NEW RELEASES (20.11.25)
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 Paris Trilogy by Colombe Schneck (translated from French by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer) $33
Writing in response to Annie Ernaux and in conversation with Elena Ferrante, Colombe Schneck's three semi-autobiographical takes on a woman's life form an elegant, powerful exploration of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, loss and renewal. Colombe is seventeen in 1984 and carefree, busy discovering sex and studying for her baccalauréat. When she becomes pregnant her choice to have an abortion is never in question. Yet suddenly she must grapple with the body that has brought the precarity of her freedom into focus. Colombe and Héloïse are two little Parisian liberals, friends since the age of eleven. They look alike, have similar upbringings and for years they follow parallel paths: university, love affairs, work, marriage, children, divorce, more love affairs. They are the most enduring witnesses to each other's lives, until illness betrays them. Colombe reconnects with Gabriel in her fifties; their relationship is passionate and transformative. As it unfolds, Colombe discovers many things about herself, including a newfound appreciation for swimming, and the euphoria and strength of a body learning when to push and when to let go. [Paperback]
”This is valuable writing. It has immense vitality. You will encounter a female narrator whose direct and bright-eyed stare at the world, and her self, is without shame or faux modesty. At the same time, it is also a deep study of existence, at various ages and stages in life.” —Deborah Levy
”The 'movements' of The Paris Trilogy thrum with life, sparkle with insight. It was an exhilarating read. I've never encountered a more perfect depiction of how the world shrinks when you understand that you're a 'girl', rather than a 'person'.” —Natasha Brown
”'Seventeen’ mines a trauma all too common for women and is published at a time when France has just enshrined abortion rights in their constitution. I found it a tale of frank retrospection, a mature woman looking back on her naive self with love and respect. It is immensely readable and still sadly relevant. Give it to every young woman you know.” —Monique Roffey
>>Not writing with no affect.
>>Paris and swimming.
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li $45
"There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home." There is no good way to say this — because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, "a single point in a timeline." Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: "doing the things that work," including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving or mourning. As Li writes, "The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now." [Hardback]
”To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatement. One is left altered by it at the same time as desperately wishing that it had never needed to be written at all.” —Observer
”A book unlike any I've read, that brims with rare clarity and intelligence, with love and care. It will stay with me for a long time.” —Cecile Pin
>>A new alphabet, a new vocabulary.
This Moment, Every Moment: Collected poems by Ruth Dallas (edited by Nicola Cummins) $50
Ruth Dallas's voice is unique within the Aotearoa New Zealand literary canon. Her poetry is characterised by a profound connection to nature and seasonal rhythms. It is deeply grounded in place — often to locations in Otago and Southland, where she spent most of her life — yet universal in its reach. The clarity, elegance and apparent simplicity of her style owe much to her interest in classical Chinese poetry and thought. This Moment, Every Moment demonstrates the majesty of Dallas's craft across her lifetime of poetic work. Time spent in contemplation of even a single Dallas poem is always time richly rewarded; how much more so with this complete collection. This new volume brings together previously uncollected poems written in Dallas's youth, alongside all her published collections — from her arrival in 1953 as a significant voice in the New Zealand literary landscape with Country Road and Other Poems, 1947-52, to her final book, The Joy of a Ming Vase, published in 2006. [Nice hardback with cover art by Kushana Bush]
”No other poems written in this country move & haunt me as Ruth's do.” —Charles Brasch.
Ruth Dallas: A writer’s life by Diana Morrow $45
Ruth Dallas (1919-2008) is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most distinctive, respected and influential literary voices. Yet despite her international success and her enduring presence as one of the country's most anthologised poets, the full extent of her contribution to New Zealand literature has been relatively unexamined and under-appreciated. This comprehensive biography redresses this imbalance, and gives this outwardly reserved South Islander her (over)due place in the spotlight as a significant poet, fiction writer and children's author. Drawing on Dallas's 1991 autobiography, Curved Horizon, her writing notebooks and journals, and letters and interviews, Morrow shows how the girl whose first published work appeared in the children's pages of the Southland Daily News grew up to become the internationally acclaimed author of nine poetry collections, a book of short stories and eight children's books. Ruth Dallas: A writer's life illuminates Dallas's personal and professional relationships, describes major formative episodes in her life — including the traumatic loss of an eye as a teenager — and investigates her inspirations and creative process. Morrow brilliantly captures the inter-regional jousting of the post-war New Zealand literary scene, and Dallas's independent-minded and highly respected presence within it. An early and regular contributor to Landfall, Dallas became both a friend and a trusted literary advisor to the journal's founding editor, Charles Brasch, working for a time as Landfall's 'secretary' — a role perhaps more justly described as co-editor. As well as Brasch, Dallas's circle of friends and colleagues included James K. Baxter, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Roderick Finlayson, Janet Frame and Basil Dowling. In this generously illustrated biography, Morrow gives us the Ruth Dallas that her family and friends knew and loved: a private person with a lively outlook on life; a serious and informed writer with an impish sense of humour; and a writer of clarity and insight. [Paperback]
The Emotion Dealer by Jack Remiel Cotterell $30
Jack Remiel Cottrell's short fiction ushers the reader into a liminal world of grief and dreams. Stories of heartbreak and betrayal jostle with incisive cautionary tales about self-aware A.I., deranged algorithms, memory transplants and bionic enhancements. The Emotion Dealer is a kaleidoscopic exploration of technology, art, cities, capitalism, disinformation, loneliness and greed. It is a guide for our troubled moment and a book that will make you wonder what — if anything — we are leaving for those who come after us. [Paperback]
“The Emotion Dealer is constantly surprising, deeply incisive, and finely attuned to the way people interact with each other. Cottrell is already a master of the short story form.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“Inventive and full of feeling, this is fiction that gets into your blood, changes you. Cottrell is an alchemist of language, a mad scientist of story, transmuting essential ideas and moments into fascinating and faceted prose formations – you’ll be dazzled and moved by even the briefest of these glistering creations. In this collection, you have just about everything you could ever want, right there with you.” —Anthony Lapwood
“The Emotion Dealer is astounding. This is a collection of urgent contrasts – gentle yet brutal, hopeful yet terrifying, dark yet so full of light. Jack takes us on a journey of what could be and is, leading us by the hand into a future as wicked and foreboding as it is radiant. Fears are brought to life and created in our image, and the result is absolutely captivating. The best works are those that make us feel, and The Emotion Dealer demands we do. The challenge is exhilarating. What a gift this collection is.” —Emily Writes
Any Person Is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert $45
Who are we when we read? When we journal? Are we more ourselves alone or with friends? Right now or in memory? How does time transform us and the art we love? In sixteen essays, Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all kinds: dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and cliched, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind them — chance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction. The whole becomes a love letter to literature and to life. [Paperback]
"A work of embodied and experiential criticism, a record of its author's shifting relationships with the literature that defines her life. Gabbert is a master of mood, not polemic: in place of the analytic pleasures of a robustly defended thesis, we find the fresh thrills of a poet's perfected phrases and startling observations. Any Person Is the Only Self is both funny and serious, a winning melee of high and low cultural references, as packed with unexpected treasures as a crowded antique shop. She is a fiercely democratic thinker, incapable of snobbery and brimming with curiosity." —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
"Any Person is the Only Self is absolutely brilliant, full of clarity and mystery and light: Gabbert effs the ineffable, describes the impossible to describe — the state of reading, what it means to remember. I'm still thinking about these essays, by which I mean still thinking about Gabbert's own thoughts; I keep bringing them up in conversation. Elisa Gabbert is one of my favorite living writers." —Elizabeth McCracken
>>Memory, identity, and synchronicities.
Air and Love: A story of food, family, and belonging by Or Rosenboim $28
As a child, Or Rosenboim’s knowledge of her Jewish family’s history was based on the food her grandmothers cooked for her — round kneidlach balls in hot chicken broth, cinnamon-scented noodle kugel, deep-pink stuffed quinces and herby green rice with a squeeze of lemon juice. It was only after reading their recipe books once they had both died that she began to understand their complicated past. Taking us from Samarkand and Riga to the Middle East, Air and Love is a deeply human retelling of some of the major moments of the twentieth century, and a family story of migration and belonging, suffused with recipes of the food made along the way. [Paperback]
'This is a moving memoir about how recipes are formed by migration, love and loss, even within a single family.” —Bee Wilson
”A fascinating book. ’Food of the road’: through memory, history, recipes — and love — a family, and an era’s, complex story is movingly traced.” —Judith Flanders
The Discovery of Britain: An accidental history by Graham Robb $60
Taking the reader on a time-travelling adventure around the "spindly, sea-wracked islands" known as Britain, this book is history that's both panoramic and intimate, poignant and shocking, seriously funny, and enlightening in the most surprising ways. Often from the unique vantage point of the author’s bicycle, we encounter an entertaining cast of characters foreign and homegrown, drop in on places and events, and dwell on the successes and catastrophes across British history. From ancient settlements swallowed up by the sea and the creation of Stonehenge to the advent of multiculturalism and recent political earthquakes, this is an enjoyably idiosyncratic take on place and history. With intriguing maps and illustrations throughout, The Discovery of Britain can be devoured whole or each chapter read in the time it takes to change a bicycle tyre or drink a cup of coffee. Enjoyable. [Hardback]
>>Books by Graham Robb.
The Collector: Thomas Cheeseman and the making of the Auckland Museum by Andrew McKay and Richard Wolfe $65
When Thomas Cheeseman arrived in Aotearoa in 1853 at the age of eight, the world outside knew little of this country's people, plants, animals and environment. Within weeks, he began a lifelong love of collecting and classifying, and by his early twenties he was making waves in colonial scientific circles. Appointed the director of the Auckland Museum when it was not much more than a shed of curiosities, by sheer force of dedication he developed it into one of New Zealand's leading museums and scientific institutions. Along the way he cultivated relationships with the leading scientists of the day, including Charles Darwin and directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, William and Joseph Hooker. And he collected many thousands of specimens and objects, making a vital contribution to our understanding of New Zealand's natural history. This handsome, richly illustrated book tells both his story and the story of the museum he founded. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
Dwelling by Emily Hunt Kivel $38
The world is ending. It has been ending for some time. When did the ending begin? Perhaps when Evie’s mother died, or when her father died soon after. Perhaps when her sister, Elena, was forcibly institutionalized in a psychiatric hippie commune in Colorado. Certainly at some point over the last year, as New York City spun down the tubes, as bedbugs and vultures descended, as apartments crumbled to the ground and no one had the time or money to fight it, or even, really, to notice. And then, one day, the ending is complete. Every renter is evicted en masse, leaving only the landlords and owners—the demented, the aristocratic, the luckiest few. Evie—parentless, sisterless, basically friendless, underemployed—has nothing and no one. Except, she remembers, a second cousin in Texas, in a strange town called Gulluck, where nothing is as it seems. And so, in the surreal, dislodged landscape, beyond the known world, a place of albino cicadas and gardeners and thieves, of cobblers and shoemakers and one very large fish, a place governed by mysterious logic and perhaps even miracles, Evie sets out in search of a home. A wry and buoyant fairy tale set at the apex of the housing crisis, Emily Hunt Kivel’s Dwelling takes us on a hapless hero’s journey to the end of the world and back again. Madcap and magical, hilarious and existential, Dwelling holds a funhouse mirror to our moment—for anyone in search of space, belonging, and some semblance of justice. [Paperback]
"Unlike any novel you will read this year, a story about millennial angst that is also a bewitching fable. Dwelling is social commentary wrapped into a delightful allegory about identity, work, ritual and tradecraft." —Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times
”A book of miracles masked by the mundane, an entertaining antidote to urban ennui that doubles as a survival guide for souls refusing to surrender to the superficiality of their surroundings." —Roberto Ontiveros, Dallas Morning News
"Dwelling, Emily Hunt Kivel's kooky, endearing fairy tale of a debut novel, is interested in the wobbly line between what's real and what's not — and on what could happen in a world that is deeply, invigoratingly made up. Allusions to myths, fables, and riffs on common idioms abound, many of them evocative and quite funny." —Lora Kelley, The New Yorker
>>A serious attempt to remain curious.
A Little Life (10th anniversary collectors’ edition) by Hanya Yanagihara $60
This exclusive 10th anniversary edition features cover artwork by RF. Alvarez and Linus Borgo, painted in response to the book, as well as an exclusive interview of the author by Neel Mukherjee.
When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor. JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world. Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm. And withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself. By midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome — but that will define his life forever. [Hardback]
”This novel challenged everything I thought I knew about love and friendship.” —Dua Lipa