The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
First, a quick PSA: Unity Books has a flash new website that lets you search and purchase from both Unity Books Auckland and Wellington – and the search function is impeccable!
AUCKLAND
1 Long Island by Colm Tóibín (Picador, $38)
When life sends you wild cards, you take your kids and you travel home and explore the roads not taken.
2 The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate, $37)
“Barry’s fans will be delighted and many a newbie beguiled.” Read the fuller review on Kirkus, here.
3 Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Granta, $28)
Booker-award winning historical novel about a toxic relationship.
4 All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate, $37)
A midlife sexual reawakening.
5 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25)
A midlife reawakening set in Wellington.
6 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38)
A funny, beautifully written re-telling of Huckleberry Finn.
7 Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Vintage, $26)
Welcome back stranger! Great to see this smash hit book about friendship and gaming back on the charts. Here’s a video of Zevin talking about the book (briefly) on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
8 Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors (4th Estate, $38)
The latest from the author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein.
9 Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton, $37)
The huge Irish novel that could. Welcome back, Bee Sting! Enjoyed this analysis from the New Yorker review: “The novel is about things coming back different, coming back weird. It’s more than six hundred pages explore the eeriness of transformative change, and they are packed with literal and symbolic deaths.”
10 Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
Well hello! One of the great Aotearoa novels from one of our greatest writers, first published in 1987, is about changing traditions. Read the novel, watch the award-winning film.
WELLINGTON
1 Power to Win: The Living Wage Movement in Aotearoa NZ by Lyndy McIntyre (Otago University Press, $45)
A celebration of communities coming together to fight for the workers. Olly Clifton wrote a personal review, covering his time in McIntyre’s orbit, here.
2 All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Moa, $38)
Sure to be one of the big novels of the year, this is the latest book from author of The Pōrangi Boy. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
“This is Aotearoa, New Zealand.
This is a novel about who we are now.
Past, present and future.
All that we have
is All That We Know.
Meet Māreikura Pohe: she’s in love with her best friend, though he’s about to abandon her; and she’s an accidental activist, though she never asked for the spotlight. Navigating self-diagnosed ADHD and a new relationship while reclaiming her language is no easy feat. But as her platform grows, Māreikura unwittingly becomes a voice for change against the far-reaching consequences of colonisation. The question remains: at what personal cost?
A modern take on family and friendship and how, even in a divided world, love and connection can triumph against all odds.”
3 The Raven’s Eye Runaways by Claire Mabey (Allen & Unwin, $25)
A middle grade adventure story by The Spinoff’s own books editor, just in time for school holiday reading. Elizabeth Knox (The Vintner’s Luck) is a fan: “Mabey’s storytelling is reminiscent of Margaret Mahy and Frances Hardinge. Her world is imagined with gusto and bravura and realised with feeling and poetic intelligence.”
4 The Mires by Tina Makereti (Ultimo Press, $40)
A novel for these tense times from one of our great contemporary writers. Here’s the blurb: “‘Water will come and you think it will be soft. You think it will be smooth and find its way around your things: your houses and cars and furniture, your gardens and windows and hope. But water can be the foot of an elephant, the horns of a moose, a herd of buffalo running from a lion, water can be the kauri falling in the forest, a two-tonne truck, a whole stadium filled with 50,000 people, screaming … Water is life, and water can be death.’
Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren’t hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe.
When Janet’s son Conor arrives home without warning, sporting a fresh buzzcut and a new tattoo, the quiet tension between the neighbours grows, but no one suspects just how extreme Conor has become. No one except Wairere, who can feel the danger in their midst, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.”
5 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25)
6 The Fight for Freshwater: A Memoir by Mike Joy (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
Conservationist Mike Joy on his long-time battle to try and save our freshwater. A lively, fascinating memoir (excerpt coming to The Spinoff soon).
7 All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate, $37)
8 Long Island by Colm Tóibín (Picador, $38)
9 Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors (4th Estate, $38)
10 Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre, $38)
“An outrageously brilliant debut . . . This is already the best new book I will have read next year.” – Eleanor Catton.
