NEW RELEASES (25.10.26)

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.

End Times Fascism, And the fight for the living world by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor $40
The far right is on the march again — but this time it's different. A new, apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is on the move. They're united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, and they welcome a future of shocks, scarcity and collapse, convinced they'll be among the saved on the other side. In this blistering reckoning with our age, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take us deep into this man-made Armageddon complex — and show us how to resist it. Around the globe, they investigate how those who are making our world unliveable are preparing to protect themselves from the fallout, whether it's by repairing to luxurious private islands, or bunkering nations against a dehumanised 'other'. If we're to meet this critical moment and defend what's left of democracy before it's smashed up beyond repair, Klein and Taylor argue, we must break the doom loop, and tell a story not of end times — but of better times. [Paperback]
"Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor are a powerful duo who embody in their own collaborations the kind of solidarity we all require. They show how one can find the formulations that touch the suffering and the aspirations of those who are looking for language, connection, and a life-affirming vision of the world. Their analysis of contemporary fascism is grounded and convincing — and I love the explosion of language that comes from their conversations, their passion, and their insistence that we make a vibrant common life on earth that reverses climate catastrophe and affirms social and economic equality." —Judith Butler
>>Our mission is clear.
>>Extreme wealth has a deranging effect.
>>A.I. is a fascist idea.
>>The fightback starts here.

Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick $33
An intrepid, galvanising mediation on illness, disability, feminism, and what it means to be alive. In 1995 Alice's mother collapsed with pneumonia. She never fully recovered and was eventually diagnosed with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then Alice got ill. Their symptoms mirrored their mother's and appeared to have no physical cause; they received the same diagnosis a few years later. Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography and literary nonfiction to uncover both of their case histories, and branches out into the records of ill health that women have written about in diaries and letters. Their cast of characters includes Virginia Woolf and Alice James, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin's lost love Rose la Touche, the artist Louise Bourgeois and the nurse Florence Nightingale. Suffused with a generative, transcendent rage, Alice Hattrick's genre-bending debut is a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness. [Paperback with French flaps]
'Ill Feelings is a deeply personal and deeply political reckoning with the nature of illness, inheritance, time, silence, bodies and invisibility. Alice Hattrick offers both a radical redefinition of the dominant narratives surrounding health and pain, and the knowledge we need in order to name, understand and resist them. Hattrick has found a voice and form which open up new and exciting possibilities for writing the self and making sense of the collective past: I read this remarkable book with outrage, fascination and immense admiration.' —Francesca Wade
'I love the quality of attentiveness that Alice Hattrick brings to their poised and pointillistic exploration of the mysterious aetiologies and affects of chronic fatigue. They excel in listening out for echoes and whispers, their narrative of illness wriggling into uncomfortable places that medicine dismisses or ignores. Their book makes you pause to think - and rethink - page by page.' —Marina Benjamin
'Ill Feelings defies neat conclusions as well as easy categorization of the book itself, so that attempting to describe it here seems like misdiagnosis, and to try and name the paradox at its heart seems like a betrayal of its rewards. But the thrill of Alice Hattrick's writing stems from its struggle to be free of its constraints, communicating with unspooling fury the mutability of lived experience rather than presuming to define it. In doing so, they remind us that the undefined — our own ill feelings — reveals not weakness so much as our inherent capacity for resistance.' —Olivia Sudjic
>>To yourself and for yourself.
>>Crashing.
>>Fresh and gorgeous.

Girlbeast by Cecilie Lind (translated from Danish by Hazel Evans) $38
Girlbeast is a fearless, unsettling, and poetic reimagining of the Lolita narrative, where power shifts unpredictably, and desire and coercion become indistinguishable. In a world that fetishises girlhood, it asks whether a girl be blamed for internalising the roles imposed upon her? Can she wield her youth as power in a system designed to render her powerless? With sharp, fast-paced prose and an addictive plot, Cecilie Lind crafts a daring examination of female agency, sexuality, and the complexities of consent. The novel evokes the idea of the girl as animal — a creature conditioned to be both docile pet and wild beast, torn between submission and rebellion, innocence and desire.Brave, provocative, and unflinching, Girlbeast is a gripping, vital novel for our times. [Paperback]
”Girlbeast is a fever dream of a novel that put a knot in my stomach. A provocative, vulgar and tender fable about the uneasy ruin of girlhood.” —Lucy Rose
>>I wasn’t a sun.

We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (translated from Spanish by Robin Myers) $28
Written in beautiful, surprising, vegetal prose as if written by the rainforest in which it is set rather than by a human hand, this novel incants to life Antonio de Erauso, a real figure from the Spanish conquest of South America, a trans man disgusted with religion and authority, hiding in the jungle with two Guarani girls he has rescued from slavery. Only in the jungle, where the categories imposed by human understanding are in flux, can transformation and liberation be effected. [Now in paperback]
”A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezon Camara's historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the heart of a pyre.” —Financial Times
”Sumptuously translated by Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling is strikingly relevant to the present day. Cabezon Camara uses history to illuminate and interrogate threats to trans representation and, in parallel, to interrogate the enduring, humanising effects of colonisation. An epic in miniature; mercurial tale for all time.” —Irish Times
”So sharp, so urgent, so brave. Gabriela Cabezon Camara is one of the most authentic voices writing in Spanish today, and among her many talents is one that's especially hard to find: not only does she challenge and incite us, not only does she confront the darkness, but she also gives us in return the subversive courage to think of ourselves as more human, more alive, and more luminous than ever.” —Samanta Schweblin
>>Read an extract.
>>The germ and the translation.
>>The importance of representation.
>>Writing like a river.
>>Letting the jungle win.

Essays Two: On Proust, translation, foreign languages, and the city of Arles by Lydia Davis $35
Each deisplaying Lydia Davis’s precision of language and acuity of perpception, the essays in this volume focus on the art of translation, the learning of foreign languages through reading, and her experience of translating, amongst others, Flaubert and Proust, about whom she writes with an unmatched understanding of the nuances of their styles. Davis’s account, for instance, of learning Norwegian Bokmål by reading Dag Solstad’s ‘Telemark Novel’ — with no external assistance — is entirely compelling, and filled with revelations of how language works. [Now in paperback]
'Precise, concentrated, lyrical. No one writes like Lydia Davis, and everyone should read her.' —Hanif Kureishi
’A writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert, and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust.' —Ali Smith
’Essays Two is a guide to new dimensions of thought. Davis makes translation seem like a sublime exercise of mind and self.’ —The Boston Globe
”Whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising. Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process of translation. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader. A book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels."‘ —Molly Young, New York Times

The Expansion Project by Ben Pester $28
Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing — its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at 'bring your daughter to work day'. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work. Because Capmeadow is expanding in unexpected ways, a Liaison Officer becomes the central focus for complaints about how the expansion is impacting the lives of the employees — unexpected buildings, years-long business days, cursed farmers' markets, and corridors of the mind are draining the life from Tom and everyone he works with. Years pass, and Tom remains at the company, convinced he is in the presence of his now adult daughter. But has he judged it correctly? And can anything go back to the way it was? [New paperback edition]
”A tour de force in surrealist comedy: fresh, sublime and eerie. He could be described, in part, as a comic descendant of J.G. Ballard. Pester is a talented writer of the surreal. A novel about dislocation that feels dislocating. It should serve as an ominous warning to us all.” —Camilla Grudova
”Pester's deceptively lucid prose mocks office platitudes but also gets to the crux of the loneliness and alienation bred by corporate language and spaces.. With a steely commitment to its outlandish form and plot, Pester's novel is as nebulous, mind-bending and delightfully strange as the workplace it describes.” —Observer
>>I am made entirely of wood.
>>Also from Ben Pester: Sail Away Land.

The Urban Activity Book: 99 ideas for nature activities in urban spaces around Aotearoa New Zealand by Rachel Haydon, illustrated by Pippa Keel Situ $35
Nature isn't just found in forests, on beaches, in rivers or on faraway mountains. It's right here, living with us in our gardens, on our windowsills and in the cracks of a footpath. The Urban Activity Book centres outdoors fun and learning within the urban environments of Aotearoa New Zealand with a view to making this series (The Nature Activity Book and The Beach Activity Book) even more accessible for tamariki living in our cities and towns. The 99 activities are designed to connect with nature in unexpected ways, to inspire young people to get outside and explore their community and urban environments, from experiments and observation to conservation and mindfulness. Written by a children's learning expert, all sorts of learning styles are recognised, with each activity being open to children who like to draw and those who like to write. The book's journal-like format and activities that range across the seasons make it a long-term and much treasured companion. Mātauranga Māori concepts and the theme of nature connectedness are an integral part of the activities. [Paperback]
>>Look inside!

Thyme to Cook: Grow and cook real food at home by Emma Galloway $60
From cookery writer Emma Galloway, author of My Darling Lemon Thyme, A Year in My Real Food Kitchen and Every Day comes a new title full of fabulous simple recipes — all vegetarian, flavour-packed and gluten-free. In a development from her earlier books, this one contains a Gardening 101 section on planting a kitchen garden — prep, seed sowing, saving seeds and harvesting. There are also simple planting guides to a range of vegetables — peas, beans, chillies, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, capsicum and more — for any size garden, from containers to full-sized garden beds. And then she shows you how to use these vegetables to make delicious, simple, nourishing meals! [Hardback]
'A treasure trove of a book — an approachable and very beautiful guide to growing your own food and easy and original ways to cook and eat it.' —Anna Jones
>>Look inside!

Data Empire: How information shaped human history by Roopika Risam $40
The first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant. From clay tablets to the algorithmic state, this groundbreaking 11,000-year global history argues that information has always been the seed of power. Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilisation in Mesopotamia, rulers pressed marks into clay to keep track of land, people and grain. To rule, they had to keep count. It is no accident, then, that the first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant. As ships and navigation expanded our horizons, a new age of European empires took control of more than 80 per cent of the world's surface, using censuses, maps and ledgers to decide who belonged, who owed, and who could be sacrificed. Today, we live in the third great era, when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable — yet from targeted advertising to border policing and mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives. Drawing on stories from ancient cave markings and knotted strings to colonial record-keeping and the algorithmic state, Data Empire reveals how data has always been the seed of power — a technology of control that has shaped civilizations and upheld empires. Provocative, humane and sweeping in scope, it asks us to recognise the power data has always held — and to imagine what resistance looks like in an age defined by it, so that we might remake the modern world for the benefit of all. [Paperback]
”Here is the new history of mankind demanded by our times. We can understand our past, going all the way back to our emergence as a species, as a struggle over data. Data used to turn into power through intermediates like money and politics, but now it does so more directly. Humanity was forced to enact reforms to make money and politics survivable. This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something.” —Jaron Lanier
>>The Empire of Information.
>>Excavating colonial data cultures.

Edward Gorey 1000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle $45
All of Gorey’s characters inhabit a uniquely enigmatic world, where the lamentable frailties of existence are humorously assuaged by the hopeful delights of fantasy. You need this. Completed size: 75 x 50cm. [Boxed]
>>Other jigsaw puzzles.