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 Greene Lyon by Alan Goodwin (Quentin Wilson Publishing, $38)
An intriguing new local release. Here’s the publisher’s blurb: “Isaac Newton was a man driven by a passion to unlock the secrets of the universe. But those were God’s secrets, and in the 1660s, England was a dangerous place for a young scholar who dared to challenge God’s supremacy – a world that also believed in the devil and the power of magic. But Isaac’s quest to understand the universe would not be silenced, even when tempted by darker impulses and a passion for Alice Cutler, whose life is threatened by a disciple of the Witchfinder General. A desperate Isaac, a seeker of knowledge but also a young man in love and fearing his life is falling apart, is driven to scientific creation and choices with fatal outcomes. This beautifully imagined novel examines one of our great historical myths and follows Newton’s path to becoming the Greene Lyon, alchemy’s symbolic creature who devours the sun. A compelling story that explores the tensions between the thirst for knowledge and the consequences of desire, Greene Lyon will haunt you long after the apple has fallen from the tree.”
2 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from Stone Age to AI by Noah Yuval Harari (Penguin, $45)
A new, sure-to-be-gigantic book from the author of Sapiens.
3 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Press, $38)
Rather barbed review on Kirkus for this beloved writer and her even more beloved characters (Olive and Lucy): “Strout’s many fans will love this sweet, rambling tale. More critical readers may feel it’s time for her to move on.”
4 Make It Make Sense by Lucy Blakiston & Bel Hawkins (Moa Press, $37)
Huge week for Blakiston and Hawkins as their book takes over the world, much like their media platform, Shit You Should Care About.
5 Well Woman: A Prescription for Lifelong Health by Frances Pitsilis (Upstart Press, $40)
Hormones giving you hassle? This book is a guide to how women’s bodies work and how they can best be operated.
6 Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
Murder mystery at a fancy house. Sign me up.
7 Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape, $38)
One of the very hot novels on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. Kushner is an extraordinarily original writer and this book is her attempt to never, for a moment, have her readers be bored. Highly recommend.
8 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38)
Delighted that this hilarious, brilliant and beautiful novel has also made it onto the Booker shortlist. Love this time of year.
9 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury Circus, $25)
Our own literary star is still hanging onto the top 10! What a run for a brilliantly Wellingtonian novel with the universal theme of rags to riches and the shine wearing right off.
10 Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Maori, Honouring the Treaty by Avril Bell (Auckland Uni Press, $30)
A guide to putting action to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Essential reading!
WELLINGTON
1 The Twisted Chain by Jason Gurney (Otago University Press, $35)
A profoundly moving account of the impacts of rheumatic fever. Here’s the publisher’s blurb: “In the winter of 1969, a 14-year-old Whangārei schoolboy called Keg went to a weekend rugby tournament and came home with a sore throat. Soon he was bedbound with a blazing fever, painful wrists, elbows and knees, and – most worrying of all – damage to his heart. He had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and his life was changed forever.
Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory autoimmune disease, usually contracted in childhood. It starts with a sore throat; left untreated it can cause serious, life-long damage to the heart. Despite its status as a developed country, Aotearoa New Zealand has one of the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world. More than 90 percent of the country’s cases occur in Māori and Pasifika communities.
Author and researcher Jason Gurney knows Keg’s story intimately; he is Keg’s son. In The Twisted Chain, Gurney describes living in the long shadow cast by this disease. He writes of emergency night-time drives to Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, of panicky hours waiting for medical help. He describes how these frighteningly vulnerable experiences sparked some of the questions that led him to a career in public health. ‘I wanted’, he writes, ‘to research the causes and effects of rheumatic fever. It was my way of fighting back against the illness that had changed the trajectory of my family’s life’.”
2 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Press, $38)
3 Make It Make Sense by Lucy Blakiston & Bel Hawkins (Moa Press, $37)
4 Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)
5 We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Viking, $38)
The latest from the king of cosy retirement crime-solving.
6 Well Woman: A Prescription for Lifelong Health by Frances Pitsilis (Upstart Press, $40)
7 Atua Wāhine: The Ancient Wisdom of Māori Goddesses by Hana Tapiata (HarperCollins, $37)
A gorgeous hardback containing stories from “Papatuanuku, who sustains and nurtures us; to goddess of peace, Hineputehue, who transformed pain into beauty; and the misunderstood goddess of the underworld, Hinenuitepo, who found purpose and enlightenment through betrayal – this book is a treasure of knowledge and insight.”
8 Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd (Viking, $38)
A thrillery literary novel from the author of Any Human Heart.
9 Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson (Penguin, $38)
Go straight to this ranking of Jacqueline Wilson books. Do not pass Go.
10 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from Stone Age to Ai by Noah Yuval Harari (Penguin, $45)