1 Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)

The exquisite, unmatched Strout is back again with a perfectly formed little banger.

2 What We Remember, What We Forget by Siobhan Harvey (Otago University Press, $35)

“What We Remember, What We Forget by Siobhan Harvey is a personal narrative and poignant meditation on the power and peril of remembering – as well as of forgetting. Moving between childhood, early adulthood, imagination and the present, Harvey writes with honest intimacy about trauma, family and queerness; harm, silence and survival.

Interweaving life story with reflections on philosophy and psychology, Harvey considers how memory both wounds and sustains, and how it may be safely carried so as to create the life one wants.

Elegantly written, this is a powerful work about attention, language and the hard but fruitful labour of understanding. What We Remember, What We Forget asks: how should we retrieve our memories, and how can we trust what we find?”

3 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador, $40)

Radden Keefe is not only a maverick journalist and writer but one of the most compelling speakers at this year’s Auckland Writers Festival. His event on Tuesday evening with Jack Tame was remarkable: entertaining, educational, erudite and charming. And the guy had only just landed in Aotearoa from London. In Tame’s words: Radden Keefe is a motherfucker, in the best way.

4 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, $38)

Delightful novel in letters.

5 Empire of AI by Karen Hao (Penguin Press, $35)

One of the most important books of our times: Hao shows, through meticulous research and reporting, that the race create and sell AI comes as a huge cost. Do not miss Hao’s events at Auckland Writers Festival!

6 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bateman, $40)

Emanuel’s hugely important book is covered in a special edition of Gone By Lunchtime, right here on The Spinoff.

7 Transcription by Ben Lerner (Granta UK, $33)

The cover of this book has a big red button on a black background like an iPhone camera. Creepy. Here’s the blurb:

“The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has travelled to Providence, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor, and the father of his college friend, Max. But after the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.

What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to each other, that store or obliterate the memories that make us who we are.”

8 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin, $38) 

A broad appeal cli-fi novel which will no doubt draw a huge audience at this weekend’s Auckland Writers Festival.

9 Night, Ma by Elizabeth Knox (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $40)

A book to love and cherish and read over again. Here’s Claire Mabey’s rave review on The Spinoff.

10 Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Titan Books, $26)

Horror novel set in WWI.

WELLINGTON

1 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bateman, $40)

2 Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)

3 Lucky Creatures: Essays by Joseph Trinidad (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

A truly gorgeous collection of essays about family, migration, rural life, queerness and Filipino culture transplanted into Aotearoa. Spruiked by the great Alexander Chee, even: ‘There’s an entirely original voice in these essays that seems to me created out of a tremendous intimacy. Trinidad is making space on the page for the people in the stories he is telling, their languages, their lives, the money they earned and the money they didn’t, the heartbreak and the connections both.”

4 One Last Question, Prime Minister by Barry Soper (HarperCollins, $40)

The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith wrote a superb review of Soper’s memoir, right here. Catch Soper at the Auckland Writers Festival this weekend.

5 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador, $40)

6 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, $38)

7 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Penguin, $28)

The alien-human friendship that could.

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

A superb medical memoir.

9 Night, Ma by Elizabeth Knox (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $40)

10 Transcription by Ben Lerner (Granta UK, $33)