable of moving from the painful to the darkly hilarious within a single exchange.” —Booker Prize judges’ citation
>>Read an extract.
>>Fiction is ideally placed.
>>Other books long-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.

A Natural History of the Studio by William Kentridge $50
Kentridge offers a personal insight into his work, his childhood and his artistic techniques. For more than three decades, South African artist William Kentridge has created a vast body of work comprising drawings and multimedia installations that have been exhibited worldwide. Here he immerses us in the artistic, intellectual and production processes of his creations, providing philosophical, autobiographical, technical and practical commentary and giving intimate insight into the studios where he has created throughout his life. A Natural History of the Studio is a personal and philosophical exploration of the creative process, and a critical look at the world and the human condition. Illustrated throughout. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Kentridge's blow-by-blow account of the artistic process is frank, unromanticised and often moving. Art scholars and students will be rapt.” —Publishers Weekly
”Kentridge lays claim to Picasso's legacy. He is just about the only artist now who can dizzy you in a comparable way with the abundance of his creativity.” —Jonathan Jones, Guardian
>>Look inside!
>>How does one make sense of the world with the tools and the techniques of the studio?
>>The film is the book.

Switzy by Emma Cline $38
A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting. A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.  This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades. His final destination is Zurich. David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in- the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend's house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life. As David's arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unravelling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he's relied on, vanish. [Paperback]
’A perfect novel, one that goes to the places only novels can go.’ —Samantha Harvey
‘We live in a time ruled by overpowered and undersocialised wealthy boy kings; Emma Cline’s mordant novel considers what, if anything, remains at the end of one such luxurious yet lonely life. David is a retired American business executive with dementia who decides to be euthanised in a Swiss clinic. As he voyages across Europe, fuzzy memories from his life slip in and out of his consciousness. There are final gestures towards intimacy with family and friends, and a whimsical cartoon becomes a symbol of a bygone childhood. What makes a life? Cline writes vividly about the trappings of the elite – the private jets, the heirloom watches, all that time spent in the office – as well as their sad social cost in a story that feels immersive, elegiac, and very real. As one of us put it: “I travel a lot, and know these guys.”’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
‘The reading experience is hypnotic, eerie, and unsettling; the misheard words (pinot-barbiedoll for phenobarbital; assfart for Ausfahrt, the German word for highway exit) and misapprehended objects add a bitter sort of humor. It’s almost scary to think about what a convincing job Cline has done imagining this shattered form of consciousness, both near and far from what goes on in one’s supposedly healthy brain. Unexpected, beautifully controlled, and almost dangerously captivating.’ —Kirkus
‘Cline is an alert, sensitised writer, and there’s real pathos in seeing her attentiveness filtered through David’s worsening cognitive decline. Poignant but unsentimental, it is her best novel yet.’ —Jem Calder, Independent
>>Read an extract.
>>Final journey.
>>The author’s own feelings of mortal terror and loss.

A selection of books from our shelves. Click through to find out more:

Pull Me Under

Carnality

Original Sin

The Harpy

No Relation

Ruins, Child

We Are Green and Trembling

Dog Days

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4 September 2026

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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.