FICTION
1 Orchids and Camellias by Sophie Rogers (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99)
Historical novel, set in Nelson, 1869. Excellent synopsis: “Ginny Yang is on the run from her murderous, Chinese hating Father. Newly widowed and with child, Ginny has to fight to have any sort of future for herself and her unborn child.”
2 The Nowhere Boy by Anne Cleary (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
This sounds good, very good, and a free copy is up for grabs in this week’s giveaway contest. It won the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize 2025, and the plot claws at your heart straight off the bat. It’s about a child who disappears in broad daylight. He was last seen in his Dad’s car in a remote carpark by a fishing beach. The cops launch a desperate search. The question beats louder and louder: what if he’s never coming back?
To enter the draw to win a copy of the author’s debut, share a story or insight about a search that ended up finding the missing person. I don’t know if the book has a happy ending but the entry must abide by that rule. Email your message to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps LOST AND FOUND by midnight on Sunday, June 28.
3 All Her Lives by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35.)
4 Portrait by Jackson McCarthy (Auckland University Press, $24.99)
I think the best literary blog in the country these days is by Victoria University academic Dougal McNeil, who brings huge energy and a whooping enthusiasm to his erudite reviews. From his review of Portrait, the debut poetry collection by McCarthy, a writer of Lebanese, Māori, and Pākehā descent: “It’s striking how many of the most exciting younger poets at the moment – Xiaole Zhan, Modi Deng, Cadence Chung, Claudia Jardine – have trained as musicians at the same time as they have developed their writing. Jackson McCarthy is one of this group, too, and I wonder if it’s the discipline of music that has freed them all from the self-defeating New Zealand self-consciousness and awkwardness and inhibition around talent and craft and skill and effort that so often turns a hesitancy to speak into a conscious mangling of what could be beautiful speech. They’re not Fretful Sleepers! And part of what makes McCarthy’s Portrait…so exciting and so fresh and so alive is its unembarrassed assurance in its own goodness. It swaggers! And it deserves to swagger.”
I dispute McNeil’s postscript, though, that the publisher ought to have amended McCarthy’s use of the word “ass” to “arse”. The poet chose to spell it as ass because that was what the poems demanded.
5 Slash by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
6 Malachite (Valmora Academy) by Ashley Andersen (Hachette, $37.99)
7 Tea and Cake and Death (The Bookshop Detectives 2) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $28)
8 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $28)
9 Biology Field Trip by Jenny Powell (Cold Hub Press, $28)
New collection of poems, viz:
Is love in the blessing of language?
Is love in the plummet of sleep
in dances of dreams
in flight of ancestral songs?
Does love leap out of your skin
in the first flush of touch?
Or is love in the land, that great keeper
of exits and entrances.
10 Have This Heart by Lawrence Patchett (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
New collection of short stories by a master of the form. It observes New Zealand men, some of them on the margins, trying to get things right. The title story is about training a rescue dog: “It was a Thursday night and Max had to get food from Pak’nSave. Beyond the checkouts, he scanned the old pinboard they had there. Once or twice he’d got odd jobs this way. Dated-seeming jobs for little businesses he’d never noticed before. Stuffing envelopes once; delivering those advert-circular things another time. A little extra money to help with his fines.”
NONFICTION
1 One Last Question, Prime Minister by Barry Soper (HarperCollins, $39.99)
2 A Place to Stand by Clare Ward (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
A free copy of this outstanding memoir by a country doctor was up for grabs in last week’s giveaway contest. Readers were asked to share a story about rural health services. It was such a popular contest that I devoted a story to the entries, on Wednesday.
The winner is Patricia Smith, who wrote a long email about legendary country doctor George Smith: “His cure-all for wounds and burns was a dressing of cod liver oil and Vaseline. The influence of Dr Smith still reached me years later even after we left the area. I had a cut on my leg that my father treated with the ubiquitous cod liver oil and Vaseline dressing and it healed well.”
Huzzah to Patricia. She wins a copy of A Place to Stand by Clare Ward.
3 The Winner’s Formula by Kerry Spackman (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Not actually a book, more like a gel to rub into the mind to activate it to work harder and achieve some measure of success within the capitalist paradigm.
4 The Valley by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99)
The author of the best book of the year came over to my place for a cup of tea this week. He didn’t accept any of the lamingtons I offered but in all other respects I liked him very much, and can declare he is my new best friend in New Zealand letters.
5 Lessons on Living by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $39.99)
6 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin Random House, $40)
Not actually a book, more like a gel to rub into the mind to activate it to work harder and achieve some measure of success within the capitalist paradigm.
7 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
8 Champions Do Extra by Brad Thorn (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Not actually a book, more like a gel to rub into the mind to activate it to work harder and achieve some measure of success within the capitalist paradigm.
9 He Told Us by Chris Wilson & Michal Dziwulski (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
One of the best books of the year, as the two co-authors investigate the background of the Christchurch terrorist and the network that supported his homicidal mission.
10 Habits of High Performers by James Laughlin (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Not actually a book, more like a gel to rub into the mind to activate it to work harder and achieve some measure of success within the capitalist paradigm.
