Recent Books

His Favourite Graves (December 2023)

By Paul Cleave

December 11, 2023

Acacia Pines, USA.  Sheriff Cohen’s life is falling apart – his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school.

When high-school student Lucas Connor is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track – to win back his wife and scoop the reward money on offer.

But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen is going to have to make the kind of decision from which there’s no coming back … a decision with deadly consequences …

The Seventh Son (December 2023)

By Sebastian Faulks

December 11, 2023

A child will be born who will change everything.

When young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman’s child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before.  Through a series of IVF treatments, which Parn hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it.

Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.

The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human.  It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should?  Sweeping between New York, London and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.

The Crewe Murders (December 2023)

By Kirsty Johnston & James Hollings

December 11, 2023

The murder of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe in their Pukekawa farmhouse in 1970 remains New Zealand’s most infamous cold case.

It spawned two trials, two appeals, several books, a film, and eventually a royal commission finding of police corruption.

It also resulted in a free pardon, the only time the New Zealand government has bypassed the courts to set a convicted murderer free.

And still, the Crewe’s killer has not been found.

Combining gripping narrative, detailed research and striking new testimony from those who were there, this book tells the complete story of the case for the first time.

The Dictionary People (December 2023)

By Sarah Ogilvie

December 11, 2023

What do three murderers, Karl Marx’s daughter, and a vegetarian vicar have in common?

They all helped create the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men; its longest-serving editor, James Murray, devoted thirty-six years to the project, as far as the letter T.  But the Dictionary didn’t just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public.  By the time it was finished in 1928 its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from archaeologists and astronomers to murders, naturists, novelists, pornographers, queer couples, suffragists, vicars and vegetarians.

Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people’s history of the OED.  She traces the lives of thousands of contributors who defined the English language, from the eccentric autodidacts to the family groups who made word-collection their passion.  With generosity and brio, Ogilvie reveals, for the first time, the full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world – and celebrates to sparkling effect the extraordinary efforts of the Dictionary People.

The Future Future (December 2023)

By Adam Thirlwell

December 11, 2023

A wild story of female friendship, language and power, from France to colonial America to the moon, from 1775 to this very moment: a historical novel like no other

It’s the eighteenth century, and Celine is in trouble.  Her husband is mostly absent.  Her parents are elsewhere.  And meanwhile men are inventing stories about her – about her affairs, her sexuality, her orgies and addictions.  All these stories are lies, but the public loves them – spreading them like a virus.  Celine can only watch as her name becomes a symbol for everything rotten in society.

This is a world of decadence and saturation, of lavish parties and private salons, of tulle and satin and sex and violence.  It’s also one ruled by men – high on colonial genocide, natural destruction, crimes against women and, above all, language.  To survive, Celine and her friends must band together in search of justice, truth and beauty.

Fantastical, funny and blindingly bright.  The Future Future follows one woman on an urgently contemporary quest to clear her name and change the world.

Six Days (November 2023)

By Dani Atkins

November 22, 2023

Two people.  One love story.  Six days.

Gemma knows that she and Finn are destined to be together.  They are soulmates.  But then, on their wedding day, he never arrives at the church.

Gemma is convinced Finn wouldn’t abandon her like this, even though he has disappeared once before.  But back then he had a reason.  She feels sure something terrible has happened, but no one else is convinced.  Even the police aren’t concerned, telling Gemma most people who disappear usually turn up in a week… assuming they want to be found, that is.

For the next six days Gemma frantically searches for Finn, even though every shocking revelation is telling her to give up on him.  Soon she even begins to doubt her own memories of their love.

How long can she hold on to her faith in Finn if everyone is telling her to let him go?

The Secret (November 2023)

By Lee Child and Andrew Child

November 22, 2023

Chicago.  1992.  A hospital patient wakes to find two strangers by his bed.

They show him a list of names and ask a simple but impossible question.  Minutes later he falls to his death from his twelfth-floor window – a fall which generates some unexpected attention.

That attention comes from the Secretary of Defense, who calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate.  Jack Reacher, recently demoted from Major, is assigned as the army’s representative.  If he gets a result, great.  If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

Reacher may be an exceptional military investigator, but office politics aren’t what get him up in the morning.  As he races to identify a cold-blooded killer and uncover a secret that stretches back twenty years, he must navigate around his new partners.

Will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way … or his way?

Resurrection Walk (November 2023)

By Michael Connelly

November 22, 2023

From No. 1 bestselling author Michael Connelly: Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller is back, and he’s taken on another long-shop case.  The chance of winning is one in a million…

Defence attorney Mickey Haller has agreed to represent a woman who is in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, and Haller enlists his half-brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, as investigator.  Even after four years in prison, his new client maintains her innocence.

Reviewing the case, Bosch sees something that doesn’t add up and senses the sheriff’s department close ranks as he pursues the truth.

The path to true justice is, for both the lawyer and his investigator, fraught with danger from those who don’t want the case reopened.  And their opponents will stop at nothing to keep the Haller-Bosch dream team from uncovering what the deputy’s killing was really about.

Light Over Liskeard (November 2023)

By Louis de Bernieres

November 22, 2023

Sometimes we must look to the past to survive the inevitable.

Q wants a simpler and safer life.  His work as a quantum cryptographer for the government has led him to believe a crisis is imminent and he needs somewhere to ride out what’s ahead.

Q buys a ruined farmhouse in Cornwell and begins to build his own self-sufficient haven.  Over the course of his challenge he meets the eccentric characters who live on the moors nearby, including the park ranger in charge of the reintroduced lynxes and aurochs that roam the area; a holy man waiting for the Second Coming on a nearby hill; an Arthurian knight; and the amorous ghost of an Edwardian woman who haunts the house.

As life in the cities gets more complicated, and our systems of electronic control begin to fall apart, Q flourishes in the wild countryside.  His new way of life brings him back in tune with his family and his sense of who he is.  He also grows close to Eva, energetic and enchanting, who is committed to her own quest for love and meaning.

In this entertaining and heart-warming novel Louis de Bernieres makes us reconsider what is really precious in our short and precarious lives.

The Book Collector: Reading and Living with Literature (November 2023)

By Tony Eyre

November 22, 2023

The Book Collector is a fascinating bibliomemoir of the writer’s lifetime joy of reading, the books and authors that have touched him, and how they have shaped his passion for book collecting.

Step into his library, where the book is ‘a tangible object of sentiment and delight’ and experience his fondness for New Zealand literature as well as a great many of the world’s most celebrated writers.  Then follow this wondering bibliophile as he takes you on a personal journey of search and discovery to second-hand bookshops around Aotearoa New Zealand and further afield, to the community book fairs and charity shops and into the online world of books.

The Book Collector is an enjoyable and thoroughly engaging read, packed full of stories, personal observations, useful information and splashes of humour, inviting the reader to further explore what our often neglected New Zealand literature has to offer.