The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND
1 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30)
“Believe the hype,” said Unity Bookseller Eden Denyer in their review of this latest instalment of the Hunger Games.
2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)
Samantha Harvey is touching down on Aotearoa soil any day now as the Booker Prize winner is starring in this year’s Auckland Writers Festival.
3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40)
From surviving shark attacks to surviving Meta, this is the exposé of the year. Read Julie Hill’s review of Wynn-Williams’ words on her previous place of work on The Spinoff.
4 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30)
A mother-son story like no other.
5 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35)
Asako Yuzuki is also winging her way to Aotearoa for the Auckland Writers Festival and we hope she has a delicious time!
6 Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, $38)
Auckland Writers Festival’s digital event with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been cancelled (“due to unforeseen circumstances”) and replaced by this one, which looks extremely different but extremely interesting.
7 Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra, $37)
Doctorow did a whirlwind tour of Aotearoa over the weekend and brought hordes of fans to Unity’s doors. Red Team Blues is a novel about a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley and crypto and crime.
8 Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin (Scribe Publications, $37)
A huge deal when it came out in 2022, this nonfiction book is about what exactly chokepoint capitalism is and why it’s choking us. Here’s the blurb:
“In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism”, with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well illustrated by the plight of creative workers.
By analysing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio, and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.
In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.”
9 Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $27)
Brilliantly done crime novel from an Aotearoa king of crime (and guest curator at Auckland Writers Festival). Here’s the blurb:
“Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman is a tenacious Māori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland’s Central Investigation Branch. When she’s led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a hidden room. With little to go on, Hana knows one thing: the killer is sending her a message.
As a Māori officer, there has always been a clash between duty and culture for Hana, but it is something that she’s found a way to live with. Until now. When more murders follow, Hana realises that her heritage and past are the keys to finding the perpetrator.”
10 Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden (Viking Penguin, $38)
A terrific, terrific novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and whose author is … you guessed it, appearing at next week’s Auckland Writers Festival. Here’s the blurb:
“It’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season…
Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel’ suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.”
WELLINGTON
1 The Art and Making of Arcane: League of Legends by Elizabeth Vincentelli (Titan Books, $99)
“The Art and Making of Arcane is an immersive journey behind the scenes of the Emmy Award-winning Animated Series!”
2 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30)
3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40)
4 Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Lothian Children’s Books, $25)
The fourth instalment in the absolutely brilliant fantasy series set in the world of Nevermoor. In this novel Morrigan Crow is about to turn 14 and her life is only getting more complicated: this hefty adventure includes finding lost family, a whole new part of Nevermoor we’ve never seen before, new friends as well as new enemies, and murder! A must-read series for ages seven to those who feel at least 700.
5 Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)
Welcome back The Spinoff’s best book of 2024 according to our readers!
6 The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa (Picador, $25)
Another cosy, bookish, cat-filled novel to comfort you during the long, chilly months of winter.
7 The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (Picador, $28)
Welcome back! This beautiful book marries memoir with research into the why and the what of gardens. Laing details the making and breaking of her own garden alongside research into what gardens and gardening means to humanity at large.
8 How to Be Enough: Seven Life-Changing Steps for Self-critics, Overthinkers and Perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen (Bonnier, $40)
Phwoar. Attacked.
9 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $39)
Whoa! Double punch.
10 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $40)
“In 38 Londres Street, Philippe Sands blends personal memoir, historical detective work and gripping courtroom drama to probe a secret double story of mass murder, one that reveals a shocking thread that links the horrors of the 1940s with those of our own times,” reads the publisher’s blurb. “The house at 38 Londres Street is home to the legacies of two men whose personal stories span continents, nationalities and decades of atrocity: Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, and Walther Rauff, a Nazi SS officer responsible for the use of gas vans.”
