Friday 26 January 2018


NEW RELEASES
Reasons to keep reading.

The Cage by Lloyd Jones         $38
Two mysterious strangers turn up at a hotel in a small country town. Where have they come from? Who are they? What catastrophe are they fleeing? The townspeople want answers, but the strangers are unable to speak of their trauma. Before long, wary hospitality shifts to suspicion and fear, and the care of the men slides into appalling cruelty. 
"Jones is a daring writer who can relied upon to ignore expectation." - The Guardian
The Only Story by Julian Barnes         $35
Is it preferable to love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship with an older woman flies in the face of social convention. As he himself grows older, however, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.
Feel Free by Zadie Smith         $40
A new collection of essays. No subject is too fringe or too mainstream to be made fascinating. How much joy can a person tolerate? How many kinds of boredom make up a life? Should Justin Bieber be more like Socrates? 
>> "I have a very messy and chaotic mind.


Man With a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige        $30
Under the summer sun on the Essex coast a gull falls from the sky and strikes an unassuming local council worker sitting on the beach below. From that moment on he is obsessed, a crazed visionary repeatedly depicting the scene and the unknown figure within in it which filled his view at the moment of impact. Can he reach the object of his obsession through his art?
"A precious and strange thing. A bona fide gem. A book that would be a credit to any short list." - The Guardian
Speak Gigantular by Irenosen Okojie           $28
A startling short story collection, riffing surreally on everyday realities of London life, using difference as a point of access into wholly new ways of thinking and feeling. 
"Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line. Lovely stuff." - Stella Duffy




A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's formula and the beauty of mathematics by David Stipp         $45
eiπ + 1 = 0 is regarded as the most beautiful equation in mathematics, and describes the connection between fundamental numbers in terms of basic operations. Leonhard Euler, the eighteenth century Swiss mathematician who devised it, was also responsible for other formulae of great elegance and usefulness (in mathematics, elegance = usefulness), and for the exploring the applications of π. 
Free Hand: New typography sketchbooks by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico         $60
Browse the workbooks of leading contemporary typographer and hand-letterers. Plenty of inspiration here. 


The Invisible Rider by Kirsten McDougall          $25
Philip Fetch is a lawyer with an office in a suburban shopping mall, a husband and father, and a cyclist on Wellington’s narrow and winding streets. He is also a man who increasingly finds simple things in life baffling. As he moves through the sometimes alarming and sometimes comical episodes of this novel, a break in the hurtling flow of events looms ahead. Is it safe for Philip to pull out and pass? The first book from the author of the wonderful Tess.
"Charming, heart-wrenching and funny. McDougall imbues her book with a lovely optimism and an infectious affection for her characters; this is a writer to watch."  – Louise O’Brien, NZ Listener
"Quirky, playful and finally moving."  – Lawrence Jones, Otago Daily Times
"Fetch has the ability to grapple with the borders of his life with a melancholy that belongs to us all, with a deceptive simplicity that sounds as if it is coming from his wisest self. The stories capture the delicacy of human feelings and relationships." – Takahē
The Lost Pages by Marija Peričić       $23
In the margins of his definitive 3-volume biography of Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach assembled and wrote Is That Kafka?, a compilation of 99 'finds' that demonstrate a Kafka different from the general sterotype. In her novel The Lost PagesPeričić goes further, pulling Kafka and his friend and executor Max Brod well over the threshhold into fiction. Hers is a Kafka and a Brod liberated from the burdens of biographical fact and therefore able to play out the metaphorical dramas that have always been within their potential. 
>> On writing The Lost Pages
The Mediterranean by Armin Greder       $33
A moving and powerful wordless picture book from the author of The Island, challenging us to consider our attitudes towards refugees. 
Lullaby by Leila Slimani            $33
When a seemingly perfect nanny commits a horrendous crime, the lives and choices of a high-flying lawyer and her husband come under scrutiny. 
Winner of the Prix Goncourt. 
"A truly horrific, sublime thriller, this tense, deftly written novel about a perfect nanny’s transition into a monster will take your breath away." - The Guardian
T is For Tumbling by Julie Morstad              $25
Delightful alphabet cards, with a whimsy with great appeal for a thoughtful child. 
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders        $22
Two childhood friends are thrown back together as adults under an imminent apocalypse: one as part of a group of cutting-edge scientists, the other as part of a group of magicians working to repair the world's ailments. Together, will they save the world or destroy it? Anders has been compared with David Mitchell and Ursula Le Guin. 
"Dazzling... Profound... Wondrous. Charlie Jane Anders darts and soars, with dazzling aplomb, throwing lightning bolts of literary style that shimmer with enchantment or electrons." - Michael Chabon
"All the Birds in the Sky has the hallmarks of an instant classic. It's a beautifully written, funny, tremendously moving tale that explodes the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, YA and 'mainstream' fiction." - Los Angeles Times

Seeing Ourselves: Women's self-portraits by Frances Borzello       $40
Blowfish's Oceanopedia: 291 extraordinary things you didn't know about the sea by Blowfish       $37
But soon will.


The Story of Shit by Midas Dekkers          $38
With all our efforts at discretion and hygiene have we lost touch with our important natural function of excretion? An interesting history of faeces, from its time in the bowel to the great diversity of customs and etiquettes that humans have devised to address it. 



House of Snow: An anthology of the greatest writing about Nepal by Ranulph Fiennes et al       $40
50 excerpts from fiction and non-fiction, assembled to raise funds to rebuild after the 2015 earthquake. 



The Wild Robot by Peter Brown         $17
A castaway robot learns to get on with the animal inhabitants of a small island. What happens when nature and technology collide? 
The Feather by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood       $28
When a great feather drifts from the leaden sky, two children recognise its extraordinariness and take it to the village for its protection. The villagers, however, want to encase it, upon which the feather loses its radiance. The children take it home and care for it through the night. In the morning it is again radiant, and when they set it free it leaves behind the first signs of blue sky and colour. 


Significant Others: Creativity and intimate partnership by Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron         $22
What trace of an artist's relationships can be found within their work? To what extent can a partner be a creative intermediary between the isolated self and the wider world? In what ways could artists' works have been different if their private lives had been differently structured?

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver        $22
A child is scorned for her physical deformity but has the ability to transform those around her and to cross the border between the human and animal worlds in this inventive novel drawing on folktale motifs. Now in paperback. 
"Little Nothing celebrates not only the unruly and lost parts of all our lives but also the possibility of their reordering and comprehension." - Los Angeles Times
Collusion: How Russia helped Trump win the White House by Luke Harding        $33
Back in stock.



Bygone Badass Broads: 52 forgotten women who changed the world by Mackenzi Li and Petra Eriksson         $35
Women from ancient times to the present (most of whom you haven't heard of) who went further than most to confront and overthrow the limitations placed upon them due to their gender. 
>> The illustrator's website. 
When I Was Small by Sara O'Leary and Julie Morstad          $30
When Henry asks his mother to tell him about when she was small, she tells him that when she was small she used to sleep in a mitten, wear a daisy as a sunhat, and feast upon a single raspberry. 
Where's Jane? Find Jane Austen hidden in her stories by Rebecca Smith        $23
An enjoyable introduction to the works and times of Jane Austen, in the form of a literary Where's Wally?


The Very Short Story Starter: 101 flash fiction prompts for creative writing by John Gillard         $35
Useful and fun, this workbook will help you think about your writing in different ways, and find ways to incorporate it into your daily routines. 


The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert           $23
When Alice's grandmother, the author of some books of very dark fairy tales, dies, her mother is kidnapped by someone seemingly from a world where those stories are true. What is Alice to do? 

"Terrifying, magical, and surprisingly funny, The Hazel Wood is one of the very best books I've read in years." - Jennifer Niven 



An American Marriage by Tayari Jones           $37
An unjust imprisonment destabilises an ostensibly exemplary relationship. 
"Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear." - Michael Chabon
Clash of the Titians: Old Masters trump cards by Mikkel Sommer Christensen       $22
Pit 32 Old Masters against each other in a trump card battle encompassing hundreds of years of art history.
A Far Away Magic by Amy Wilson        $18
When Angel moves to a new school after the death of her parents, she isn't interested in making friends. Until she meets Bavar - a strange boy, tall, awkward and desperate to remain unseen, but who seems to have a kind of magic about him. Everyone and everything within Bavar's enchanted house is urging him to step up and protect the world from a magical rift through which monsters are travelling, the same monsters that killed Angel's parents. But Bavar doesn't want to follow the path that's been chosen for him - he wants to be normal, to disappear. From the author of A Girl Called Owl
Mice in the City: New York and London by Ami Shin      $30 each
The landmarks of the cities turn out to be crammed with tiny busy mice (and the odd cat). Large format. Lots of fun. 
The Mystery Mansion: Storytelling card game by Lucille Clerc       $30
A beautifully presented myriorama - arrange the elements of the story in any of a vast number of permutations, each a different story.




A Maori Word a Day: 365 words to kick-start your reo by Hemi Kelly           $30
Build real familiarity with key words and their usage. 


Mezza (Card game) by Thomas Michael        $25
Quirky and fun, this variation of 'Shithead' is made even more exciting by the addition of mathematically very powerful '1/2' cards.






26.1.19

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