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 Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, $38)
“Get your leathers, we have dragons to ride,” goes the epithet inside the third instalment of Yarros’ megaselling The Empyrean series which has just been unleashed (and already has 18,959 ratings on Good Reads). The first book in the series, Fourth Wing, soared like a golden feathertail dragon to the top of the Amazon and NYT bestseller lists, making Romantasy one of the biggest genres of the age and Yarros one of the biggest authors, ever.
If you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s the blurb for this latest instalment:
“After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty. Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves – her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find – the truth.
But a storm is coming… and not everyone can survive its wrath.”
2 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)
The little book that made big news way back in 2024.
3 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)
The 2024 Booker Prize winner fits nicely with this list of slim books to kickstart your year of reading.
4 The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Granta, $28)
The 2016 Booker Prize International winner that would also fit nicely into the list above (this one). An unforgettable story.
5 All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate, $37)
Phwoar what a book. Brilliant writing. Unputdownable storytelling. Might be spurring a revolution.
6 Human Acts by Han Kang (Portobello Books, $28)
There is never too much Han Kang. This book is as brutal as it is beautiful. Here’s the blurb:
“Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend’s corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless.”
7 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber, $45 hardback, $37 paperback)
Sally Rooney’s skinny protagonists are still finding readers. (Want the skinny on the skinny? Here’s the Vogue article that provoked this brilliant response from Hera Lindsay Bird).
8 Time of the Child by Niall Williams (Bloomsbury, $37)
Gorgeous writing as has come to be expected from this Irish master. Here’s a snippet from a glowing review in The Guardian:
“A slow-burning, finely crafted novel about second chances, humanity and familial love, Time of the Child rewards close reading. While outwardly everything remains the same, interior lives are profoundly altered. Williams’s descriptive language is extraordinary – his use of understatement and irony artfully deployed, his characterisation sublime. I find it astonishing that, despite his global success, he has yet to win a big award.”
9 The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa by Catherine Comyn (ESRA, $30)
An evergreen text that ducks and dives in and out of this list with the regularity of the seasons. Here’s what the book is about:
“Finance was at the centre of every stage of the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the emigration of early colonists to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial governance. This book tells the story of the financial instruments and imperatives that drove the British colonial project in the nineteenth century. This is a history of the joint-stock company, a speculative London property market that romanticised the distant lands of indigenous peoples, and the calculated use of credit and taxation by the British to dispossess Māori of their land and subject them to colonial rule. By illuminating the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, this book not only reframes our understanding of this country’s history, but also the stakes of anti-colonial struggle today.”
10 There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking, $37)
A fascinating novel that takes the idea of “aquatic memory” (the memory of water) as it’s premise to explore how people and nations treat each other and the long-term effects of those choices.
WELLINGTON
1 Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, $38)
2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)
3 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)
4 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35)
The cult Japanese novel based on a true story. Here’s the blurb:
“Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?”
5 He Kupu Nā te Māia by Maya Angelou (Auckalnd University Press, $35)
A selection of poems by Maya Angelou translated into Māori by wāhine Māori from across Aotearoa.
6 Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance & the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday & Steve Hanselman (Profile Books, $33)
Ideal back-to-work-just-as-summer-has-arrived reading.
7 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber, $45 hardback, $37 paperback)
8 Wild Wellington: Nga Taonga Taiao: A Guide to the Wildlife & Wild Places of Te Whanganui-a-tara by Michael Szabo (Te Papa Press, $45)
The sun has decided to show up and the Southerly has scooted off on its miserable way: it’s time to pack Szabo’s guide book in your satchel and wander in Wellington’s wilds.
9 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (THWUP, $38)
“What struck me most about Delirious is how real it all felt. It started with the way that Mary and Pete inhabit their house, the little details like the curtain that was too short because the chimney sweep put it through the dryer, and then unfurled from there into how they inhabit the world and live in it. Perhaps it is fiction, but I can’t help but feel Wilkins must be the most astute observer of people and little, tiny, meaningful details.”
Read more from The Spinoff’s review of Delirious by Gabi Lardies and Claire Mabey.
10 All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate, $37)
This post was originally published on here
