NEW RELEASES (1.9.26)

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Life of M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. ”A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.” The film star M is one of the most recognisable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away. Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths — about the very experience of living — might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M? In this astonishing novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotised, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world. [Paperback]
>>The confessions of Rachel Cusk.
>>Unhappy cosciousness.
>>Tight lipped.
>>Biogossip.
>>Join our online discussion on 13 October!

The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances by Terri Te Tau $38
A remarkable debut novel that follows one close-knit Māori community and the Wairarapa forest they are fighting to restore. Tīria is a revolutionary scientist—or so she likes to think. Her work at the whānau-led Kōpuaranga Research Centre has transformed the valley’s reforestation efforts. But not everyone is convinced that genetically edited cats belong in the ngahere. While Tīria juggles disciplinary hearings and romantic field trips, her best friend Lydia is left trying to hold the hapori together. When human remains are found in a nearby cave, the valley is drawn into speculation. What begins as an isolated discovery soon reveals unsettling ties to the 1800s, when the region’s ecological devastation first began. As rumours spread and tensions escalate, Lydia and Tīria are pulled into a history that promises to redefine not only the research centre, but the future of the community and the forest they call home. [Paperback with French flaps]
“This is a real deal Māori sci-fi thriller dripping in small-town charisma, rongoā, and twists. Terri Te Tau somehow manages to prove, with eye-watering brains and a bit of Indigenous futurism, that the highest technology in the cosmos truly is our whakapapa.” —Coco Solid
“Ethereal and intelligent, it beautifully captures a sense of time that’s grounded in te ao Māori.” —Lauren Keenan
“A celebration of ecology and love. An unputdownable environmental epic of time travel, mana whenua, and entanglement—at once intimate and hilarious, with characters that are now wrapped around my heart. Terri Te Tau is an extraordinary talent. The world needs this stunning debut right now.” —Laura Jean McKay

Sea Now by Eva Meijer (translated from Dutch by Anne Thompson Melo) $42
The catastrophe that everyone knew was coming has arrived — the dykes are breached, the tideline rises a kilometer a day, and the citizens of the Netherlands are forced into gyms and shelters in Germany and Belgium. The foxes and rabbits head inland across the dunes. The politicians make empty speeches and fret the optics. The Hague — ‘the center of peace and justice’ — slips beneath the rising water. Online retailers do flash sale promotions on disaster kits. There is violence and looting, but some people are too tired to start over again and simply walk into the rising tide. Not willing to simply move on, three women get into a small boat and ride back out over the flooded cities, looking for loved ones they know are likely drowned. On the way, they witness a world retaken by seabirds, whales, and kelp forests. The sea has spoken, and there's nothing left to be done but listen. Philosopher and cross-species linguist Eva Meijer's new novel redefines both nature writing and climate fiction by bringing the power and resilience of the natural world to the fore. [Paperback with French flaps]
Broadening both the scope of the novel and the bounds of our understanding and empathy. What sets Sea Now apart from other recent climate fiction, however, is its decentering of the human perspective. It asks us to think more broadly than we are accustomed, to take the time to imagine the lives of rabbits and fish, and to wonder what the sea might feel.' —Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders
'Sea Now unfolds from both broad and intimate perspectives with a voice that, in Anne Thompson Melo's translation, is delightful and terrifying in its simplicity. It isn't just a human story, but one of overfished fishes learning not to be afraid; of shellfishes, birds, rabbits, and 'sea-being'; of horses discovering that 'what they mean by freedom is the seaweed that moves inside you'; of whether, like mussels and octopuses, 'the sea dreams'. In its regard for other-than-human Earthlings, Sea Now joins Meijer's rich oeuvre of novels and philosophical meditations on multispecies coexistence. One could read this novel as the story of two characters — the Netherlands and the sea — posing a question of each other: What am I? What and who is ‘the Netherlands’? What and who is ‘the sea’? The first question implicates uncomfortable stories of value: Who determines the status quo that decides who or what (a foreigner?, a painting?) deserves to be saved, who or what (a US-trained scientist?, the Dutch language?) would count as a loss? Meijer's prose, in Melo's hands, flows quietly with a consistent bittersweetness, and the novel's pervasively dreamlike quality underscores the true horror of this entirely realistic scenario.' — Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Asymptote
>>How the sea might speak.
>>Allowing things to be ambiguous.

Event Horizon by Balsam Karam (translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel) $45
Seventeen-year-old Milde is from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich, where mothers and daughters, banished from society, make their living — without rights, access to care, or legal status. But Milde refuses to accept the order of things and, together with some friends, she revolts against the government's injustice. Arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, Milde is eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or, as part of an experiment, to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass. She chooses the Mass, opting to face its fathomless depth and loneliness rather than hurt the morale of her weary allies back home. Collapsing and expanding myth and reality, Event Horizon is an exquisite existential work of speculative fiction, dark as deep space, woven with reflections on exile, oppression, solidarity, trauma, and loss. [Paperback]
‘If you ever wonder why fiction matters, read this radiant and defiant book. Nothing confronts the realities of our world more powerfully than a story willing to imagine and extrapolate them so fully. That this vision is readable – bearable, even – is only because it is written with such love, care and formal brilliance in both voice and structure.’ —Samantha Harvey
‘Balsam Karam’s Event Horizon is a parable for our times. With the power of myth and the lyricism of an epic poem, the novel grapples with so much of what we are witnessing around us across the globe: oppression, torture, migration, division and humans having to negotiate impossible bargains. This philosophical and existential novel had me gripped from beginning to end. Karam’s voice – urgent and essential – penetrates deep and will stay with me.’ —Joanna Pocock
‘Balsam Karam writes from the fringes of space, the frothing sea, the borders of despair and state-enforced terror. Her prose shines like glass. Fabulistic and dreamy, it lingers long past first reading. Event Horizon exposes the serrated edge of girlhood, plunging into the black holes that consume rebels and outsiders.’ —Momtaza Mehri
‘Event Horizon reminds us that the revolution is always already over and has always not yet begun. It is a moving, domestic novel about how to make a home and a life while displaced and oppressed, and about what might endure when you are forced to leave it for good.’ —Samuel Fisher
>>Inside the Outskirts.
>>The exiled writer.
>>Also available in this edition.

The Tunnel by William H. Gass $67
The Tunnel, William H. Gass's colossal second novel, thundered onto the literary scene after three decades at the typewriter. Hailed by many as an indisputable masterpiece, reviled by others as a suffocating and overwhelming experiment, The Tunnel has been voraciously studied by readers ever since. The story of a middle-aged history professor who, upon nearing completion of his magnum opus, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany, finds himself implicated in his own research, and begins to write a parallel work of history: his own life's story. Fearing that someone might find these confessional pages, he begins to dig a tunnel out from beneath his home in an attempt to hide, or escape, from the past that he has so diligently catalogued. The Tunnel is many things: an awe-inspiring and apocalyptic novel that reckons with the accumulating brutality of the twentieth century; a mirror, asking readers to confront their own potential for darkness; and the crowning achievement by one of America's great prose stylists. [Paperback]
"The Tunnel is maddening, enthralling, appalling, coarse, romantic, sprawling, bawling. The rhythmic pressure of its language is seductive and bears along ever-interesting images and ideas. So much stuff in this novel! We revel in the sheer glory of Mr. Gass's phenomenal prose style, his unflagging energy, in a prose that seems to embrace and swallow everything and make all things live with interest." —Robert Kelly, New York Times Book Review
"Gass allows his narrator to make a world within words, for the concerns of this novel's prose re both poetic and encyclopedic. Gass's prose is musical and inventive" —Philip Graham, Chicago Tribune
"Each paragraph, each sentence, every clause, every phrase, has been burnished breathless, willfully wrought, stippled stark, with an obsessiveness bordering on Brodskey baroque. The eye can't rest, nor the mind mist. Gass has written a splendid, daunting, loathsome novel." —John Leonard, Nation
>>Wilfully written.

Te Onehaumako by Zeb Tamihana Nicklin $30
This is a young adults novel in te reo Māori where we follow the story of Tawa, an inquisitive teenager. With a time-travelling shed located in his garden, Tawa takes a trip through time visiting ancient days, where he meets Mauwhare and his grandmother. Thoughout the story, Tawa meets ancestors and paramount chiefs and soon realises there might be more to his grandmother and Mauwhare than meets the eye. Packed with excitement and unexpected turns along the way, Tawa discovers connections he couldn’t have imagined from the past that impact his world today. The storyline of Te Onehaumako is unpinned by the signficance of mahinga kai, mahi maara and mahi whenua – Māori food cultivation practices and gardening. These practices continue to gain prominence as the knowledge relating to the Māori lunar calendar. [Paperback]
Winner NZSA Best First Book Award at the 2026 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
”Ko Te Onehaumako he pukapuka kua tuhia katoatia ki te reo Māori. He pūrākau whakaoho hirikapo e aro pū ana ki te ao o te rangatahi. Ka mau ngā whatu o te kaipānui ki ngā whārangi o te puka nei. He ngāwari te whai hononga ki ngā kiripuaki nā te ngahau o ngā nuka reo. Waihoki, e kaha whakatauira ana a Te Onehaumako i ngā mātāpono me ngā tikanga hei ārahi i te taiohi i tēnei ao hurihuri. He pukapuka whakahirahira a Te Onehaumako e whakakao ana i ngā kawenga tiaki i te taiao me te ānamata o te tangata.”
”Te Onehaumako, written entirely in te reo Māori, is an original and thought-provoking novella aimed at young adult readers. The engaging story pulls in readers from the start, and sustains their interest throughout with thoughtful pacing, relatable characters and clear themes. It follows a heartfelt journey of discovery, gently guiding readers to understand that to truly thrive, we must respect, nurture, and protect the natural world. Te Onehaumako is an important book that will spark meaningful conversations about sustainability and our shared environmental responsibilities.” — judges’ citation

Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland by Lavinia Greenlaw and William Morris $27
Morris's intimate journals, written for a friend, unconsciously explore questions of travel, noting his reaction to the idea of leaving or arriving, to hurry and delay, what it means to dread a place you've never been to or to encounter the actuality of a long-held vision. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw draws out these questions as she follows in the footprints of Morris's prose, responding to its surfaces and undercurrents, extending its horizons. The result is a new and composite work, which brilliantly explores our conflicted reasons for not staying at home. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Morris's journals... are precious and unique because they are so simply and beautifully written with the informed sense of wonder of a deeply learned and sophisticated man. No one except Ruskin has ever put the case for beauty with such vehemence and clarity." —Guardian
"Greenlaw has brilliantly found a new form for writing about Morris, and for this we can only be grateful." —Tony Pinkney

The Illuminated Man: Life, death and the worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan $55
This book is about J. G. Ballard. This book is also about death, love and time travel. J. G. Ballard possessed one of the most astonishing imaginations of our age, and he had an intense and turbulent history: a childhood spent in the encroaching shadow of World War II, teenage internment in a Japanese prison camp - an experience famously fictionalised in Empire of the Sun. Ballard's novels are among the finest and most unusual fiction that has ever been published. Whether in the hyper-surrealism of High Rise or the erotic violence of Crash, he upended the morality and reality of our world. Christopher Priest knew many of Ballard's friends and colleagues personally. As a young writer, it had been Ballard's stories, most of all, that had helped cement his passion for science fiction. With much of their early work published in the same magazines, Priest knew about Ballard's world from the inside. He set out to write a biography that would make people understand what he already knew: that J. G. Ballard wasn't just a cult writer — he was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. In 2024, Christopher died. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had metastasised into the bones, the same disease that killed J. G. Ballard — the man whose biography he'd spent his last months working on. When Nina and Christopher first met, they bonded over their love for Ballard's writing, rereading his novels and stories together many times. When it became clear that Christopher would not have time to finish this biography, Nina promised him that she would complete it, patching together with her own voice the gaps that remained. If the book began as a tribute from Priest to Ballard, it is now also a love story written by Nina for Christopher. With access to never-before-seen material, The Illuminated Man explores the history and themes of Ballard's life and — with Ballardian strangeness — celebrates and mourns for those that are gone. This is the story of two deaths, three science fiction writers and one attempt to turn back time. [Hardback]
”The best account yet of the life of one of the great English-language writers of the last century. Exemplary in detail and analysis, The Illuminated Mind is a page-turning portrait of an author whose work feels more bracingly relevant than ever.” —The New World
”A deft and necessary negotiation through the lives and masks of a writer fated to become an adjective. Twinned narratives intertwine as biographical pursuit invades and informs the complex journey of the pursuers. Legends of the master myth-maker are interrogated, confirmed and sometimes challenged. An engaging and frequently moving tribute to a writer honouring his self-imposed task to the last breath.” —Iain Sinclair
”J.G. Ballard was one of the five or six genuinely contemporary UK writers of the mid-to-late 20th Century, and perhaps the only one with a completely individual internal landscape, a fully achieved escape velocity from the UK literary establishment as then comprised, and a genuine appetite for writing into the vast social, political and scientific shifts of the century. His awareness was broad yet finely tunable; his conclusions were always his own. He wanted to be aware of the real time in the universe. All of this is noted and developed in Chris Priest and Nina Allan's biography of Ballard. Exciting, too, to see a major UK publisher investing in an unconventional turn on an often stale and trudging genre. Ballard and Priest would both have enjoyed the challenge The Illuminated Man represents to our idea of how a biography should comport itself.” —M. John Harrison

The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin $37
'And try to breathe, man. You gotta remember to breathe. You won't get so panicky if you can remember that.' Eddie Wilkens runs his own house-painting business. Forty-something and living alone, he just wants to take life one day at a time. When his eight-year-old neighbour, Russell, starts hanging around, Eddie sees that this small kid — with his single mother working nights and his violent older brother — is struggling to keep his head above water, and so tries to help. Equal parts heart wrenching and uplifting, The Left and the Lucky is a portrait of this unusual friendship — the ways hurt shatters people and the compassionate acts that can, maybe, hold some of those pieces together. [Paperback]
'Vlautin's characters are a vast chorus of broken hearts, reaching for grace.' —Colin Walsh
'No one writes with such empathy and insight as Willy Vlautin.' —Benjamin Myers
'Vlautin writes about people overlooked by society and overlooked by literature.' —Ann Patchett
>>There’s a lot of luck involved in life.

Plant Fiend by Peter Butler $40
In this memoir Peter Butler explores his relationship with plants, which have always been both a love and a refuge. In the mid 1970s he and his then partner purchased 90 acres of dense rainforest in Golden Bay’s Aorere Valley. Living amongst the nīkau and rātā developed his passion for forest plants but it was gold-mining that helped finance his experimentation with commercial crops. He started with subtropical fruit, before becoming one of New Zealand’s first certified organic kiwifruit growers. When the wet climate and marketing issues put an end to the kiwifruit, growing cannabis was his next venture. It also did not end well for him. Wanting a high value but legal crop to grow, Peter then researched the medicinal properties of New Zealand native plants. The plant with the best supporting science was horopito, one of the world’s oldest flowering plants. His plantation of horopito now covers several hectares and the resulting business, Forest Herbs Research, has developed products utilising the plant’s powerful anti fungal properties. Peter also helped grow a large online retailer of natural health and skincare products, HealthPost, based in Collingwood and owned by him and his family. [Paperback]

Te Anuhe Tino Hiakai nā Eric Carle, nā Brian Morris i whakamāori $20
A sturdy die-cut board-book edition of Eric Carle’s classic children’s book, translated into te reo Māori.