NEW RELEASES (7.8.25)

All your choices are good! Take your pick from our selection of books straight out of the carton, and click through to our website to secure your copies. We can dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.

The Welcome of Strangers: A History of Southern Māori by Atholl Anderson $70
This deeply researched and beautifully presented book traces the origins of early Waitaha and Kāti Māmoe, and the later migrations, conflicts and settlements of the hapū who became Ngāi Tahu. Drawing on tribal knowledge, early written records and archaeological insights, he details the movements, encounters and exchanges that shaped these southern regions. He shows how people lived seasonally from the land and sea, supported by long-distance trade and a deep knowledge of place. These were the communities that the first Europeans encountered, as whalers, sealers and missionaries made their way around the coast. New edition, greatly expanded and updated. [Hardback]
”The Welcome of Strangers is, I believe, the best ethnohistory produced in New Zealand to date. Underpinned by whakapapa and methodical research, it provides solid evidence of our Ngāi Tahu past and sets it firmly in its context. The work of an accomplished scholar and longtime associate, the revised edition is strengthened and sharpened with new research, biographical detail and rich imagery of people and place. It is pleasing to have this scholarly yet accessible volume available to a new generation of New Zealanders – and even more so, Ngāi Tahu whānui, both scholars and at the flax roots.” —Sir Tipene O’Regan ONZ, Chair, Te Pae Kōrako; Upoko, Te Rūnaka o Awarua
”With one eye on the universal and the other on the particular, Atholl Anderson reveals how culture and nature shaped one another in southern Te Waipounamu for some five hundred years, down to the mid-nineteenth century. Born from the head of a world-leading archaeologist and the heart of a much-loved son of Kāi Tahu, this is a signally important text in the canon of Māori history.” —Michael Stevens, Professor and Director, Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha / University of Canterbury
>>Look inside!

Girlbeast by Cecilie Lind (translated from Danish by Hazel Evans) $38
Girlbeast is a fearless, unsettling, and poetic reimagining of the Lolita narrative, where power shifts unpredictably, and desire and coercion become indistinguishable. In a world that fetishises girlhood, it asks whether a girl be blamed for internalising the roles imposed upon her? Can she wield her youth as power in a system designed to render her powerless? With sharp, fast-paced prose and an addictive plot, Cecilie Lind crafts a daring examination of female agency, sexuality, and the complexities of consent. The novel evokes the idea of the girl as animal — a creature conditioned to be both docile pet and wild beast, torn between submission and rebellion, innocence and desire.Brave, provocative, and unflinching, Girlbeast is a gripping, vital novel for our times. [Paperback]
”Girlbeast is a fever dream of a novel that put a knot in my stomach. A provocative, vulgar and tender fable about the uneasy ruin of girlhood.” —Lucy Rose
>>Read an extract!

Lexicon of Affinities by Ida Vitale (translated from Spanish by Sean Manning) $39
With entries as varied as 'elbow', 'Ophelia', 'progress', the painter Giorgio Morandi, 'chess', 'Eulalia' (a friend of the author's aunt), and 'unicorn', Ida Vitale constructs a dictionary of her long and passionately engaged artistic life. Taking the reader by the arm, she invites us to become her confidant, sharing her remarkable 20th century as a member of a storied generation of Latin American writers, of whom she is the last remaining alive. It's a compendium of friendship, travel, reading, and the endless opportunities she found for 'the joyful possibility of creation.' Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its exuberant, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Vitale's prose is drop dead gorgeous." —Jeremy Garber
"Extraordinary. Giving due attention to Vitale's prose will bring you reassurance and optimism." —Lunate
"A vibrant and playful memoir-in-dictionary-form. A joyous celebration of a life well lived, with entries that range from the simple to the titanic." —Literary Hub
"Indispensable. Vitale's language has a precision that reminds us that memory exists: that today precision is an act of distinction and recognition." —Letras Libre
>>Something of a refuge.
>>”One hundred years don’t weigh me down.”

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine $38
Three women from very different families are brought together when their sons are accused of assaulting a young woman whose social standing they see as far below their own. Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they'll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed. Brutal, tender and intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, multi-voice presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny. [Paperback]
”This Belfast novel has the style of Woolf but the heart of Dickens. Erskine — a gifted short story writer — deploys a style closer to Virginia Woolf than to HBO, delivering scattershot glimpses of events through the eyes of a broad cast of characters. For all the formal subtlety and fragmentation of this impressive novel, then, it is amazing to see there is such a warmly conventional heart beating beneath the Woolfian multiple perspectives and the deliberate haziness with which Erskine depicts the novel's central act of class-based injustice.” —Robert Collins, Sunday Times
”This polyphonic portrait of class, power and social exclusion in Northern Ireland is centred on the assault of a teenage girl, and the reactions of the boys' parents. Erskine is a nimble, prodigiously talented author: funny and brutal by turns, with an extraordinary immediacy.” —Guardian

The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke $30
The first of our organs to form, the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of all that makes us human: as long as it continues to beat, we hope. One summer day, nine-year-old Keira suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident. Though her brain and the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira's parents and siblings agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max had been hospitalised for nearly a year with a virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max's parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family. This is the unforgettable story of how one family's grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. With compassion and clarity, Dr Rachel Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira's heart and explores the history of the remarkable medical innovations that made it possible, stretching back over a century and involving the knowledge and dedication not just of surgeons but of countless physicians, immunologists, nurses and scientists. [Paperback]
Winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
”The best narrative non-fiction I've read in years. Rachel Clarke has written a profound piece of investigative journalism and wrapped it up in poetry.” —Christie Watson

Juice by Tim Winton $38
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they're not alone. So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism. [Now in paperback]
”A barnstorming, coruscating work of fiction, a heavyweight literary novel that sits squarely in the growing canon of ‘climate fiction’ and it feels to me to be an instant classic of that genre. I strongly recommend it.” —Emily H. Wilson, New Scientist 
”Juice, Winton has said, means ‘human resilience and moral courage’, and there is that in spades in this complex, riveting book already being hailed as a masterpiece..” —Sydney Morning Herald
”This is page-turning stuff, gripping and awfully gratifying. Winton's ending is a masterstroke, the heart-in-your-mouth final chapter one of the best things I've read in a long time.” —Rachel Seiffert, Guardian

The New Age of Sexism: How the A.I. revolution is reinventing misogyny by Laura Bates $40
Step into a world where: Little girls dressed up as women dance for an audience of adult men. A pornographic deepfake image or video of you exists on the internet and you just don’t know it yet. Men create ‘perfect’ AI girlfriends who live in their pocket — customised to every last detail, from breast size to eye colour and personality, only lacking the ability to say no. This isn’t an image of the future. Sex robots, chatbots and the metaverse are here and spreading fast. A new wave of AI-powered technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, is putting women everywhere in danger. In The New Age of Sexism, author and campaigner Laura Bates takes the reader deep into the heart of this strange new world. She travels to cyber brothels and visits schools gripped by an epidemic of online sexual abuse, showing how every aspect of our lives — from education to work, sex to entertainment — is being infiltrated by ever-evolving technologies that are changing the way we live and love forever. This rising tide, despite all its potential for good, is a wild west where women’s rights and safety are being sacrificed at the altar of profitability. [Paperback]
>>Misogyny in the Metaverse.

The Secret Green by Sonya Wilson $25
It's almost a year since Nissa Marshall was found alive after miraculously surviving a month lost in the vast, dense, isolated bush of Fiordland. Strange, magical things happened when Nissa was lost in the wilds but was it actually real? Or had she made it all up in the forest inside her head? When the mysterious forest creatures come for Nissa again, she discovers that Fiordland is under threat. What are the sparks so afraid of? What is the secret they're so desperate to protect? And why do they think a thirteen-year-old kid can save them all? This thrilling sequel to Spark Hunter crackles with the magic of the ancient forest. It's a high-stakes adventure through a vast wonderland with a great green secret hidden from humans for thousands of years. [Paperback]
”Perfectly pitched for middle fiction readers, Spark Hunter weaves history, culture, conservation, humour, tension and adventure into the story of Nissa Marshall, who has always known there is more to the Fiordland bush than meets the eye. While leaning into the fantastic just enough to encourage the imagination, the inclusion of archival excerpts will spark keen readers to hunt out their own discoveries within the mysterious history of this corner of Aotearoa. Making this story's light shine bright is te reo Māori blended throughout and a cast of supporting characters that are easily recognisable as classmates, teachers, and friends.” —New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults judges’ citation for Sparkhunter

Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four women who wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff $30
In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare's England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-16th century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the 17th century to publish a book of original poetry, which offered a feminist take on the crucifixion, or Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman, about the plight of the Jewish princess Mariam. Then there was Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist, who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to rob her of her land in one of England's most infamous inheritance battles. [New paperback edition]

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally $42
A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about his stint as a child actor, his travels along the hippie trail, his wives and children, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety. [Paperback]
>>The least hospitable man.

Indian Kitchens: Treasured family recipes from across the land by Roopa Gulati $60
Gulati travels through India and celebrates the wonderfully varied food that makes up a nation, making pitstops at the homes of the people who cook it every day. From dals to masalas, and quick and easy suppers to feasts for a crowd, the easy-to-follow recipes are bursting with authentic flavours using ingredients found in your local supermarket. Recipes include aubergine pakoras with onion and tamarind relish, potato and paneer tikki, sweetcorn bhajis, Tandoori sea bass, home-style Punjabi chicken curry, Kashmiri lamb with saffron, cardamom and red chillies, cumin potatoes, Bengali-style butternut squash with tamarind and jaggery, channa dal with spinach, black eye beans in garlic tomato masala, phirni with honey, orange and saffron syrup and pistachio and cardamom biscuits. From the monsoon-washed backwaters of Kerala to the crowded markets of Mumbai, and from remote kitchens in Gujarat, with shelves stacked high with pickle jars, to the old French quarter of Ponducherry, where lunch is served on banana leaves picked fresh from the garden, this celebration of regional cooking will bring the sights, sounds and flavours of India to your table. [Hardback]
”Roopa's masterpiece. I want to make and eat every single thing in it.” —Bee Wilson
>>Look inside.

A Dim Prognosis: Our health system in crisis — and a doctor’s view on how to fix it by Ivor Popovich $38
A gripping expose of New Zealand's failing health system This compelling tell-all reveals the realities of working as a doctor in New Zealand. Fast-paced and darkly funny, it chronicles ten years of working in medicine and sheds a light on where and why the health system is failing. From bullying and toxic culture to under-staffing and mismanaged priorities, this is a clear-eyed account of a health system on its knees. [Paperback]
”Brave, funny and heart-rendingly sad. Every healthcare worker in Aotearoa will feel seen.” —Dr Emma Wehipeihana, author of There's a Cure for This
”A must-read for all who care about the future of publicly funded healthcare in Aotearoa.” —Dr David Galler