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 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)

Author Kiri Lightfoot says Smail’s guidebook to Te Tiriti is the book we all need to read. And we’d tend to agree.

2 The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House, $32)

Latest self-help blockbuster.

3 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)

Last year’s Booker Prize winner that gives us contemplation of our fragile planet from space.

4 How To Be Wrong by Rowan Simpson (Electric Fence, $40)

“A crash course in startup success.” Hear Simpson in conversation with Bernard Hickey on a recent episode of When the Facts Change.

5 We Do Not Part by Han Kang (Hamish Hamilton, $40)

The latest novel from Nobel Prize winning Korean author of The Vegetarian, Human Acts, Greek Lessons and more. Here’s the blurb:

“Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.

Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her.

There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before.”

6 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30)

“A rambunctious, tragicomic absurd road trip novel about a wealthy Swiss-German mother and son.” Sounds fun.

9 Becoming Aotearoa: A New History Of New Zealand by Michael Belgrave (Massey University, $65)

A notable omission from the Ockhams shortlist after a confident longlisting. Belgrave’s accessible, expansive history is a triumph.

10 Delirious by Damian Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)

A notable inclusion in the fiction shortlist for the biggest prize at the Ockhams. A profoundly beautiful, sad, funny, real novel about an ageing couple and the cacophony of their internal and external lives.

WELLINGTON

1 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)

2 Three Days in June Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus, $36) 

“Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.” Read the full review on Kirkus.

3 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35)

Asako Yuzuki is among the first five authors announced for the 2025 Auckland Writers Festival. An appetiser, if you will.

4 Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (Picador, $38)

A novel that tackles the rise of populism amid domestic, personal catastrophe.

5 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)

6 Te Moana o Reo/Ocean of Languages edited by Michelle Elvy & Rapatahana Vaughan (The Cuba Press, $30)

More than 40 languages converge in one ambitious and celebratory collection of poetry, essays, and microfictions.

7 Star Gazers by Duncan Sarkies (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)

That glorious alpaca novel that is holding a mirror up to the dark and the light of human nature, politics, and farming in ways both entertaining and thought provoking.

8 We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida (Doubleday, $36)

See item 8 in Auckland, above.

9 All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate, $37)

Horny, exploratory, honest and longlisted for the Women’s Prize alongside our very own Saraid de Silva whose novel Amma was one of The Spinoff readers’ favourites in 2024.

10 Patisserie Made Simple by Maxine Scheckter (Bateman, $70)

The delightful lady from Instagram has made a book! Find Maxine at @sugar.flour.welly and follow her delicious adventures in patisserie, then buy her book and try it at home.