NEW RELEASES (11.6.26)

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.

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa $60
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place best: insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them — and in one figure in particular — she may find meaning, solace, rage; her own salvation, perhaps, or her own vanishing? A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds — past and present, imagined and real — to make something lasting and new: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth. From the author of A Ghost in the Throat. [Hardback]
”The effect is electric, like seeing a ghost returned to life.” —New Statesman
”Obliterates every clear definition of genre and form. Astounding and utterly fresh.” —Irish Independent
”Lush, lyrical prose that dazzles readers from the get-go: sumptuous, almost symphonic, in its intensity.” —Sunday Times
”Past versus present, blood versus milk, birth versus death — dichotomies abound, but the questions of women's lived experiences and who history remembers link them all.” —Paris Review
>>Lost voices from the asylum.
>>Grateful to live these days.
>>Or order the paperback (due by the end of June).

Taharaki Skyside by Fiona Pardington $75
Brimming with beauty and loss, Fiona Pardington’s avian portraits resurrect the charisma and wildness of native birds preserved as taxidermy specimens in museum collections. On these pages, her manu are not merely replicated but reborn. Ancestral memory is brought to life under the gaze of photographer Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht). One of Aotearoa’s most powerful contemporary artists, Pardington’s practice captivates audiences with her ability to convey the intangible through exquisitely composed photographs. This new book explores the practice of an artist at the height of her career and reveals the monumental avian portraits she has created for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Essays from Hana O’Regan, Maia Nuku, Andrew Paul Wood, Geoffrey Batchen, Harry Rickit, and Megan Tamati-Quenell. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

The Expansion Project by Ben Pester $38
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?? A dizzying, haunted satire of the late-capitalist workplace. [Hardback]
”A tour de force in surrealist comedy. Fresh, sublime and eerie. Pester is a talented writer of the surreal who could be described, in part, as a comic descendant of J.G. Ballard. A novel about dislocation that feels dislocating. It should serve as an ominous warning to us all.” —Camilla Grudova
”Surreal and unsettling. 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
>>On the business bus.
>>Surreal scrutiny.

Women Without Men: A novel of modern Iran by Shahrnush Parsipur (a new translation from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh) $40
A powerful and essential tale of female freedom. This long-suppressed Iranian novel traces the interwoven destinies of five women — including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a sex worker and a schoolteacher — as they arrive by different paths to live together in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. Drawing on recent Iranian history and transcendent elements of Islamic mysticism, Parsipur's unforgettable novel sees women escaping strict confines of family and society. It is still as pertinent and discerning today as it was when travelling secretly from hand to hand upon its first publication in 1989. Women Without Men was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Some works of fiction move through time, gaining depth with every decade. In Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men, we follow the lives of five women against the background of revolution and coups as they find their way to a garden, shedding their old lives like snakeskin. Parsipur was imprisoned for daring to write about women’s desires, and now lives in exile in America; Women Without Men has been banned in Iran for over three decades. But her layered tales, glittering in a fresh translation, continue to beckon you into a world that is simultaneously scoured by reality, and touched with fable and myth.” —International Booker Prize judges’ citation
”Women Without Men is the best feminist novel I know. It's thrilling, beautiful and hilarious, filled with weird women in transformation and the violent little men desperately trying to control them. I am convinced this novel is in fact a magic trick. Reading it feels like being invited to the rebellious unveiling of an age-old secret. It is both deeply mysterious and clear as water, filled to the brim with undeniable truth.” —Johanne Lykke Holm
"Parsipur is a courageous, talented woman, and above all, a great writer." —Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis
>>Read an extract.
>>An interview with the author and the translator.
>>The book was made into an astounding film by Shirin Neshat.

Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s hidden places and lost memorials by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson $28
A moving meditation on memory and the preservation of Palestinian heritage. Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine — now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories — and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on the small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi Ukkasha mosque and tomb, writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased — and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land. Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today. [Now in paperback]
”Shehadeh is engaged, forensic, alert to history's weight but unwilling to let it crush him. Shehadeh's books are like beacons held up against the darkness of Israeli oppression. Forgotten is perhaps the brightest light of all.” —Observer
”Again and again, I thought of W.G. Sebald as I read Forgotten. The resemblance lies not only in the mournful elegance of the prose but also in its method: a meditative excavation of history embedded in the landscape.” —Guardian

Nostalgia: A history of a dangerous emotion by Agnes Arnold-Foster $30
Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies). It is a fascinating, compelling story of a social and political emotion, vulnerable to misuse, and one that reflects the anxieties of the age. It is also a clear-eyed analysis of what we are doing now, how we feel about it and what we might want to change about the world we live in. [Paperback]
”This absorbing exploration of nostalgia raises questions about its slippery nature, and shows how it has been chillingly deployed in politics, from the cold war to Trumpism.” —Guardian
”Beautifully compact, wide-ranging and enjoyable.” —TLS
”Illuminating.” —Vogue
”With its juicy readability and historical wanderings, Nostalgia evidences the flaws of memory, and how it cherry picks the pleasant elements of the 'good old days'.” —nb.
>>On nostalgia.

Ballot by Anjali Enjeti $23
Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot during one of the most tumultuous political eras in US history, and recounts the astonishing events leading up to the 2024 presidential election. Enjeti lays out the growing challenges for voters in battleground states, where rightwing legislatures have introduced staggering numbers of voter suppression bills and redrawn district lines, all to disenfranchise as many Black and other marginalized voters as possible. As her account of the history and stakes of election integrity shows, the aftershocks of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 have manifested most egregiously on the four corners of the ballot. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Ballot packs detailed information and emotional resonance into few words, and at the same time, the book conveys important and timely insight into the democratic process in the United States. The well-crafted sentences and punchy paragraphs are crucial for emphasizing the importance of voting and the precarious state of the ballot.” —Chicago Review of Books
”Enjeti examines what it means to vote today, and how endangered some of our votes truly are in an era of rising voter suppression, partisan redistricting, and disenfranchisement. Brilliant, humane, and useful.” —Boston Globe
”It is so easy amidst so much of talk of voting to forget what it is to vote. What the right to vote means to you personally and to the country in which you live. Anjali Enjeti has written a moving and brilliant autobiography of her vote that intersects with the history of the right to vote, speaking all the while to the subtext of the times: that bound up in our vote is our lives, and what we mean to each other, our future and our past, our possibilities. I felt a renewed commitment to democracy, and I will reflect on how I didn't know I needed that for some time. I want this book everywhere.” —Alexander Chee
”Anjali Enjeti makes an essential and timely case for voting as a tactic. She welcomes in both skeptics and believers to explain what's at stake when we go to the ballot box and what happens when voting rights are curtailed. A necessary text at this point in human history, I hope that young people especially will read it and that elders will join them.” —Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Bibliophile: Diverse Spines; 500-piece jigsaw puzzle by Jamise Harper and Jane Mount $40
This 500-piece puzzle features art from Bibliophile: Diverse Spines by Jamise Harper (founder of the Diverse Spines book community) and Jane Mount (author of Bibliophile). With over 60 books colorfully illustrated, this puzzle comes with a handy "Where to Start" reading checklist, so you can be inspired to go on your own literary adventure. Puzzle size: 40cm x 61cm. [Served in a book-shaped box]
>>See the completed puzzle.

The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare (translated by Barbara Bray and Jusuf Vrioni) $30
At the heart of the Sultan's vast but fragile empire stands the mysterious Palace of Dreams: the most secret and powerful Ministry ever invented. Its task is to scour every town, village and hamlet to collect the citizens' dreams, then to sift, sort and classify them, and ultimately to interpret them, in order to identify the ‘master-dreams’ that will provide the clues to the Empire's destinies and those of its Monarch. An entire nation's consciousness is thus tapped into and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind. Kadare's ‘Palace of Dreams’ stands as the symbol of the thought-police who have, through history, been the most effective instruments of oppression at the service of dictators. [Paperback edition]
”Kadare's most daring novel, one of the most complete visions of totalitarianism ever committed to paper.” —Vanity Fair
”If there is a book worth banning in a dictatorship, this is it.” —Guardian

Inside the Box: How constrainst make us better by David Epstein $39
We live in a world that gives us seemingly infinite choices and values freedom above all else. We have an unprecedented number of options regarding what to do, who to be and how to spend our time. All that choice is wonderful; it is also overwhelming. The irony is that total freedom can be paralysing, and unlimited resources don't necessarily lead to the biggest breakthroughs. In fact, overvaluing complete freedom can be disastrous for everything from starting a company to harnessing creativity to finding personal satisfaction. David Epstein argues that all of us — individuals, businesses, institutions, even societies — can benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we're working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation. Epstein celebrates the surprising potential of hard deadlines, boring goals, and unexpected obstacles. [Paperback]

The Fluffy Futon by Yuichi Kasano $30
Grandma spreads her newly washed futon to dry in the sun. The futon is so soft and smells so clean! The cat can't resist nestling down for a snooze. Instead of chasing it away, Grandma settles in alongside, soon followed by the hen and her chicks, a little boy, the dog, the goat, and the pig family. Soon the whole household is taking a nap! Until Grandma starts to find the futon so comfy that no one else can fit. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
>>Cosy sleepers!