NEW RELEASES (13.5.26)
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.
Seven, Or, How to play a game without rules by Joanna Kavenna $40
Who decides the rules of the games we play? In August 2007, or thereabouts, a young philosopher leaves Oslo, heading for Greece, on a mission to find Theodoros Apostolakis, the head of the Society of Lost Things. Fortunately, Apostolakis isn't lost, but everything else is: ancient libraries, entire civilisations, priceless books and a beautiful box, once used to play the world-famous game of Seven. The hunt for this small thing, among the countless lost things, becomes an absurdist quest through time and space: from the earliest human societies to the advent of AI. Told, shared and mythologised by our narrator, along with a wild cast of dreamers, philosophers, poets, rebels and optimists, Seven is an extraordinary, uplifting journey through an ever darkening world. [Hardback]
"Joanna Kavenna. What a writer." —Ali Smith
"To surrender yourself to the revelations of life and then to come back with the assertions of prose: that is the new heroism of the woman writer, and Kavenna is in the vanguard of it." —Rachel Cusk
"Joanna Kavenna's two decades as a writer have seen her beat a gorgeously unconventional path through a plethora of subjects and genres, from polar exploration to motherhood to economic inequality, and from travelogue to academic satire to technological dystopia." —A K Blakemore, The Guardian
"The most brilliant novel I've read in ages, part academic satire, part philosophy of AI and gaming, all hubris-puncturing wisdom worn with such levity that I was cackling from start to finish." —Adam Rutherford
”Kavenna is a writer of genuine elegance, intelligence and understated emotions. It is encouraging that there are those who still follow the pellucid postmodernism of Italo Calvino." —Stuart Kelly, Spectator
"Philosophical concepts and dizzying speculations on the nature of reality have always featured in Kavenna's novels, but here she ramps up the comedy, interleaving erudite playfulness with characters who are as believable as they are eccentric." —Suzi Feay, Financial Times
"Thoroughly pleasurable." —Camilla Grudova, The Telegraph
>>A madcap journey to the limits of philosophy.
>>The novelists who predicted our present.
Te Kaikaukau | The Swimmer: i te ao o te reo by Witi Ihimaera Smiler $45
Novelist, memoirist and playwright Witi Ihimaera decided, at the age of eighty, to dive back into the water and spend a year full time at Te Wānanga Takiura, immersing himself in his own language, in te reo Māori.
This book tells the story of this kaikaukau, this swimmer, and his year i te ao o te reo — of sinking and floating; of loss and shame, connection and wairua; of fathers and teachers, kuia and friends. A riveting and revealing memoir, Te Kaikaukau | The Swimmer sparkles with whaikōrero and whakataukī and is written for all — Māori and Pākehā, fluent reo Māori speakers and those for whom the language is still a mystery, a dream, an aspiration. It is the story of a Māori New Zealander reclaiming his voice, history and whakapapa in contemporary Aotearoa. Of becoming Witi Ihimaera Smiler and drawing closer to his desire to write a novel in te reo for his beloved father Tom and his tīpuna. [Hardback]
”This personal work of exposure, confession and humility is about learning to stand "at the centre of your own ignorance," becoming a student again in (relatively) old age in order to address one of the key issues of colonisation, the removal of language and its embedded cultural knowledge. When Witi says, ‘I have started at the beginning again,’ it is a rallying call for all of us to overcome our feelings of shame and inadequacy, to take up the challenge of embarking on ‘a new and enthralling journey."' —Paula Morris
”E poho kereru ana ahau i a Witi, i tona kaha, i tona manawaroa, i tona ngakau titikaha hoki ki te u ki te ako i tona reo rangatira. I smiled and laughed, working my way through Witi's new pukapuka in Maori, imagining him standing to present these whakapuaki at Takiura. Witi's stories about his upbringing, his kainga at Waituhi, ona kuia, ona matua, tona tamaititanga, and all of it, in te reo Maori, are a true inspiration. Nana hoki te korero, okea wheketia! Koia kei a koe, e te hoa.” —Hemi Kelly
Troll: A love story by Johanna Sinisalo (translated from Finnish by Herbert Lomas) $28
Angel, a young photographer, comes home to find a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a wounded, helpless young troll. Wanting to protect what he sees as a helpless creature, he takes it in, blissfully unaware of the chaos that awaits. As Angel dives into research on his strange new companion, it becomes clear that the troll has a powerful connection to all of humanity’s most forbidden feelings — and it begins to make Angel cross boundaries he never imagined he would. Beguilingly original and strange, Troll: A Love Story is an unforgettable story of humanity’s relationship to wild things. [Paperback]
”Blame global warming, but trolls are moving out of legend to scavage at the outskirts of Finnish cities. Sinisalos strange and erotic tales peer at the crooked world through a peephole. The troll comes to life after hours, unleashing glittering desires. Is the troll becoming more human (hurt, jealousy), or does he merely reveal our own trollishness?” —Guardian
”An imaginative and engaging novel of urban fantasy. Overlapping narrative voices nicely underscore the moral of Sinisalos ingeniously constructed fable: The stuff of ancient legend shadows with rather unnerving precision the course of unloosened postmodern desire.” —Washington Post
>>Subjective reality.
Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh $38
Calcutta, September 1969. Varsha Gupta wants fish for her lunch. Her family can't understand it; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother. Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychiatrist who has been investigating what are known as 'cases of the reincarnation type' for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations. Half a century later, Varsha's therapeutic case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. And as Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface. Travelling between late-sixties Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel about family, fate and our fragile planet. [Paperback]
”Amitav Ghosh's intellectual panache and serene mastery of form make him one of the last great practitioners of the novel of ideas. Ghost-Eye is the most captivating expression yet of an imagination unfettered by the protocols of the liberal-humanist novel: a novel that explores the very real, if still oddly underexplored, world of the spirit that hundreds of millions of people inhabit simultaneously with its material counterpart.” —Pankaj Mishra
Zines NZ: Punk to present by Bryce Galloway $60
Lo-fi, hand-built and produced in small editions by devoted zinesters, zines are an ever-evolving and enduring publishing phenomenon. This lively book tells the Aotearoa zine story, from our first punk-rock music zine in 1980 to the plethora of contemporary zinefests of the early twenty-first century. Zines NZ: Punk to present is written by a zine devotee and is packed with hundreds of images of zine covers and spreads, most of which charm with lopsided collaged energy and all of which possess a singular vision. Zines are so often ephemeral and elusive, and this book's tribute to so many rich and distinctive voices ensures that their history is not lost. A stunning archive, with full commentaries. [Flexibound]
>>Look inside!
The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin by Alexandra Lapierre (translated from French by Tina Kover) $38
The first novel written about the enigmatic literary legend. Australia, 1901. Just twenty years old and the daughter of struggling bush farmers, Miles Franklin pulls off the impossible-publishing My Brilliant Career, a fiery, fearless debut that takes the English-speaking world by storm. She hides behind a male pseudonym, but when her true identity is revealed, the backlash is swift and brutal. Alone, broke, and undaunted, Miles sails for America. What follows is a wild, inspiring journey: years of activism, deep friendships, exhilarating love affairs, and an unshakable belief in the power of words. From the suffrage movement in Chicago to the cultural salons of Europe, she never stops writing, never stops fighting. Eventually, she returns to Australia — to critics who had written her off — and delivers a dazzling comeback. Today, her name is synonymous with Australia's most prestigious literary awards: the Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize. But behind the legend was a woman fiercely devoted to her freedom, her craft, and her ideals. [Paperback]
Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (translated from German by Philip Boehm) $38
The author of The Passenger's blistering portrait of a divided society that would give way to fascism. Berlin, 1920s: a beacon of culture and hedonism, but a political mess. The streets are crowded with war veterans, beggars, prostitutes and madmen, desperately chasing any means to secure a few marks or a roof over their heads. Come nighttime, a rag-tag group descends on the Jolly Huntsman pub to dance and drown their cares in all the schnapps they can afford. But in this society on the brink, pleasure all too easily erupts into violence. Written when he was twenty-two years old, Boschwitz's first novel displays his extraordinary talent for capturing Germany's self-destruction, which would tragically engulf him only five years later. [Paperback]
”The book's greatest strength is showing, in day-to-day terms an atmosphere in which a fascist government could arise. Many of the novel's concerns overlap with those of the present day.” —Kirkus
”A darkly funny anthropological study of what it is like to be one of the ordinary, little people trapped in an escalating social nightmare.” —Sunday Times
Frostlines: An epic exploration of the transforming Arctic by Neil Shea $39
The Arctic was once a place seemingly frozen in time. Now, while the old cold world can still be glimpsed in the herds of caribou, the hidden lives of wolves, and the hunting skill of an Inupiat elder, there is a new Arctic emerging. Shea begins his journey with the wolves of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, and travels among the Indigenous Netsilingmiut and Tlicho peoples of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. In the Barren Lands, perched on an esker, he watches bears, or Big Men. In Alaska he tracks the patterns of caribou, now shifting after thousands of years of predictability, and in the European Arctic, he explores the new Cold War that is rising between Russia, China, Europe, and the United States over who controls the pole, and who will reap its riches as the ice melts. Frostlines is an expansive yet intimate revelation of the Arctic during a time of crisis, and a journey along the threshold of this stunning and sometimes frightening world. What Shea finds is not one Arctic but many. [Paperback]
”Magnificent and moving. This stunning book — part travelogue, part history, part popular science — will give you a new appreciation for a place, and its people, and how they together are confronting the upheaval of the modern world.” —Steve Brusatte
The Encyclopedia of Ugly Fashion: A hilarious introspective of history’s best worst fashion tends by Karolina Żebrowska $55
Dive into history's forgotten fashion mistakes with this hilarious collection of hideous clothing trends throughout history. Filled with the biggest style flops across the decades, this book is a culmination of fashion history that will make readers ask, what were they thinking? Delivered through the comedic authorial voice of YouTuber and fashion historian Karolina Zebrowska, this book will give readers a peek back in time at looks like Bullet Bras, Calash Bonnets, Sock Garters, and Venetian Stilts. Complete with caricatures from centuries past, Karolina depicts each piece in all its glory, or lack thereof. Through historical context interwoven with comedic quips rooted in her own perspective, each trend is brought back to life. Describing such absurd historical pieces as the Liripipe Hood, her archival, curator lens allows her to analyze not just why people wore what they did, but why it went so wrong. She depicts 18th century dresses ruining silhouettes and 14th century tailed hoods worn as status symbols, all with her acerbic wit and eye for design. With Karolina's fashion expertise and hilarious voice, taking a look at the past's most regrettable fashion trends has never been more fun. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Desperate.
>>The Instagram feed.
Why Look at Animals? by John Berger $30
”As frequent as the calls of animals in a zoo are the cries of children demanding: Where is he? Why doesn't he move? Is he dead?” John Berger broke new ground with his penetrating writings on life, art and how we see the world around us. Here he explores how the ancient relationship between man and nature has been broken in the modern consumer age, with the animals that used to be at the centre of our existence now marginalized and reduced to spectacle. [Paperback]
>>Listen to Berger.
>>A good companion volume to Kate Zambreno’s Animal Stories.
Art Cure: The science of how the arts transform our health by Daisy Fancourt $40
Many of us consider making and consuming art to be a hobby, or even a luxury. But what if arts engagement — from classical music to salsa, poetry to pop concerts, galleries to graffiti — was in fact one of our most powerful tools for unlocking health and happiness? What if art could help you live longer - and even save your life? Fancourt reveals the life-changing power of the arts — Songs support the architectural development of children's brains. Creative hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Visual art and music act just like drugs to reduce depression, stress, and pain. Dance build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theatre decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body. Art helps us not only to survive, but to thrive and flourish. Informed by the results of decades of scientific studies, Art Cure explains why the arts — alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature — are the forgotten fifth pillar of health, and gives you the tools to write your own 'arts prescription'. [Paperback]
”This rigorously researched, scientifically informed book is a revelation. It could not be more timely, nor make a stronger, more urgent case for placing the arts at the centre of our communities.” —Melvyn Bragg
>>Other books short-listed for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
>>Means and ends.