The week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias
FICTION
1 Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi (Allen & Unwin, $29.99)
"For a number of years Kate De Goldi and her husband Bruce Foster lived down the track from our house in York Bay. It was not unusual for me to pop down for a chat and find myself leaning in the bedroom door while Kate lay in bed. That would be the arrangement for an earnest discussion on what we happened to be reading or had read. That may seem odd to some. But bed is where Kate is more at home than most. And where Kate considers herself no less up and ready to tackle the new day. She is simply recumbent. And contentedly so, recumbent in her nest of books that have slipped into the folds of the bedcovers; more books are piled on a bedside chair, a few others discarded to the floor": from an exquisite portrait of the author by her friend Lloyd Jones.
2 The Wrong Woman by J.P. Pomare (Hachette, $36.99)
A new Pomare! Excellent. This guy is surely the best New Zealand crime writer around, and his latest book is a police procedural. From the blurbology: "A private investigator returning to the hometown he fled years ago becomes entangled in the disappearance of two teenage girls in this stunning literary crime thriller. An insurance firm has offered him good money to look into a suspicious car crash, and he finds himself back in the place he grew up - home to his complicated family history, a scarring relationship breakdown and a very public career-ending incident…. Rumours are swirling about the well-liked young woman who crashed the car, killing her professor husband, and there are whispers about a second local student who has just disappeared."
Generic cover.
3 Harbouring by Jenny Pattrick (Penguin Random House, $36.00)
The Nielsen chart has been in a holding pattern these past few weeks, with only a few new titles (by Kate De Goldi and Josh Pomare) bringing fresh life into the bestseller list alongside such long-established titles as Greta and Valdin (published last year) and Auē (published, what, three years ago now, isn't it?). But Xmas is just around the corner, and with it is the very, very keenly anticipated novel by one of the great masters of literary fiction, Catherine Chidgey. The Axeman's Carnival is narrated by a magpie. WTactualF but if anyone can get away with it, and turn it into an event, a special read, a smash hit, it's Chidgey. The book is out soon, very soon indeed.
4 Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin Random House, $36)
The Dunedin writer was among the winners of the 2022 Surrey Hotel writers residency award in association with Newsroom and Dick Frizzell, as announced on Wednesday by top man Jesse Mulligan on his Afternoons show on RNZ.
5 The Leonard Girls by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $36.99)
6 The Slow Roll by Simon Lendrum (Upstart Press, $39.99)
7 Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
8 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers, $35)
9 How to Loiter In a Turf War by Coco Solid (Penguin Random House, $28)
10 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)
The Westport writer was among the winners of the 2022 Surrey Hotel writers residency award in association with Newsroom and Dick Frizzell, as announced on Wednesday by top man Jesse Mulligan on his Afternoons show on RNZ.
NON-FICTION
1 Everyday Favourites by Vanya Insull (Allen & Unwin, $39.99)
The Nielsen chart has been in a holding pattern these past few weeks, with only a few new titles (Insull's cookbook, Vance's political diary) bringing fresh life into the bestseller list alongside such long-established titles as Aroha (published last year) and I am Autistic (February). But Xmas is just around the corner, and publishers are any minute about to release non-fiction books they hope will sell their socks off – a bio of Black Caps legend Ross Taylor, a memoir by former Attorney General and all-round wit Chris Finlayson, and middle-classy home and garden photo books by Jane Ussher and Liz Carlson.
2 Blue Blood: The inside story of the National Party in crisis by Andrea Vance (HarperCollins, $36.99)
"So this is what the Wellington political beltway feels like on the inside, and it's pretty much exactly what you always suspected: a chamber of horrors, one of the worst places in the civilised world, a sealed room marked NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE. Blue Blood: The inside story of the National Party in crisis by Andrea Vance is a descent into a circle of Hell where lost souls function to create, maintain and nourish a crisis. Here, then, is the swamp; and Vance has fun draining it": from my review at ReadingRoom.
Poignantly, the cover only had room for four of the leaders examined in the book, and left out poor old forgotten Bill English, and Todd wassisname.
3 No Excuses by Dave Letele (Penguin Random House, $40)
4 A Quiet Kitchen by Nici Wickes (David Bateman, $45)
5 Yum! by Nadia Lim (Nude Food Inc, $55)
6 The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
7 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
8 The Boy from Gorge River by Chris Long (HarperCollins, $39.99)
9 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle & Bianca Elkington & Moana Jackson (Bridget Williams Books, $14.99)
10 I am Autistic by Chanelle Moriah (Allen & Unwin, $29.99)
