A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

An engrossing examination of political and personal life in Central America, from the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Writing with the economical swiftness and concentrated perception that has made her one of America's most distinguished writers, Joan Didion creates a gleaming nove l of innocence and evil. Set in the ruined Central American nation of Boca Grande, A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women and their conflicting experiences of wealth, politics and personal history. We follow the intriguing life of Grace Strasser-Mendana - an American expatriate and member of one of Boca Grande's most influential families - alongside the story of Charlotte Douglas, whose daughter Medin has run off with a group of Marxist radicals. What follows is an exploration of the women's ability to make sense of the behaviour that surrounds them, as their worlds are made hazy by the atmosphere of evil and innocence that envelops their strained and entangled lives. Writing with her inimitable mix of candid emotional frankness and razor-sharp political astuteness, Joan Didion's third novel is at once utterly particular whilst emblematic of an age of unscrupulous authority and seemingly inevitable bloodshed. ...Show more

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister , offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story.Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival. --- -Million-copy bestseller-National Book Award finalist-One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 ...Show more

Tenth of December by George Saunders

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

A New York Times BestsellerOne of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet. Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, l oss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These unsettling, insightful, and hilarious stories explore what makes us good and what makes us human. ...Show more

Getting Back Brahms by CHEEK MAVIS

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Series: Harvill Panther Ser. | Reading Level: very good

The original Scandinavian thriller One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop.The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, an expert in the ways of snow and ice, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, foll owing a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. ...Show more

Falling Slowly by Anita Brookner

$8.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Beatrice and Miriam are sisters, sharing little except an unhappy childhood. Beatrice is a pianist, a romantic, while Miriam is disillusioned after a failed marriage. While they have a home and a few acquaintances in common, neither confides to the other what is in their hearts.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award A modern classic, "Housekeeping" is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of the ir dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience. ...Show more

Things You Should Know by A. M. Homes

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: good

Things You Should Know is a collection of dazzling stories by one of the most talented and daring young American writers. Homes' distinctive narratives demonstrate how extraordinary the ordinary can be. A woman pursues an unconventional strategy for getting pregnant; a former First Lady shows despair an d courage in dealing with her husband's Alzheimer's; a teacher's list of 'things you already should know but maybe are a little dumb, so you don't' becomes an obsession for someone wasn't at school the day it was given out; and adult tragedy intrudes into a childhood friendship. The stories are full of magic and strangeness and humour, but also demonstrate an uncanny emotional accuracy and compassion. ...Show more

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

$8.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Series: Penguin Modern Classics | Reading Level: very good

Holly Golightly is generally up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She hasn't got a past. She doesn't want to belong to anything or anyone, not even to her one-eyed rag-bag pirate of a cat. One day Holly might find somewhere she belongs. Also includes: House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, A Christmas Memory) ...Show more

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary Fiction | Reading Level: very good

How do we become who we are?Can we ever truly escape our origins?Must we dance to the music of our time?Set in London, New York and West Africa, Swing Timeis about two brown girls from Willesden who dream of being dancers. Only one - Tracey - has the talent. But the other has ideas which take her furthe r than she could ever have imagined. It is a story of finding happiness in the meanest of places and feeling sad when all around you are happy. It's about the choices we make and the choices made for us. Above all, it's a tale of the friendships that anchor us, define us, and change us forever. ...Show more

Who is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner by Lynley Hood

$12.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: very good

For four years, writer Lynley Hood, was obsessed, or possibly possessed, by New Zealand writer and educator Sylvia Ashton-Warner. This compelling diary is a record of Hood's experiences and reflections as she pieced together the multi-dimensional puzzle of Sylvia Ashton-Warner's life for her award-winni ng biography, Sylvia!Hood candidly reveals the fascination and complexities of the biographer's search; the highs of extraordinary discoveries, the lows of confusion and doubt, the frustrations and intrigue of the New Zealand literary scene of the time, as well as chronicling her own development as a solitary, full-time writer. ,i>Who is Sylvia? brilliantly captures the unflinching spirit and energy of the biographer. It's an absorbing, intimate and delicious read - as only a diary can be! ...Show more

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

$15.00 NZD

Category: Hardback fiction | Reading Level: good