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.
AUCKLAND
1 Moonlight Sonata by Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House, $38)
Prolific, terrific writer of YA pivots to adult fiction with a story about secrets.
2 Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby, and Piripi Walker (Lift Education, $20)
Football hooligan voice: Tooooby-y.
3 The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
Every time I see this and Te Tiriti right up the top here I just want to hug -slash-high five every single one of you, you lovely Unity readers.
4 Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Sandstone, $27)
Winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
5 Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
“A Literary Detective Returns to Find Trouble in the Country Club Set” – New York Times headline.
6 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)
Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney.
7 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)
<rolls eyes, sighs> Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney.
8 Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook from Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt (Hachette, $38)
Companion reading: Uneasy Street – The Anxieties of Affluence, by Rachel Sherman.
9 Purakau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka (Penguin Random House, $38)
“Look at the book in your hands: the leaves opened, the spine cracked. The words on the pages are like a pulsing heart – you can see life here. You can feel it in your hands” – Introduction.
10 The Meaning of Trees by Robert Vennell (HarperCollins, $55)
Legit cool facts about our scrappiest flora – kelp, toetoe, mānuka – as well as their high-and-mighty mates.
WELLINGTON
1 How to Escape From Prison by Paul Wood (HarperCollins, $38)
“Like me, Bull was serving a life sentence for murder… Bull showed me how to make an ice pick shank.”
2 Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
3 Te Tiriti o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby, and Piripi Walker (Lift Education, $20)
Again for good measure: Tooooobby-y
4 An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (One World, $26)
Throughout, you get the sense Jones is deploying only a portion of her genius. And it’s still knock-you-over good.
5 Marilyn Waring: The Political Years by Marilyn Waring (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
“It was awful, of course… It’s taken me about as long to write it as it did to live it” – the author, interviewed in the Listener.
6 The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
7 Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth (Random House, $28)
Or, Won’t Somebody Think of the Planet Economics
8 The Spy & the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre (Viking, $28)
Espionage enthusiasts, keep an eye out for Roger Faligot’s Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping, out in a week or so.
9 Two or More Islands by Diana Bridge (Otago University Press, $28)
The poet’s first published collection in 10 years “achieves a level of rare impressiveness”, says Vincent O’Sullivan.
10 Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy (Penguin, $28)
You do you, radiation enthusiasts.