NONFICTION
2025 will see more biographies of, and by, esteemed Kiwis, including in March Tony Fomison: Life of the Artist, the decade-in-the-making account of the painter by art scholar Mark Forman. There’s artist Dick Frizzell’s memoir, Hastings : A boy’s own adventure. Later in the year we’ll see Tina Makereti’s essay-memoir, This Compulsion In Us, and art historian Mary Kisler’s The Dark Dad, which focuses on her father, who was deeply damaged by WWII. In May, in a collection of essays titled It Nearly Killed Me But I Love You, journalist Sinead Corcoran Dye writes about her traumatic experiences in early motherhood. Lauren Keenan will publish Toitū te Whenua, a guide to the places and people of the New Zealand Wars.
Also coming are cookbooks from several big-name chefs, books about life on the land, following your dream and achieving later in life, plus architecture titles, an account of Tongariro National Park, and further books on the NZ Wars and NZ society.
There will be books on weight management and diets, on improving your resilience, on self-discovery, a guide to learning Samoan, a beginner’s guide to building wealth, by “Māori Millionaire” finance podcaster Te Kahukura Boynton, and a book on the much-debated Bird of the Year.
FICTION
One of the year’s highlights in fiction will be a new novel from the prolific and prize-winning Catherine Chidgey, The Book of Guilt. Published simultaneously around the world in May, it’s a spooky speculative mystery set in England in 1979. The every move of triplet teenage boys Vincent, Lawrence and William is watched in a government care scheme in the south from which the trio hope to go to the “Big House” in Kent where they imagine a pleasant life at the seaside.
Lighter fare comes in the form of Tea And Cake And Death, the next in the cosy crime Bookshop Detectives series, out in April. Garth and Eloise and Stevie must sniff out a prolific poisoner ahead of a vital fundraising event, the Battle of the Book Clubs.
Also out in the first half of 2025 will be Duncan Sarkies’ Star Gazers, a novel “about the collapse of democracy in an alpaca-breeding society”. Dominic Hoey, author of Poor People With Money, has 1985, a coming-of-age story about teenage boy Obi, the publisher saying it “feels like a cross between Outrageous Fortune and The Goonies”. Later in the year comes a new novel from Josie Shapiro, author of Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, and another thriller from The Call author Gavin Strawhan. Liam McIlvanney’s new novel, The Good Father, will be published mid-year. Nine Lives is the first book of fiction from Wellington writer Ingrid Horrocks –interlinked stories exploring women’s lives over 200 years. Towards the end of the year, Tom Baragwanath, whose debut mystery novel Paper Cage won the 2021 Michael Gifkins Prize, will publish the follow-up, Lucky Thing. Elizabeth Smither has four novellas in Angel Train; author and director Stef Harris has two novellas about The Girl from Sarajevo; and Geoff Parkes has a debut murder mystery set in 80s small-town NZ.
Erin Palmisano, whose bestselling debut was The Secrets of the Little Greek Taverna, has The Secrets of Maiden’s Cove, out in February. Anne Tiernan, author of The Last Days of Joy, will in May publish The Good Mistress, in which the lives of three women, a wife, widow and mistress, collide. Katherine J Adams has a sequel to her last witchy novel in Tonight, I Bleed.
Promised from publishers are veritable libraries of children’s titles, from picture books to YA.
In poetry, a new collection is coming from Kate Camp in March, Makeshift Seasons. In May, Fiona Kidman will have The Midnight Plane: New and Selected Poems. Later in the year, Tusiata Avia will release her selected poems, and Sick Power Trip will arrive from Erik Kennedy.
