NEW RELEASES (10.9.26)

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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.