The top 10 sales lists recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND
1 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
The must-read local book of the year holds firm at number one for another week. “A gripping, true story of the lives of Rikihana, Nathan, their legal aid lawyer Lewis and the way their lives roll in and out through the turnstiles of the Hutt Valley District Court… an eye-opening, page-turning, up-close insight into systemic fractures and human impacts.”
2 No Pit Stops by Grant Baker (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)
Inspirational reading for budding entrepreneurs and fast car enthusiasts alike.
3 Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline Press, $38)
Major new Irish novel alert! This one from the author of Hamnet takes place in the shadow of the Great Hunger and involves an ordnance surveyor who has “an unsettling encounter in a copse”. Have a listen to O’Farrell speaking to RNZ Saturday Morning last weekend.
4 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate, $37)
“The book that will be everywhere in 2026”, wrote the Independent, successfully predicting these very charts. Major motion picture pending.
5 One Last Question, Prime Minister by Barry Soper (HarperCollins, $40)
Press gallery veteran liked job better when you could get axed with the prime minister.
6 Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (Scribe Pubs Pty, $38)
“Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double feat: it succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel. As judges, we’ve enjoyed rich discussions about the many layers of this book. It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel.” So said the chair of judges for the 2026 International Booker Prize upon its win last month.
7 Stakes: A Memoir by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, $40)
Dracula memoir, set to be reviewed on The Spinoff any day now.
9 The Land and its People by David Sedaris (Abacus, $40)
Sedaris-heads know what to expect at this point, and it seems they are not at all disappointed by this new collection. Maybe the funniest travel writing since Bryson?
10 All Her Lives: Nine Stories by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
“Reading Ingrid Horrocks’ short-story collection (and first work of fiction) is like slowly rotating a semi-opaque jewel: each facet polished on its own, but sometimes, through a trick of the light, you can see beyond to the mesmerising whole.” Luminous praise for the Ockhams-winner over at Kete Books.
WELLINGTON
1 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
2 Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline Press, $38)
3 Nova by Tim Corballis (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
Brand new this week from THWUP, Nova is described as “a genre-defying novel that imagines a future in which people and their worlds talk to each other”. Todd Atticus, who also did the cover for The Valley, is on a hell of a tear at the moment and has knocked it out of the park once again with this one.
4 Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)
A new set of characters (no Olive Kitteridge this time) but very much the same old Strout, thankfully.
5 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate, $37)
6 Whistler by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury UK, $39)
“The loveliest of summer gifts”, former Washington Post literary critic Ron Charles wrote from the Northern Hemisphere in his review of the new Patchett. Also pretty good in winter, it seems.
7 All Her Lives: Nine Stories by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
8 Stakes: A Memoir by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, $40)
9 Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (Scribe Pubs Pty, $38)
10 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador, $40)
Good chat with the author about London Falling and life in general on this podcast.
