1 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton, $38)

A sprawling, sweeping love story and family saga, shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.

2 What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape, $38)

A speculative novel destined to become a cli-fi classic.

3 Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate, $38)

Trent Dalton wishes he’d written Lord of the Rings. Find out why right here, on Dalton’s edition of The Spinoff’s books confessional.

4 The Impossible Fortune: Thursday Murder Club #5 by Richard Osman (Viking, $38)

Cosy crime led by old folks.

5 Lessons on Living: Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ups and Downs by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $40)

It is terribly sad that Aotearoa lost Nigel Latta too early to cancer on September 30. This book was released just days after Latta’s death and leaves us with his trademark kindness and wisdom.

6 Alchemised by SenLinYu (Michael Joseph, $40)

The runaway dark (really dark) fantasy book of the year.

7 Strange Houses by UKETSU (Pushkin Press $37) 

A crime novel sensation from Japan.

8 The Predicament by William Boyd (Viking Penguin, $38)

Sneaky spy stuff, and the second novel of a planned trilogy.

9 You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue (Harvill Secker, $26)

Described as the “Aztec West Wing” by The Guardian.

10 The City and It’s Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, $28)

Another surreal mystery from Murakami. Here’s the blurb: “When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.”

WELLINGTON

1 Lessons on Living: Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ups and Downs by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $40)

2 The Impossible Fortune: Thursday Murder Club #5 by Richard Osman (Viking, $38)

3 Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate, $38)

4 What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape, $38)

5 How to Save Democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand by Sir Geoffrey Palmer (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)

If you need to try before you buy, read The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith on Palmer and his wise and timely book.

6 Everything but the Medicine: A Doctor’s Tale by Lucy O’Hagan (Massey University Press, $40)

“Meeting her patients where they are seems to be at the core of O’Hagan’s approach to medicine. As a baby GP she joined with two other GPs in building a medical practice from the ground up,” writes Emma Marr in her review of O’Hagans book on The Spinoff. “Only after that did she build a house, and a family, and she devoted, and continues to devote, a considerable part of her life to serving the community around her.”

7 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton, $38)

8 Capital Trees: The Arboreal Legacy of Te Upoko-o-te-Ika the Wellington Region by Susette Goldsmith (Te Papa Press, $40)

Lovely little book to pop in a Christmas stocking for the arboreal enthusiast in your life.

9 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin, $40)

Maybe the current All Blacks need to read this book by the former All Blacks mental skills coach?

10 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $60)

Grant Robertson has been bumped!