NEW RELEASES (4 April 2025)
Any of these books could go straight to the top of your reading pile. We can dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.
Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber $38
Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work-a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way — from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album. As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves. Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, Lesser Ruins is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity's ecstatic, agonising search for meaning through art. This book delivers many of the reading pleasures of Thomas Bernhard.
"Lesser Ruins is a near perfect document of what it is to procrastinate, spun out in Haber's signature absurdist, looping, intellectually ecstatic style." —Emily Temple, Literary Hub
"Haber's novel is fluent and compelling, often rhapsodic, with a cumulative power to its repetitions." —Hal Jensen, Times Literary Supplement
Twigs and Stones by Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop $30
Snake and Lizard live together in a burrow in the desert. They are such good friends that Lizard decides to display their names above the burrow entrance. But three small words can cause trouble between friends. They must decide whose name should appear first. Then Lizard makes an unfortunate spelling mistake—he thinks it’s very funny but Snake is not laughing. Snake finds some spelling of her own that will teach Lizard a lesson! The friends eventually find a way to put the argument behind them in this funny picture book that holds a mirror to our human flaws and reminds us that names and nicknames must be used with care.
Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by Hiromi Ito (translated from Japanese by Jon L. Pitt) $40
A series of intertwined poetic essays written by Japanese poet Hiromi Ito — part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy. Written between April 2012 and November 2013, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits adopts a non-linear narrative flow that mimics the growth of plants. Tree Spirits Grass Spirits serves as what we might call a phyto-autobiography: a recounting of one’s life through the logic of flora. Ito’s graciously potent and philosophical prose examines immigration, language, gender, care work, and death, all through her close (indeed, at times obsessive) attention to plant life.
"Ito's vivid descriptions of the physicality of the natural world carry over to her reflections on what it means to be a human moving through the environment. Jon Pitt's translation gracefully conveys Ito's engaged yet casual tone while allowing space for the rhythm and mouthfeel of each sentence, and it's not an exaggeration to say that every paragraph in this book is a joy to read." —Kathryn Hemmann
"These ambient poems about the flora of the California desert and Kumamoto, Japan are philosophical meditations on the peculiarity of human storytelling and naming practices.. Ito's poems suggest that the ways we humans look at plants contain information about how we produce both selves and others as well as narratives about death and transformation." —Angela Hume
Plasmas by Céline Minard (translated from French by Annabel L. Kim) $35
The stories in Plasmas dive into a post-human, more-than-human world where life as we know it has been replaced by life as it goes on. Acrobats glide through the air attached to biotech devices, an archivist presents scenes from Earth after interstellar colonization to her students, and scientists in Siberia play god with a manmade beast. Written as a series of vignettes into futures near and far, Plasmas dives into questions of legacy, memory, the body, and technology through striking prose from one of France's leading sci-fi writers. Equally comfortable in the worlds of Donna Haraway and Vladimir Nabokov, Plasmas is stunning in both philosophical and literary depth.
"Plasmas is a cubist painting: representing reality, while simultaneously shattering our perception of it." —The Harvard Gazette
"Plasmas is six stories that, as an archipelago-vaguely disquieting, wonderfully styled-constitutes a unique literary planet, if not a constellation of heretofore unclassified matter, forming an unprecedented unknown." —Le Monde
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley $39
On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast — the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly — her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.
”Exactly why Buckley is not already revered and renowned as a novelist in the great European tradition remains a mystery that will perhaps only be addressed at that final godly hour when all the overlooked authors working in odd and antique modes will receive their just rewards.” —Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement
The Spanish Mediterranean Islands Cookbook by Jeff Koehler $70
Explore the diverse cuisine of Spain's Balearic Islands - Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera — through 155 authentic home cooking recipes. Located off the Spanish Mediterranean coast, the Balearic Islands are renowned for their natural beauty, yet their cuisine has been largely underappreciated. This evocative recipe collection transports readers to the family kitchens, cafes, and markets of the archipelago, revealing a distinct culinary heritage shaped by the region's geography. The islands' most beloved dishes celebrate local produce, familiar Mediterranean ingredients — olive oil and garlic, rice and fresh fish — and resourceful cooking methods passed down for generations. From Menorcan-Style Stuffed Eggplant, Baked Fish with Spinach and Swiss Chard, Black Rice with Cuttlefish and Artichokes, and Pork with Wild Mushrooms to Baked Figs, Almond Cookies, and Formentera's most famous dessert, Fresh Cheesecake with Mint, the book's recipes include both sweet and savoury classics. Alongside the bounty of dishes, acclaimed author Jeff Koehler presents short essays highlighting culinary traditions, such as weekly village markets and St Martin's Day festivities; local ingredients, including cured sausages and tomato preserves; and essential techniques, such as preparing a perfect sofregit.
Boodle Boodle Boodle by Geoff Stahl $28
The Clean's 1981 EP catalysed independent music in Aotearoa and defined what became known as the ‘Dunedin Sound’ At the time, The Clean were seen as ambassadors for a burgeoning independent music culture in Aotearoa, drawing on the DIY spirit of punk and post-punk centred around Dunedin. Geoff Stahl considers the influence and legacy of the EP and band on indie music in New Zealand and elsewhere. Examining the myth of the ‘Dunedin Sound’ associated with The Clean, the EP, and Flying Nun Records, he details how this myth emerged, its repudiation by many of the artists it presumes to cover, and its complicated persistence in the contemporary New Zealand imaginary.
Song of a Blackbird Maria van Lieshout $30
Emma is a young student about to be drawn into what will become the biggest bank heist in European history: swapping 50 million guilders' worth of forged treasury bonds for real ones — right under the noses of the Nazis. Emma's life — and the lives of thousands, including a little girl named Hanna — hangs in the balance. Almost seventy years later, Annick discovers something surprising about her family. Her grandmother needs a bone marrow donor but none of her relatives is a match. In fact, they are not even related. Desperate to find a living blood relative, Annick dives into the past, aided by her grandmother's only childhood possession, five copper etchings, and the name of their maker: Emma Bergsma. In this stranger-than-fiction graphic novel, Maria van Lieshout weaves a tale about family, courage and the power of art. Beautifully done.
”So heart-rending and familiar, and so brilliantly, unforgettably different.” —Morris Gleitzman
”Song of a Blackbird illustrates, with great tenderness, how the past lives within us. This is essential, illuminating reading.” —R. J. Palacio
The Crisis of Narration by Byung-chul Han $31
Narratives produce the ties that bind us. They create community, eliminate contingency and anchor us in being. And yet in our contemporary information society, where everything has become arbitrary and random, storytelling shouts out loudly but narratives no longer have their binding force. Whereas narratives create community, storytelling brings forth only a fleeting community — the community of consumers. No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people as individual consumers. Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates narrative: stories sell. Storytelling is storyselling. The inflation of storytelling betrays a need to cope with contingency, but storytelling is unable to transform the information society back into a stable narrative community. Rather, storytelling is a pathological phenomenon of our age.
"Like a Sartre for the age of screens, Han puts words to our prevailing condition of not-quite-hopeless digital despair." —The New Yorker
A History of the World in Six Plagues: How contagion, class and captivity shape us — From Cholera to Covid-19 by Edna Bonhomme $40
Edna Bonhomme traces the long history of viral outbreaks under conditions of social confinement-the plantation system, colonial camps, imprisonment, quarantine, factories-and reveals how these enclosed spaces fuel epidemics. This is a book about the complicated histories of movement and stagnation, and about the time we live in, with a focus on the racialised history of several key epidemics from the impact of cholera on the plantation economy to HIV/AIDS outbreaks in US prisons.
”An expansive portraiture of how colonialism and confinement have influenced our understanding of illness and humanity. Thankfully, due to the author's talent and sheer strength in combining personal narrative with history, this book is also tender as it tackles some of the most stigmatised subjects of our time.” —Morgan Jerkins
Twist by Colum McCann $37
Anthony Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea- the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world's information across the ocean floor — and what happens when they break. So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver — and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele. As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer — and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding on the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in. Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him.
”McCann may follow Coppola upriver and Conrad to the heart of darkness but the concerns of his novel are contemporary and urgent and utterly compelling. This is an ambitious novel, note perfect, wild but controlled, with its deft apparatus mapping our most mysterious 21st century malaise — the great loneliness of the connected world.” —Kevin Barry
The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra $45
an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramifications. Memory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe's civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel's policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world - the 'darker peoples', in W. E. B Du Bois's words — the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation — freedom from the white man's world. The World after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century — the West's triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the darker peoples' frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world's population. As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis — about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration.
”In this urgent book, Mishra grapples with the inexplicable spectacle of stone-faced Western elites ignoring, and indeed justifying, the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Mishra reflects on the supposedly universal consensus that emerged from the Holocaust, as well as his own early sympathies for Israel, as he expounds on the terrible toll of this passivity in the face of atrocity.” —Rashid Khalidi
”This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers. His outrage is hard to ignore. But at the centre of this book is a humane inquiry into what suffering can make us do, and he leaves us with the troubling question of what world will we find after Gaza.” —Hisham Matar
Wife by Charlotte Mendelson $38
When Zoe Stamper, specialist in Ancient Greek Tragedy, meets fellow academic Dr Penny Cartwright at a faculty event, she seems impossibly glamorous. After all, Zoe is several rungs down the academic pecking order, and a nervous ingenue as far as Penny's sophisticated circle is concerned. But Penny leaves Zoe a cryptic note, and a passionate affair ensues. Once Penny confesses all to her live-in lover, Penny and Zoe move in together and their happiness seems assured. But there is something else Penny needs as badly in her life as Zoe's adoration, and thus the beginning of their affair might also have signalled its end.
”A devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious.” —Sarah Waters
”It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it.” —Meg Mason
Too Late to Awaken: What lies ahead when there is no future? by Slavoj Žižek $30
We hear all the time that it's five minutes to global doomsday, so now is our last chance to avert disaster. But what if the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened - that we're already five minutes past zero hour? Why do we seem unable to avert our course to self-destruction? Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj Žižek deliver his most forceful, hopeful account of our discontents yet. Surveying the interlocking crises we currently face — global warming, war, famine, disease — he points us towards the radical, emancipatory politics that we need in order to halt our drift towards disaster.