The Children Act by Ian McEwan     $36.99
A legal challenge to the withholding of medical treatment of a minor for religious reasons forms the framework of McEwan's latest tightly written novel.
"Ian McEwan fails to disappoint with his latest novel. It is written with an economic but beautiful style, delving into individual lives while discussing wider issues." - Sarah
"Excellent." - Marie
>> Watch this trailer.
>> McEwan and Amis chat about their new novels here.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell        $37.99
 Mitchell's most ambitious novel yet. Long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
"600 pages of metafictional shenanigans in relentlessly brilliant prose. Death is at the heart of this novel, and there lies its depth and darkness, bravely concealed with all the wit and sleight of hand and ventriloquistic verbiage and tale-telling bravura of which Mitchell is a master. Whatever prizes it wins or doesn't, The Bone Clocks will be a great success, and it deserves to be, because a great many people will enjoy reading it very much." - Ursula K. Le Guin, Guardian
>> Here's an interview.

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton     $35.00
An account of the absorption and dedication of Shapton's teenage years in competitive swimming, and of her later years of recreational swimming and introspection. Includes artworks based on swimming spots and a catalogue of Shapton's swimming costumes and the memories they represent. A delight to read.
"Pure genius, gliding lyricism. It is, simply, a delight."- Independent in Sunday

Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey      $36.00
Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable but unfulfilling life in Manhattan. As her husband scrambles to figure out what happened to her, Elyria hurtles into the unknown, testing fate by hitchhiking, tacitly being swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and public parks. Her risky and often surreal encounters with the people and wildlife of New Zealand propel Elyria deeper into her deteriorating mind... 
"A searching, emotionally resonant novel. There’s significant talent at work here." - The New York Times

England, And other stories by Graham Swift        $39.99
Ordinary lives distilled in ordinary situations, captured with Swift's accustomed mastery.
"Heart-breaking, unadorned tales." - Telegraph

Zealandia: Our continent revealed by Nick Mortimer and Hamish Campbell      $60.00
The definite book on the planet's seventh continent, some of which pokes above the ocean surface and forms New Zealand. This book is the result of a complete rethink of geology and natural history. 

Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead       $39.99
"During the Nazi occupation, the inhabitants of a group of small villages in Fance's Massif Central were able to help about 3000 persecuted people, resisters, freemasons, escaped POWs, communists and Jews escape to Switzerland and Spain, and hid about 800 Jewish refugee children whose parents had been sent to the death camps.  Since the war many questions have arisen about this seemingly unremarkable place where remarkable things happened.  Caroline Moorehead, author of A Train in Winter, has unravelled a rich story of ordinary people responding to impossibly brutal events. This is an incredible book, both harrowing and uplifting, and I can't get it out of my mind." - Jan

I Don't Want to Go to School by Stephanie Blake      $19.99
Once upon a time, there was a mischievous little rabbit. Maybe you know him. When his mother said: "Tomorrow is your first day of school, little rabbit." he replied: "I'm not going!"

Big Art / Small Art by Tristan Manco     $85.00
Artists from around the world use extremes in scale to great and often surprising effect. It's hard to keep working when a book as browseably interesting as this arrives.

Hard Country: A Golden Bay life by Robin Robilliard      $39.99
A fascinating memoir of sixty years of farming and living at Rocklands, on the fringe of the Takaka Valley.

 The Colour of Food: A memoir of life, love and dinner by Anne Else      $35.00
Anne Else loved eating, but when she married at 19 she'd never cooked a meal. Despite a shaky start she became an enthusiastic cook - with a little help from Nancy Spain, Katharine Whitehorn, Elizabeth David and the Duchess of Windsor. In this captivating memoir, Else takes you inside her life, from marriage and motherhood through divorce, remarriage, discovery of her birth mother and enduring the heartbreaking deaths of family members, to making new friends through her food blog.

A New Zealand Nature Journal by Sandra Morris     $22.00
Have you ever noticed that ladybirds have different numbers of spots? Or that leaves can be pointed or round, long or short, soft or hard? There is so much to explore in the natural world. Keeping a nature journal is the best way to record all your amazing discoveries.

J by Howard Jacobson      $36.99
Set in the future, a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited, J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying. Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe - a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.
This seems really interesting, and has already been compared with 1984 and Brave New World.
Long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker prize.
"Perhaps the British dystopian novel of our time." - John Burnside, Guardian

The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis        $37.99
Does the banality of evil place it closer to clownhood than to monsterhood? Partly narrated by an Auschwitz commandant, this is an excoriating novel.
"The Zone of Interest is grubby, creepy - and Martin Amis's best for twenty five years. He has done his subject justice. The final release for the reader is an almost physical relief." - Spectator
>> Amis and McEwan chat about their new novels here.

Sleeping on Horseback by Frances Samuel       $25.00
"I love the rich feel of Frances Samuel's poems. Strange things happen. People yearn for other times and places. Sometimes they even walk to the moon. Yet the poet's exotic elsewheres constantly dissolve into the local, into the day-to-day world where we also lead our lives. These poems - to steal Samuel's own words - are the work of a professor of the invisible who is also a pickpocket of reality." - Bill Manhire

Where is Rusty? by Sieb Posthuma       $19.99
 Rusty goes to the department store with his mother and Henrietta and Toby. But his nose leads him astray and on a new adventure. Soon, everyone is looking for him. Where is Rusty? Can you help?

Sapiens: A brief history by Yuval Noah Harari       $37.99
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

Out of Time: The pleasures and perils of aging by Lynne Segal     $29.99
Segal mixes memoir, literature and polemic to examine the inevitable consequences of staying alive. Who is that stranger who stares back from the mirror? What happens to ambition and sexuality? As baby-boomers approach their sixth and seventh decades, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent. Must the old always be in conflict with the young? How can we deal with the inevitability of loss and find satisfaction in survival? 
"Passionate, lucid, and shockingly candid ... a clarion call to those who see feminism as a redundant cause." - Helen Walsh
"A powerful manifesto for dealing with the march of time." - Observer

Why You Can Go Out Dressed Like That: Modern fashion explained by Marnie Fogg         $34.00
All too often a lack of obvious fit or purpose has been mistaken for a lack of design sophistication. In an informed defence of innovative fashion, this book champions the improbable, the provocative, the uncomfortable and the seemingly ridiculous. 

With a Zero at its Heart by Charles Lambert      $36.00
24 themed chapters, each of 10 paragraphs, each paragraph bearing 120 words.
"With a Zero at Its Heart is elegantly written and carries considerable emotional clout. Lambert's approach means there's a real democracy of incident, and little observations stand alongside life-changing events in a parade that takes in tripe, chickenpox, funerals, cowboy films, pigeon feathers, great books and wild nights. His message is that a life is poorly served by conventional storytelling; his poetic, tender and funny novella provides a fine alternative." - Guardian

The Tightrope Walkers by David Almond    $30.00
Dominic Hall grows up in the sixties on a brand-new estate, along with the other families who escaped the river. But the Tyne is still an overwhelming presence, and most of the fathers work in the shipyards. Dom is torn between his new mates: Holly Stroud, his enchanting neighbour, and Vincent McAlinden, who's something else altogether - a wild, dangerous boy with murderous instincts. After his mother's death, Dom has to decide who he is, what he wants to be - and then face up to the consequences.

The Name at the End of the Ladder by Elena de Roo      $17.00
"Win the game to choose your name and free the players who remain." Twelve-year-old September is determined to choose an adventurous name for herself from the Name Bank - not like all her friends, who are named after flowers or trees. Soon she discovers that she has no choice, unless she wins an ancient and mysterious board game. And every roll of the dice leads her further into danger.

The Catch: How fishing companies reinvented slavery and plunder the ocean by Michael Field     $40.00You need to know this.

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo       $25.00Swearing to his dying mother that he'll find the father he has never met, a certain Pedro Paramo, Juan Preciado sets out across the barren plains of Mexico for Comala, the hallucinatory ghost town his father presided over like a feudal lord. Between the realms of the living and the dead, in fragments of dreams and the nightly whispers of Comala's ghosts, there emerges the tragic tale of Pedro Paramo and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. A classic of magic realism and arguably the most important Mexican novel ever written, with a new foreword by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Singing Home the Whale by Mandy Hager        $19.99
 Will Jackson is hiding out, a city boy reluctantly staying with his uncle in small town New Zealand while he struggles to recover from a brutal attack and the aftermath of a humiliating YouTube clip gone viral. After he discovers a young abandoned orca whale his life is further thrown into chaos, when he rallies to help protect it against hostile, threatening interests.

Is There a Dog in this Book? by Viviane Schwartz      $29.99
Our three favourite picture book cats Tiny, Moonpie and Andre make a new furry friend...Something smells funny...what can it be? Wait, hang on a second, is it a DOG? Is there a dog in this book?! Oh no!

Falling into Place by Amy Zhang       $22.00
"On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton's Laws of Motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road." Why? Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up?

It's Been Said Before: A guide to the use and abuse of clichés by Orin Hargraves       $46.00
At what point does a phrase pass from being useful to being over-used? To what extent can a cliché make meaning clearer and to what extent can a cliché obscure meaning? Do clarity and style make different demands on the use of familiar phrases?

Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb      $34.99
Robin Hobb returns to her best-loved characters in a brand new series! Once, there were three inseparable friends: Fitz, Nighteyes and the Fool. But one is long dead, and one long-missing. Then one Winterfest night a messenger arrives to seek out Fitz, but mysteriously disappears, leaving nothing but a blood-trail. What was the message? Who was the sender? And what has happened to the messenger? Suddenly Fitz's violent old life erupts into the peace of his new world, and nothing and no one is safe.
 "In today's crowded fantasy market Robin Hobb's books are like diamonds in a sea of zircons." - George R. R. Martin

Quest by Aaron Becker      $29.99
A king emerges from a hidden door in a city park, startling two children sheltering from the rain. No sooner does he push a map and some strange objects into their hands than he is captured by hostile forces that whisk him back through the enchanted door. Just like that, the children are caught up in a quest to rescue the king and his kingdom from darkness, while illuminating the farthest reaches of their imagination...
Another wonderful wordless story from the author of Journey.

The Jewel by Amy Ewing     $19.99
A compelling new series. Imprisoned in the opulent cage of the palace, Violet learns the brutal ways of the Jewel, where the royal women compete to secure their bloodline and the surrogates are treated as disposable commodities. This book has been compared with both The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale.

Play in the Garden: Fun projects for kids to enjoy outdoors by Sarah O'Neill       $35.00
 Beginning in the spring, children can get their hands dirty testing soil, fool the birds with stone strawberries, race Jack up the beanstalk, stir pots of stinky weed brew, grow plants for free, create a pirate map and find buried treasure, craft corn dolls, design their own stepping stones, and more. O'Neill is a New Zealand gardener and parent.

Memories of Early Years, And other writings by Douglas Lilburn      $39.99
Important to the understanding of the development of the most outstanding and wide-ranging New Zealand composer.

Twelve Thousand Hours: Education and poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Vicki Carpenter and Sue Osborne       $39.99
The correlations are obvious but the mechanisms are a challenge. What are our priorities?

Hunting Elephants by Peter Bland       $22.00
"There's a remarkable consistency of voice and vision in Bland's work, and he remains the congenial, wry, and perceptive companion he has always been." - Hugh Roberts, New Zealand Books

100 Best Native Plants for New Zealand Gardens by Fiona Eadie       $45.00
Indispensable.

Construction by Sally Sutton        $29.99
You'll need a hard hat, preferably a yellow one, to read this book (we've got the hard hats, too).

The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory        $37.00
The story of Margaret Pole, daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, and one of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the Wars of the Roses; from the author of The Other Boleyn Girl.

The Dark Net: Inside the digital underworld by Jamie Bartlett       $39.99
The online world most of us inhabit represents only a small fraction of the internet. Beyond Google and commercial web browsers lies a parallel universe, a 'deep web' twenty-five times larger than the surface web: a world of private chat rooms, second lives and anonymous markets; places where people stretch freedom to its limits to be anything, and do anything, they want.

Summer of Monsters: The scandalous story of Mary Shelley by Tony Thompson      $19.99
A novel of Mary Shelley's life, leading up to the summer she spent with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori and Claire Clairmont, which inspired her novel Frankenstein.

English Eccentric: A celebration of imaginative, eccentric and truly stylish interiors by Ros Byam Shaw       $85.00
Step inside and poke around.

To This Day by Shane Koyczan      $25.00
From acclaimed spoken-word poet Shane Koyczan, the rallying cry against bullying that became a viral video viewed over 12 million times. Now a dazzling illustrated book featuring the work of thirty artists from around the world, To This Day is a powerful expression of the lasting effects of bullying, and the inner strength that allows people to move beyond it.

Fathers are almost infinitely various, and so are books. We can help you match some up.
Fathers' Day: this Sunday.










  

How To Be Both by Ali Smith       $37.00
This new novel from the wonderful Ali Smith comes in two versions, depending on the ordering of the text. Which will you get, and how will this affect your reading? Long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker prize.
"Its two overlapping plots both ask if it’s possible to be male and female, in the past and the present, to be present and absent, to appear one thing and mean another. Ali Smith’s writing often disrupts forms in a joyous, mind-expanding fashion, and in How To Be Both, she mischievously remodels the novel with both brazen ambition and sneaky subtly. Smith’s writing is smart, witty and arch, both utterly contemporary and vividly historical." - Independent

 Shark by Will Self       $37.00
Another literary tour de force from the inimitable Will Self. Shark turns upon an actual incident in WWII, when the ship which had delivered the fissile material to the south Pacific to be dropped on Hiroshima was sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of 900 men, including 200 killed in the largest shark attack ever recorded. When a resident in the 1970s at the therapeutic community in north London starts to tell rambling stories of thrashing about in the water while under attack from sharks, psychologist Zac Busner has to decide whether they are schizoid delusions or some sort of reality...
"Shark confirms that Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation, a writer whose formidable intellect is mercilessly targeted on the limits of the cerebral as a means of understanding. Yes, he makes you think, but he also insists that you feel." - Guardian
>> Read this: "I had planned to write Jaws without the shark."
 

American Smoke: Journeys to the end of the light by Iain Sinclair   $35.00
A literary road-trip through America on the trail of Beats Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder. 
"Iain Sinclair is brilliant, always coming out of left field with an unexpected idea. He is a psycho-geographer comparable with Sebald." - Jan
"A challenging, maddening, fascinating journey. Enjoy Sinclair's poetic language and subtly warped sense of humour." - Metro
"Beautifully crafted prose. Wonderful." - Daily Telegraph 
"Iain Sinclair has gone from cult author to national treasure." - Robert Macfarlane

 Stone Mattress: Nine tales by Margaret Atwood      $40.00
A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. And a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatalite.
"Margaret Atwood is the quiet Mata Hari, the mysterious, violent figure who pits herself against the ordered, too-clean world like an arsonist." -  Michael Ondaatje 

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom       $35.00
When Eva's mother abandons her on Iris's front porch, the girls don't seem to have much in common - except, they soon discover, a father. Thrown together with no mothers to care for them and a father who could not be considered a parent, Iris and Eva become one another's family. Iris wants to be a movie star; Eva is her sidekick. Together, they journey across 1940s America, stumbling, cheating and loving their way through a landscape of war, betrayals and big dreams.
"I loved this book." - Sarah
"I loved this book." - Stella

 Richard Seddon, King of God's Own: The life and times of New Zealand's longest-serving Prime Minister by Rom Brooking     $65.00
"The life, the health, the intelligence, and the morals of the nation count for more than riches, and I would rather have this country free from want and squalor and unemployed than the home of multi-millionaires." - Richard Seddon, 1904

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth      $39.99
Set in the three years after the Battle of Hastings, The Wake tells the story of a fractured band of guerrilla fighters who take up arms against the invaders. Carefully hung on the known historical facts about the almost forgotten war of resistance that spread across England in the decade after 1066, it is a story of the brutal shattering of lives, a tale of lost gods and haunted visions, narrated by a man of the Lincolnshire fens bearing witness to the end of his world. Written in what the author describes as 'a shadow tongue' - a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable for the modern reader. Interesting.
Long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

Why I Read: The serious pleasure of books by Wendy Lesser      $35.00
“The truths in literature are incidental and cumulative, not global and permanent.”
"Lesser’s voice is so congenial, measured, authoritative and sane, it seems downright impervious to quarrel. In Why I Read she has written a necessary addition to the canonical titles of appreciation. Wendy Lesser is a serious reader — a quality reader — and this book is a serious pleasure. " - The New York Times

 The Twenty First Century Art Book     $59.99
280 artists, 50 countries, a wide range of media: painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art, video installation, performance.

Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev by Andrey Kurkov      $28.00
Ukrainian Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov's first-hand account of the crisis in his country. Written from his flat in Kiev, just 500 metres away from Independence Square, Kurkov can smell the burning barricades and hear the sounds of grenades and gunshot. The diaries begin on the first day of the pro-European protests in November, and are a mix of commentary on current events, Ukraine's political past, and Kurkov's personal experience of living through a time of intense political unrest.

 A History of the Book in 100 Books: The complete story, from Egypt to e-book by Roderick Cave and Sara Ayad       $39.99
A lavishly illustrated trip along the temporal backbone of human culture. A lovely book.

My Grandfather's Gallery: A family memoir of art and war by Anne Sinclair        $40.00
Paul Rosenberg, one of Europe's leading art dealers, fled Paris with his family in 1940, leaving behind his paintings, which found their way into Nazi hands. More than half a century later, Sinclair found a box of correspondence between her grandfather and Picasso, Matisse, Braque and others, and set about reclaiming her family's history. 
Fascinating reading, and emblematic of the individual stories of Jewish lives overshadowed by the one story devised for them by the Nazis.

 We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas     $35.00
"Thomas's treatment of Ed Leary's early-onset Alzheimer's is extraordinary. It seems to come upon the reader with the same slow realisation as it comes upon his wife and son. It is clear that Thomas has quarried deep to discover emotional truth and a form and language in which to express it. We Are Not Ourselves took 10 years to write, and justifies every one of them." - Guardian
"Devastating." - The New York Times

 Hello World: Where design meets life by Alice Rawsthorn    $55.00
What demands does life make on design, and how does design affect the way we live? 
"Hello World is a new book by Alice Rawsthorn, the one and only, the best design critic in the entire world. She keeps the banner of design flying high. Irma Boom designed it, and Irma is simply the best book designer alive." - Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

 What to Bake and How to Bake it by Jane Hornby     $55.00
The ultimate cookbook for amateur bakers looking to master the classics and expand their repertoires.

 How to Speak Money: What the money people say - and what they really mean by John Lanchester       $35.00
A clear and entertaining guide to the world of finance from the perceptive author of Capital and Whoops!

 The Imaginary World of [your name here] by Keri Smith      $25.00
What kind of world would you like to inhabit? Keri Smith begins with a list. Writing down everything the reader is drawn to, from things they love or collect to things that fascinate and excite, including objects, colours, sounds, textures, memories, places and people, the list serves as the building block for the creation of a new world. This world is based entirely on who the reader is as an individual, and as such is completely unique. Prompted to think about landscape, place names, maps, currency and more. Another great interactive book from Keri Smith, encouraging everyone to push their imaginations to the limit.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters     $39.99
1922. An impoverished widow and her spinster daughter are obliged to take in lodgers. For with the arrival of a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house are shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. 
From the author of Fingersmith, The Night Watch and The Little Stranger.
"Morally complex, atmospheric, romantic and psychologically deep. A triumph: spellbinding, profound and almost problematically addictive." - Express

 Personal by Lee Child       $37.99
Jack Reacher is back. Come and get him.
>> Watch Lee Child, here to say "Hi".

 Tuatara: Biology and conservation of a venerable survivor by Alison Cree      $89.99
The long-awaited monograph on the Sphenodon. 

 The Restoration of Otto Laird by Nigel Packer          $37.99
An elderly architect, once renowned for his radical designs, comes out of peaceful retirement to fight the demolition of his most significant building. Can he keep the past where it belongs?

Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Ivor Montagu and the astonishing story behind the game that changed the world by Nicholas Griffin     $37.00
It was one of the most significant developments of the post-war era: China finally abandoning its close relationship with the Soviet Union to begin detente with the USA. Astonishingly, the man who helped make it happen was a British aristocrat, Ivor Montagu, a Soviet spy who dined with Stalin. Even more remarkably, the means to this rapprochement was table tennis, a sport loved by both Chairman Mao and Montagu. A story too improbable to be true - if it wasn't true!

Dress, Memory: A memoir of my twenties in dresses by Lorelei Vashti     $35.00 
Lorelei started collecting dresses in her twenties and found that every time she wore one it became more significant to her. From falling in love for the first time to playing in a band, from starting a career to moving overseas, every dress soon had a memory stitched into it, and she became as attached to each one as if they were the events and people themselves...But what happens when the wardrobe gets full? Should you let go of the dresses you've outgrown, or try to hold on to them forever?

The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths     $17.99
Andy and Terry's incredible, ever-expanding treehouse has 13 new storeys, including a watermelon-smashing level, a wave machine, a life-size snakes and ladders game (with real ladders and real snakes), a rocket-powered carrot-launcher, a Ninja Snail Training Academy and a high-tech detective agency with all the latest high-tech detective technology, which is lucky because they have a BIG mystery to solve - where is Mr Big Nose??? Well, what are you waiting for? Come on up!

 Internal Medicine: A doctor's stories by Terence Holt     $35.00
A collection of essays about life as a surgical intern.
"Terrence Holt is Melville + Poe + Borges, but with a heart far more capacious." - Junot Diaz 

 The Edge of Uncertainty: 11 discoveries taking science by surprise by Michael Brooks     $35.00
Our unshakable truths are being shaken apart. Fascinating!
"The canniest science writer around. He writes, above all, with attitude." - Independent

Fifty Weapons that Changed the Course of History by Joel Levy    $39.99
A fascinating and pictorial guide to the arms and armaments that have had the greatest impact on the development (and destruction) of human civilization.

Heirloom Vegetables: A guide to their history and varieties by Simon Rickard    $65.00
How often do you hear someone complain that tomatoes don't taste like they used to? It's becoming a common concern, as food production is increasingly controlled by multinational corporations more interested in profit than flavour. People who care about their food are growing their own vegetables in droves - and especially heirlooms for their wonderfully diverse flavours, shapes and colours (not to mention their rich history and weird and wonderful names).

 The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw       $37.00

Paris: 1989. Recently retired Inspector of Police Auguste Jovert receives a letter from a woman who claims to be his daughter. Two days later, a stranger comes knocking on his door. Set in Paris and Japan, The Snow Kimono tells the stories of Inspector Jovert, former Professor of Law Tadashi Omura, and his one-time friend the writer Katsuo Ikeda. All three men have lied to themselves, and to each other. And these lies are about to catch up with them.

 The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan      $26.00

Enter The Realm of Possibility and meet a boy whose girlfriend is in love with Holden Caulfield; a girl who loves the boy who wears all black; two boys pondering their first anniversary; and a girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have. These are just a few of the captivating characters readers will get to know in this intensely heartfelt new novel about those ever changing moments of love and heartbreak that go hand-in-hand with high school. 

 "David Levithan is one of my favourite young adult authors." - Sarah

 Happy City: Transforming our lives through urban design by Charles Montgomery     $37.00

The solutions to this century's problems - from climate change to overpopulation - lie in unlocking the secrets to great city living.

Academy Street by Mary Costello      $35.00
"With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion amid the legions of the meek and the unobtrusive." - J.M. Coetzee
"Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book." - Ron Rash

 Confessions of a People-Smuggler by Dawood Amiri      $35.00
A first-hand account of the hidden face of humanitarian crisis.

Orlando the Marmalade Cat: A camping holiday by Kathleen Hale       $19.99
He may be seventy years old now, but Orlando, his wife Grace and their kittens Blanche, Pansy and Tinkle are still off to the country for their fun-filled camping adventure. Hale's first 'Orlando' book is now reissued.

 The Beast of Monsieur Racine by Tomi Ungerer       $29.99
Ungerer is one of the most esteemed and influential illustrators. Monsieur Racine wakes up one day to find his precious pear tree looted of all the award-winning fruit. When he discovers that the culprit is funny-looking beast, his anger gives way to curiosity and two become friends.

The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee      $28.00
This novel, spanning five turbulent decades of Iranian history (from before the 1979 revolution, through the Islamic Republic and up to the present) was a runaway best-seller in Iran before it was banned by the government. 

The Book of Days by K.A. Barker      $19.99
Most people believe the best way to forget someone is to throw them down a well. Or lock them in a room with eight keys, or bury them at a crossroad in the thirteenth hour. But they're wrong. The best way to forget someone is for them never to have existed in the first place. When sixteen-year-old Tuesday wakes from sleep for the first time, she opens her eyes to a world filled with wonder - and peril. Left only with a letter from the person she once was, Tuesday sets out to discover her past. 

 The Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia     $35.00
Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marin is drawn to the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room. Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, the Incorrigible Optimists Club introduces Michel to a world beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of history, ideas and politics shaped by their own personal experiences.
"A masterpiece." - La Parisienne

Violins of Hope, Violins of the Holocaust: Instruments of hope and liberation in mankind's darkest hour by James A. Grymes     $29.99
The violin has been part of Jewish culture for centuries, but during the Holocaust, the violin assumed extraordinary roles within the Jewish community. For some musicians, the instrument was a liberator; for others, it was a savior that spared their lives. For many, the violin provided comfort in mankind's darkest hour, and, in at least one case, a violin helped avenge murdered family members. Today, these instruments serve as powerful reminders of an unimaginable experience - they are memorials to those who perished and testaments to those who survived.

 Bistronomy: French food unbound by Katrina Meynink     $59.99
The new wave of cuisine represented by the bistronomy movement is led by young chefs who create phenomenally clever food without the pomp and circumstance of high-end restaurants. This is haute cuisine for the people - served in convivial surrounds, where food and community, rather than the thread count of the tablecloth, are what matters.

 Politics by David Runciman       $29.99
Politics: what is it, why we do we need it and where, in these turbulent times, is it heading? Runciman's comprehensive short introduction is invaluable to those studying politics or those who want to know how life in Denmark became more comfortable than in Syria. 
A joy to read.

 The Inheritor's Powder: A cautionary tale of poison, betrayal and greed by Sndra Hempel       $29.99
In this account of one of history's most notorious poisonings, Hempel tells the story of the birth of toxicology and of a mystery which gripped a nation.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Handel        $34.99
DAY ONE: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. WEEK TWO: Civilization has crumbled. YEAR TWENTY: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild...
"Station Eleven is so compelling, so fearlessly imagined, that I wouldn't have put it down for anything." -  Ann Patchett

 Empty Mansions: The mysterious life of Huguette Clark and the spending of a great American fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell    $39.99
Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had Huguette Clark, who died aged 104, lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?
 "An exhaustively researched, well-written account, a blood-boiling expose that will make you angry and will make you sad." - The Seattle Times

 White Crocodile by K.T. Medina        $35.00
When emotionally damaged mine-clearer Tess Hardy travels to Cambodia to find out the truth behind her ex-husband's death, she doesn't know much about the country or its beliefs. On arrival, she finds that teenage mothers are going missing, while others are being found mutilated and murdered. As local superstitions breed fear, Tess is drawn into a web of lies that stretches from Cambodia to another murder in England, and a violent secret twenty years old.

 Good Morning, Mr Mandela by Zelda la Grange     $35.00
The autobiography of the white Afrikaner who became a close assistant to Nelson Mandela.

 Percy Jackson and the Greek Gods by Rick Riordan      $26.00
If you like horror shows, blood baths, lying, stealing, backstabbing, and cannibalism, then read on...Who could tell the origin stories of the gods of Olympus better than a modern-day demigod? In this whirlwind tour of Greek mythology, Percy Jackson gives his personal take on the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece - and reveals how they came to rule the world. 

Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan     $22.00 
When Apple's mother returns after eleven years of absence, Apple feels whole again. She will have an answer to her burning question - why did you go? And she will have someone who understands what it means to be a teenager - unlike Nana. But just like the stormy Christmas Eve when she left, her mother's homecoming is bitter sweet, and Apple wonders who is really looking after whom. It's only when Apple meets someone more lost than she is, that she begins to see things as they really are.

 The diaries are coming! (Luckily - so is 2015 (Eek!)).

 Our Aging Brain by André Aleman    $35.00
We all worry occasionally that our brains - particularly our memories - just don't work as well as they used to. In this groundbreaking book, André Aleman shows that though the decline in our mental capacities begins earlier than we think, this is not such a bad thing. In fact, older people are more resistant to the effects of stress, cope better with their emotions and with complex situations, and are - generally speaking - happier than their younger counterparts.