1. The Secrets of the Little Greek Taverna by Erin Palmisano (Moa Press)
This local exotic romance novel holds tightly to the No 1 spot. Our review said: “Palmisano, a NZ-US citizen who lives in Nelson with her chef partner, has combined the essential elements of food, wine and travel in a sunny novel with all the ingredients of a romcom that’s also being published in the UK and US.
“In a small village on the island of Naxos, a whitewashed taverna and guest house, all bougainvillea and lemon trees, sits empty. It had been Cressida Thermopolis’s dream to have guests and feed them delicious Greek food. But her husband, Leo, has died aged just 27, and Cressida is at a loss. Which is when a young American woman, Jory St James, arrives late one night off the ferry and becomes her first guest. Can the two woman breathe life back into the little Greek taverna? Will the ever-wandering Jory find love? This is a novel with a heart as big as the Aegean, where the magic of luck and fate is always in the air, electric currents flow between people, where crisp white sheets sit on gloriously soft beds, so it’s probably a safe bet.”
2. On Call by Ineke Meredith (HarperCollins)
From the Listener: “Meredith writes about being a Kiwi general surgeon, and her memoir is a sharply written, occasionally eye-opening tale of life in the operating room and as a single parent. There are the young victims of a terrible car wreck, tales of prostates and catheters, the high-end call girl with an unusual request. Then there’s exhaustion, worrying about being a good mother, being punched in the face by a patient. And then her parents in Samoa, where she grew up, get sick. Is the job worth it? No spoilers, but the memoir ends on a positive note of change.”
3. Dinner, Done Better by Nadia Lim and My Food Bag (Penguin)
The food delivery company and chef Nadia Lim offer 80 “tasty and convenient” recipes, selected from the most popular from the past decade. Based on Lim’s Nude Food philosophy, aimed at “eating real, fresh food from the land, sea and sky”, it promises meals intended to be quick and big on flavour but light in the dishwasher, healthy options, meatless offerings, ones for the weekend that might take a bit more effort, and recipes for the sauces and spice mixes the company offers.
4.The New Zealand Easter Activity Book by Sarina Dickson & Hilary-Jean Taper (Hachette)
Easter is nearly here. In this book, kids are invited to join a group of forest fairies to “get creative with loads of mazes, dot-to-dots, games and activities to complete and colour in!” Features two pages of full-colour, Easter-themed stickers that you’ll later find all over the house.
5. The Space Between by Lauren Keenan (Penguin)
This novel, set during the New Zealand Wars in 1860, focuses on Frances, an unmarried Londoner newly landed in New Zealand. She meets Henry White, who had jilted her and is now husband to Matāria, who is shunned by her whānau because of her marriage. The blurb says, “As conflict between settlers and iwi rises, both women must find the courage to fight for what is right, even if it costs them everything they know.”
An extract: “Frances heard the commotion before she saw it: a man being arrested by two soldiers of the Crown, right in front of Thorpe’s General Store.
‘I belong here!’ the man shouted. ‘Nō Te Ātiawa au. This is our place.’ He wore a European shirt over trousers that were far too short. His black hair was unkempt, his eyes bright.
‘You need a pass to enter the township,’ one of the soldiers said, hands gripping his rifle. The soldier’s uniform was crisp and tidy: black trousers and a navy-blue tunic with shiny buttons. ‘Natives are not allowed here without swearing allegiance to the Queen. You should all know that by now. And you’re disturbing the peace by yelling.’
‘Go,’ the other soldier said. ‘Move.’
The man was led away, head bowed, past the staring customers at the butcher’s, the seamstress’s workshop and the bakery. Past the pile of cut wood that would soon be another military blockhouse, built to ensure that the likes of this loud, shabby man were kept out of the settlement. How unpleasant. Frances preferred not to think about what the newspapers called the ‘native troubles’ — it was all too frightening. So, she wouldn’t. She’d think about something else instead.”
6. BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin)
Liam Dann, a business journalist at the NZ Herald, offers a broad view of the economy and finance. From the Listener review:
“Dann gives us a basic introduction to economics: supply demand curves, inflation, marginal utility, price elasticity. He has financial advice – buy low, sell high! – with more substantive wisdom dispensed by figures like Sir Stephen Tindall, Sir John Key and even the Buddha. Key’s advice to young New Zealanders: live within your means, understand the power of compound interest, buy property; while the Buddhist scriptures counsel us to partition our wealth thusly: ‘one part should be enjoyed, two parts invested in your business, and the fourth set aside against future misfortunes’.
“There’s an economic history of modern New Zealand, and this is where BBQ Economics transcends the limitations of both barbeque banter and media columns. We get the familiar stages of the post-war story: the export boom, the cradle-to-grave welfare state, the economic dysfunction of the 1970s and early 80s; Muldoon then Roger Douglas, Ruth Richardson and the Mother of All Budgets. This story often trails off in the mid-1990s with the subsequent MMP era seen as a period of comparable stability. There are shocks like the GFC and Covid but no sustained crisis. Dann wants to tell a more coherent and more troubling story about the nation’s economic direction over the last three decades.”
7. Bird Child and Other Stories by Patricia Grace (Penguin)
Patricia Grace’s new collection of short stories, published nearly two decades after her last. As Paula Morris’s Listener review notes: “Patricia Grace’s first book, Waiariki, published in 1975, was a collection of short stories, the first published by a Māori woman writer. Almost 50 years later she is still writing stories. If the pieces in Bird Child are her valediction, they express what Grace holds most dear as a writer: stories of her childhood and youth in a loving Māori and Pākehā family, and the Māori stories, ancient and modern, encompassing forest and freezing works, the pātaka and the Food Court, factory floors and hypocritical ministries with their endless reports and ignored recommendations.”
“The collection can be divided into three sections: stories based around myths and legends; episodic, atmospheric stories about a girl named Mereana, clearly informed by Grace’s own youth; and stories largely written since Grace’s last collection, Small Holes in the Silence. “The deft and moving Matariki All-Stars is a stand-out example of Grace’s gift, evoking the complexity of family relationships and social issues in compressed short-story time. Her body of work is one of political activism as well as polished sentences, profound empathy and character-rich communities.”
8. Feijoa by Kate Evans (Moa Press)
A new guide to and history (with recipes) of our second-favourite oval fruit.
David Hill in the Listener said: “Feijoas: there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground with them. You either breathe in their sun-and-summer scent as you anticipate that first honey-lush slide of them over the papillae (indeed, I’m salivating), or you recoil from contact, going ‘Ewww! Too perfumed! Too sickly!’ … Foreign? Well, yes: they originated some 30 million years ago, in Brazilian highlands and Uruguayan valleys. There’s something pleasingly incongruous about a plant with such provenance becoming a commonplace in Kiwi side streets.
“Raglan-based, internationally published journalist Kate Evans offers this as ‘a book about connections’. So it is: connections with other feijoa fanatics (Evans neatly calls them ‘disciples’); between plants and the animals who spread their seeds; between ‘tamed’ varieties and environments; and of course between humans and nature. No plant is an island.
“Evans is an irrepressible investigator, phoning or visiting experts across multiple continents. From its origins in South America, the feijoa was studied in Germany, collected in France, domesticated in the US, transplanted to NZ. She heads to virtually all venues.”
9. The Grimmelings by Rachael King (A&U Children’s)
The first book for young people in over a decade from Christchurch writer Rachael King. From the Listener’s very favourable review: “A lonely teenager. Parents missing in action. A boy who appears from nowhere. An enormous black stallion. So far, so classic. Yet nothing is what it seems …
“While each of these elements is present in many of the best books for children, King knits them together with more than a touch of magic to create a dynamic new adventure that will reverberate in the reader’s memory.
“In her earlier children’s book, Red Rocks, it was selkies, the seal-like creatures of Scottish legend, around which the story was spun. This time it’s kelpies, those beguiling water-horse shape-shifters, taking centre stage in a story that starts in Scotland but ends somewhere in Central Otago.
“At the heart of the story is Ella, isolated geographically and socially with her fatherless family – fragile younger sister Fiona, mother Morag and ailing granny Griselda, known as Grizzly – on a farm somewhere in the south of New Zealand.”
10. The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press)
Richard Shaw, a professor of politics at Massey University, follows up his 2021 memoir The Forgotten Coast, about his Irish great-grandfather who bought three farms on land confiscated from Māori. Following its publication, Shaw had feedback – from detractors, but others who had been similarly disturbed by aspects of their families’ histories in Aotearoa. These “small stories of colonisation” from across the country make up The Unsettled.
From the Listener’s review: “The ‘unsettled’ of the title refers not only to the unease felt by Shaw and his collaborators, but also to an awareness of ‘the unsettling effects the arrival of their settler families in this land have had on those who were here before’. The people whose voices Shaw presents ‘reject the lazy tropes about the civilising effects of colonisation’ and want to change the conversation about the past and its impact on the future. This is not about judging or blaming antecedents, who need to be seen in their own context, but acknowledging the impact of their actions.”
Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending March 16.
