Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi; Yusef Salaam

$22.99 NZD

Category: Real World

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of the Noughts & Crosses series and The Hate U Give. One fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighbourhood escalates into tragedy. 'Boys just being boys' turns out to be true only when those boys are white.    Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal Shahid's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?    With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both. ...Show more

The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon

$36.00 NZD

Category: NZ Authors | Reading Level: near fine

A compulsive and chilling novel about subjugation, survival and the meaning of family. The car containing the four sleeping children left the earth. From the top of the wooded bluff, where the rain-slick road had curved so treacherously, down to the swollen river at the base of the cliff, was easily six ty feet. There was no moon that night, only low, leaden cloud clogging the sky. As if suspended, the car hung in the air for a fraction - of a fraction - of a moment . . . John Chamberlain has brought his family to New Zealand from the UK. Before he starts his new job, he takes them on a driving holiday. The car skids over the road and hurtles off a cliff. The year is 1978. In 2010 the remains of John's older son have been discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father's watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of wood scored across, marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died? Where was the rest of his family? And what did the tally stick signify? ...Show more

Brasswitch and Bot (#1 Rise of the Remarkables) by Gareth Ward

$22.99 NZD

Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy | Series: The Rise of the Remarkables

Drawn into a world of prejudice, deceit and danger, Wrench must master her powers, knowing they offer her only hope for survival . . . if they don't destroy the world first. Screams surge along York's narrow Victorian streets as a run-away crackle-tram races toward disaster. Fearing an accident like the one that killed her parents, Brasswitch Wrench is forced to reveal her powers - a decision that will change her life forever. Recruited to the sinister department of Regulators who hunt down others like her, Wrench teams up with their maverick mechanical leader, Bot as they are tasked with halting the rise of the aberration threat. Until today, being called Brasswitch would have got you killed. Now, it might save your life. ...Show more

The Quick and the Dead by Cynric Temple-Camp

$39.99 NZD

Category: Biography

Dr Cynric Temple-Camp's suspense-filled, often Gothic story-telling ability captivated readers in his debut book, The Cause of Death. In the Quick and the Dead, New Zealand's self-confessed aficionado of death is back with more mysterious illnesses, gruesome murders, baffling crimes, and the other curio us, scarcely believable ways people meet their demise.The Quick and the Dead is also a book about life and the margins of survival - why some people live and others don't when faced with a seemingly similar peril. How much does luck, fate and chance play its part? What is the difference between life and death? What separates the quick and the dead? ...Show more

The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos; Sam Taylor (translator)

$22.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Series: Walter Presents

By turns farcical and moving, The Mystery of Henri Pick is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books – and of the authors who write them. In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication; the faded dreams of aspiring writer s. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it. The book is a sensation, prompting fevered interest in the identity of its author – apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece? An obstinate journalist, Jean-Michel Rouche, heads to Brittany to investigate.... The Mystery of Henri Pick is the first novel in Pushkin Press' 'Walter Presents' series - all handpicked by Walter Iuzzolino from around the world. It has sold over 500,000 copies in France, been translated into 17 languages, and made into a successful French feature film.     ...Show more

Nancy Patulski's Favourite Stories

$24.99 NZD

Category: Gift Books

The Night of All Souls by Philippa Swan

$36.00 NZD

Category: General Fiction

In this highly entertaining novel, Edith Wharton is variously reimagined- as a host in the afterlife, a historical figure in a modern novella, and as an elusive presence in the pages of her own writing. But when a lifelong secret is exposed, it's almost too shocking to be true. Hugely acclaimed during her lifetime, writer Edith Wharton is back - with the most extraordinary opportunity. Summoned to a room in the afterlife, Edith finds the manuscript of a new novella inspired by her life. A letter from her one-time editor advises Edith to consider carefully whether to destroy the work or allow its publication. Is this a chance to correct her image of haughtiness and privilege, and to reignite interest in her writing? Edith begins reading the novella to her astonished companions; and what unfolds is a cautionary story of online fame. But as she gradually remembers the details of her life, Edith becomes fearful about what the work might reveal and is haunted by the words- The letters survive, and everything survives.  ...Show more

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk

$17.99 NZD

Category: Chapter Books

The Newbery Honor-winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea returns with the story of an unforgettable young heroine in Depression-era Maine. After the financial crash, Ellie and her family have lost nearly everything--including their home in town. Forced to start over, Ellie has fou nd a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on Echo Mountain. But there is little joy, even for Ellie, as her family struggles with the aftermath of an accident that left her father in a coma. An accident for which Ellie has accepted the unearned weight of blame.   Determined to help her father, Ellie will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as "the hag." But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal and, with them, a fresh chance at happiness.   Critically acclaimed author Lauren Wolk weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of strong women, set against the rough and ragged beauty of the mountain they all call home. ...Show more

Come Again by Robert Webb

$32.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

If you could do it all over again, would you? A recently widowed women is about to find out when she wakes up and finds herself eighteen again in this "compelling" story of second chances (Mail On Sunday). You can't fall in love for the first time twice ... Kate's husband Luke -- the man she loved from the moment she met him twenty-eight years ago -- died suddenly. Since then she has pushed away her friends, lost her job and everything is starting to fall apart. One day, she wakes up in the wrong room and in the wrong body. She is eighteen again but remembers everything. This is her college room in 1992. This is the first day of Freshers' Week. And this is the day she first meets Luke. But Luke is not the man that she lost: he's still a boy -- the annoying nineteen-year-old English student she first met. Kate knows how he died and that he's already ill. If they can fall in love again she might just be able to save him. She's going to try to do everything exactly the same ...   ...Show more

Fake Baby by Amy McDaid

$36.00 NZD

Category: Staff Picks - Louise | Reading Level: very good

Fake Baby is a tender and funny exploration of the power of words, our perception of resilience and what it means to be real. Nine Days. One City. Three Oddballs. Stephen's dead father is threatening to destroy the world. If Stephen commits the ultimate sacrifice and throws himself into the harbour, he will save humanity. The last thing he needs is a Jehovah's witness masquerading as a school boy and an admission to a mental health facility. * Jaanvi steals a life-like doll called James and cares for him as if he were her dead child. Her husband demands she return him. But she and James have already bonded, and it's nobody's business how she decides to grieve. * Lucas, pharmacist and all-round nice guy, is having one of the worst weeks of his life. His employees forgot his birthday, his mother's gone manic, and now his favourite customer is in hospital because of a medication error he made. Can he make things right? Or is life all downhill after forty? 'A darkly funny satire that's both moving and wise.' - Paula Morris ...Show more

Highfire by Eoin Colfer

$34.99 NZD

Category: Staff Picks

From the internationally bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl series: Eoin Colfer's first adult fantasy novel is a hilarious, high-octane adventure about a vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon who's been hiding out from the world - and potential torch-carrying mobs - in a Louisiana bayou . . . unt il his peaceful world's turned upside down by a well-intentioned but wild Cajun tearaway and the crooked (and heavily armed) law officer who wants him dead. Squib Moreau may be swamp-wild, but his intentions are (generally) good: he really wants to be a supportive son to his hard-working momma Elodie. But sometimes life gets in the way - like when Fake Daddy walked out on them leaving a ton of debt, or when crooked Constable Regence Hooke got to thinking pretty Elodie Moreau was just the gal for him . . . An apprenticeship with the local moonshine runner, servicing the bayou, looks like the only way to pay off the family debts and maybe get Squib and his momma a place in town, far from Constable Hooke's unwanted courtship and Fake Daddy's reputation. Unfortunately for Squib, Hooke has his own eye on that very same stretch of bayou - and neither of them have taken into account the fire-breathing dragon hiding out in the Louisiana swamp . . . For Squib Moreau, Regence Hooke and Vern, aka Lord Highfire of Highfire Eyrie, life is never going to be the same again. Highfire is a genre-bending tour-de-force of comedy and action by the million-copy-selling master storyteller.     ...Show more

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

$32.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her young black babysitter, Emira Tucker, is accused by a security guard of kidnapping the Chamberlains' toddler at the supermarket one night. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the awkwardness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone 'family', the complicated reality of being a grown-up and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.     ...Show more