The only published and available best-selling 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.

AUCKLAND

1 Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant Books, $33)

The clue is in the name.

2 Auckland Architecture: A Walking Guide by John Walsh & Patrick Reynolds (Massey University Press, $20)

Lovely weather for a stroll.

3 Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown, $35)

“A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love”: the Pulitzer Prize Board, announcing its 2018 Prize Winner in Fiction.

4 Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (Penguin Random House, $26)

A selection of words from a Guardian review: Oedipus, lexicographer, mother-daughter, houseboat, dementia, haunts, sinewy, eldritch.

5 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $33)

Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney

6 Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate, $25)

Based on the author’s completely bonkers childhood in 80s Queensland.

At six, the author says, his brother lead him to a wardrobe in their home’s master bedroom and pushed against the rear wall. “A compression mechanism clicked… and it fell forward into my brother’s hands. It was the secret entry to a secret room built into the earth beneath our house.”

7 Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson (William Collins, $30)

Taster: “…about four thousand years ago, a new group of migrants appeared in the western Pacific. A true seagoing people, they were the first to leave behind the chains of intervisible islands and sail out into the open ocean.”

8 The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (Virago, $28)

A Great Dane and a cat person share a 46sqm New York apartment.

9  A Mistake by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, $30)

“Short, scalpel-sharp tale of misadventure, medical and moral, set in a version of Wellington Hospital”: Diana Wichtel, in the Listener

10 Red Notice by Bill Browder (Penguin Random House, $26)

“If I get killed, you can be damn sure that it’s Putin that did it”: the author to Tina Brown.

WELLINGTON

1  A Mistake by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, $30)

2  Sodden Downstream by Brannavan Gnanalingham (Lawrence & Gibson, $29)

One day in Naenae.

3  Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $38)

4  The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (Allen Lane, $35)

Superb, shit-scared science writer on climate change and the havoc it will wreak. Page 138: “If you have made it this far, you are a brave reader.” (Another superb science writer, Rebecca Macfie, interviewed Wallace-Wells for us last month.)

5  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Allen Lane, $30)

To be concluded quite soon, apparently (see above.)

6  Ottolenghi: Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press, $60)

“Vividly colourful food, but in a natural, not Red No 40, sort of way. He assembles fabulous fresh ingredients, and he generously implies that if you try even just a little bit harder, you can cook like this”: Linda Burgess, The Spinoff Review of Books

7 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber, $33)

Your books editor couldn’t get past page 60. Shame! It went on to win the Man Booker Prize.  

8 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins, $25)

Eleanor Oliphant has been selling her socks off for more than a year now, in fact.

9 Tiamat’s Wrath by James S A Corey (Orbit, $38)

Sci-fi; eighth of nine in the series. Penultimate!

10 Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown, $25)