1 Tāmaki Makaurau 2025: Essays on Life in Auckland by Damien Levi (Auckland City Libraries, $32)

A beautiful new book of essays about life in Aotearoa’s big smoke, featuring contributions by Anton Blank, Daren Kamali, Faisal Halabi, Jeremy Hansen, Taniera Hawke-Hohepa, Abel Mercer, Perzen Patel, Emmy Rākete, Tommy de Silva, Jean Teng, Manu Vaea and Helene Wong.

2 The Art of Joy: Easy Daily Rituals and Practices for a Wonder-Filled Life by Jen Sievers (Koa Press, $55)

Aotearoa artist Jen Sievers’ guide to living a “juicier” and more “joy-filled” life with “delicious tools” including daily art and journaling.

3 The Rose Field by Philip Pullman (Penguin, $38)

Is this the end of childhood? Lyra’s story comes to an end in this final book in the Book of Dust trilogy, which follows on from the His Dark Materials trilogy. Will Pan find Lyra’s lost imagination? And what is the imagination, really? Only Pullman has the answer. Also looking forward to renewed conversations about what animal our daemons would be.

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

A posthumous memoir by one of Epstein and Maxwell’s victims. Take care.

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

Cosy crime for a wild Spring.

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

The life story of a renowned activist and artist. Read The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith’s insightful interview with Iti, right here.

7 Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent (Aporo Press, $35)

The perfect novel for Halloween: Vincent’s debut is dark and brilliant. Here’s the publisher’s blurb: “Rita considered the dead. Shut her eyes. Rolled their names around her brain. Stacked each person in order like folded laundry, warm and crisp from the sun. She wondered how her name would sound amongst them.

In the rural reaches of Auckland, the women of the eclectic Gordon family gather for Christmas. They may push each other’s buttons, but know precisely when to offer tea (or a tipple). Rita, the 50-year-old baby of the family, is planning to tell them she has cancer. Drifting between past and present, she considers the lives of women in their community and reckons with what it all means for her future and her family.

Featuring elderly lesbians, twins who aren’t twins, and several dogs named Roger, Hoods Landing is about shoddy pasts, ambiguous futures and the imperfect bonds that tie family together.”

8 Lessons on Living: Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ups and Downs by Nigel Latta (Harper Collins, $40)

Latta’s final book and a gift for those he left behind.

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

What will future ancestors think of our present civilisation?

10 Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Canongate, $28)

One of the most beautiful accounts of animal-human relationships you’ll ever read.

WELLINGTON

1 The Rose Field by Philip Pullman (Penguin, $38)

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

3 The American Boys by Olivia Spooner (Moa Press, $38)

A war time romance set in Wellington in 1942.

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

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

6 Lessons on Living: Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ups and Downs by Nigel Latta (Harper Collins, $40)

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

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

Horrocks’ first foray into fiction has resulted into an exquisite collection of short stories: immersive, moving, insightful. Horrocks’ books confessional is a banger, too.

9 I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (Penguin Random House, $33)

A profoundly affecting dystopia republished for our times.

10 Partypooper #20 Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (Puffin, $18)

The unstoppable Kinney! May you poop the parties for many years to come.