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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)

Look who we have here! Claire Keegan’s stunning novella Small Things Like These, continuing to win hearts and minds in 2023.

Here’s why we love it: “This book … is short, set within the comforting rituals of Christmas, and is basically perfect. The subject matter is serious and disturbing but the writer’s skill is to draw you into the dilemma through the eyes of a protagonist of such honesty, empathy and goodness that you’ll come away with renewed hope for the world.”

2 The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Canongate, $50)

The Creative Act is number two again, eight months after publication – we just can’t get enough creative inspiration. 

3 On The Record by Steven Joyce (Allen & Unwin, $38)

A new memoir by one of the key figures in John Key’s three-term government. Stuff gives a rundown: “The memoir is the stuff of dreams for history buffs and political nerds; it charts with huge attention to detail the important moments and decisions of the government within which Joyce was a loyal member of Sir John Key’s inner circle. It’s also a rare insight into the all-consuming and intense life of a cabinet minister. 

“The memoir reminds readers why Joyce earned the Mr Fixit label throughout National’s nine years in power. A former businessman and entrepreneur who made millions turning his student radio gig into one of the country’s most successful media companies, Joyce sweated the small stuff, as well as the big stuff – and in many ways that was also the MO of the Key government.”

4 Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin, $45)

The start of spring means that foraging season has begun, and clearly, a lot of people are getting amongst – or at least reading about it. A lifetime (two years) ago, Liv Sisson wrote an introduction to finding fungi for The Spinoff, a great starting point for anyone feeling mushroom-curious. 

5 The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa (Moa Press, $38)

A new local debut by the wonderful Airana Ngarewa. He wrote recently on The Spinoff about how he went from disengaged student, to cage fighter, to writer – here’s an excerpt: “While writing The Bone Tree, I did not have to strip down to my shorts and go to war with another man in a cage but I did have another fight to fight. The fight to tell our stories. To represent the struggle honestly. Good, bad and complicated. To tell a tale that, if I’d stumbled upon it in school, would’ve meant something to me and would’ve got more out of me than an eye roll. If I’d had a book like this, I like to think it wouldn’t have mattered who the teacher was. The story would’ve been enough.”

6 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Vintage, $26)

“Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur—a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds—and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.”

Thus begins the gamer romance that has taken the world by storm. 

7 The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

The brilliant, strange, poetic, funny winner of 2023’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

8 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, $35)

A new Ann Patchett novel is always cause for celebration, in the form of tucking away somewhere cozy with a very large cup of tea… and barricading the doors to stop any reading interruptions. 

9 Yellowface by Rebecca Kuang (Borough Press, $35)

The Sydney Morning Herald delivers its verdict on this BookTok-fuelled bestseller: “After four successful genre fantasy books, Rebecca F. Kuang’s fifth novel, Yellowface, is a mystery thriller that shocks, delights, and not-so-subtly weaves a scalpel through today’s commercial publishing industry. It’s a book about a woman who, through sheer confidence in her own ability to deceive, convinces herself and the world that a crime she committed was not really a crime at all. … Yellowface asks us to morally adjudicate the reprehensible behaviour of June. It is a Young Person Novel – one that insists readers know exactly what it’s trying to do. There is no subtlety here and is mesmerisingly ruthless in this insistence. But the intensity of this effort is exactly what makes this book so engrossing, so utterly addictive.” 

10 Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder (Hamish Hamilton, $40)

The new book by Stasiland author Anna Funder pulls together threads of fiction, memoir, criticism, and biography to bring to life George Orwell’s wife, Eileen Blair. 

WELLINGTON

1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $37)

First in Welly for the second week running! Read books editor Claire Mabey’s stellar review… or just jump straight into the fray and read the book.  

2 Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin, $45)

3 American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (Atlantic, $33)

Because sometimes watching the film just isn’t enough. 

4 Yellowface by R. F. Kuang (Blue Door, $35)

5  Our Land in Colour: A History of Aotearoa New Zealand 1860 – 1960 by Brendan Graham and Jock Phillips (HarperCollins, $55)

A century of life and culture in Aotearoa, captured on film, is now in colour for the first time. Six of the two hundred photographs can be wondered at over here in Canvas.

6 On The Record by Steven Joyce (Allen & Unwin, $38)

7 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber, $28)

The bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible won the Pulitzer Prize for her newest novel, Demon Copperhead – a modern retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield. 

8 The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa (Moa Press, $38)

9 We Need to Talk About Norman by Denis Welch (Quentin Wilson Publishing, $40)

The question you’re all asking is answered smartly by the publisher’s blurb: why do we need to talk about Norman?

“Because although Norman Kirk was prime minister for barely 21 months some 50 years ago, he still speaks to us. His belief in the state as a force for good and his style of leadership could and should be powerful guides for politics in the 21st century. Kirk was not a supporter of the neoliberalist ideology that has given us widening inequality, rising poverty and the virtual obliteration from public debate and policy-making of the workers who create this country’s wealth. His idea of a healthy country was, famously, one whose citizens could realistically expect to find ‘someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for’.”

10 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, $35)