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

According to The Conversation, this is “vintage” Pynchon.

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

If you like the books, don’t bother with the movie.

3 Mana by Tāme Iti (Allen & Unwin, $50)

Iti told The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith that “The biggest challenge [in writing this book] was how we maintain our mana in our space, in our creativity, so we’re not being construed to be locked into being a slave to someone else’s ideology.” Read more, right here.

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

The perfect crime novel to stay inside with on an intensely blustery day.

5 Hardship and Hope by Rebecca Macfie (Bridget Williams Books, $20)

The talented, tireless Rebecca Macfie grounds the national poverty crisis in the stories of grassroots movements that are building a fairer world.

6 Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate, $38)

The eternally sunshiny Australian writer’s latest banger. Read The Spinoff Books Confessional for Dalton’s own reading recs.

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

The man whose name is attached to a plethora of buildings is now fully explained.

8 When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Rizden (Doubleday, $38)

A novel about ageing and autonomy.

9 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton, $38

A hot pick for this year’s Booker Prize win.

10 Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse by Virginia Roberts Giuffre (Transworld, $40)

Virginia Roberts Giuffre was Epstein and Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: this is her story, published posthumously.

WELLINGTON

1 Keith and the Kitten by Elaine Bickell (Scholastic, $22)

A classic dog v cat situation.

2 Mana by Tāme Iti (Allen & Unwin, $50)

3 A Gap in Nature by Elspeth Sandys (Quentin Wilson Publishing $38)

Here’s the publisher’s blurb: “When May Nicholls’s husband returns from the Second World War, it is to find that his wife’s affections, such as they were, have been transferred to their young son, David. May, an English immigrant, is already a fish out of water in Claytown, a small central North Island town where everyone knows each other, and their business. Independent, ambitious, and unmoved by local gossip about her, May follows her own path, steadfastly favouring her son over the daughter born after the war. Until, in his twenties, David severs the bond, and begins a new life in London.

More than two decades later, a traumatic event forces David’s daughter Chloe to reassess her understanding of the father she never knew. Her determination to find an explanation for his actions takes her to New Zealand, where her father’s sister, a renowned musician, lives. As the reality of inter-generational trauma, and the unforeseen consequences of trying to forget, is gradually revealed to her, she is able to shine light on the gaps and absences in the past, forging, in the process, new, life-affirming connections.”

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

An essential yet at times frightening read. Read all about it on The Spinoff, here.

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

Best McEwan novel in ages.

6 Rough Trade: A Novel by Katrina Carrasco (Picador, $38)

An acclaimed crime novel set in Washington, 1888.

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

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

9 Pakukore by Rebecca Macfie, Graeme Whimp and Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich (Bridget Williams Books, $20)

Read a powerful excerpt from this book, titled ‘Poverty in Aotearoa is not accidental’ on The Spinoff, here.

10 The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngarewa (Moa Press, $38)

A rollicking yarn set in the 1940s by a talented and prolific writer. Brilliant characters, a knotty plot and grounded in true stories.