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.

SORRY - THIS SITE AND FEED ARE NOW CLOSED.
Thank you for your support. {Thomas}


29 January 2016

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/997431?barcode=9781910695098&title=Pond
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett       $24.99
A woman ceases to attempt to make an impression on the world, withdraws to the western coast of Ireland and minutely observes the impressions the world makes upon her. Always hinting at experience just beyond the reach of language, Bennett's remarkable book reveals the latent awareness-sharpening capacities of fiction.
"These stories are intelligent and funny, innovative and provocative, and it’s impossible to read them without thinking that here is a writer who has only just begun to show what she can do." — Eimear McBride (author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing)
"Wielding a wry but implacable logic, Claire-Louse Bennett dives under the surface of “ordinary” experiences and things to reveal their supreme and giddy illogic. Like Gail Scott and Lydia Davis before her, she writes an impeccable affect-less prose that almost magically arrives at something extraordinary." — Chris Kraus (author of I Love Dick)
"As brilliant a debut and as distinct a voice as we’ve heard in years—this is a real writer with the real goods." — Kevin Barry (author of Beatlebone)
"A touch of William Gaddis. A touch of Lydia Davis. A touch of Samuel Beckett. A touch of Edna O’Brien. And yet Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond feels entirely unique. Quiet and luxurious all at once, this will be one of the most sensational debuts of the year." — Colum McCann (author of Let the Great World Spin) 
"Straight on the top of my reading pile." - Thomas
>> Who will sit on the ottoman?
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/985431?barcode=9781910702604&title=NoiseofTime
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes        $35.00
In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return. The incomparable Barnes's first novel since his Man Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending uses the figure of Dimitri Shostakovich in hugely sympathetic exploration of the withering effect of the clash between conscience and repression. 
"Barnes has given us a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man’s conscience, one man’s art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism." - Guardian
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995333-HumanActs-9781846275968
Human Acts by Han Kang         $33.00
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma.
"Human Acts is a stunning piece of work. The language is poetic, immediate, and brutal. Han Kang has again proved herself to be a deft artist of storytelling and imagery." - Jess Richards
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/985432?barcode=9780701188993&title=ShylockIsMyName-TheMerchantofVeniceRetold%28HogarthShakespeare%29
Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson        $37.00
Who better than the razor-sharp satirist and chronicler of modern Jewish life to write this modern version of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice?
"Supremely stylish, probing and unsettling." - Independent
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990811-TheInterpreter-9781925240245
The Interpreter by Diego Marani        $37.00
Gunther Stauber, head of Translation and Interpreting at a major international organisation in Geneva, seems to be suffering from a mysterious illness when his translations become unintelligible and resemble no known language. He insists he is not ill and that he is on the verge of discovering the primordial language once spoken by all living creatures. His boss, the novel's narrator, Felix Bellamy, decides Gunther has to go. In turn, Felix starts speaking the same gibberish as the missing interpreter. And then his wife disappears, perhaps in search of Gunther. He seeks help in a sanatorium in Munich where he is prescribed an intensive course in Romanian and forbidden from speaking French. He realises that he must talk to his missing colleague to understand what has happened to him and to have any hope of a cure. As he undergoes profound changes - speaking the language of dolphins, of whistles and squeaks - he is forced to confront the deep mysteries of life.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1003629-TheLivesofCoatHangers-9781927322376
The Lives of Coat Hangers by Sudesh Mishra         $25.00
Sudesh Mishra is a philosophical poet, one preoccupied not only with how meaning is made, but with how meaning is manifested in the modern world. His poetry is concerned with the truths revealed by humble, humdrum objects.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/958581-WeGototheGallery-ADungBeetleLearningGuide-9780992834913
We Go to the Gallery by Miriam Elia       $29.99
You will want this. As much a super-sharp spoof on modern art as it is a spoof on the book in the Ladybird reading scheme, this book was legally suppressed by the Ladybird copyright holders (at least until they had their own set of Ladybird spoofs ready to release (>>read more about this here)).
>> Fight of the Ladybirds.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/997005-TheBedsideGuardian-9781783561155
The Bedside Guardian, 2015 edited by Malik Meer        $39.99
It was the year of an unexpected general election result and a dramatic Labour leadership contest; 'Je suis Charlie' and #BlackLivesMatter; a year in which FIFA spectacularly imploded on the world stage and a transgender woman appeared on the front of Vanity Fair. It was a year of journeys: British schoolgirls running away to Syria and desperate refugees fleeing into Europe. It was a year when the Guardian worked to put the environment back at the top of the agenda, while the threat of Isis and the issues of mass migration continued to dominate the headlines.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/986471-AnnaandtheSwallowMan-9780552575270
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit         $21.00
Krakow, 1939, is no place to grow up. There are a million marching soldiers and a thousand barking dogs. And Anna Lania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father and suddenly, she's alone. Then she meets the Swallow Man. He is a mystery, strange and tall. And like Anna's missing father, he has a gift for languages: Polish, Russian, German, Yiddish, even Bird. When he summons a bright, beautiful swallow down to his hand to stop her from crying, Anna is entranced. Over the course of their travels together, Anna and the Swallow Man will dodge bombs, tame soldiers, and even, despite their better judgement, make a friend. But in a world gone mad, everything can prove dangerous.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992006-TasteofHome-9781863958011
The Taste of Home: In search of the secrets of flavour by Diane Fresquez        $29.99
Do men and women experience taste and smell differently? What do apple trees have in common with humans? And what happens when you eat a meal completely in the dark? Moved by a death in the family to recreate the dishes her mother prepared in her childhood home, former Wall Street Journal reporter Diane Fresquez embarked on a year-long journey to investigate the links between taste, memory and the molecular building blocks of what we eat, seeking out scientists and entrepreneurs who are trying to reveal the secrets of flavour.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992007-CureAJourneyintotheScienceofMindOverBody-9781922147721
Cure: A journey into the science of mind over body by Jo Marchant         $39.99
A rigorous, sceptical, deeply reported look at the new science behind the mind's extraordinary ability to heal the body. Have you ever felt a surge of adrenaline after narrowly avoiding an accident? Salivated at the sight (or thought) of a sour lemon? If so, then you've experienced how dramatically the workings of your mind can affect your body. Yet while we accept that stress or anxiety can damage our health, the idea of 'healing thoughts' was long ago hijacked by New Age gurus and spiritual healers. Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs can ease pain, heal wounds, fend off infection and heart disease, even slow the progression of AIDS and some cancers. Is the role of the mind in the body's illness or health an aid or an impediment to healing?
>>Interview here.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990809-TheHighMountainsofPortugal-9781922182814
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel        $37.00
The much-anticipated new novel from the author of Life of Pi. Tomás discovers an ancient journal and sets out from Lisbon in one of the very first motor cars in Portugal in search of the strange treasure the journal describes. Thirty-five years later, a pathologist devoted to the novels of Agatha Christie, whose wife has possibly been murdered, finds himself drawn into Tomás’s quest. Fifty years later, Senator Peter Tovy of Ottawa, grieving the death of his own beloved wife, rescues a chimpanzee from an Oklahoma research facility and takes it to live with him in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, where the strands of all three stories miraculously mesh together.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/982707-RunningGirl-9781910200674
Running Girl by Simon Mason         $21.00
Meet Garvie Smith - charming, brilliant and completely bone idle. If anything can get his attention, it might just be a murder. What sort of girl was gorgeous Chloe Dow? Not the sort to disappear without a trace. What sort of policeman is workaholic Detective Inspector Raminder Singh? Not the sort to rush his first murder investigation. What sort of boy is Garvie Smith? Don't ask. At least, don't ask his mother. When Chloe's body is pulled from Pike Pond, the hunt is on for her killer and DI Singh has a chance to prove his worth. He doesn't need any 'assistance' from notorious slacker Garvie Smith, the boy with the highest IQ ever recorded at Marsh Academy, and the lowest ever grades. Or does he?
"There's never been a school-age sleuth quite like the excellent Garvie Smith." - Guardian
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/985008-InaLandofPaperGods-9781472224200
In a Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie        $37.99
Jiangxi Province, China, 1941. Atop the fabled mountain of Lushan, celebrated for its temples, capricious mists and plunging ravines, perches a boarding school for the children of British missionaries. As her parents pursue their calling to bring the gospel to China's most remote provinces, ten-year-old Henrietta S. Robertson discovers that she has been singled out for a divine calling of her own...

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/981787-TeMatauaMauiFishhooksFishingandFisheriesinNewZealand-9780473328696
Te Matau a Maui: Fishhooks, fishing and fisheries in New Zealand by Chris Paulin        $49.99
 Discusses the form and function of the traditional Maori fishhook, customary fishing, and development of commercial fishing in New Zealand since European settlement (including the adoption of the rotating hook design as a re-discovery of the innovative and highly effective Maori hook design by present day commercial long-line fisheries), and changes in Maori lifestyle associated with the increasing availability of European agricultural cultivars and domestic animals in the nineteenth century, and urbanisation in the twentieth century that led to a decline in Maori fishing activity and the loss of indigenous knowledge.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/984181-RIP-9781472118585
R.I.P. by Nigel Williams           $24.99
Retired bank manager George Pearmain is, apparently, dead. According to the behaviour of everyone around him, it would seem that he is no more. Not only that, but his mother has also passed away too - and on the eve of her 99th year, poor dear. Not only that, it could be that they were both murdered. He feels fine otherwise. As George's family gather for the birthday-celebration-that-never-was, he hovers around the house, watching and listening, entirely unseen. As a result, he makes all sorts of discoveries about himself, his wife Esmeralda and his supposedly happy family.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/982461-TheNewLife-9780571326082
The New Life by Orhan Pamuk          $24.99
"I read a book one day, and my whole life was changed." So begins  Pamuk's road novel (reissued at last!) about a young student who yearns for the life promised by a dangerously magical book. He falls in love, abandons his studies, turns his back on home and family, and embarks on restless bus trips through the provinces, in pursuit of an elusive vision. In coffee houses with black-and-white TV sets, on buses where passengers ride watching B-movies on flickering screens, in wrecks along the highway, in paranoid fictions with spies as punctual as watches, Pamuk's fiction comes alive.
"Like Borges crossed with The Usual Suspects. You could become obsessed with this book." - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
>> "Pay attention to people's lives".
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/982308-ScotlandAHistoryfromEarliestTimes-9781780272801
Scotland: A history from the earliest times by Alistair Moffat         $69.99
...And to the most recent times.
"The great thing about Moffat's account is that, for all its emphasis on uncertainty, it rattles along with complete narrative certainty, to the extent that great events consistently take even a historically literate reader unawares." - Scottish Review of Books
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/974280-PlanetesOmnibusVolume1-9781616559212
Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1 by Makoto Yukimura        $39.99
By the celebrated Japanese Manga artist. It's the 2070s, and mankind has conquered space, making interplanetary travel possible and igniting the imaginations of the world. It's also vastly increased the amount of dangerous space debris, and someone has to clean it up. Hachimaki, Yuri and Fee are a crew on that beat, each with their own goals, tendencies and personal problems. Just trying to do their jobs in an age of space-age environmental concerns and new vistas of exploration, the crew become unwitting heroes when the only place Fee can still smoke is threatened by terrorists.
>> Episode 1.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992133-JonathanUnleashed-9781408870785
Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff          $32.99
Jonathan Trefoil's boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him - only richer and more organised with a different sense of humour. On the plus side, his two flatmates are determined to fix his life - or possibly to destroy it altogether. It's difficult to be certain as they only speak dog. Poor Jonathan. He doesn't remember life being this confusing back in the good old days before everyone expected him to act like a person. But one thing he knows for sure: if he can make it in New York City, he can make it anywhere. Will he get out of advertising, meet the girl of his dreams and figure out the gender of his secret crush? Given how it's going so far, probably not. The first adult novel from the author of How I Live Now.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/993919-PaulinaFran-9781783781584
Paulina and Fran by Rachel B. Glaser       $33.00
Sharp-tongued, fearsome Paulina meets lovely, listless Fran one night at a house-party held near their privileged New England art school. Together they drift through their classes, critique their fellow students, lavish attention on their curls and nurture their shared dreams of genius. But when their burgeoning friendship tips from intensity into enmity our two heroines find themselves cast out from the halcyon days of art school, divided from one another and set adrift in the increasingly disappointing world of adulthood.
"Glaser’s incisiveness is best on the intense ridiculousness of being young: the obsession with working out who we are, protectiveness over the persona we’ve created, and jealousy towards anyone who seems to be trying within the same framework and doing it better." - Independent
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/991994-TheArtofBeingNormal-9781910200520
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson      $18.00
David is funny and quirky and has always felt different from other people - but he also has a huge secret that only his two best friends know. Ever since he can remember, he has felt like a girl trapped in the body of a boy.
"A life-changing and life-saving book." - Philip Pullman
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995349-BadNewsLastJournalistsinaDictatorship-9781408866467
Bad News: Last journalists in a dictatorship by Anjan Sundaram       $33.00
The incredible story of the rise of dictatorship and the fall of open speech, as told by the last free journalists to remain in Rwanda.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/981214-100DocumentsthatChangedtheWorldFromMagnaCartatoWikiLeaks-9781849943000
100 Documents that Changed the World: From Magna Carta to WikiLeaks by Scott Christiansen       $39.99
Most momentous events have had an accompanying document. It must have been hard/easy to choose one hundred.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/981530-StoriesMenTell-9780473339098
Stories Men Tell: New Zealand men talk about their lives edited by John Keir      $39.99
Extraordinary stories and ordinary stories. For 50 years the Atrium Club has operated as a gym for men only. But the Atrium is like no other gym. It's a club - unashamedly a safe haven for an unlikely mix of gentlemen; a place for mind and body where the relationships and the camaraderie are as important as the exercise. The members include rich-listers as well as those down on their luck; knights of the realm; sports stars; leaders in the fields of business, industry, medicine, law, academia, military and the media.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990810-FeveratDawn-9781925240771
Fever at Dawn by Peter Gardos        $37.00
In July 1945, Miklós, a Hungarian survivor of Belsen, arrives in a refugee camp in Sweden. He is skin and bone, and has no teeth. The doctor says he has only months to live. But Miklós has other plans. He acquires a list of 117 young Hungarian women who are also in refugee camps in Sweden, and he writes a letter to each of them—obsessively, in his beautiful hand, sitting in the shade of a tree in the hospital garden. One of those young women, he is sure, will become his wife. In a camp hundreds of kilometres away, Lili reads his letter. Idly, she decides to write back. Letter by letter, the pair fall in love. In December 1945 they find a way to meet. Based on a true story, luckily.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992080-TheGreenBicycle-9780141356686
The Green Bicycle by Haifaa al Mansour          $19.99
Dreamer. Rebel. Hero. Wadjda has one simple wish - to race her friend Abdullah on her very own bicycle. But in Saudi Arabia, it is considered improper for girls to ride bikes and her parents forbid her from having one. Sick of playing by the rules, Wadjda schemes different ways to make money and buy the bike herself.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995361-LennyandLucy-9781760292119
Lenny & Lucy by Philip C. Stead and Erin E. Stead       $27.99
'This house is not as good as our old house,' said Peter. 'I want to go back.' But no one heard except for Harold, the dog. Neither of them slept that night, in their room overlooking the unfamiliar woods...
>> Lenny will guard the bridge.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/986280-Passenger-9781460752043
Passenger by Alexandra Bracken          $24.99
Etta Spencer is a violin prodigy. When tragedy strikes and a mysterious power tied closely to her musical abilities manifests, Etta is pulled back through time to 1776 in the midst of a fierce sea battle. Her capture was orchestrated by the Ironwoods, the most powerful family in the Colonies. Nicholas Carter, handsome, young, prize master of a privateering ship, has been charged with retrieving and delivering her to the family - unharmed. Etta learns her fate is entwined with an object of untold value from her past. Ironwood is desperate to secure his future, but Etta must find it first in order to return home. Embarking on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind from a mysterious traveller, the true nature of the object and Ironwood's dangerous game, could mean the end for Nicholas and Etta.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995345-FlyAwayHome-9781784630386
Fly Away Home by Marina Warner      $21.99
A new collection of Marina Warner’s short stories. Like her novels, Marina Warner's stories conjure up mysteries and wonders in a physical world, treading a delicate, magical line between the natural and the supernatural, between openness and fear.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/993969-MySisterRosa-9781760112226
My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier          $22.99
Che Taylor has four items on his list: 1. He wants to spar, not just train in the boxing gym. 2. He wants a girlfriend. 3. He wants to go home. 4. He wants to keep Rosa under control. Che's little sister Rosa is smart, talented, pretty, and so good at deception that Che's convinced she must be a psychopath. She hasn't hurt anyone yet, but he's certain it's just a matter of time.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1007202-LandskippingPaintersPloughmenandPlaces-9781408868911
Landskipping: Painters, ploughmen and places by Anna Pavord         $45.00
 In the eighteenth century, artists first started to paint English scenery, and the Lakes, as well as Snowdon, began to attract a new kind of visitor, the landscape tourist. Early travel guides sought to capture the beauty and inspiration of waterfall, lake and fell. Sublime! Picturesque! they said, as they laid down rules for correctly appreciating a view. While painters painted and writers wrote, an entirely different band of men, the agricultural improvers, also travelled the land, and published a series of remarkable commentaries on the state of agricultural England. They looked at the land in terms of its usefulness as well as its beauty, and, using their reports, Anna Pavord explores the many different ways that land was managed and farmed, showing that what is universal is a place's capacity to frame and define our experience.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/985956-Quicksand-9781846559952
Quicksand: What it means to be a human being by Henning Mankell      $38.00
Mankell's books are underpinned by his strong ethical passion for justice and his sympathy for those in whom social ills make themselves known.
>> Is the no hope?
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/982350-CookNourishGlow-9780718183486
Cook. Nourish. Glow. by Amelia Freer      $48.00
 100 delicious and easy-to-prepare recipes, Amelia equips you with the skills and knowledge to improve your health while empowering you to cook with confidence. A nutritional therapist, she promotes a gluten-, refined sugar- and dairy-free lifestyle in favour of endless fad diets. Chapters feature step-by-step visuals designed for the novice chef; how to use and prepare staple pantry ingredients; eating clean on the go; a 'naughty' chapter - because living healthily is about consistency, not perfection - and a chapter full of dishes designed to combat gut-related issues. Recipes include: Fine Omelette Layered with Tomato and Saffron, Tapenade and Mixed Herbs, Sweet Potato Cakes with Grilled Tiger Prawns and Saffron Sauce, Fig and Raspberry Panna Cotta, Eggs and Leeks with Tabasco and Tarragon Dressing. That will make you luminescent.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990814-OneBreath-9780670079193
One Breath: Death, freediving, and the quest to shatter human limits by Adam Skolnick         $37.00
Is freediving a sport or an existential rebellion?
>> Skolnick uses the achievements and death of Nicholas Mevoli as a window into this exploration of human limits.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992134-RiverofInk-9781408862223
River of Ink by Paul M.M. Cooper        $32.99
A poet is used by a tyrant to pacify the people of the ancient Kingdom of Lanka and comes to question how his conscience and his art could best be used.
 "It isn't easy to write about the past with both a hesitant watchfulness and a calm assurance, to make it vivid and strange and yet also, in a fundamental way, ours, but that's exactly what Paul Cooper has achieved - with considerable aplomb - in River of Ink." - Amit Chaudhuri
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992350-NoPlaceLikeHomeHB-9780857988461
No Place Like Home by Ronojoy Ghosh         $29.99
The city is no place for a polar bear like George. Being homesick is making George a terrible grump. Not knowing where home is makes it even worse. So George sets off on a search. He isn't sure what home looks like, but he'll know it when he finds it.
>> Some pictures here.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995350-TheNakedShoreOftheNorthSea-9781408815496
The Naked Shore of the North Sea by Tom Blass       $45.00
The North Sea has battered and bewildered, produced and provided, damaged and destroyed in equal measure. Its inclement weather and perilous tides have made it a playground and a proving ground, a nursery and a grave, an object of veneration and a mighty adversary. A sea like no other, it has shaped our modern world and yet remained the same ancient beast known to the earliest inhabitants of its shores.
"Tom Blass's The Naked Shore is a wonderfully bracing journey around the North Sea. His gaze misses nothing, and his robust prose glitters with story and lore and surprise." - Philip Marsden, author of Rising Ground
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995352-TheConversationARevolutionaryPlanforEnd-of-LifeCare-9781620408551
The Conversation: A revolutionary plan for end-of-life care by Angelo Volandes        $29.99
"A well-lived life deserves a good ending." This book sets encourages us to have the conversation that avoids having our lives extended beyond our wishes and at any cost.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992079-Yellow-9780143573333
Yellow by Megan Jenkinson       $24.00
If fourteen-year-old Kirra is having a mid-life crisis now, then it doesn't bode well for her life expectancy. Her so-called friends bully her, whatever semblance of a mother she had has been drowned at the bottom of a gin bottle ever since her dad left them for another woman, and a teenage ghost is speaking to her through a broken phone booth. Kirra and the ghost make a pact. She'll prove who murdered him almost twenty years ago if he makes her popular, gets her parents back together, and promises not to haunt her.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/993916-TheLongRoom-9780571322510
The Long Room by Francesca Kay      $32.99
What happens to a man who has his ear pressed to the lives of others but not much life of his own? When Stephen Donaldson joins the Institute, he anticipates excitement, romance and new status. Instead he gets the tape-recorded conversations of ancient communists and ineffectual revolutionaries, until the day he is assigned a new case: the ultra-secret Phoenix. Is Phoenix really working for a foreign power? Stephen hardly cares; it is the voice of the target's wife that mesmerises him.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/993914-TheProphetsofEternalFjord-9780857897916
The Prophets of the Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine     $32.99
Morten Falck is a newly ordained priest sailing to Greenland in 1787 to convert the Inuit to the Danish church. A rugged outpost battered by harsh winters, Sukkertoppen is overshadowed by the threat of dissent; natives from neighboring villages have united to reject Danish rule and establish their own settlement atop Eternal Fjord. As Falck becomes involved with those in his care-his ambitious catechist, a lonely trader's wife, and a fatalistic widow he comes to love-his faith and reputation are dangerously called into question.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/986469-DarkMatterandtheDinosaursTheAstoundingInterconnectednessoftheUniverse-9781847923950
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The astounding interconnectedness of the universe by Lisa Randall          $39.99
 "A bold intellectual synthesis from one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, blending cosmology, astronomy, particle physics and the history of life on Earth to suggest the existence of an entirely new force of nature. This book certainly ventures into the unknown, but that's where great physicists like to be." - Professor Brian Cox
"Only Lisa Randall can take us on such a thrilling scientific journey-from dinosaurs to DNA to comets to dark matter and to the past and future of our species. Randall's research is so thorough, the story so powerful, and her storytelling so compelling that I could not put this book down." - Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies
>> Excellent rare live performance by Dark Matter here. (Not so sure about the dinosaurs, though.)
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990592-PoliticsandtheMedia-9781869408473
Politics and the Media edited by Geoff Kemp et al         $49.99
It often seems that politics is increasingly powered by spin and decreasingly by substance. Does our government reflect or manipulate public opinion? This new edition includes extensive consideration of the 'Dirty Politics' revelations and responses.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1003367-OrphanX-9781405910712
Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz          $37.00
"Orphan X is the most exciting new series character since Jack Reacher. A page-turning masterpiece of suspense." - Jonathan Kellerman
"Outstanding in every way." - Lee Child

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/986936-AdventuresofBeekleTheUnimaginaryFriendPB-9780734416834
Beekle, The unimaginary friend by Dan Santat          $19.99
An imaginary friend waits his turn to be chosen by a real child, but when he is overlooked time and again, he sets off on an incredible journey to the bustling city, where he finally meets his perfect match and - at long last - is given his special name.
>> You could watch this trailer.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992060-HelloRubyAdventuresinCoding-9780143308980
Hello Ruby: Adventures in coding by Linda Liukas          $22.00
"Code is the twenty-first century literacy, and the need for people to speak the ABCs of programming is imminent. Our world is increasingly run by software, and we need more diversity in the people who are building it." - Linda Liukas

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/977868-LivesinRuinsArchaeologistsandtheSeductiveLureofHumanRubble-9780062127198
Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the seductive lure of human rubble by Marilyn Johnson           $33.00
"As she did in her previous books about librarians and obituary writers, Johnson finds that the line between inspirationally nutty and actually crazy is measured in the joy of the work." - Entertainment Weekly
 "An engrossing examination of how archaeologists re-create much of human history, piece by painstaking piece." - Kirkus Reviews
>> Is there such a thing as an non-seductive lure?
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992065-TheBigFish-9780670078974
The Big Fish by Pamela Allen        $29.99
Once upon a time
a little old man, a little old woman,
a small boy and a small girl
went to spend the day by the river.
The little old man wanted to catch a big fish
and soon there was a tug-tug-tug on his line . . .