NEW RELEASES (26.2.26)

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.

Mulysses by Øyvind Torseter (translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson) $50
An astonishing, high-adventure graphic novel that playfully remixes The Odyssey, Moby Dick, and more, from the esteemed Norwegian cartoonist. Fresh out of a job, with his apartment slated for demolition and his possessions seized, Mulysses is in need of $5,000—and fast! As luck would have it, he crosses paths just in time with a wealthy collector, who offers him the fortune he seeks if he succeeds in bringing back the world’s biggest eye, fabled to grant its owner enormous power. Like Ulysses, Ishmael, and many others before him, Mulysses takes to the sea in search of both adventure and himself. [Hardback]
"Mulysses plays on the deadpan humor of Moby-Dick and the Cyclops section of the Odyssey... The hero-narrator, a cute mule-like chap who also appears in Torseter's The Heartless Troll and The Hole, reminds me of Tove Jansson's Moomintroll. All this is accomplished with minimalist, scratchy lines, rare patches of color, amusing characters and few words. I can picture an adult reading it with a child and both being happy. Mulysses is an engaging little mash-up that is, thankfully, no mess at all." —New York Times
>>Look inside!

Party Boy by Breton Dukes $35
Marco is stressed. On one hand, he’s a cook in a progressive city bar, a married father of three, doing all he can to raise his boys right. On the other (slightly burnt) hand, his life is chaos. Every day seems full of cruel and unusual obstacles, from temperamental arancini to a car breakdown at the worst possible time. Painkillers and booze can only do so much to protect him from the fallout of his adolescence — the bullying, the fear, the things that were done to him and the things he did. Now his fiftieth birthday is approaching, and all the ghosts of his life are invited to the party. It feels like his last chance, though he isn’t sure for what. [Paperback]
”A novel I’ve been hoping for! Party Boy is a shock of a book about damaged males, about being a father, a husband, a son, an idiot, someone trying to make amends. Somehow it manages to be both pulse-rattling and poetic, and from its daring mix of comedy and terror, what arrives is finally a deeply affecting portrait of a man on the edge.’” —Damien Wilkins
>>Culpability.
>>Emotional toll.

The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch masters by Benjamin Moser $40
Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser found himself visiting — casually at first, and then more and more obsessively — the country's great museums. Beyond the sainted Rembrandt — who harbored a startling darkness — and the mysterious Vermeer, whose true subject, it turned out, was lurking in plain sight, Moser got to know a whole galaxy of geniuses: the doomed virtuoso Carel Fabritius, the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, the deaf prodigy Hendrik Avercamp. Year after year, as he tried to make a life for himself in the Netherlands, Moser found friends among these centuries-dead artists. And he found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that he was. Why do we make art? What even is art, anyway — and what is an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does it mean to fail? The Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to turn them on their heads: to look, and then to look again. This is Holland and its great artists as we've never seen them before. And it's a highly personal coming-of-age-story, twenty years in the making: a revealing self-portrait. Illustrated in colour throughout. [Paperback]
”Moser considers individual lives, life in general and the fragility of all biographies. Unknowns make the knowns shine brighter. Moser relishes strange facts and is attuned to the charisma of his subjects.. This is a meditation on belonging, how we strive to adopt a nation through its art, how we fall in love with a place, its past and foreignness.” —Prospect
”Benjamin Moser's fascinating study of Dutch art and artists is more than the sum of its extraordinary parts. Part memoir, part critical and historical analysis, the book also offers a superb commentary — one of the best I've ever read — on what it means to be displaced in a never entirely whole world, and what it means to see between the cracks. I learned so much reading this fine book, and so will you.” —Hilton Als

This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley $38
After a near-death experience and life-changing injury, twenty-year-old Jago Trevarno goes to stay with his uncle on his small coastal farm a few miles from St Ives in Cornwall. Their existence is a simple one, their lives measured by the span of the days, the rhythms of the seasons and the animals they care for. But lurking in the shadows is local villain, Bill Sligo, who has designs on Jacob's farm and in particular on a field near the cliffs housing a derelict mineshaft. Wanting to repay his uncle's kindness, Jago determines to find out what Bill Sligo is up to. Jago is still vulnerable though, and in pursuing Sligo he delves into a murky world that he is ill-equipped to deal with. How far will Bill Sligo go to get what he wants? Jago doesn't know it yet, but once again he is in grave danger. Beautifully written, spare and elegiac, filled with shafts of light and darkness as well as the beauty and harshness of the Cornish landscape, Jago's journey is one of hope, renewal and resilience as he comes to terms with this, his second life. [Hardback]
”An astonishing account of recovery. The prose is spare and beautiful, the narrative simple but sound — it is as finely wrought as poetry. Jago's distinctive voice emerges, a true and clear and entirely convincing creation, always reaching towards the light and life.” —The Guardian
”A beautifully written, authentic and deeply affecting portrait of adversity, care and hope that will appeal to fans of Benjamin Myers' The Offing and Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These.” —Daily Mail
”An unexpectedly life affirming story woven into the fabric of a thriller.” —Esther Freud
>>The author’s second life.

Against the Machine: On the unmaking of humanity by Paul Kingsnorth $65
novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents an original — and terrifying — account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilisation, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game. It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. Here Kingsnorth reminds us what humanity requires — a healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage; and a deep attention to matters of the spirit. Prophetic and poetic, Against the Machine is a manual for dissidents in the technological age. [Hardback]
”Invigorating. No one can read this refreshingly subversive book and emerge with their world-view intact.” —New Statesman
”A trenchant and terrifying account of what modern people have sacrificed in exchange for technology's promise of power and autonomy.” —The New York Times
”The most powerful and important book I have read in years. This book should be required reading not only for politicians, technocrats, teachers and all who help shape our world, but for every still-living soul in this terrifying age of the Machine.” —Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary

The Year After Kahlia: Surviving, loving, and writing my way through loss by Kirsten O’Connor $35
When Kahlia O’Connor died by suicide at twenty-four, her world stopped. What followed wasn’t healing; it was survival, raw and unfiltered. The Year After Kahlia is a memoir of love that refuses to fade, and a mother learning how to keep breathing in a world her daughter no longer inhabits. It speaks honestly about grief, suicide, motherhood, and what it takes to re-enter life after it’s fallen apart. Told with startling clarity and fierce love, it’s both a companion and a call for truth — to speak openly about what hurts and to remember what still matters. [Paperback]
“This book is a much-needed companion for when the unthinkable happens. With raw honesty and immense compassion, Kirsten shares the devastating loss of her daughter and the disorienting year of grief that followed. The Year After Kahlia offers solace and permission to those who grieve: there is no right way, no linear path, no fixing required. ” —Chameli Gad
>>How was the world continuing?
>>Further resources.

My Friend May by Julie Flett $35
I'd like to tell you a rather true story about a big black cat. Her name was May. Margaux and her cat May became friends when Margaux was just six years old. They grew up together, sharing countless memories along the way. But one day, May is late coming home. Where is May? Is she under the porch? Maybe on the roof? Margaux's nitsis (the Cree word for auntie) helps search for May in the tall grass. But soon nitsis needs to leave: she's moving away to the big city, and has to pack her things into boxes. Margaux helps nitsis, but she can't take her mind off May. Will she ever return? nitsis is worried, too. But little do they know, May has a surprise in store for both of them! This beautifully illustrated and heartwarming story with a surprise happy ending invites readers to share their own cat stories. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

Videotape by Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy $23
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowed the seismic cultural shifts to come after the Cold War. In the West, its advent deepened the trends of the age — individualism, consumerism, the fragmentation of society, and the consolidation of corporate power in the entertainment industry and its victory over the regulatory powers of the state. In the East, it encouraged new forms of socialization and economic exchanges, while announcing the gradual crumbling of government control over the imagination of the people. By the mid-1990s, the VHS format was displaced by the DVD. The DVD would eventually give way to streaming. Yet the cultural legacy of the videotape continues to inform our relationship to technology, privacy, and to entertainment. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Other titles in the excellent ‘Object Lessons’ series.

The Only Cure: Freud and the neuroscience of mental healing by Mark Solms $40
Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind — outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivalling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well? Perhaps because one of the most controversial figures in psychology was right all along. Neuroscience now confirms much of what Sigmund Freud conjectured over a century ago: our deepest struggles stem, not from chemical imbalances, but from buried memories and unconscious conflicts that no pill can touch. Using case studies and cutting-edge brain science, neuroscientist Mark Solms makes the case that psychoanalysis should resume its position as our master theory of the mind. Yet modern research also reveals where Freud got important things wrong. Could correcting these errors make therapy even more effective?As psychiatric diagnoses soar and standard treatments continue to fail many patients, The Only Cure offers a real science of healing, rooted in the radical idea that our suffering arises from truths we haven't yet faced. [Paperback]
”This is an extraordinary book on so many different levels. It's a dramatic history of psychoanalysis, a reassessment of Freud, a fascinating and moving autobiography, and a compelling argument for rethinking the place of feelings and subjectivity within the framework of science. And hence it's also about caring, and nurture — and love. How minds change is the question at the centre of this book. It's changing mine.” —Brian Eno
”Solms made a really compelling case that the origin of consciousness is with feelings, not thoughts. Feelings are the language in which the body talks to the brain. I'm convinced.” —Michael Pollan

A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the rise of the Mafia, and the struggle for Italy’s soul by Caroline Moorehead $40
Corruption, sleaze and violence were woven into the fabric of twentieth-century Sicilian life, as the Mafia rose to dominance; this is the story of one man who stood in opposition. In 1986, the largest Mafia trial in Italy's history took place in Sicily. The maxi-processo saw 471 men and 4 women take the stand, accused of kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and many thousands of murders. Sitting in the galley was Leonardo Sciascia, then aged sixty-five. One of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century, he had published the first Mafia novel, The Day of the Owl, in 1961, and was widely seen by Italians as a true moral figure in a country where corruption had seeped into every corner of public and private life. Sciascia was born in 1921 and came of age as the Mafia grew to prominence across Sicily. Widespread poverty and hardship following the First World War meant that many Sicilians no longer recognised Rome's leadership, which had left a void for local gangsters to fill. Witnessing the scale of corruption and violence, Sciascia predicted it would soon spread north, and he was right- by the 1980s, the Mafia had infiltrated every level of Italian politics and grown into an international, highly successful business. [Paperback]
”Sciascia is the noblest of Italian novelists, and in this magnificent and deeply affecting biography, Caroline Moorehead has given a full account of him, his people, his island, his tragic times.” —Philip Hensher

Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski $95
From the author of House of Leaves comes this much-anticipated 1200-page novel about two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter. While folks still like to focus on the crimes that shocked the small city of Orvop, Utah, back in the fall of 1982, not to mention the trials that followed, far more remember the adventure that took place beyond municipal lines. For sure no one expected the dead to rise, but they did. No one expected the mountain to fall either, but it did. No one expected an act of courage so great, and likewise so appalling, that it still staggers the heart and mind of anyone who knows anything about the Katanogos massif, to say nothing of Pillars Meadow. As one Orvop high school teacher described that extraordinary feat just days before she died, Fer sure no one expected Kalin March to look Old Porch in the eye and tell him: You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards. [Hardback]
"This is an amazing work of fiction. I absolutely loved it. At the heart you'll find a blood-drenched story of pursuit and two brave and resourceful children. But there's so much more. I immersed myself. Have never read anything like it." —Stephen King
"An authentic western epic. A maximalist canvas of intricate, intimate detail. Tom's Crossing fills the contemporary western vacuum left behind by Cormac McCarthy, but it's informed by every era of the Great American Novel, from Melville and Faulkner to Pynchon and, looking further afield, Roberto Bolano's 2666. An unexpectedly earnest trove of story within story within story within." —Neil McRobert, Vulture