1 Claude Megson: Architect by Reid Giles & Jackie Meiring (Massey University Press, $75)

“From the 1960s until his early death in 1994, New Zealand architect Claude Megson forged a significant body of experimental houses – typically abstract and fantastical, they could seem almost unfathomable in their complexity …”

Take a peek inside the book, here.

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

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026!

3 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35)

We are all hooked on Butter.

4 Hooked by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $37)

And on Hooked.

5 Atomic Habits by James Clear (Random House, $40)

One of the books mentioned in Josh Drummond’s excellent musing on the value of self-help, right here on The Spinoff.

6 My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton, $48)

This fictional imagining of Stein’s Paris pairs well with Francesca Wade’s utterly brilliant biography of the experimental writer.

7 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers, $35)

Welcome back, brilliant, inventive novel that won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in 2022!

8 Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape, $28)

There are still tickets left to go see Szalay in conversation with the one and only Roddy Doyle at the Auckland Writers Festival next month.

9 Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, $28)

Also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026!

10 Lázár by Nelio Biedermann (MacLehose Press, $38)

“This gothic-inflected saga has received much attention in Europe for its quirky and confident take on 20th-century Hungarian history. It is sobering to reflect that its author not only has no personal memory of the end of communist rule in eastern Europe, but that he wasn’t even alive when the twin towers fell. Born in 2003, Nelio Biedermann is among the first wave of gen Z writers of fiction and Lázár is his debut novel.” So begins Marcel Theroux’s review in The Guardian.

WELLINGTON

1 The Other Side of the Sunset by Antonella Sarti (Earl of Seacliff Workshop, $45)

“The Other Side of the Sunset, by Antonella Sarti Evans traces the multi-faceted influence of Italians and their culture in New Zealand over the last six decades. Through vivid stories and historical insight, this book reveals how Italian culture has woven itself deeply into the fabric of Aotearoa, creating rich and unexpected connections between languages, traditions, professions and ways of life. From post-war migrants to the highly skilled newcomers of today, Antonella spent many hours over a two-year period undertaking new research interviewing a wide range of New Zealanders who all have cultural ties to Italy.”

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

“Fist my bump!”

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

“‘To take things seriously is also to put the humour and the glow and the warmth and the beauty and worthwhileness of things,’ says Knox when we talk. In the book, Knox’s sister, Jo, is as charismatic and charming as she is troubling. Knox’s mother, too, is as vivid and mischievous as she is unable to protect her daughter (Sara) from abuse by a neighbourhood predator. Even while this is a memoir of tremendous pain, confusion and anguish, it is also an account of love, care and empathy. Nobody is reduced to what they did or didn’t do to the narrator.” Read the rest of our review of this remarkable memoir, here.

4 The News from Dublin: Stories by Colm Tóibín (Pan Macmillan, $38)

The modern master returns with a collection of bitters-sweet short stories.

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

6 The Clean: In the Dream Life You Need a Rubber Soul by Richard Langston (Auckland University Press, $50)

Kiran Dass wrote a fantastic guide to The Clean’s top 10 songs in The Guardian this week.

7 Banjara by Shana Chandra (Moa Press, $38)

Congratulations to Shana Chandra on a magnificent debut! Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

“Rajasthan 1888: Avani Rathod, a nomad of the Banjara community, is summoned to teach a blue-eyed colonial officer the trees of her region, but instead is misled into indenture to the sugarcane plantations of Fiji. While on the voyage that leads her away from her ancestral land, Avani’s baby forms in her belly and she forges close friendships with the other women bound for the Pacific – bonds that will be tested once they reach the islands, under the suffocating colonial powers.

Aotearoa 2016: Avani’s great-granddaughter, Meera Chand, seeks the true history of her ancestors – the forgotten and displaced Girmitiya. Meera’s search for her great-grandmother’s origins leads her to a region of India, where she learns the rhythms of Odissi dance and where she meets up with her former lover – the man she can never have, but whom she can’t forget.

Set in Aotearoa, Australia, India and Fiji, Banjara is an essential reimagining of Indo-Fijian Girmitiya history, and a love letter to our ancestors whose stories live on in our genes.”

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

If you loved this memoir, then you’ll also love item three, above.

9 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $40)

Ardern delighted huge audiences in Wellington and Dunedin recently and will return home for events in Auckland next month, including the ceremony for the Ockham New Zealand Books Awards.

10 Claude Megson: Architect by Reid Giles & Jackie Meiring (Massey University Press, $75)