NEW RELEASES (2.6.23)
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies.
Different for Boys by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Tea Bendix $28
Ant Stevenson has many questions, like when did he stop being a virgin? Are there degrees of virginity? And is it different for boys? Especially for boys who like boys? Ant tries to figure out the answers to his questions as he balances his relationships with three very different boys: Charlie, who is both virulently homophobic and yet close friends with Ant; Jack, whose camp behaviour makes him the target of Charlie's rage; and finally Freddie, who just wants Ant to try out for the rugby team.
"Not content with merely writing a moving coming-out story, Ness has also constructed a postmodern satire of the limitations of the young adult novel. The hormones are crackling and the dynamics within the group twist and turn as they explore their sexuality. Ness is perceptive, plots beautifully and writes like a dream." —Times
>>Look inside!
>>Ness talks about the book.
19 Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica (translated by Sarah Moses) $33
On hearing her neighbour's body plummet on to her patio, a woman's comfortable life seems to split open. A cab driver's perfectly manicured nails may be concealing grisly secrets. A woman whose partner has left her begins to act out an increasingly deranged set of instructions.In these tense, macabre stories, Bazterrica strikes to the dark heart of our desires, fears and fantasies. From the author of Tender Is the Flesh.
”In 19 Claws, Bazterrica resumes the study of the macabre that characterised Tender Is the Flesh. This time, however, the brutality of the female experience is cut through with a dark wit and a heavy dose of the fantastic.” —Guardian
”Gothic and brilliantly grim, these uneasy tales from the author of Tender Is The Flesh are as shadowy as night even in the bright glare of sunshine, as Bazterrica's darkly macabre imagination works like talon and beak, capable of tearing apart everyday situations and transforming them into something horribly chilling.” —Daily Mail
>>”Capitalism and cannibalism are the same.”
A Tidy Armageddon by BH Panhuyzen $38
The world is utterly transformed: every product of human creation has been organised by an unknown hand into a vast grid of nine-story blocks, each comprised of a single item type: watering cans, lighthouses, fake Christmas trees, helicopters, plastic spoons, and everything else Earth's culture and technology have ever produced, stacked in homogenous towers and separated by a maze of passageways. Navigating this depopulated environment, a small contingent of diverse soldiers tries to make sense of this enigmatic apocalypse while desperately searching for survivors. They are led by Elsie Sharpcot, a Cree woman who has endured the military's rampant racism and misogyny, and Dorian Wakely, her PTSD-afflicted second-in-command. Both veterans of the war in Afghanistan, they lead a group of army misfits while they all struggle — against the elements and each other — to survive. Passing with fear and wonder through this museum of human achievement, provisioning themselves from its resources, the group races to outrun the approaching winter and find a home.
"A Tidy Armageddon is a gorgeous, provocative, pitch-perfect conceptual art piece in the literary lineage of Tom McCarthy's Remainder and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was immersed from the first page into a world resembling an enormous and very organised megastore, where capitalism's last breath chastened and delighted me. Had God's hand rearranged all the things just so, or was it an advanced alien civilisation? No, it was BH Panhuyzen in passionate authority presenting me with the end of the world in a way never before imagined. Unforgettable." —Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
"Samuel Beckett meets Stephen King in an absurd and eerie coming-of-end tale that should serve as some sort of warning (but probably won't)." —Peter Darbyshire
>>Read an excerpt.
A is for Art by Sarah Pepperle $30
A joyful alphabet of art from Aotearoa and around the world, curated especially for children! Before children can read, they engage with the language of pictures. The experience of art brings joy and delight to young children, connecting them with moments of beauty and wonder in the world around them. Curated for children aged 2–4, this beautifully designed board book features full-page artworks by acclaimed artists from Aotearoa and around the world, accompanied by short, read-aloud texts. It features artworks in different media, from paintings to sculpture, photography to woodcuts, from the 1700s to the present. This stylish art book is the perfect way to introduce young children to art.
>>Have a look inside this lovely book!
Landfall 245 edietd by Lynley Edmeades $30
POETRY: Evangeline Riddiford Graham, Gregory O’Brien, Philip Armstrong, Nick Ascroft, Rebecca Ball, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Medb Charleton, Janet Charman, Jennifer Compton, Brett Cross, Jodie Dalgleish, Jackie Davis, Mark Edgecombe, Shirley Eng, Alexandra Fraser, Amber French, Tim Grgec, Lincoln Jaques, Paula King, Brent Kininmont, Jackson McCarthy, Maria McMillan, Michael Mintrom, Ruben Mita, Josiah Morgan, Emma Neale, Bill Nelson, Claire Orchard, Lorenz Pöschl, Nafanua Purcell Kersel, Brett Reid, Derek Schulz, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Nicola Thorstensen, Steven Toussaint, Tim Upperton, Nicholas Wright
FICTION: Rebecca Ball, Holly Best, Jonny Edwards, Danielle Heyhoe, Zoë Meager, Annabelle O’Meara, Lisa Onland, James Pasley, Rachel Smith, Rachael Taylor, Phoebe Wright
NONFICTION: Airini Beautrais, Xiaole Zhan
ART: Gavin Hipkins, Amanda Shandley, Anya Sinclair
And announcing the winner of the 2023 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition!
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov (translated by Reuben Woolley) $38
Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea. A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery — among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the ‘anomalies’. Meanwhile, Taras — who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra — is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money. The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with Kurkov's unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait one the world's most intriguing cities.
”A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami.” —Guardian
”A post-Soviet Kafka.” —Daily Telegraph
”A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut.” —Spectator
”This beguiling literary postcard from a recent, now supplanted past brims with the bittersweet charm and rueful satire of the books, such as Death and the Penguin, that established Kurkov's international reputation.” —Financial Times
>>Long-listed for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
>>Read an extract.
>>”I owed Lviv a novel.”
>>A profession that necessarily starts as a hobby.
Monsters: A fan’s dilemma by Claire Dederer $38
Can we—and, if so, should we—separate an artist’s work from their biography? What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it? Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and her own behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same.
”Monsters is an incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time. It's thrillingly sharp, appropriately doubtful, and more fun than you would believe, given the pressing seriousness of the subject matter. Claire Dederer's mind is a wonder, her erudition too; I now want her to apply them to everything I'm interested in so I can think about them differently.” —Nick Hornby
”In a world that wants you to think less — that wants, in fact, to do your thinking for you — Monsters is that rare work, beyond a book, that reminds you of your sentience. It's wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off.” —Lisa Taddeo
Parisian Days by Banine [Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff] (translated by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova) $40
The Orient Express hurtles towards the promised land, and Banine is free for the first time in her life. She has fled her ruined homeland in what is now Azerbaijan and unhappy forced marriage for a dazzling new future in Paris. Now she cuts her hair, wears short skirts, mingles with Russian emigres, Spanish artists, writers and bohemians in the 1920's beau monde — and even contemplates love. But soon she finds that freedom brings its own complications. As her family's money runs out, she becomes a fashion model to survive. And when a glamorous figure from her past returns, life is thrown further into doubt. Banine has always been swept along by the forces of history. Can she keep up with them now? Tanslated into English for the first time.
“ delightful memoir of an eventful life set against the helter-skelter of the 20th century. Banine herself shines through as an intelligent and independent spirit, longing for her own self-determination.” —Financial Times
>>The eventful life of Banine.
>>Also by Banine: Days in the Caucasus.
Sparrow by Hames Hynes $38
Raised in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the waning years of the Roman Empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, the herb-scented garden, then the loud and dangerous tavern, and finally the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes of every ethnic background from the far reaches of the empire – do their mysterious business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world. Through meticulous research and bold imagination, Hynes brings the entirety of the Roman city of Carthago Nova – its markets, temples, taverns of the lowly and mansions of the rich – to vivid life. Sparrow recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity.
”Utterly engrossing, vivid, and honest, this coming of age story reaches across millennia to grab us by the throat.” —Emma Donoghue
”An unnerving, exhilarating, unflinching portrayal of sex, slavery and sisterhood, takes the reader to one the most pitiless backstreets of the Roman Empire in its final years only to discover there — between the violence and the suffering, amid the Decline and the Fall — enduring tenderness and love. This is a novel of ancient times for our times. And it is splendid, a work of scorching distinction.” —Jim Crace
In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on trial by Mona Chollet (translated by Sophie R. Lewis) $25
What remains of the witch hunts? A stubborn misogyny, which still tints the way our societies look at single women, childless women, aging women, or quite simply, free women. Who was historically accused of witchcraft, often meeting violent ends? What types of women have been censored, eliminated, repressed, over the centuries? Mona Chollet takes three archetypes from historic witch hunts, and examines how far women today have the same charges levelled against them: independent women; women who choose not to have children; and women who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing. Finally, Chollet argues that by considering the lives of those who dared to live differently, we can learn more about the richness of roles available, just how many different things a woman can choose to be.
”A thought-provoking, discursive survey by Mona Chollet, a bright light of Francophone feminism . Chollet has emerged as a quiet revolutionary, pushing back against the cliches and the patriarchy that shapes them.” —The New York Times
Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the language of power by Clare Hunter $30
I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that shaped her.
At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In sixteenth-century Europe women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.
”In this charmed feat of imagination and learning, the beauties and disasters of Mary Stuart's life unfold again, and her nimble brain and fingers are alive. It is a personal project, with the flavour of a memoir, but dense with fascinating information that the less inspired might miss. Clare Hunter is at ease in this glittering, alien world, and moves through it as a woman, with Mary's 'joyouestie' in mind as well as her suffering.” —Hilary Mantel
Children of the Rush by James Russell $21
It's 1861, and gold fever is sweeping the world. Otherwise sensible adults have gone mad and will do anything to get their hands on the precious metal. But two children have been caught up in the rush. Michael and Atarangi couldn't be more different, but they share one thing: each has a remarkable and magical talent. Circumstances conspire to bring the children together in the remote and inhospitable goldfields, and they're thrust into a world where lawlessness, greed, and cruelty reign. When the children find out that a cut-throat gang stalks the goldfields, preying upon the innocent, they have a choice to make: turn a blind eye, or fight back?
>>2023 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults — finalist
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng $37
The new novel from the author of The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists. It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert's, comes to stay. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley's friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she sees him as he is — a man who has no choice but to mask his true self. As Willie prepares to leave and face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including how she came to know the charismatic Dr Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China. And more scandalous still, she reveals her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts — a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction. A novel of public morality and private truth, based on real events.
”The House of Doors is brilliantly observed and full of memorable characters. It is so well written, everything so effortlessly dramatised, the narrative so well structured and paced that this is a book that will mesmerise readers far into the future.” —Colm Toibin
”A tremendous feat of literary imagination. Highly evocative, richly observed and entirely convincing, it is a tour de force!” —William Boyd
Sibley Backyard Birding postcards $50
100 postcards featuring beautiful images from David Sibley’s Field Guide to Birds.
>>Like this!
Pod by Laline Paull $38
Ea has always felt like an outsider. As a spinner dolphin who has recently come of age, she's now expected to join in the elaborate rituals that unite her pod. But Ea suffers from a type of deafness that means she just can't seem to master spinning. When catastrophe befalls her family and Ea knows she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave the pod. As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. Not to mention the ocean itself seems to be changing: creatures are mutating, demonic noises pierce the depths, whole species of fish disappear into the sky above. Just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life. Laline Paull explores the meaning of family, belonging, sacrifice — the harmony and tragedy of the pod — within an ocean that is no longer the sanctuary it once was, and which reflects a world all too recognisable to our own. From the author of The Bees.
”Laline Paull succeeds splendidly in rising to the most important literary challenge of our time — restoring voice and agency to other-than-human beings.” —Amitav Ghosh
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Grace (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Allison C. Meier $23
Grave takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Allison C. Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However, graves turn out to be not always so subtle, reverent, or permanent. While the indigent and unidentified have frequently been interred in mass graves, a fate brought into the public eye during the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice today is not unlike burials in the potter's fields of the colonial era. Burial is not the only option, of course, and Meier analyses the rise of cremation, green burial, and new practices like human composting, investigating what is next for the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life.
Contents: 1. The Grave: Our House of Eternity; 2. Navigating Through Necrogeography; 3. The Living and the Dead; 4. The Privilege of Permanence; 5. An Eternal Room of Our Own; 6. No Resting Place; 7. To Decay or Not to Decay; 8. New Ideas for the Afterlife; 9. Dead Space.
>>Other excellent ‘Object Lessons’.