1. (NEW) The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward & Louise Ward (Penguin)
“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders.”
And so begins this first joint novel from actual Hawke’s Bay booksellers Gareth and Louise Ward, a cosy murder-mystery that promises bookshop insider titbits and literary puns galore. The plot has Garth and Eloise and their dog Stevie, who, telling the story in alternate chapters, “are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl. Intrigued by the puzzling, bookish clues the two ex-cops are soon tangled in a web of crime, drugs and floral decapitations, while endeavouring to pull off the international celebrity book launch of the century.”
2.(1) The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour and Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
It’s 80 years since D-Day. Pippa Latour, who died in West Auckland late last year aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the operation’s success by acting as a secret agent in France for Britain during World War II. “I was not a James Bond-style spy,” said Latour. “I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos.” It was exhausting work; she was unable to trust anyone, had several code names, and was often hungry. It was desperately perilous, too. Many of the 13,000 agents were killed, including 14 women out of 39 in France. The average life expectancy of male wireless operators in France when she served was six weeks. Latour’s was a truly remarkable life all around, and The Last Secret Agent, co-written with Jude Dobson, is a clear and fluent account. You can read more about the book here.
3. (9) All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Moa Press)
In her first adult novel, Kino, the award-winning writer of the YA novel The Pōrangi Boy, casts a youthful eye over the fraught business of being a Māori activist in contemporary Aotearoa. Māreikura is full of good intentions, though. As the Listener review notes, she tends to see things, “in black and white and as absolutes – because she’s young, because she’s human, because she’s learning”. The author manages to mostly keep the didactic voice of the novel contained within her characters, though it does sometime spill out over the edges of this frame. “But satire when it’s this close to the bone isn’t the easiest thing to pull off. Fortunately, Kino provides a nice balance to Māreikura’s relentlessness, with a cast of utterly delightful, authentic and well-written secondary characters whose take on things te ao Māori is less vehement … The writing is consistently tight and a joy to read as it rattles along at pace with frequent laugh-out-loud moments, mainly in my instance at the intense self-involvement of the various young characters.” To read the Listener review, go here.
4.(2) The Life of Dai by Dai Henwood (HarperCollins)
For a long time, comedian Dai Henwood never told anyone he had incurable cancer. He was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in April 2020, during lockdown, and told a small group of friends via WhatsApp. Turns out the large tumour found had circulated itself to his liver and beyond. It was not until early 2023 that he went public via a TV interview with his friend, comedy writer and actor Jaquie Brown. The Life of Dai, written with Brown, came out of interviews done between chemo sessions in 2023. Unsurprisingly, it’s anything but linear, Dai-gressive even. Split into three sections called Comedy, Love and Peace, it’s half memoir, half spiritual search-cum-life advice for those going through cancer diagnosis and treatment. It begins with his early life and influences, Monty Python, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams. He was a comedy geek. There is his father, the teacher-turned-toxicologist-turned-actor, his mother the judge, who underwrote his early shows. Despite the subject, the tone is generally light, honest, loving in his familiar style. He adores his wife, his children, his friends. Loves rugby league. The book doesn’t shy from details of the “horrendous, life-saving poison” that is chemotherapy, the surgeries, his fear and anger and acceptance. “I’ve made the conscious decision to live now.”
5. (5) Waitohu by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin)
Holding its spot is this new guided life journal based on the Māori lunar calendar from the best-selling psychiatrist author of Aroha and Wawata. “This writing journey is fuelled by the whakataukī (proverb) ‘ka mua, ka muri’, ‘walking backwards into the future’. Every month we circle back to the beginning of the book, rediscovering thoughts from the month before under the illuminating gaze of each moon face. New layers of ideas are added to earlier reflections, then collected together in a way that uncovers new truths.”
6. (3) A Life Less Punishing by Matt Heath (A&U)
Broadcaster, writer and musician Matt Heath’s self-help guide, subtitled “13 ways to love the live you’ve got”, begins with the 1980s TV show The Greatest American Hero, about a hapless teacher, Ralph Hinkley, who can’t control the superhero suit he’s been given because he’s lost the manual, and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. If you don’t see the connection, it happens in an epiphany for Heath, feeling sorry for himself on the shore of a South Island lake. “I will consume the writings, lectures and podcast appearances of great thinkers and regurgitate them into a personal Hinkley manual.” It’ll be a self-help book in its purest form, he says, written to help himself in times of trouble, dealing with, in his chatty, easy style, anger, fear, loneliness, stress, boredom, grief and so on.
7. (4) Where is Hairy Maclary? by Lynley Dodd (Picture Puffin)
Toddlers love lift-the-flaps books and this one, following the rhyming clues – is he having a scratch in the strawberry patch, or taking a bath at the side of the path? – in search of Hairy and his canine chums.
8. (NEW) The Great Kiwi ABC Book by Donovan Bixley (Upstart)
Donovan Bixley’s board book, originally published in 2016, is an alphabet-builder featuring characters from his Wheels on the Bus and Old MacDonald’s Farm. Look out, says the publisher, for the milkshake-making cow, the All Black lambs, the pink ski-bunny, the colossal squid.
9. (NEW) The Great Kiwi 123 Book by Donovan Bixley (Upstart)
Another republished board book from Bixley, this one helping teach little ones to count.
10.0 (10) Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin)
The wisdom of 52 Māori proverbs explained by psychiatrist Hinemoa Elder in this bestselling book first released in 2020. An extract:
“Ko te mauri, he mea huna ki te moana – The life force is hidden in the sea.
“Powerful aspects of life are hidden in plain sight.
“This whakataukī stems from one of our famous ancestors from the north, Nukutawhiti. He cast his kura, his feathered cloak, into the Hokianga Harbour to calm the waters for safe passage. And this treasure remains there, out of sight, yet signifies the ancient presence of those that have gone before.
“This saying has given me strength so many times. I have always found it comforting because it speaks to the hidden magic of life.
“It reminds me of those things we feel intuitively but often ignore – we can choose to tune in to our gut instinct, for example, or wait until the messages become clearer and more obvious.
And it reminds me that we all have hidden powers inside us that we can too easily forget.”
(Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending August 3.)
