It's here! One of the most significant New Zealand publications of the year: Richard Nunns' long-awaited account of a lifetime's mission to rescue New Zealand's indigenous musical sounds and instruments. Beautifully illustrated and brimming with information.
>> Voices of the Land: Nga Reo o te Whenua, a film featuring Nunns' journey and the discoveries thereupon, will be screening this Saturday 16th and next Monday 18th as part of the Nelson International Film Festival. Richard will be giving a Q&A session after each; we'll be there with books. Click the link to book.
This is an amazing selection of photographs of unintentional aspects of everyday New Zealand life, and a historical record of our social environment. Derek's job as a meter reader has carried his photographer's eye to all sorts of overlooked places, and his work invites comparison with Robin Morrison and William Eggleston.
>> See a few of Derek's photos here.
Just in! One of the most eagerly anticipated (and loveliest) books of the year.
"Murakami’s latest offering is a mystery, a philosophical conversation and a layered landscape of music, dreams, melancholy and understated humour. Being less complex than IQ84, but more mature than Norwegian Wood, it has elements of many of Murakami’s books, and yet it has its very own texture." - Stella
Leaked e-mails appear to link the Prime Minister's office within hard right smear campaigns and other dubious activity. This is vital topical reading, whatever your politics.
>> Watch this and this.
>> Read this.
More stock due next week - reserve a copy now!
"Rambling and poetic, wrapped in folksy wit and shrewd observation, the gracefully crafted road stories of Noontide Toll play out amid arguments about the past in a postwar Sri Lanka simmering with unresolved tensions." - Guardian
This eagerly awaited novel by the author of the prize-winning Netherland, has just been longlisted for the Man Booker prize.
"O'Neill seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought." - New York Times
This book tells the painful, heartbreaking, exhilirating story of how Joyce's novel was conceived, written, published, burned, acclaimed and excoriated before taking its place as a masterpiece of world literature. Joyce's book ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel forever. But, for more than a decade, Ulysses was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase, and Joyce was a penniless outcast, reliant on his supporters to keep both himself and his family going.
"The bomb has exploded. It will blow a hole in the well-guarded prison of English Literature." - The Quarterly Review
"It came from the woods. Most strange things do." Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss. These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll. Take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there...
Pearl can be very, very good. More often she is very, very bad. But she's just a child, a mystery to all who know her. A remarkable book.
"Davies's clear-eyed intent and steadfast rejection of the mawkish results in episodes that function both as exquisite miniatures to be marvelled at in isolation and as a collection of fine mosaics best viewed as a whole. Her heroine may be feral, psychotic or just a bit wild, but it is the reader who is permitted to decide." - Eimear McBride, The Guardian
A fascinating book! Over 130 leading lights from different fields - artists, architects, writers, designers, geographers, mathematicians, computer pioneers, scientists - make sense of exterior and interior worlds through highly personal and imaginative maps and charts.
Lucky Kyle wins a coveted spot as one of twelve kids invited for an overnight sleepover in the library, hosted by Mr. Lemoncello and riddled with lots and lots of games. But when morning comes, the doors stay locked. Kyle and the other kids must solve every clue and figure out every secret puzzle to find the hidden escape route!
"An ode to libraries and literature that is a worthy successor to the original madman puzzle-master himself, Willy Wonka." - Booklist
Two hot summers in Northern Ireland, 1949 and 1969, are brimming with personal and national troubles.
"Clever, unpredictable, beautifully written." - Roddy Doyle
"Delicate and unusual. Outstanding." - Guardian
Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life - but she's deeply unhappy...
From the author of the enjoyable Where'd You Go, Bernadette.
"A profoundly disturbing account of the hitherto hidden role of the role of Nixon and Kissinger in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Bass has defeated the cover-up." - The Washington Post
2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Born in Akaroa, Worsley's greatest adventure was as captain of Shackleton's ship Endurance, which was trapped in pack ice on the 1914–1916 Antarctic expedition and slowly crushed. The crew of 28 spent over a year camped on the Antarctic ice before Shackleton, Worsley and four others sailed a tiny lifeboat across the wild Southern Ocean to South Georgia to summon help for the rest of the men. An expanded edition of Shackleton's Captain (long out of print and much sought-after).
In Christchurch's inner city an innovative structure has taken shape: a 'Cardboard Cathedral' to stand in for the building devastated by the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Signalling the beginnings of renewal in the CBD, the cathedral is the first civic building completed since the quakes. Shigeru Ban, its designer, is an expert in disaster-zone building. In essays, plans and specially commissioned photography, this book tells the story. Originally conceived as a temporary building, its construction involved design challenges, structural innovations and community involvement; and the now-permanent structure seems set to become a symbol of Christchurch's revival.
Well written and illustrated. An important book.
Draws upon the holdings of Te Papa to illuminate a time of national trauma.
A fascinating and, above all, enjoyable exploration of the inner lives of plants.
Poems for children, bursting with enthusiasm and fun.
"Probably the greatest living crime writer in the world." - Ian Rankin
Malone was commanding officer of the Wellington Battalion of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli. He is probably the best-known individual from that ill-fated campaign, which culminated in the successful assault on Chunuk Bair on 8 August 1915. Malone was killed later that day.
A truly delightful overview of human inquiry into a wonderful world, from the Big Bang to the digital age.
Are lines made up of an infinite number of points? In 1632 a group of Jesuits was convened to rule whether this theory was admissible. The legitimacy of popes and kings, as well as our modern beliefs in human liberty and progressive science, hung in the balance; the answer hinged on the infinitesimal.
The action-packed follow-up to the highly successful Tito Ihaka novel, Death on Demand, involves New Zealand’s confrontation with the USA over its anti-nuclear stance.
In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Northern Amazon of Colombia. The world's leading authority on the hallucinogens and medicinal plants of the region, he returned after twelve years of travelling through South America in a dug-out canoe, mapping uncharted rivers, living among local tribes and documenting the knowledge of shamans. Wade Davis, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, follows in his footsteps.
A twentieth century time traveller to 29AD finds Jesus Christ incapable of fulfilling subsequent history's expectations and so takes on the role himself. Moorcock's science fiction classic won a Nebula award in 1967. Back in print at last.
Five amateur bakers compete in a baking competition and discover that the vision of perfect domesticity they aspire to may not be the whole truth.
>> Reviewed on National Radio.
As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to be a man blessed by fortune. Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed.
"Dark, atmospheric, utterly riveting." - Daily Mail
"An extraordinary book that defies genre." - Irish Independent
Food to delight children and frighten adults: Witchy-Poo Fingers, Fang Soup, Green Eggs and Ham Pie, Exploding Orange Cake, Dirt Pudding. Shut your kids in the kitchen with this book and stand clear!
You couldn't ask for a clearer or better illustrated survey of the denizens of the iron road.
