The King and the Sea by Heinz Janisch and Wolf Erlbruch  $19.99
“I am the king!" said the king. The sea answered with a whoosh.
The little king wants to control his world: the sea, the cloud, the rain, a bee, a trumpet, a pencil, but his world has other ideas and the king learns to soften his relationship with it and accept the way it governs itself. A thoughtful, subtle picture book with illustrations by Erlbruch (Duck, Death and the Tulip). As soon as you have finished you will want to start reading it again.

Marshlands by Matthew Olshan     $19.99
Unexpectedly released after many years of ill-treatment, an aging prisoner finds refuge at a museum which is exhibiting a replica of the Marshlands, in which the prisoner had spent some time as a doctor among the despised and feared Marshmen. Suddenly the novel turns inside out and begins to run backwards. What is the crime that was committed, and why has the doctor been imprisoned? 
"Olshan's prose, so spare and unsentimental, and the book's fraught political atmosphere, so coolly rendered, are remarkably reminiscent of J.M. Coetzee's work, as is the strange, almost fairy-tale quality of a story at once so specific in its details and so general in its detachment from any particular time or place." - The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Reading the World: Confessions of a literary explorer by Ann Morgan       $49.99
Morgan decided to spend a year reading a book from each country of the world. How did she get on? Why are some countries better represented in English translation than others? What concepts of culture or identity were challenged by her reading? How many different countries have you read books from? (You might be surprised how few). 
>> She blogged. 

 Vixen by Rosie Garland         $19.99
Devon, 1349. The villagers of Brauntone are awaiting a sign. As they haul a stinking creature from the nets, new priest Father Thomas thinks it has finally come. In the hands of his young housekeeper, Anne, this creature is revealed as just a girl, but in the mind of Father Thomas she is to be so much more than that. And he will stake all but his own life on that as the Plague rages towards Brauntone and its people turn to him to save them.
"Poetic, surprising, sexy and ultimately deeply moving, Vixen will have you hooked... it will stay with you long after you've reached the final page." - Diva

 Death and Forgiveness by Jindra Ticha        $30.00
Ticha fled Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Russian invasion and settled in New Zealand. She returned on the first day of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and since then she has had 18 books published in Czech while continuing to live in New Zealand. In this thoughtful book, her first novel written in English, she tells of a woman who returns to Prague to nurse her dying mother, having fled Czechoslovakia and settling in New Zealand following the 1968 Russian Invasion. How has exile changed the way she thinks? What reverberations alter the patterns of a life and the relationships that comprise it?

Mr Selden's Map of China: The spice trade, a lost chart and the South China Sea by Timothy Brook      $29.99
In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing.

The Book of Palms by C.F.P. von Martius        $49.99
On December 13, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, was carried to his grave in a coffin covered with fresh palm leaves. The fronds were a reference to his groundbreaking Natural History of Palms (1823–1853). This book reproduces all 240 stunning chromolithographs from the original three volumes, including the South American scenes. 

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by John Ronson       $35.00
Shame is one of the most underappreciated societal and historical forces. Ronson travelled the world to meet people who have been publicly shamed. How did shame affect them? How much are we motivated (or curtailed) by the fear of shame?
"Superb and terrifying." - Guardian

Falling Out of Time by David Grossman      $27.00
Grossman's genre-defying drama - part play, part prose, pure poetry - tells the story of bereaved parents setting out to reach their lost children. Written following the death of his own son, this book is an expression of the depth of human feeling - grief, tenderness, anger - that overwhelms and re-orders ordinary concerns following the death of a loved one.
"A harrowing testimony to grief. It's a measure of Grossman's clarity of thought and his theatrical timing that one reaches its end and feels, in some small way, glad to have been in his characters' company however grim the road they travel." - Glasgow Sunday Herald

The Utopia of Rules: On technology, stupidity and the secret joys of bureaucracy  by David Graeber       $38.00
Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber author of the excellent Debt: The first 5000 years, takes a journey through ancient and modern history to trace the peculiar and fascinating evolution of bureaucracy over the ages. 

 Dreams of Freedom, In words and pictures      $29.99
A lovely inspirational picture book produced by Amnesty International to promulgate the importance of different kinds of freedom. Short texts by Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Anne Frank, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi and Malala Yousafzai (and others) have been illustrated by Alexis Deacon, Chris Riddell, Jackie Morris, Birgitta Sif, Oliver Jeffers (and others).

 Whipping Boy: The forty-year search for my twelve-year-old bully by Allen Kurzwell      $37.00
A fascinating account of the author's lengthy search for the boy who made his life hell at school.  

My Abuelo's Mexican Feast: A life and love of Mexican food by Daniella Germain    $39.99
An illustrated journey back to Mexico's past, tracing the life of Daniella Germain's Abuelo (grandfather) and his love affair with food. Beautifully illustrated throughout with hand-drawn watercolour illustrations, this book is full of very authentic and very appealing Mexican recipes.

The Well by Catherine Chanter       $37.00
A haunting novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.
"The Well asks us where do we seek refuge, and why? And perhaps it shows us that what is left, after all is suffered, is love. Battered, weathered, at the end of the novel it comes cresting over the hill, a herald of relief. I loved this book!" - Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

 The Faithful Couple by A.D. Miller      $38.00
A perceptive charting of a platonic friendship between two men, from their chance meeting in 1993, through girlfriends and wives, success and failure, children and bereavements. This is the story of a friendship built on a shared guilt and a secret betrayal.
"Powerful and moving. I loved The Faithful Couple." - Roddy Doyle

 Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder     $38.00
Former Olympic runner, Aganetha Smart is 104, alone in a nursing home, forgotten by family and history. Until two young strangers come and kidnap her and take her on a journey back into her past. 
"A beautiful, thoughtful homage to those forgotten women who stepped outside the boundaries of what was allotted to them, and a testament to the struggles and sacrifices that paved the way for the female athletes who followed." - Quill & Quire

 Finding Zero: A mathematician's odyssey to uncover the origins of numbers by Amir S. Aczel         $39.99
The use of numerals can be traced back through the Romans and Greeks to Babylon, but where did Arabic numerals come from? The author's search takes him to India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and ultimately into the wilds of Cambodia. There he is amazed to find the earliest zero - the keystone of our entire system of numbers - on a crumbling, vine-covered wall of a seventh-century temple.

 Detective Gordon: The First Case by Ulf Nilsson and Gitte Spee      $19.99
Someone’s stealing nuts from the forest, and it’s up to Detective Gordon to catch the thief! Unfortunately, solving this crime means standing in the snow and waiting for a long time. If only he had an assistant – someone small, fast, and clever – to help solve this terrible case. Then Detective Gordon would be able to go back to doing what he’s best at: thinking, eating cakes, drinking tea, and stamping important papers.

 Swallow This: Serving up the food industry's darkest secrets by Joanna Blythman       $35.00
Just what goes into the food we buy? What happens in factories to make preprepared food quite unlike the food we make at home? Just what does 'natural' mean? This book will change the way you shop.

Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939 by Christopher Isherwood      $28.00 
A candid memoir of gay Berlin in the 1930s, a pivotal decade in Isherwood's life and oeuvre. Includes much on his friends Auden, Spender and Forster. 

 King John: England, Magna Carta and the making of a tyrant by Stephen Church       $65.00

>> Historical perspicacity. 

 Mind Games by Teri Terry       $19.99
A new book from the author of the 'Slated' trilogy. 
In a future world, life is tightly controlled by the all-powerful PareCo. Standing out from the crowd is dangerous so misfit Luna hides her secrets carefully, not realising her own power. Unlike her friends and family, Luna has never been able to plug into Realtime, PareCo's virtual world, where almost everyone now lives their lives. So how do PareCo know about Luna, and why do they want her for their elite think tank?

 The Tastemaker: Carl van Vechten and the birth of modern America by Edward White        $29.99
The many lives of one of the most influential cultural impresarios of the early twentieth century: a patron and dealmaker of the Harlem Renaissance, a photographer who captured the era's icons, and a novelist who created some of the Jazz Age's most salacious stories. A close confidant of Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, van Vechten frolicked in the 1920s Manhattan demimonde, finding himself in Harlem jazz clubs, Hell's Kitchen speakeasies, and the Greenwich Village underground gay scene.

 Shrinks: The untold story of psychiatry by Jeffrey Lieberman     $39.99
 "An astonishing book: honest, sober, exciting, and humane. This book brings you to the very forefront of one of the most amazing medical journeys of our time."—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies
"Jeffrey Lieberman has produced a masterful behind-the-scenes examination of psychiatry - and, by extension, the human condition. A wise and gripping book that tackles one of the most important questions of our time: what is mental illness?" —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon

The History of Fly Fishing in Fifty Flies by Ian Whitelaw       $39.99
Who better to tell the history of fly fishing than the flies themselves?

 Shine by Candy Gourlay       $19.99
 Monsters are in the eye of the beholder. Rosa suffers from a rare condition that renders her mute. She lives on the strange island of Mirasol where the rain never seems to stop. In the gloom of the island, its superstitious population are haunted by all sorts of fears - they shun people who suffer from Rosa's condition, believing them to be monsters. So Rosa must live hidden away in an isolated house with its back to the rest of the world, with only the internet for a social life. When she meets Ansel95 online, she realises she has found a friendship that must take place in the real world.
"A precious and important novel." - Guardian

Love in the Time of Contempt: Consolations for parents of teenagers by Joanne Fedler       $35.00
You are not alone. What is it about parenting, especially parenting of teenagers, that causes you to doubt your own values and desires?

Motherless Child: The definitive biography of Eric Clapton by Paul Scott       $39.99
From the Yardbirds to Cream to his solo career, Clapton's subtle guitar has bewitched a million ears.
>> Cream, live, 1968.
>> Clapton shows how to play his Gibson SG.

 

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro       $36.99
Ishiguro's first novel since Never Let Me Go is set in a post-Roman Britain where the forces of myth constantly assail the edges of the familiar and the faculty of memory is contended and uncertain. This is a very interesting and rather unusual book - one of the publishing highlights of the year.
"This amazing novel will take you on a journey as reader that will leave you wondering and contemplating the metaphorical cleverness of this author to talk about aging, loyalty, betrayal, peace and war in such an unusual setting. Ishiguro pulls off a masterpiece that a lesser author would have struggled with." - Stella
>> Neil Gaiman on this book.
>> Ishiguro blames his wife.

The Fish Ladder: A journey upstream by Katharine Norbury       $37.00
Grief-stricken over a miscarriage and the re-opening of the wound of her own adoption, the author set out to walk various rivers upstream. As she moved from mouth to source, she found consolation in the natural world and a healing of her own wounds. If you loved H is for Hawk  or Nature Cure, you will be keen to read this book.
"A beautiful, strange, intoxicating and utterly unique story." - Phillip Pullman
 "Norbury’s writing achieves a lovely unobtrusive merging of emotion and description, so that the landscape reveals her feelings and in doing so shares her burden." - Guardian

A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Alemagna       $39.99
A lion tires of life on the savannah and decides to go to Paris. He is disappointed when no-one pays him any attention, even when he roars on the Metro.
This large-format book is one of the most irresistibly beautiful picture books we have seen this year.

 Whale Years by Gregory O'Brien      $29.99
 "Two poets on a headland, mid-survey / might pause suddenly and say / will this be your whale, or mine?"
Between 2011 and 2014, poet and artist Gregory O'Brien found himself following the migratory routes of whales and seabirds across vast tracts of the South Pacific Ocean, resulting in work that O'Brien describes as "acts of devotion - a homage to a series of remarkable locations and to the natural histories of those places". 
 

The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus, illustrated by Catrin Morgan      $37.00
"This excellent book is a sort of fictional encyclopedia of pretty much everything you don't understand about the world but were unable quite to pinpoint or to find words for your confusion. The book will certainly not help you to understand anything any better, but it will make your confusion immaculate and add to it dimensions of awe and beauty that you had hitherto not suspected. This new edition pairs Marcus's text with Morgan's equally obtuse and intriguing illustrations. Highly recommended." - Thomas

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee study of the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program      $39.99
"The Senate Intelligence Committee's report is a landmark in accountability. It is one of the most shocking documents ever produced by any modern democracy about its own abuses of its own highest principles." - The Guardian

 William S. Burroughs: A life by Barry Miles        $39.99
"I think that William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." - Norman Mailer
>> William Burroughs shoots William Shakespeare.

 Fishes: A guide to their diversity by Philip A. Hastings       $75.00
Showcases the anatomy and diversity of all 82 orders of fishes and more than 150 of the most commonly encountered families.

The Poet's Tale: Chaucer and the year that made The Canterbury Tales by Paul Strohm      $39.99
Where were you in 1386? When the year began, Geoffrey Chaucer was a middle-aged bureaucrat and sometime poet, living in London and enjoying the perks that came with his close connections to its booming wool trade. When it ended, he was jobless, homeless, out of favour with his friends and living in exile. No wonder he started producing the great foundational text of English literature.

Death Sentences: Stories of deathly books, murderous booksellers and lethal literature from the world's best crime writers introduced by Ian Rankin       $37.00
No mention of Page & Blackmore yet. 

 If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie       $35.00
"An astonishing piece of work. Christie combines lyrical prose and true-to-life characters (and skateboarding) to craft a remarkable tale of mothers and sons, and what it means to grow up." - Philipp Meyer, author of The Son

 A Walk in Paris by Salvatore Rubbino       $29.99
Accompany a girl and her grandfather on a walk around Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. No lions.
"Just beautiful. I love this book!" - Sarah

The Umbrella by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert         $29.99
A curious dog is caught by a gust of wind and rides an umbrella around the world in this charming wordless book. Guess where he ends up!

 The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True tales of science, surgery and mystery by Rob Dunn        $49.99
The secret history of the human heart (the organ), from the first explorers to the latest discoveries.

 Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Maori and the question of the body by Tony Ballantyne      $39.99
From the establishment of the first mission in 1814, the physical body itself became the most contentious site of cultural engagement. Maori and missionaries struggled over issues of hygiene, tattooing, clothing, and sexual morality, and missionaries found it was difficult to maintain their own practices because of their dependence on Maori chiefly patrons as well as material constraints and social conflicts.

Worn Stories, Sartorial memoirs edited by Emily Spivack     $46.00
Every piece of clothing tells a story. In this interesting book, a large number of people, many prominent, all with narrative talent, tell the stories behind an item they have worn or someone close to them has worn. If you loved Women in Clothes, this book is for you.

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon       $37.00

>> Sonic Youth: 'Kool'. 

 The Legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir        $38.00
In Winstone's imagination, the Kid and his partner ride through the Wild West on the trail of their quarry. In Winstone's actual life, he's had to abandon his 'partner' and is hiding out in the tough landscape of Central Otago. What has this boy run from, and how will the resilient and engaging twelve-year-old survive?
 

The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig        $29.99
 In a world where everyone is born as a twin, the Alpha twins are elite and the Omega twins are cast out. But there is a strange interdependence between them, and things are not always as they seem...
 "This is the first in a trilogy which will appeal to fans of The Hunger Games and Wool. There was a five-publisher fight for this one and the film rights have already been sold!  And that's not surprising as the premise is great and I'm keen to get the next installment!" - Stella

 Risk Wise: Nine everyday adventures by Polly Morland       $29.99
 Could any of us live in a world without risk, and would it be desirable to do so? Through a series of nine pen portraits, Polly Morland takes us on a journey through the world of risk, looking not at the extremes or exceptions, but at the routine risks we accept and embrace as part of our everyday lives, often unconsciously.

 She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha       $37.00
"Don't let the lucid, lyrical grace of the prose fool you - this is a blistering, enthralling, barek-nuckle ride of a novel. Its revelations about the "New India" are explosive." - Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others 
"The best novel from and about India that I have read in a long time." - Pankaj Mishra

 The Pirates and the Nightmaker by James Norcliffe       $19.99
To escape the cannibalistic impulses of some pirates, a boy is made invisible and given wings by a mysterious stranger. What is the price he must pay? As well as being a great magical adventure in its own right, this book provides the deep history of the Loblolly Boy.  

 Asians and the New Multiculturalism in New Zealand edited by Gautam Ghosh and Jacqueline Leckie    $39.99
What kind of multicultural framework best suits New Zealand's rapidly expanding ethnic diversity? Can the Treaty of Waitangi - initially set up to accommodate British settlers and to recognise the tangata whenua - serve as the basis for New Zealand's immigration policy in the new millennium? Could all citizens embrace multiculturalism?

 Five Things They Never Told Me by Rebecca Westcott       $19.99
It's a glorious summer and Erin and Martha are both stuck at Oak Hill Home for the Elderly. Misunderstood and feeling ignored, they are equally frustrated by the situation. But as Erin learns to listen to Martha, she discovers some very important lessons about making her own voice heard.

Without You There is No Us: My secret life teaching the sons of North Korea's elite by Suki Kim       $28.00
In 2011 and all universities in North Korea were shut down for an entire year, except for the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Suki Kim got a job there, teaching English. 
"This superb work of investigative journalism is distinguished by its grave beauty and aching tenderness." - Kiran Desai

Red, A crayon's story by Michael Hall     $29.99
A blue crayon labelled 'red' suffers an identity crisis. He just can't be red no matter how hard he tries.

Daydreams for Night by John Southworth and David Ouimet      $29.99
Meet the boy with grey hair who spends his days on a cargo ship peeling potatoes, a strange man who keeps a ferris wheel in his backyard, and a whale that lives in a man-made lake on the top of a faraway hill. Six short, strange tales with intriguing illustrations.

Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, pirates and motley crews in the age of sail by Marcus Rediker      $39.99
This book urns maritime history upside down, exploring the world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants, and other builders of empire, but rather from the point-of-view of common people whose labors made that world possible: sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates, and other outlaws, whose formative experiences at sea are brought together for the first time. This book shows that important historical processes transpired on the vast, nationless commons called the sea: the rise of capitalism, the formation of race and class, and the creation, from below, of oppositional cultures that promised more just and democratic ways of life.

 Small Bites: Tapas, mezze and other tasty morsels by Paul Gayler     $45.00
Pick your way around the world.  

Brand New: The shape of brands to come by Wally Olins     $45.00
Analyses the problems facing today's organizations, criticizes corporate misbehaviour where he finds it, praises those companies who seem to be building and sustaining brands successfully in our brave new world, and predicts the future of branding. Olins has been lauded by The Financial Times as the world's leading practitioner of branding and identity.

The Teenage Brain: A neuroscientist's survival guide to raising adolescents and young adults by Frances E. Jensen          $35.00
Helpful (the neuroscientist survives, the parents survive, the teenagers survive (and become lovely adults (and leave home))).

Spitting Blood: The history of tuberculosis by Helen Bynum     $35.00
Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its human hosts have been together for a very long time, and the history of the disease is not merely a medical but a cultural one.

 Fullmoon photographs by Darren Almond         $130.00
Almond is a maestro of the difficult art of nocturnal nature photography.

 Blood, Wine and Chocolate by Julie Thomas      $35.00
Loyalty, betrayal, murder.... and merlot. There is no safe place from the Mob for Vinnie Whitney-Ross, not even on an idyllic New Zealand vineyard.
From the author of the runaway success The Keeper of Secrets.  

The Maine Coon's Haiku, And other poems for cat lovers by Michael J. Rosen, illustrated by Lee White        $$25.00