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 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Head of Zeus, $25)
Min Jin Lee’s novel was published in 2017; season one of the TV series aired in 2022; and season two premiered just last week on Apple TV, which probably explains why the book has shot up the charts again. Good on everyone for buying the book as well as watching the show.
2 Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Maori, Honouring the Treaty by Avril Bell (Auckland Uni Press, $30)
Nobody else in the world gets to be Tangata Tiriti: this books helps you embrace what that means.
3 Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
Gripping literary crime from one of the best novelists around.
4 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35)
“Part true crime novel, part love letter to fine dining, and part takedown of capitalistic structures in modern-day Japan, Butter is a compelling and intensely readable take on what it means to enjoy life, and all the contributing forces that make that decision complicated.” Read more on the Chicago Review of Books.
5 Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Penguin, $26)
Maxwell on Good Reads gave this tome five stars, and this endorsement: “If you are prepared to go on a crazy ride for 700+ pages (oh yeah, if you don’t like chunky books… you get the point), then I can’t recommend The Bee Sting enough.”
6 Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (Bloomsbury UK, $25)
Superior to the film.
7 There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking Press, $37)
“An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.” Read more on Kirkus Reviews.
8 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury Circus, $25)
The unstoppable novel from the masterful Emily Perkins. Read our review of this Ockham winner, here.
9 Greek Lessons by Han Kang (Penguin, $26)
From the author of that extraordinary story, The Vegetarian (which won the Booker Prize in 2016), Greek Lessons is about language and the self. Here’s a snippet from the New York Times review: “This novel is a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language, whether between parent and child, teacher and student, or between words spoken aloud and those traced, painstakingly, with a finger on someone else’s waiting palm.”
10 Precipice by Robert Harris (Hutchinson, $38)
A new World War I thriller from the master of such things.
WELLINGTON
1 Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
2 Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Maori, Honouring the Treaty by Avril Bell (Auckland Uni Press, $30)
3 Look Out by Euan Macleod & Craig Potton (Potton & Burton, $80)
An art-photography collaboration. Here’s the blurb: “Look Out is an artistic collaboration that celebrates the sublimity of New Zealand’s Southern Alps by two well-known New Zealand artists. Two friends, painter Euan Macleod and photographer Craig Potton, are both drawn to the high mountains around Aoraki/Mt Cook in the central core of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. On trips together, Euan has painted and Craig has photographed, and although their collaboration is neither literal or conceptual, they are both ignited by each other’s love of these huge mountains. Look Out is their tribute to this faraway, awe-inspiring arena, as well as a reflection on the place of art in understanding the natural world.”
4 The Invasion of Waikato / Te Riri ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
“The book begins with the 1863 crossing of the Mangatāwhiri River by British troops. This act marked the Crown’s declaration of war against the Waikato tribes, igniting a conflict with far-reaching consequences. At its heart, the war was a clash between the Crown’s push for control and Māori insistence on self- governance, a right affirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The resulting conflict has shaped the nation for over a century, more influential, O’Malley argues, than even New Zealand’s involvement in the two World Wars.
The Invasion of Waikato/Te Riri ki Tainui features short biographies of people and groups who have contributed to our contemporary understanding of the events.”
Another essential from O’Malley.
5 There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking Press, $37)
6 The Voyage Home by Pat Barker (Hamish Hamilton, $38)
Tuck me up and put me to bed with Pat Barker. Barker is a queen of the Classical retelling, here’s the blurb for this latest one:
“After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle.
Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come.
Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts.
As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever.”
7 Precipice by Robert Harris (Hutchinson, $38)
8 The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth & Louise Ward (Penguin, $38)
The charming and funny crime novel from a pair of charming and funny booksellers.
9 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury Circus, $25)
10 Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time by Catherine Taylor (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $38)
New Zealand born writer and literary critic Catherine Taylor was just back in Aotearoa for WORD Christchurch and an event with Verb Wellington. Taylor’s memoir is a textured, award-winning, transporting memoir of growing up at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, miners strikes and the unrest of adolescence itself.