OUR Picks
Here are our latest recommendations. This is where you can learn more about what we’re reading and loving and what you, our customers, are buying.
WHAT WE'RE READING
Emilie: Long-Lost Fairy Tales by Kate Forsyth (out now)
Gavin: Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (out June)
Hannah: Butter by Asako Yuzuki (out now)
Joanna: Mrs Gulliver by Valerie Martin (out late March)
Kasey: Butter by Asako Yuzuki (out now)
Molly: Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti (out April)
Rose: Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez (out now)
OUR TOP 10 BESTSELLERS FOR MARCH
BOOKS WE LOVE
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
Greta and Valdin Vladisavljevic are Māori-Russian-Catalonian siblings, both unhappily in love with people who may or may not be entirely unsuitable for them. With the love and interference of their idiosyncratic family, they must assert themselves and their value.
This very, very funny book is an utter treat. Reilly’s witty, observational humour not only makes Greta and Valdin one of the most entertaining novels you’ll read this year, it also facilitates exploration of queer identity and joy. Come for the laughs, stay for the commentary on multiracial identity in Aoteara/New Zealand and the complexity of familial tangles that simultaneously bind and support. Hannah
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
Inspired by the life and death of conceptual artist Ana Mendieta, this novel is a page-turner with a question of justice at its heart: who gets to be remembered, and why? Anita is an on-the-rise Cuban artist murdered by her lauded sculptor husband in 1985, narrating her fury beyond the grave. In 1998, Raquel, an art history student who feels like an outsider at her Ivy League university, navigates the intersection of class, race and gender as she falls in love with a wealthier, well-connected young artist. The thrill of the story is in waiting for Raquel to uncover Anita's story and make the connection to her own life. ROSE
Practice by Rosalind Brown
This cellular-level dissection of a day in the life, and mind, of a young student, while she wrestles with Shakespeare’s sonnets, is a compelling and thrilling novel. Annabel's attempts to find clarity in her writing are hindered by the dualities of her life, the schism between an intellectual existence and the demands of her animal body. Brown's great skill is in detailing the tracks our thoughts run toward unbidden, the tributaries of our subconscious, and how much of our lives, and its eternal dualities, is internalised, never to be seen even by those closest to us. GAVIN
This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright
Octavia Bright is the co-host of one of my favourite podcasts, Literary Friction, and I've been waiting for this book for some time. It is such a brave, moving story full of wisdom about her recovery from alcohol addiction and her beloved father’s decline into Alzheimer’s at the same time. She writes so honestly about the chaos and denial of addiction and so beautifully about loss and, ultimately, death. I really loved it. Jo
Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin
I find it difficult to resist any book set in a circus! There is something fascinating about the bright showiness of a big top performance juxtaposed with the secrecy of backstage life; intense glamour sitting beside what must be a steely, perhaps monotonous dedication to craft. Dusapin with her trademark delicate, evocative descriptions is the perfect author to bring this rarefied atmosphere to life. Our guide to the world of cirque is fellow outsider Nathalie, a costume designer hired to work with the three performers set to execute the deadly Russian Bar Routine at a festival in Ulan Ude. There is a misty beauty to the writing in Vladivostok Circus, but also a tight thread of tension held throughout. Breathtaking. Emilie
We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
This collection of stories by the blazing and formidable talent that is Georgia Blain, published posthumously, track the ordinary madnesses, the bliss and the sorrow it is to be in relationship with others, as the characters reel from extremis to pleasure, ascension to despair. Blood and guts. As an avid Blain fan, it was a treasure and a delight to read new words from a beautiful brain taken from this world too soon. MOLLY
The Caretaker: A Novel by Ron Rash
I devoured this unflinching portrayal of humanity in one sitting. Seventeen-year-old Jacob’s prosperous parents are obsessed with him living the life they’ve plotted for him, but didn’t account for him falling in love with the 16-year-old hotel-maid, Naomi. Disinherited and conscripted, Jacob is shipped to Korea, while pregnant Naomi is left under the watch of Jacob’s close friend Blackburn Gant - a target of ridicule due to the lasting impact of polio. Rash’s usual affection for midcentury Appalachia underpins The Caretaker, but so does a harsh undercurrent of class bias, stigma and intolerance. Kasey
& MORE BOOKS WE LOVE
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
Ordinary Gods and Monsters by Chris Womersley
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
Heart of the Grass Tree by Molly Murn
Honeybees & Distant Thunder by Riku Onda
Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Between You and Me by Joanna Horton
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
A Sunday in Ville d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris
Salt and Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Liberation Day by George Saunders
When I Sing Mountains Dance by Irene Solá
Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here by Heather Rose
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada
All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Meshi by Katherine Tamiko Arguile
Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au
Chai Time at the Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
White on White by Aysegul Savas
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
When Things are Alive They Hum by Hannah Bent
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen by Krissy Kneen
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
One Day I’ll Remember This by Helen Garner
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean
Exploded View by Carrie Tiffany
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
First Love by Gwendoline Riley
Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend