1 Empathy by Bryan Walpert (Mākaro Press, $40)

The latest novel from Ockhams-shortlisted author Bryan Walpert. Here’s the publisher’s blurb: “Marketing executive Alison Morris bets her reputation on a project to sell empathy in a perfume bottle. Her husband, Jim, is inspired to try a similar thing in a game he’s developing – sinking all their money into EmPath, where people progress by learning to understand one another without direct communication.

All at once Alison’s fragrance develops dangerous effects and Jim’s game falters in the market, then the chemist working on the perfume project vanishes. His son, David, seems to be the only one looking for him. A widower with two children, David is a man of routine who just wants to get on with his life, but his love for his father takes him into a murky world where empathy can be bought and sold and can lead to murder.”

2 Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape, $38)

This novel is 88-year-year-old Pynchon’s first in 12 years, and ninth overall. Here’s a searing snippet from The Guardian’s review:

“[Shadow Ticket] is an antic mixed bag, a diverting tour of old haunts. Pynchon’s yarn sets out with a song in its heart and mischievous spring in its step, but it edges into darkness and its final forecast is bleak. The writer knows what’s to come and where this roll of foul history will eventually lead: towards a clownish world order epitomised by men such as Elon Musk, who recently boarded a Wisconsin stage with a cheesehead hat on his head and the American flag at his back. Cheese fraud is a front and period details provide cover. But the fascist past isn’t dead, it’s stinking up the joint right this minute.”

3 Chris Knox: Not Given Lightly by Craig Robertson (Auckland University Press, $60) 

Craig Robertson’s decade-and-a-half long passion project documenting the extraordinary life of multifaceted artist, Chris Knox, is a landmark publication. The Spinoff’s books editor took to it with interest and found it both compelling and, at times, frustrating.

4 Strange Houses by UKETSU (Pushkin Press, $37) 

Uncanny crime.

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

“It’s equal parts brainy and anxiety-inducing,” writes The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith, “but Palmer isn’t the sort who lets himself get tied up in existential dread: it’s more productive to write tens of thousands of words about it all. So, how do we fix this mess? According to Palmer, it can be as easy as introducing civics education in schools, as hard as lowering the voting age to 16 or overhauling the entire damn parliamentary system.”

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

Tips from a former All Blacks psych coach.

7 Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams (Simon & Schuster, $30)

In at magic number seven is McWilliams’ brilliant history of money and humanity,

8 Is a River Alive? by Robert McFarlane (Hamish Hamilton, $65)

Yes?

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

Stick it in your summer stack: it’s got spies and sneaking.

10 Ernest Rutherford and the Birth of Modern Physics by Matthew Wright (Oratia Books, $45)

He did a lot more than splitting the atom. We’ll tell you that for free.

WELLINGTON

1 All Her Lives by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

Horrocks’ first foray into fiction is a triumph! The stories in All Her Lives are powerful in their specificity and vast in their scope as the nine stories carry the reader across time and place. For fans of Barbara Anderson, Michelle Duff and Airini Beautrais.

2 The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters 1642–1840 by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $50)

A new edition of a classic from one of the country’s preeminent historians.

3 He Puāwai: A Natural History of NZ Flowers by Philip Garnock-Jones (Auckland University Press, $80)

One hundred native flowers bloom across the pages thanks to stunning 3D photography.

4 Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape, $38)

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

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

The multi-million-copy bestselling series about how growing old doesn’t need to spell the end of your dream of solving crimes.

7 Chris Knox: Not Given Lightly by Craig Robertson (Auckland University Press, $60) 

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

McEwan’s speculative climate crisis dystopia is getting more real every day.

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

A beautifully produced handbook to the capital’s tree life.

10 Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton, $40)

The latest in one of the most enduring themes in all of art.