New books to hit the spot


TOUCHDOWN is a weekly selection of outstanding new titles: books either anticipated or surprising, just out of the carton! Follow the links for more information, to purchase these books or to have them put aside for you.

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10 July 2015


http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/886980?barcode=9780864739926&title=MauriceGee%3ALifeandWork
Maurice Gee: Life and work by Rachel Barrowman       $59.99
It's here! The greatly anticipated biography of Maurice Gee, Nelson resident and one of New Zealand's finest writers, by one of New Zealand's finest literary biographers. Beginning with his debut novel The Big Season in 1962, Gee has published 33 books, including Plumb, which won the 1978 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and is regarded by many critics as the defining novel of modern New Zealand literature. The product of nearly ten years’ research and writing, this biography provides an engaging and frequently surprising narrative of Gee’s life, along with vivid and accessible readings of both his adults and children's books. The book is illustrated with photographs from Gee’s personal collection as well as public archives.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/887182?barcode=9781927271896&title=WhenIamHappiest%28Dani%233%29
When I am Happiest by Rose Lagercrantz and Eva Eriksson      $19.99
Dani is very happy that it's the last day of school and the holidays are about to start. But then there's a knock on the classroom door, and Dani is told some bad news. How can she possibly be happy now? This is a sensitive, beautiful story about Dani's love for her father and her on-going friendship with Ella. It's a story about sorrow and joy and how life really is.
We love the Dani books! You will want to read My Happy Life and My Heart is Laughing too.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/882281?barcode=9780007459599&title=TheEmperorWaltz
The Emperor Waltz by Philip Hensher       $25.00
A novel with three narrative strands: fourth-century Rome, 1920s Germany, and 1980s London. In each place, a small coterie is closely connected and separated from the larger world. In each story, the larger world regards the small coterie and its passionately-held beliefs and secrets with suspicion and hostility. It is the story of eccentricity: its struggle, its triumph, its influence - but also its defeat.
"A ravishing tour de force." - The Times
 "A performance of extraordinary flair and majesty from a writer who seems capable of anything." - Guardian
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/921666-TheNot-DeadandtheSavedandOtherStories-9780330535250
 The Not-Dead and the Saved by Kate Clanchy        $38.00
"The short stories in this debut collection possess a raw, unsettled urgency and are exactly what we need to be reading now. Clanchy’s tales possess a raw, unsettled urgency, as if she were gripping the reader by the collar. These are not, it should be noted, stories for the faint of heart. They are literary hand grenades, raising difficult questions about the world in which we live – which is exactly what we need right now." - Joanna Rakoff, Guardian


http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/766659-TheFIREEconomy-9781927247839
The FIRE Economy: New Zealand's reckoning by Jane Kelsey      $49.99
The FIRE economy – finance, insurance and real estate – is now the world’s principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, instability has accompanied this new orthodoxy. The continuing narrative of neoliberalism in New Zealand reveals financial crises to be inherent to the very structure of the FIRE economy. How we respond to New Zealand’s future crises, however, means questioning what responses the failing neoliberal orthodoxy will actually permit. In detailing the barriers the FIRE economy presents to change in New Zealand, Kelsey points towards socially progressive, post-neoliberal futures. An important book.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/570089-NewZealandMountaineeringAHistoryinPhotographs-9781869538231
New Zealand Mountaineering: A history in photographs by John Wilson          $49.99
Ever since the 1880s, when mountaineering was born in New Zealand with the first attempt to climb Mount Cook, New Zealanders have had a special affinity with their mountains (climbing them in particular).
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/906941-TheSupernaturalEnhancements-9780091956479
The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero       $24.00
When Ambrose Wells dies jumping out of his bedroom window in Axton House, forgetting to open it first, a distant relative with an unusual companion takes possession of the gothic estate at Point Bless, Virginia. But as they settle into their new surroundings, excited by rumours of ghosts, suicides and secret societies, they find themselves not just part of a mysterious 'Game', but determined to win it. Part ghost story, part cerebral mystery - fully enjoyable.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/887026-SomeofUsEattheSeeds-9780864739872
Some of Us Eat the Seeds by Morgan Bach          $25.00
Morgan Bach weaves a line between waking life and the unstable dreamworld beneath, disorienting and reorienting us from moment to moment. In poems of childhood, family, travel and relationships, her poems respond to the ache and sometimes horror of life in a voice that is restless and witty, bold and sharp-edged.
"It’s ordinary and extraordinary. It’s the kind of arrival that delights me." – Bernadette Hall
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/920580-TheHumanRighttoDominate-9780199365005
The Human Right to Dominate by Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon      $45.00
"Nourished by a profound knowledge of the intricacies of the situation in Israel and Palestine, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon uncover a remarkable paradox of contemporary society: how the claim for human rights can coexist with the use of violence and serve purposes of domination. Their convincing analysis invites a critical rethinking of the global moral order." -Didier Fassin



http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/884427-Pablo-9781906838942
Pablo by Julie Birmant and Clement Oubrerie       $39.99
This award-winning graphic biography of Pablo Picasso captures the prolific and eventful life the artist. Pablo takes in Picasso's early life among the bohemians of Monmartre, his turbulent relationship with Fernande, and the development of a career that began in penury, continued on through scandal and frustration, and reached its climax with the advent of Cubism and modern art. The book shows how Picasso's art developed through his friendship with the poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, the painter Georges Braque, as well as his great rival Henri Matisse.
>> Nobody called Pablo Picasso anything.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/884096-BecauseYoullNeverMeetMe-9781408862629
Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas      $18.00
For fans of John Green! Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures, while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship which becomes a lifeline during dark times - until Moritz reveals that he holds the key to their shared, sinister past, and has been keeping it from Ollie all along.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/886489-Stallo-9780571296781
Stallo by Stefan Spjut         $33.00
In the summer of 1978 a young boy disappears without trace from a summer cabin in the woods. His mother claims that he was abducted by a giant. The boy is never found. The previous year, over in a Swedish National Park, a wildlife photographer takes a strange picture from his small airplane, of a bear running over the marshes. On its back sits a creature, which the photographer claims is something extraordinary. This is a haunting supernatural thriller for fans of Let the Right One In or The Passage.
"I was enthralled form the very first page. The words seems to sparkle on the page." - Karl Ove Knausgaard
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/881659-Whole-9780992264864
Whole: Recipes for simple wholefood eating by Bronwyn Kan      $45.00
Bronwyn Kan brings together 10 contributors of varying culinary backgrounds to explore the very personal relationship we have with the food we make. Drawing from their collective experience, the healthy wholefood recipes within are simple to make and designed to nourish body and mind. A lovely book. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/887031-TheLivesofColonialObjects-9781927322024
 The Lives of Colonial Objects edited by Annabel Cooper et al       $49.99
The 50 authors - historians, archivists, curators and Māori scholars - have each chosen an object from New Zealand’s colonial past, and their examinations open up our history in astonishingly varied ways. A kahu kiwi, a music album, a grandmother’s travel diary, the tauihu of a Māori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat, a flying boat, a cannon, a cottage, a country road – things invite us into the past through their tangible, tactile and immediate presence: in this collection they serve as 50 paths into New Zealand’s colonial history.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/876704-ArtoftheBook-StructureMaterialandTechnique-9781584235897
 Art of the Book: Structure, material and technique       $89.99
A comprehensive guide to printed volumes, featuring not only finished projects but also the techniques and materials of book making, as well as definitions of the terminology.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/953415-LesserBeastsASnout-to-TailHistoryoftheHumblePig-9780465052745
Lesser Beasts: A snout-to-tail history of the humble pig by Mark Essig          $45.00
Incredibly efficient at converting almost any organic matter into nourishing, protein, swine are prized for their meat - yet their flesh is banned in many cultures, and the animals themselves are maligned as filthy, lazy brutes. As historian Mark Essig reveals, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.
>> Demonstration of pigs' control of humans
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/883081?barcode=9789881383457&title=AnimalKingdom-DesignwithAnimalAesthetics-UntamedGraphics
Animal Kingdom: Design with animal aesthetics        $79.99
From packaging and branding to product design and installation art, this is an illustrated survey of how the graphic depictions of animals impact on our visual culture.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/954900?barcode=9780473319748&title=TheOfficialNewZealandDictionaryofColloquialisms
The Official New Zealand Dictionary of Colloquialisms by Lucy Kirkwood        $29.99
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/910389-TheBirthofaBridge-9780857053787
 Birth of a Bridge by Maylis de Kerangal          $38.00
Coca, Southern California. A small town on a wild river, at the margins of the red-rocked desert and the forest where the last of the state's Native Americans still make their home. When Boa, the charismatic new mayor, decides to put Coca on the map, he plans a monumental new project: a six-lane bridge, two hundred metres high, designed and destined to catapult the city into the third millennium. Workers from across the globe flock to California: to earn a living, to escape their pasts, to bear witness to man's mastery of nature. But the project's majestic scope has no regard for the legacy of this ancient land, and within this monochrome Babel festers a very human cocktail of fears and passions.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/879574-TheBirdSkinner-9780857897275
The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway         $25.00
It is 1973. Jim Kennoway, a distinguished ornithologist, has just left his work at the Natural History Museum in New York, turned his back on his family and retreated to an island boathouse off the coast of Maine. His desires are simple: to be left alone with his cigarettes, gin and battered copy of Treasure Island, and to forget.
"Alice Greenway creates intensely believable characters who come from other places and other times. The Solomon Islands become characters as rich and three-dimensional as any other. She captures so well the unsleeping tragedies of the past, and how these bear in upon the present." - Helen Dunmore
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/876003-MearikiTheQuestForTruthMatawehiFables-9781775501718
Meariki: The quest for the truth by Helen Pearse-Otene and Andrew Furdan       $25.00
Meariki is a slave to the people of Ngaī Kuw̄ai and must obey the chief and look after his only daughter, Hineamuru. When Hineamuru is abducted by a warlock, Meariki and Peh̄i, a young warrior and Hineamuru's lover, go on a hazardous journey to rescue Hineamuru. Peh̄i is brave but arrogant, while Meariki is clever and resourceful, and the success of the journey rests on her. At each incident in the adventure, Peh̄i and Meariki uncover hidden truths, and Meariki comes to realise that in saving Hineamuru, she will also reveal her own true destiny. A gripping graphic novel.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/852470?barcode=9781775501664&title=Arohanui%3ARevengeoftheFey%28MatawehiFables%29
Arohanui: Revenge of the Fey by Helen Pearse-Otene and Andrew Furdan       $25.00
An accomplished graphic story of two hostile tribes: one thriving, the other starving and forced to enter into a hard bargain to survive. In the midst of the conflict, two lovers from opposing tribes, Kahu and Kuratawhiti, plan to bring their warring tribes together through their marriage. But tragedy looms as Kahu defends his beloved Kuratawhiti against his treasured sister, Mira, who unleashes a lifetime of rage on Kuratawhiti and her people.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/886901?barcode=9781847923363&title=HowMusicGotFree%3AWhatHappensWhenanEntireGenerationCommitstheSameCrime%3F
How Music Got Free: What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime? by Stephen Witt        $39.99
The story of how a creative industry ate itself. Could this happen to books?
"Scorching investigative history of how the music industry found itself staring catastrophe in the face. Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our creative industries." - The Bookseller
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/885586-Oblivion-9781846559808
Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason        $38.00
"The prince of gloom." - New York Times
"One of the greats of modern crime fiction." - Sunday Times
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/882291-Humans30TheUpgradingoftheSpecies-9780008113391
Humans 3.0: The upgrading of the species by Peter Nowak         $27.00
We used to create technology to change the world around us; now we're using it to change ourselves. With vaccinations, in-vitro fertilization, and individual genetic therapy, we're entering a new epoch, a next step, faster and more dramatic than the shift from Australopithicines to Homo Sapiens. The technology that set us apart from our earliest selves is becoming part of the evolutionary process. Advancements in computing, robotics, nanotechnology, neurology, and genetics mean that our wildest imaginings could soon become commonplace.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/885503-TheWayofTeaandJusticeRescuingtheWorldsFavoriteBeveragefromItsViolentHistory-9781455519040
 The Way of Tea and Justice: Rescuing the world's favourite beverage from its violent history by Becca Stevens      $35.00
What started as an impossible dream-to build a cafe that employs women recovering from prostitution and addiction-is helping to fuel an astonishing movement to bring freedom and fair wages to women producers worldwide where tea and trafficking are linked by oppression and the opiate wars. Becca Stevens started the Thistle Stop Cafe to empower women survivors. But when she discovered a connection between cafe workers and tea laborers overseas, she embarked on a global mission called "Shared Trade" to increase the value of women survivors and producers across the globe.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/885556-DylanDiscbyDisc-9780760346594
 Bob Dylan: The illustrated discography by Jon Bream     $45.00
 Thpughtful analyses of all 35 studio releases, illustrated with LP art, period photography, 7-inch picture sleeves from around the world, and other memorabilia, as well as performance and candid offstage photography. 
>> "I don't need Time Magazine".