Anthology of New Zealand Literature
Jane Stafford, Mark Williams (eds)
Auckland University Press, HB, 9781869405892
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Covering everything from Polynesian mythology to the writing of Katherine Mansfield and the Yates’ Garden Guide (yes, really), this 1248-page anthology has been compiled by two prominent academics from Victoria University in New Zealand. It brings together for the fi rst time in one volume New Zealand’s major writing – novels and stories, poems and plays, letters and diaries, comics and songs – from the earliest records of exploration and encounter to the globalised, multicultural present. This essential guide to NZ’s literary culture and heritage will tell you what to read, and why.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.95
Back to Blood
Tom Wolfe
Random House, PB, 9780224097284
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Tom Wolfe has been holding up a mirror to American society for decades. In 1987’s Bonfire of the Vanities (Vintage Classic. PB. $12.95), New York was the perfect setting in which to do so; in 2012’s Back to Blood it is Miami, that sundried southern city where more than half of the population are recent immigrants, that takes centre stage. Wolfe dips into various ethnicities for his characters, and the palpable tensions between races and classes are more than background – they are subjects in themselves. The characters display nepotism and narcissism, hate and lust, selfi shness and corruption, and there’s even murder. Wolfe is very good at skewering we humans, and it’s this, as much as the plot, that makes Back to Blood such an engaging read.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.95
The Bat
Jo Nesbø
Harvill/Secker, PB, 9781846556005
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Christmas has arrived early this year for Nesbø fans! Finally, we can enjoy the first Harry Hole novel, which was released in Norway in 1997 but hasn’t been published in an English edition until now. All of those references in the later books to Harry’s time in Sydney’s Kings Cross are explained, as are the genesis of his alcoholism and his skill in tracking serial killers (something that will become horribly commonplace for him in later books such as The Leopard, The Devil’s Star and The Snowman). While it’s not as polished as his more-recent novels, The Bat offers Nesbø’s trademark tight plotting, deadpan delivery and music references – plus, of course, the world-weary and incomparable Harry, one of contemporary crime fi ction’s most distinctive characters.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.99
The Black Box
Michael Connelly
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781743312643
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In his latest outing, Harry Bosch reopens a 20-year-old case and pursues it with his usual dogged determination. After linking the bullet from a recent crime to an unsolved fi le about a 1992 killing of a young female photographer during the LA riots, he searches for the ‘black box’, the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together. Soon, he comes to realise that the photographer’s death was not random violence, but something more personal that is also connected to a deeper intrigue. As riveting and relentlessly paced as we have come to expect from any novel featuring this professionally gifted yet emotionally flawed character, The Black Box won’t disappoint Connelly’s myriad devotees.
December Release
The Captive Sun
Irena Karafilly
Picador, PB, 9781742612089
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Greece’s recent hardships are just a fraction of those it has endured over the past century, and this remarkable novel follows a woman as she lives through many of these historical events. The Captive Sun begins in 1935 during an economic crisis, but compared with what lies ahead, this is a peaceful time. Schoolteacher Calliope Adham lives in the fishing village where she has grown up, and her life seems destined for conventionality until WWII breaks out. Soon, her husband heads off to fi ght and die, and Nazis occupy the village, bringing Lieutenant Umbreit into her life. The end of the war just leads to more turmoil, in Calliope’s country and also in her heart. Already a bestseller in Greece, The Captive Sun is sure to be just as popular here in Australia.
The Cleaner of Chartres
Salley Vickers
Viking, PB, 9780670922130
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This is the beguiling tale of a young woman who brings healing to a town that didn’t know it needed it, only to fi nd her own redemption among its community of lost souls. When Agnès Morel is found sleeping in the porch of the ancient cathedral of Chartres, none of the residents of the quiet French town realise what changes lie in store for them. Before long, she has a magical effect on all of their lives. But what about her own? A trauma lies in Agnès’ past, and eventually she will be forced to confront it. The Cleaner of Chartres is another great read from the author of the bestselling Miss Garnet’s Angel, with plenty of historical, mythical and religious information woven into the text.
The Daylight Gate
Jeanette Winterson
Century, HB, 9780099561859
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Using her sly wit and ear for language, Jeanette Winterson has taken a historical event and crafted this seductive nightmare of a novel. ‘Stand on the fl at top of Pendle Hill and you can see everything of the country of Lancashire, and some say you can see other things too’, she writes. Dark magic, perhaps, is being performed on the hill. Two suspected witches have been arrested and then a magistrate stumbles into what might be a black Sabbat – 13 people gathered on Good Friday. One is Alice Nutter, a powerful woman by the standards of 1612, carrying a human tongue in her saddlebag … The infamous Lancashire trials are being set in motion, and this gothic tale about their victims is as brutal and engrossing as any episode of Game of Thrones.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $39.95
Dear Life
Alice Munro
Chatto & Windus, HB, 9780701187842
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In her new collection of short stories, the incomparable Alice Munro continues to explore the lives of various inhabitants of the countryside and towns around Lake Huron, illuminating the moments – some prosaic, some extraordinary – when their lives have been shaped. Suffused with Munro’s clarity of vision and unparalleled gift for storytelling, this collection features departures, beginnings and homecomings both virtual and real, painting a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous and remarkable ‘dear life’ can be.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.95
Flight Behaviour
Barbara Kingsolver
Faber & Faber, PB, 9780571290789
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Family, community and ecology are familiar themes in the novels of Barbara Kingsolver, and Flight Behaviour features all three. But this slow-burning novel is also about self-fulfilment, and its main character, Dellarobia Turnbow, is a wonderful creation. Trapped by circumstances on a failing farm in the Appalachians, Dellarobia is isolated in more than just a geographical sense. So when an aggregate of monarch butterflies mysteriously appears, she sees them as a possible salvation – it is only after a group of scientists arrives to study them that she realises that their arrival is instead a worrying portent for the future of the globe. With its topical theme of climate change and its affectionate treatment of the challenges facing communities in rural America, this wonderful novel is one of Kingsolver’s best.
The Heart Broke In
James Meek
Canongate, PB, 9780857862914
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Philip Pullman was ‘enormously impressed’ by this novel by British author James Meek (The People’s Act of Love. Canongate. PB. $19.95), describing it as a ‘moral thriller’. Whatever you call it, it’s one of those books that you just can’t put down. A brilliant modern-day family and romantic saga, it features a cast of characters led by a brother and sister – one morally bankrupt (and sleeping with an underage girl) and the other a do-gooder – who are forced to make decisions that threaten to tear their lives apart. Meek doesn’t fall back on experimental gimmicks here – like Dickens, he builds an involving, complex drama with, as the title indicates, lots of heart.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $28.00
The Hundred-Foot Journey
Richard C Morais
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781742373744
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Anthony Bourdain, himself no slacker when it comes to writing evocatively about food, says of this novel: ‘Outstanding! A completely human story heavily larded with the lushest, most high-test food porn since Zola. Easily the best novel set in the world of cooking ever ….’ The story follows Hassan Haji and his idiosyncratic restaurateur family as they journey from Mumbai and Southall to a French alpine village called Lumière. When Hassan’s father brings the fl avours of India to this rural town in the form of his restaurant Maison Mumbai, the family faces fi erce opposition from their neighbour, the formidable Madame Mallory, whose Michelin-starred restaurant is all of 100 feet away. Morais deftly captures the passions, egos and aromas of the kitchen, delivering a charming, funny and life-affi rming novel.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $29.99
Live By Night
Dennis Lehane
Little Brown, PB, 9781408703168
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There are plenty of American crime writers who have built successful brands churning out annual variations on a tried and tested theme. And then there’s Dennis Lehane. Not content to limit himself to his popular Kenzie and Gennaro PI novels, Lehane has also written the powerful Mystic River, with its dark, almost Shakespearian, themes; the gothic-style thriller Shutter Island; and two meticulously researched historical novels: The Given Day and its just-released sequel of sorts, Live By Night. Set in 1920s Boston and Florida, this story of gangster Joe Coughlin has everything that aficionados have come to expect from Lehane: evocative settings, powerful prose, compelling characters and a cracker of a storyline. A fabulous summer read.
May We Be Forgiven
A M Homes
Granta, PB, 9781847083227
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This is a novel that by any usual critical gauge shouldn’t have succeeded – but does, magnifi cently. It’s a fictional wild ride through contemporary America, veering off course innumerable times but arriving triumphantly at its destination. The storyline revolves around Harry, an under-achieving husband, academic and scholar specialising in the life and career of Richard Nixon. After a cataclysmic series of events leads to his older and more-successful brother George being incarcerated in a high-security facility, Harry is left in charge of George’s children, animals and house. Replete with black humour, improbable plot developments and commentary on the debasement of the American dream, May We Be Forgiven is a truly extraordinary an exhilarating read.
Monsieur
Emma Becker
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070111
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If you’re looking for something even more deliciously erotic than Fifty Shades of Grey, don’t hesitate to grab this book for a bit of bedtime reading. Ellie and the man she calls ‘Monsieur’ share a forbidden passion. He’s a wealthy surgeon, a man of the world, a husband and father. She’s a uni student less than half his age who wants to live out her fantasy of being Nabokov’s Lolita. In notebooks, Ellie keeps a record of their sensual, steamy affair – including the kind of stuff that will make you cross your legs if you’re perusing it on a train. The author, Emma Becker, is only 22,and Monsieur has an autobiographical flavour that gives it a wickedly sexy edge.
NW
Zadie Smith
Hamish Hamilton, PB, 9780241145555
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This isn’t the London featured in the tourist brochures. Instead, it’s the ungentrifi ed northwest (N-W) of the city – the London of the author’s childhood. Smith’s career kicked off in her mid-twenties with the popular and critical success White Teeth (Penguin. PB. $19.95), but now she’s well into her thirties and onto her fourth novel, the fi rst for seven years. Although her earlier work is brilliant, Smith’s style has grown up a little. The four central characters possess an incredible depth and vividness: anxious Leah and her deceptively successful best friend, Natalie; Felix, loveable and doomed; and once-handsome Nathan, who is deeply troubled. The novel’s intricate, unusual and seemingly flawless structure could only have been constructed by an experienced, first-rate novelist.
The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781743311271
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These days, it’s a novelty to come across a best-selling Scandinavian novel that doesn’t feature serial killers. But over 2.5 million readers internationally have read Jonas Jonasson’s charming tale about Alan Karlsson, a centenarian who escapes through a nursing-home window and embarks on a picaresque journey that leads him into the orbit of bikie gang members, a hot-dogstand operator called Benny, an elephant called Sonya and a detective chief inspector determined to track them all down. Alan’s journey is interspersed with vignettes from his past, where his Zelig-like ability to insert himself in the company of famous men during historically important moments in time supplies a second, equally quirky, storyline.
The Orchardist
Amanda Coplin
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, PB, 9780297867913
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Talmadge is a good man. He is the orchardist of the title, tending to his trees in Northwest America at the turn of the last century, living alone for years after the disappearance of his sister. When two girls, heavily pregnant and scared, steal apples from his market stall and later appear in the orchard, he tries to provide them with shelter. Clearly he also wants to provide them with a family and with familial love. But good intentions pave the way not so much to hell as to heartache. Using language to great effect, debut novelist Amanda Coplin creates a hypnotic rhythm and pace, searingly memorable characters and a novel that provokes some profound questions.
A Possible Life
Sebastian Faulks
Hutchinson, PB, 9780091936815
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Communal memory haunts these interconnected stories from the author of the acclaimed Birdsong (Vintage. PB. $12.95). Set across countries and over a century – from the resistance movement in WWII France, to a Victorian workhouse, to the 1970s music scene – the characters in A Possible Life risk their bodies and hearts in search of some kind of connection, some key to understanding what it is that makes us the people we become. Faulks prompts the reader to ponder the differences between historical and personal memories, and as always, his mastery of language and storytelling is apparent on every page, imbuing grace and humanity into the sometimes bleak points in time he addresses.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.99
Standing in Another Man's Grave
Ian Rankin
Orion, PB, 9781409144724
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Tsk, tsk. It seems that Ian Rankin’s publisher told us a porky-pie when it announced that 2007’s Exit Music would be the last Rebus novel. Not that we’re complaining, as it’s always a treat to enter the whisky-andnicotine– stained world of this maverick Edinburgh-based detective. This time around, Rebus is working in the Cold Case Unit as a civilian. Drawn into a decade-old missing person’s case, he connects it with other disappearances and establishes the existence of a serial killer. Soon, he and DI Siobhan Clarke are tracking the killer, while Malcolm Fox of the Internal Affairs Unit (The Complaints) watches Rebus’ every move.
Sutton
J R Moehringer
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007489916
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This expansive, brilliantly researched pageturner by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist re-creates the real-life story of America’s most active and most literate bank robber, Willie Sutton. Using sparse, well-honed prose, Moehringer follows Sutton’s life through the 1920s and ’30s all the way to the late ’60s, tying his story in with that of the 20th century. Figures and events from history feature on almost on every page – from WWI parades to Armstrong’s 1969 moon walk – and parallel themes run throughout: of the reporter searching for the real story of Willie Sutton; of the public’s fascination with crime fi gures and loathing of banks; and of Sutton’s futile search for the woman who initiated him into his life of crime, and who also just happened to be the love of his life.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $49.95
Sweet Tooth
Ian McEwan
Jonathan Cape, HB, 9780224097376
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This novel marks Ian McEwan’s return to the spy story, a genre he last entered with 1990’s The Innocent. But like that earlier novel, Sweet Tooth is more about love, loyalty and betrayal than it is about espionage. As the plot unfolds (recounted in retrospect by the narrator, beautiful Cambridge graduate and trainee MI5 spy, Serena Frome), it becomes clear that McEwan is having a lot of fun with this book: the literary and academic pedigree of Serena’s lover, Tom Haley, bears many similarities to that of McEwan himself and there are plenty of publishing in-jokes. The story has more twists than a Chubby Checker record and is an intriguing and meticulously structured thriller, even if it is, as James Lasdun wrote in The Guardian, ‘more John Fowles than John Le Carré’.
Telegraph Avenue
Michael Chabon
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007318490
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Those who haven’t yet been inducted into the Chabon fan club should read this sprawling novel as soon as possible – like his Pulitzerwinning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, it’s a funny and moving story that is told in simply astonishing prose. Larded with popular culture references (particularly American soul music and 1970s blaxploitation fllms), the story is set in a predominantly black neighbourhood between Oakland and Berkeley and focuses on Archy Stallings, the sartorially splendid co-owner of Brokeland Records. Archie has plenty of problems: Gwen, his midwife wife, is in trouble at work; the incipient opening of a music megastore threatens the future of his shop; his troubled son from a previous relationship has appeared in his life; and his deadbeat father, a former star of martial-arts movies, is up to no good. It all makes for exciting and edgy reading.
The Testament of Mary
Colm Tóibín
Picador, HB, 9781742611044
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Here, Tóibín remains faithful to the Gospel stories but takes advantage of the lack of a narrative from Christ’s mother to deliver a thoughtful reimagining of her voice and experiences. Her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, Mary tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to his brutal death. To her he was a vulnerable fi gure, living in a time of turmoil and change and surrounded by men who could not be trusted. Reviewing the book in The Observer, Naomi Alderman said ‘Tóibín’sweary Mary, sceptical and grudging, reads as far more true and real than the saintly perpetual virgin of legend. And Tóibín is a wonderful writer: as ever, his lyrical and moving prose is the real miracle.’ We can only concur.
Trains and Lovers
Alexander McCall Smith
Polygon, HB, 9781846972454
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Using the words ‘charming’ and ‘endearing’ to describe a book or fi lm can often mean that one is damning it with faint praise, but that’s not what we intend here. And this is because Trains and Lovers, like most of McCall Smith’s novels, really is both charming and endearing. Philosophical questioning – What should we strive for in our lives? Is love the greatest of human characteristics, and is trust an essential component of love? To what degree does moral luck influence our lives? – is at the core of this tale of four strangers meeting on a train between Edinburgh and London. During the journey they share stories about how love has touched their lives, leaving behind questions – and some simple yet profound answers – to be pondered by readers who take the trip with them.
Two Brothers
Ben Elton
Bantam, PB, 9780593062067
$29.95 exGST $32.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
It’s hard to pigeonhole Ben Elton. Though known best for his comic screenplays – particularly Blackadder and The Young Ones – he also writes lyrics and scripts for stage musicals and is the author of 13 wildly dissimilar novels, including the CWA Dagger–winning Popcorn and the dystopic Gridlock. Two Brothers is a different beast again. In it, Elton turns his considerable writing abilities to telling the story of brothers Paulus and Otto Stengel, born in Berlin on the same day that the Nazi Party was formed and forced to live through the horrors that the Nazis unleashed. The plot proceeds at a cracking pace, bringing the reader into the world of the boys, their Jewish family and their mutual love, Dagmar. Inspired by the experiences of Elton’s paternal family, Two Brothers is a moving and compelling read.
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $32.99
Unnusual Uses for Olive Oil
Alexander McCall Smith
Little Brown, HB, 9780316027540
$11.77 exGST $12.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
How does Alexander McCall Smith keep producing such delightful novels? They’re always guaranteed to tickle people pink – the kind of thing to read while snuggled in bed with a cup of tea. This is the fourth book featuring Professor Dr von Igelfeld, who works at the Institute of Romance Philology, Bavaria, and is the distinguished author of ‘that definitive, twelve-hundred-page scholarly work, Portuguese Irregular Verbs’. The professor is socially awkward and doesn’t have much luck with the ladies – his last crush used his book as a stepladder – but then it seems he might get a chance with the wealthy Frau Benz. As for the book’s unusual title, let’s just say that a hilarious incident occurs involving olive oil and an academic rival’s one-legged dachshund …
SPECIAL PRICE Originally $45.00
Winter of the World
Ken Follett
Macmillan, PB, 9780230710108
$34.50 exGST $37.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This enthralling epic will transport you back in time and keep you there for hours. If you’ve read the fi rst in Ken Follett’s Century trilogy – 2010’s bestselling Fall of Giants (Pan. PB. $19.99) – you’ll be wanting to return to the action. But if you haven’t read the first and feel like sampling the series midway, perhaps because of a particular interest in WWII, then Winter of the World can be enjoyed on its own. Follett’s characters – there are fi ve main families involved – are swept up in the events of the war and its surrounding years, while also dealing with their own personal dramas. It could be considered the literary equivalent of Downton Abbey, although Follett’s writing is more complex and satisfying.
The Yellow Birds
Kevin Powers
Sceptre, PB, 9781444756135
$24.54 exGST $26.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Kevin Powers served in the US Army in Iraq, and his powerful and haunting debut novel captures the impact of war on those who have been sent there to fight. John Bartle befriends the young Daniel Murphy while still training in New Jersey, and promises his mother that he will take care of him when they go to Iraq. Ten months later, Murphy, aged only 18, is dead. What were the real circumstances surrounding Murphy’s death in Iraq? How will Bartle face Murphy’s mother? And how will Bartle honour this deep bond, formed amidst violent conflict? Moving and beautifully subtle, The Yellow Birds is also astonishingly vivid, taking the reader to the action in Iraq and into the mind of one who has seen the horror.
Highly Recommended
Ancient Light
John Banville
Viking, PB, 9780670920624
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
For ageing actor Alexander Cleave, reminiscing about his first unlikely affair as a teenage boy in a small town in 1950s Ireland triggers a more recent – and devastating – memory.
Highly Recommended
Building Stories
Chris Ware
Jonathan Cape, HB, 9780224078122
$59.09 exGST $65.00 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This new, innovatively presented graphic novel from comic book artist and cartoonist Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth) is set in a Chicago apartment building and deals with the themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression.
Highly Recommended
Canada
Richard Ford
Penguin, PB, 9781408815168
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Set in 1950s Montana, this haunting and visionary novel by one of America’s best contemporary writers is about vast landscapes, complex identities and fragile humanity.
Highly Recommended
The Cartographer
Peter Twohig
Fourth Estate, PB, 9780732293178
$18.17 exGST $19.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This impressive debut novel is set in Melbourne in 1959, when an 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder. Forced to take refuge in drains and tunnels beneath the city, he creates a rather unreliable map to plot out places where he is unlikely to cross paths with the murderer.
Highly Recommended
The Casual Vacancy
J K Rowling
Little Brown, HB, 9781408704202
$36.36 exGST $40.00 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
The first adult novel written by the creator of Harry Potter is a gritty exercise in socialrealism that pours unrelenting scorn on British middle-class gentility and makes a number of pertinent political points as its page-turning narrative unfolds.
Highly Recommended
The Dinner
Herman Koch
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921758522
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This dark and provocative satirical novel has been a bestseller in Europe, where it has sold more than one million copies. Its portrayal of upper-middle-class families is in turn engrossing, hilarious and horrifying.
Highly Recommended
The Forrests
Emily Perkins
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408809235
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
New Zealand novelist Emily Perkins (Novel About My Wife) tells the story of Dorothy Forrest, who moves with her odd, disenfranchised family from New York City to Auckland aged seven and goes on to lead a life filled with the banal and the sublime.
Highly Recommended
Harry Curry
The Murder Book
Stuart Littlemore
Harper Collins, PB, 9780732293437
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
The renegade barrister and his elegant legal partner, Arabella Engineer, defend a series of clients charged with murder. Shades of Rumpole and Rake from the well-known barrister and media commentator.
Highly Recommended
HHhH
Laurent Binet
Harvill/Secker, PB, 9781846554803
$29.95 exGST $32.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This thrilling novel about a WWII assassination plot is based on the true story of Operation Anthropoid, when two Czechs sent by the British parachuted into Prague in 1942 planning to assassinate the head of theGestapo, Reinhard Heydrich.
Highly Recommended
The Hydrogen Sonata
Iain M Banks
Orbit, PB, 9780356501512
$23.59 exGST $25.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
With the publication of the ninth Culture novel, Iain M Banks confirms his position as the pre-eminent science fi ction writer working today. ‘Epic in scope and derangingly replete in detail’ (Stuart Kelly, The Guardian).
Highly Recommended
I'll Catch You
Jesse Kellerman
Little Brown, PB, 9781847444455
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
With I’ll Catch You, Kellerman (son of Faye and Jonathan and the author of 2008’s The Brutal Art) has written a book that functions simultaneously as a thriller and a parody of a thriller.
Highly Recommended
The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer
Edwina Preston
UQP, PB, 9780702249211
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This imaginative neo-Victorian epic weaves together a murder mystery, social drama and the story of a genealogical search in a colourful and humorous fictional package.
Highly Recommended
The Jewels of Paradise
Donna Leon
William Heinemann, PB, 9780434022281
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
William Heinemann PB $29.95 Set in the Venice that she describes so well in her Commissario Brunetti books, Leon’s latest novel is about the search for the lost treasure of baroque composer Antonio Sartorio.
Highly Recommended
Merivel
Rose Tremain
Chatto & Windus, PB, 9780701185213
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
The sequel to Tremain’s splendid Restoration (Vintage. PB. $12.95) follows Robert Merivel, courtier to Charles II, as he heads to France in search of the Sun King and to Switzerland in pursuit of a handsome woman.
Highly Recommended
Norwegian By Night
Derek B Miller
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781921844881
$29.95 exGST $32.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Sheldon Horowitz – 82 years old and irascible – disappears with a stranger’s child after hearing the boy’s mother being murdered. He’s determined to protect the child from the killer and his Balkan gang, but will he be able to do so at his age, and in a strange country?
Highly Recommended
The Prisoner of Heaven
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922879
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
The eagerly awaited third volume in the series of novels that began with The Shadow of the Wind (Text. PB. $24.95) returns to the world of the Cemetery of Forgotten Book and the Sempere & Sons bookshop in Barcelona.
Highly Recommended
The Red Book
Deborah Copaken Kogan
Virago, PB, 9781844089017
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Mary McCarthy’s The Group reprised for the modern generation, Copaken Kogan’s novel draws its title from the publication issued every five years by Harvard University and is about the power and burden of privilege, the reality of being a modern woman and the lasting bonds of female friendship.
Highly Recommended
Red Country
Joe Abercrombie
Gollancz, PB, 9780575095830
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Abercrombie picks up the story of one of the most popular characters from his bestselling The First Law Trilogy (Gollancz. Boxed set. $49.99) in this new tale of adventure.
Highly Recommended
Salvation of a Saint
Keigo Higashino
Sphere, PB, 9781408704196
$33.59 exGST $36.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This crime fiction title from the author of the international bestseller The Devotion of Suspect X (Abacus. PB. $19.99) is just as compelling as its predecessor.
Highly Recommended
Silent House
Orhan Pamuk
Hamish Hamilton, PB, 9781926428352
$27.26 exGST $29.99 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
Never before published in English, Pamuk’s second novel is the moving story of a family gathering in the summer before the Turkish military coup of 1980.
Highly Recommended
The Small Hours
Susie Boyt
Virago, PB, 9781844089130
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If you haven’t yet read any Susie Boyt, this is a great place to start. One of the UK’s most exciting literary talents, Boyt has written four previous novels and a memoir, but this stunning meditation on love, self-love and forgiveness (and their shadowy opposites) is her most impressive work to date.
Highly Recommended
Toby's Room
Pat Barker
Hamish Hamilton, PB, 9780241145227
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Moving from the Slade School of Art before WWI to Queen Mary’s Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the attempt to rebuild the shattered faces of the war-wounded, this riveting drama of identity and damage, intimacy and loss, continues the story first encountered in 2007’s Life Class (Penguin PB $24.95).
December Release - Highly Recommended
The Toe Tag Quintet
Matthew Condon
Random House, PB, 9781742756691
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This crime caper comprises five novellas (one with the fabulous title ‘Murder, She Tweeted’) that recount the adventures of a former Sydney detective from 21 Division who retires to Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Highly Recommended
Try the Morgue
Eva Maria Staal
Norton, PB, 9780871403346
$27.23 exGST $29.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
This debut autobiographical novel is a cracker! The story of a young Dutch woman who becomes involved in the shadowy, adrenaline-charged world of the international arms trade but then gives it up for life in the suburbs, it’s full of tension, tragedy and irony.
Highly Recommended
The Twelve
Justin Cronin
Orion, PB, 9780752897882
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From the author of The Passage (Orion. PB. $19.99) comes this story of 12 death-row prisoners who are infected with an ancient virus in order to create human weapons.
Highly Recommended
Zoo Time
Howard Jacobson
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408831823
$22.68 exGST $24.95 incGST ADD TO TROLLEY
The Booker-winning writer’s latest release is a humorous, sexy, rude and exhilarating novel about Guy Ableman, his vivacious wife Vanessa, and her alluring mother, Poppy.