Fka USA: A Novel by Reed King

$32.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

Reed King's amazingly audacious novel is something of a cross between L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Douglas Adams's A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. Indie Next Pick for JulyBest of June: io9, AV Club, Amazing Stories, The Verge In Reed King's wildly imaginative and possibly prescient debut, the United States has dissolved in the wake of environmental disasters and the catastrophic policies of its final president. It is 2085, and Truckee Wallace, a factory worker in Crunchtown 407 (formerly Little Rock, Arkansas, before the secessions), has no grand ambitions besides maybe, possibly, losing his virginity someday. But when Truckee is thrust unexpectedly into the spotlight he is tapped by the President for a sensitive political mission: to deliver a talking goat across the continent. The fate of the world depends upon it. The problem is--Truckee's not sure it's worth it. Joined on the road by an android who wants to be human and a former convict lobotomized in Texas, Truckee will navigate an environmentally depleted and lawless continent with devastating--and hilarious--parallels to our own, dodging body pickers, Elvis-worshippers, logo girls, body subbers, and VR addicts. Elvis-willing, he may even lose his virginity. FKA USA is the epic novel we've all been waiting for about the American end of times, with its unavoidable sense of being on the wrong end of the roller coaster ride. It is a masterwork of ambition, humor, and satire with the power to make us cry, despair, and laugh out loud all at once. It is a tour de force unlike anything else you will read this year.   "Mr. King looks at all our upcoming problems, and imagines a local reaction to each one. The result is often funny, usually sardonic, and always imaginative, what with all the mole rats, flesh drones, dimeheads, and especially 'The Grifter's Guide to the Territories FKA USA, ' a notable addition to the line of imaginary authorities."--The Wall Street Journal ...Show more

Luster by Leilani Raven

$37.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

Meet Edie. Edie is not okay. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a white, middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young, black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling headfirst into Eric’s home and family. Razor sharp. provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster is a painfully funny coming-of-age story told by a fresh new voice. ...Show more

The Lost and the Damned by Olivier Norek

$34.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Series: The\Banlieues Trilogy Ser.

A suspenseful new police procedural from a serving French police officer and writer on the hit series Spiral A corpse that wakes up on the mortuary slab. A case of spontaneous human combustion. There is little by the way of violent crime and petty theft that Capitaine Victor Coste has not encountere d in his fifteen years on the St Denis patch - but nothing like this. Something unusual is afoot, and Coste is about to be dragged out of his comfort zone. Stranger still, anonymous letters addressed to him personally have begun to arrive, highlighting the fates of two women, invisible victims whose deaths were never explained. Just two more blurred faces among the ranks of the lost and the damned. Olivier Norek's first novel draws on all his experience as a police officer in one of France's toughest suburbs - the same experience he drew on as a writer for the hit TV series Spiral. Translated from the French by Nick Caistor ...Show more

Xstabeth by David Keenan

$37.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

'Reading [Xstabeth] feels like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music' Edna O'Brien 'Prepare for more of that inimitable Keenan narrative voodoo brilliance' Wendy Erskine In St Petersburg, Russia, Aneliya is torn between the love of her father and her father's best friend. Her fath er dreams of becoming a great musician but suffers with a naivete that means he will never be taken seriously. Her father's best friend has a penchant for vodka, strip clubs and moral philosophy. When an angelic presence named Xstabeth enters their lives - a presence who simultaneously fulfils and disappears those she touches - Aneliya and her father's world is transformed. Moving from Russia to St Andrews, Scotland, Xstabeth tackles the metaphysics of golf, the mindset of classic Russian novels and the power of art and music to re-wire reality. Charged with a consuming intensity and a torrential rhythm that pulses with music, it is an offering of transcendence and a love letter to the books of Chandler, Nabokov and Dostoevsky, by a writer who is rewriting the rulebook of contemporary fiction. ...Show more

The Greatest Beer Run Ever - A Crazy Adventure in a Crazy War by John Donohue

$37.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

An incredible true story of how, in 1967 - having seen students protesting against the Vietnam war - Chickie Donohue and his New York City bar friends decided that someone should go to Vietnam and take their soldier pals a beer and show them that SOMEONE appreciates what they're doing out there. It wou ld be the Greatest Beer Run Ever! But who'd be crazy enough to do it? One man was up for the challenge: John "Chickie" Donohue. A U. S. Marine Corps veteran turned merchant mariner, Chickie decided he wasn't about to desert his buddies on the front lines when they needed him most. In THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER, Chickie sets off on an adventure that changes his life forever. Armed with Irish luck and a backpack full of alcohol, he makes his way to Qui Nho'n, tracking down his disbelieving friends one by one. But Chickie sees more of the war than he ever bargained for, unexpectedly getting caught up for a night on the front line by the Demilitarized Zone, and in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. Donohue talks his way in and out of situations; learns a lot about himself and most importantly, changes his view on the Vietnam War, seeing first-hand the craziness of the whole endeavor and ultimately realising that the protesters were right. ...Show more

Poems to Save the World With by RIDDELL CHRIS

$29.99 NZD

Category: Poetry

A brilliant, thoughtful anthology of poems full of hope, selected and illustrated by Chris Riddell.In Poems to Save the World With, Chris Riddell has selected and illustrated his very favourite classic and modern poems full of hope and wit to untangle the madness of life.In this gorgeous anthology, Chri s's follow-up to one of the Bookseller's best poetry books of the last twenty-five years, Poems to Live Your Life By, will ignite your inner activist. Covering a wealth of subjects such as the climate crisis and human rights issues, these insightful poems are brought to life with Chris's exquisite, intricate artwork.This perfect gift features famous poems, old and new, and a few surprises. Classic verses sit alongside the modern to create the ultimate collection. Includes poems by Wendell Berry, William Blake, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, John Dryden, John Dunne, Neil Gaiman, Nikita Gill, Jane Kenyon, Rudyard Kipling, Emma Lazarus, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Rachel Rooney, William Shakespeare, Percy Shelley, Maggie Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Stewart, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, and many more. ...Show more

Ravens Bk 1 by Danielle Paige; Morgan

$24.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

Lana's War by Anita Abriel

$37.99 NZD

Category: Historical

Paris 1943. Lana Antanov is rushing to see her husband, Frederic, and tell him the news that she is pregnant. But as she arrives the convent where Frederic teaches music, she watches in horror as a Gestapo officer executes Frederic for hiding a Jewish girl in a piano. Overcome with grief, Lana loses the baby. A few months later, Lana is approached by a member of the French Resistance to work as a spy on the French Riviera and help save Jews from execution. As a 'White Russian' daughter of a Russian countess, Lana is the ideal choice to infiltrate the emigre community of Russian aristocrats who socialise with German officers. But Lana has a very personal motive for taking on this mission - the Gestapo officer in charge intent on exterminating all the Jews, Alois Brunner, is the man who shot Frederic. Lana's cover story makes her the mistress of a wealthy Swiss playboy, the darkly handsome and charismatic Guy Pascal, and her base his villa on the Riviera. Together they make a ruthlessly effective team. The information they gather at parties and the casino at Monte Carlo helps thwart several raids and enables countless Jews to escape to Morocco by boat. But Lana has not counted on becoming attached to a young Jewish girl named Odette or to fall helplessly in love with Guy. As the Nazis close in, her desire to protect the ones she loves threatens to put them all at risk. 'Filled with danger and romance, Lana's War is the story of a courageous woman waging her own battle against the Nazis ... Cinematic in scope, this novel will keep readers turning pages with twists and turns that lead to an unforgettable ending.' Renee Rosen, bestselling author of Park Avenue Summer   'Lana is a heroine to root for, and her story of loss and love is inspiring and life-affirming. I was completely engrossed in this lush, transportive novel.' Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author of The Queen's Fortune ...Show more

Box 88 by Charles Cumming

$32.99 NZD

Category: Thriller

An organisation that doesn't exist. A spy that can't be caught. 1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall is imminent and the Cold War will soon be over. But for Box 88, a top secret spying agency known only to an inner circle of MI6 and CIA operatives, the espionage game is heating up. Lachlan Kite, recruited straight from an elite board school, is sent to France - the frontline of a new secret war. Kite is tasked with gathering intelligence on a mysterious Iranian businessman implicated in the tragic Lockerbie bombing. But what he uncovers is even more deadly... 2020: MI5 hear rumours of Box 88's existence and go after Kite - only for Iranian intelligence to get to him first.  Taken captive and subjected to torture, Kite is presented with a simple choice: reveal the truth about what happened in France thirty years earlier - or watch his family die. Past and present merge, as MI5 and Box 88 are caught up in a race against time to save Kite. ...Show more

Cold Shoulder - A Lorraine Page Thriller by Lynda La Plante

$37.99 NZD

Category: Thriller

SHE'S LOST EVERYTHING EXCEPT HER LIFE . . . Lieutenant Lorraine Page had everything -- a devoted husband, two beautiful daughters and an impressive career with the Homicide Squad. It's impossible to believe that she could be thrown out of the police force and end up on Skid Row. Lorraine's ex-colleagues soon forget her, as the hunt for a nightmare serial killer spirals into an all-out search for a missing witness: a victim who escaped. Lorraine Page is that witness. Against her will she is drawn into the investigation, and forced to face her past and her overwhelming guilt... ...Show more

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

$27.99 NZD

Category: Thriller

Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones returns withNight of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both? Praise forNight of the Mannequins "Reading Stephen Graham Jones is like sitting in the corner of a bar with an old friend, and everyone quiets down the moment they start telling a story.Night of the Mannequins is dark and twisted, funny, a little crazy, and unsettling as hell. The opening setup gets way under your skin, and then Jones takes the story somewhere much darker than you imagined. If there's an heir apparent to the kind of no-rules, wild imagination, down home storytelling perfected by Joe R. Lansdale, it's this guy right here. Read him."--Christopher Golden "Sly, surprising psychic sleight-of-hand, in a tale of teenage madness where the next plastic face might be your own."--John Skipp "Wicked and wry, this is a terrific story by one of my favorite writers, Stephen Graham Jones. Tip-top with a twist of dead. The narrator's first person delivery is the most notable aspect of this surprising and creepy tale that nods to popular stalker-killer films of the past, but is so much better than the bulk of those films, and what an ending. You definitely need this."--Joe R. Lansdale "Stephen Graham Jones' has one of the most gripping, stream-of-consciousness voices in horror fiction.Night of the Mannequins is propulsive and poignant, capturing the mundane terror of adolescence, and adding that ever-so-essential dab of killer mannequin. You won't put it down." --Sarah Langan ...Show more

How Did I Get Here? Soliloquies Of Youth by Ben Brown (edited by)

$25.00 NZD

Category: Poetry

There are times when the right to remain silent and the need to say something exist in the same moment. I would suppose a choice is made at such a time as to whether guilt is a matter of fact or a matter of conscience. A youthful mind forged in a crucible of fear might argue, ‘Yeah I did it, but that do n’t make me guilty. My world has a different measure.’ In January 2020 poet Ben Brown took a box of biros, an A4 ream of paper and a question to 28 YPs—young people—living in Te Puna Wai o Tūhinapō, the Oranga Tamariki youth justice residence next door to Rolleston Prison, south-west of Christchurch. He asked them, ‘How did you get here?’ Over four days of kōrero and collaboration, tautoko and awhi, the young men aged 13–18 wrote their answers as poems, which have been collected in a book, with illustrations by two of the participants. ...Show more