New books to hit the spot


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

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19 February 2016

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/995591?barcode=9780908321452&title=AHistoryofNewZealandWomen
A History of New Zealand Women by Barbara Brookes      $69.99
A wonderful book, distilling New Zealand's history through the experiences of women. Fully illustrated and with full contextual treatment, the book is both browseable and rewards sustained reading. How have we done without this book so long?
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/984812-WhentheFloodsCame-9781444736489
 When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall      $37.99
In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off from the rest of the world. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children, the only hope for the future, are a rare commodity. For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. She's safe, happy enough. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. At first he's a welcome addition, his magnetism drawing the Polanskis out of their shells, promising an alternative to a lonely existence. But Roza can't shake the feeling that there's more to Aashay than he's letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble? Is it true that children are being kidnapped?
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/915404-RainANaturalandCulturalHistory-9780804137096
Rain: A natural and cultural history by Cynthia Barnett        $49.99
Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Barnett traces the story of rain from the first downpours that filled our oceans, through our attempts to understand and predict the weather, and the role of weather in our imaginations, to the future of rain in a time of climate change.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1003637?barcode=9780864739797&title=TransitofVenus
 Transit of Venus by Hinemoana Baker, Urike Almut Sandig, Glenn Colquhoun, Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski and Chris Price      $29.99
Three German poets and three New Zealand poets mark the recent transit of Venus, reconsidering encounters between Europe and the Pacific 250 years after James Cook's voyage to observe the transit of Venus, the voyage upon which he landed at Tolaga Bay and provoked the first positive encounter between Maori and European.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/998166-LittleHoneyBee-9781783702602
Little Honey Bee by Jane Ormes and Katie Haworth     $29.99
In a spring garden the flowers are slowly coming out as the weather warms up. As the flowers come, so too do bees and other forms of life. Each page of this book has flaps to lift that correspond with the shapes and layers of the different flowers. Readers are able to open the petals of a sunflower, and turn a vine of dog rose buds into an archway of fully bloomed flowers. Lovely!
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1004241-TheGatheringTideAJourneyAroundtheEdgelandsofMorecambeBay-9781910192191
 The Gathering Tide: A journey around the edgelands of Morecambe Bay by Karen Lloyd        $36.99
A deeply personal journey around the 60 miles of coastline that make up 'nature's amphitheatre' in north-west England. Embarking on a series of walks that take in beguiling landscapes and ever-changing seascapes, Lloyd tells the stories of the places, people, wildlife and history of Morecambe Bay. We meet the Queen's Guide to the Sands, discover forgotten caves and islands that don't exist, and delight in the simple beauty of an oystercatcher winging its way across the ebbing tide. Lloyd explores her own memories of the bay, making an unwitting pilgrimage through her own past and present.
"Evocative, muscular." - Kathleen Jamie

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990675-ThisisLondonLifeandDeathintheWorldCity-9781447274797
 This is London: Life and death in the world city by Ben Judah      $39.99
 More than half of those who live in the UK's capital came from somewhere else - and most arrived in the last ten years. Migration is transforming London, for better and for worse. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/994761-WhereDidTheyGoASpottingBook-9781783702787
Where Did They Go? A spotting book by Emily Bornoff       $32.00
Where has the polar bear gone? Where did the lemur go? Can you find them? Search for endangered animals in jungles, in deserts and on the ice. Well?

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1004475?barcode=9780994123411&title=MotuekaWharf-100years
 Motueka Wharf: 100 years by Carol Dawber        $45.00
 The waterside town of Motueka has always been heavily dependent on its port. Over the years passenger services have operated between Riwaka, Motueka and Nelson, fishing fleets have worked the tides, fertiliser has come in shiploads and hops, tobacco, timber and livestock have gone out over the wharf. In 1955, when shipping was at its height, 276 vessels entered the harbour. Fully illustrated. 
 

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/992082-Max-9781922182852
 Max by Sarah Cohen-Scali         $26.00
When you first meet Max it's 1936, in Bavaria, and he's still a baby inside his blonde, blue-eyed mother. Utterly indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, Max will address you and tell you his story until 1945 - his destiny as an exceptional being, the prototype of the 'Lebensborn' (Fountains of Life) program, designed to produce perfect specimens of the Aryan race to regenerate the Reich. But when Max meets Lukas, a young Polish boy who resembles him but who rebels against the Nazi system, cracks starts to appear in Max's convictions...
Gripping YA fiction with insight into Nazi psychology.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/991360-MendtheLiving-9780857053879
 Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal          $34.99
A young man's heart gives a woman life after he is left brain-dead after a surfing accident. 
 "Far from being the simple tale of a heart transplant, this novel is a true epic, a great modern saga that investigates our relationship with death as much as our relationship with language." - Lire

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/985009-HonkyTonkSamurai-9781444787214
 Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe R. Lansdale       $34.99
 Hap and Leonard are not your typical private eyes. But what they lack in experience they make up with perseverance. Hap, a former 60s activist and self-proclaimed white trash rebel, and Leonard, a tough black, gay Vietnam vet, have finally decided to make their detective work official. Their first client: a mean old woman looking for her missing granddaughter. The girl used to work for a car dealership in town, but it seems like cars weren't the only things on offer. The mystery thickens to include blackmail, revenge, and an in-bred family of hillbilly assassins. Only Hap and Leonard could turn a simple missing person case into a life-threatening showdown.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/967587-TheFoodLab-BetterHomeCookingThroughScience-9780393081084
The Food Lab: Better home cooking through science by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt       $89.99
The interactions between heat, energy, and molecules can create great food. This book shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new techniques.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/174131?barcode=9780500238738&title=TheBoyWhoBitPicasso
 The Boy Who Bit Picasso by Antony Penrose       $25.00
The true story of Antony Penrose, son of the photographer Lee Miller and the painter and writer Roland Penrose, and his childhood friendship with the great artist. Includes artwork by Picasso and photographs by Lee Miller. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1003410?barcode=9780241240021&title=TheStarDiaries
Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem        $37.00
From the most cerebral of SF writers, this set of stories all feature the adventures of space traveller Ijon Tichy, spinning in time-warps, spying on robots, encountering bizarre civilizations and creatures in space and being hopelessly lost in a forest of supernovae.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/1003409-TheBlessing-9780241974728
The Blessing by Nancy Mitford         $37.00
It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in...
"Deliciously funny." - Evelyn Waugh
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/991960-TheHiddenHalfofNatureTheMicrobialRootsofLifeandHealth-9780393244403
 The Hidden Half of Nature: The microbial roots of life and health by David Montgomery and Anne Bikel       $48.00
Microscopic organisms may provide the key to solving problems with agricultural production and with our own bodies. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/819168-TheManintheHighCastle-9780241968093
 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick       $21.00
America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese. But between these two states - locked in a cold war - lies a neutral buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War II was won by the Allies... A dystopian classic.
"A disturbingly plausible alternate history." - Lucy
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/977275-TakeSixGirlsTheLivesoftheMitfordSisters-9781784970871
 Take Six Girls: The lives of the Mitford sisters by Laura Thompson       $44.99
The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/990573-OccupyMe-9781473212961
 Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan        $34.99
A woman with wings that exist in another dimension. A man trapped in his own body by a killer. A briefcase that is a door to hell. A conspiracy that reaches beyond our world...










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