An exploration of the functional aesthetic of Japanese design through 300 objects: from everyday items, to iconic fashion and furniture. A lovely book.
If you liked Jonasson's previous book, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, you'll be keen to start reading this.
"Another funny, clever novel to cheer you up when you need something amusing without being too lightweight. I loved it!" - Susi
Set around the trial of a man who claims to be a Vanderbilt, this is a novel about the fluid, shifting and ultimately elusive nature of identity. In this contemporary reworking of the Tichborne case, a Queensland cattle farmer is the seemingly reluctant claimant of the Vanderbilt fortune.
A beautifully produced and illustrated little book featuring Cliff Fell's verse sequence, a deliciously viscid amalgam of clutching and relinquishment.
"When all else fails - cook!"
This book is both a personal memoir and a social history of food in New Zealand. Decade by decade, Belton looks at what we ate and how what we ate defined us.
A delightful exploration of the "space between prose and poetry". McQueen's Poet Laureate project is presented as a slip-cased set of eight fascicles, beautifully illustrated with images from the Hocken collection.
Kennedy provides insight into the miseries and magic moments of writing life, all told with great wit and compassion and accompanied by idiosyncratic essays on character, voice, writers' workshops and writers' health. Very enjoyable.
An unprecedented book about the human cost of war by a former marine captain and Iraq veteran.
"Klay's gifts become more apparent with each new narrator and circumstance: his reach, his tonal control, his observational sophistication, the sheer emotional torque of his narratives. By the end, he had convincingly inhabited more than a dozen different voices and I felt I had learned more about Iraq than in any documentary or factual account." - Guardian
A collection of poems capturing the many moments of a soldier's life, by the author of the affecting and poetic Afghan War novel The Yellow Birds.
The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling's one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called 'Monuments'.
"In this admirably concise and evocative biography Ackroyd acknowledges Chaplin’s many human failings, while at the same time giving us a vivid sense of what made the man a genius. Enthralling." - Telegraph
Two brothers take very different routes in their search for transcendence. From the author The Hours.
A vivid picture of the dying days of the Romanov dynasty.
The Hueys are arguing. "It wasn't me, it was him!" But they can't remember just what it was they were arguing about. Can they be distracted?
Come August, Come Freedom: The Bellows, the Gallows and the Black General Gabriel by Gigi Amatou $19.99
A fictionalised history of the leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1800.
"An intense, empathetic, richly imagined novel." - Bulletin of the Centre for Children's Books
Clothing, accessories and toys inspired by fairy tales and able to be conjured from a skein of wool with two wands.
Get some inspiration for our annual crafting competition (entries due 1 June).
When something like a meteorite plunges into the ocean and a tidal wave overcomes them, three people find themselves bound together in ways never imagined.
From the winner of the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
"There's more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor's work than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics." - Ursula K. Le Guin
The most chilling novel yet from an author at the icy peak of Nordic crime writing.
The second installment of Lay's fictionalised life of Cook, covering his second voyage, in search of Terra Australis Incognita.
The long-awaited memoir from the author of Under the Tuscan Sun.
"A vast, surreal cornucopia of images stretching over 88 ages, a non-lineal narrative, bursting at its seams into every successive five-lined unrhymed stanza, each self-contained but caught in the net of Pule's ravishing imagination." - Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
This book argues that World War II was, effectively, a maritime war - it was the Royal Navy's war.
Inspired by tradition, informed by modern fusion trends, fun and full of taste, a celebration of Japanese cooking with authentic yet simple-to-prepare recipes from this Japan-born New Zealand-based chef.
Perfect for fans of John le Carre, this is a suspenseful spy novel from the "master of the modern spy thriller" (Mail on Sunday).
Trying to find out what changed his grandfather so much during the First World War, Baxter learns a lot about the particular character of Paris at a time when all Europe changed. From the author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World and other very readable Parisiana.
A tale of camels, lost princesses and the strength of wisdom and knowledge.
Set on theYorkshire moors, this is "a powerful, visceral portrait of the ties that bind, and those that break. Steiner has written a truly exceptional study of human flaws and frailties." - Guardian
A boy in Auschwitz grabs the opportunity to look after the German officers' horses.
Three women must overcome the past and beat the odds to find hope for the future in this novel set in Central Otago.
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games in a beehive!
"One wild ride... Paull's heart-pounding novel wrenches us into a new world." - Emma Donoghue
"A gripping Cinderella/Arthurian tale lush with Keatsian adjectives." - Margaret Atwood
A tiny fragment of bone leads ex-cop Louis Kehlweiler on a trail that takes him to a tiny Breton fishing village where someone owns a dog that would take a bite out of anything - even the foot of a corpse.
"A wonderfully delightful read." - Peter
The Bloomsbury Group was as experimental in the realm of relationships as it was in the realm of literature. Frances Partridge's celebrated account of the love quadrangle between her, her husband Ralph, and Dora and Lytton Strachey (which culminated in the deaths of two of them) is also revealing of other members of the group.
Over 130 family-friendly recipes from some of Tessa Kiros's most-popular cookbooks.
A well-illustrated account tale of creativity, misadventure, success and excess from the Kiwi rocker of Hello Sailor fame. Well illustrated.
