NZ Fiction

1 When It All Went to Custard by Danielle Hawkins (HarperCollins, $35)

2 Whatever it Takes by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press, $37.99)

Publisher’s blurbology: “When seven-year-old Alyssa is kidnapped, Deputy Noah Harper decides he will do what it takes to find her – but that means crossing lines he can never come back from. Finding the girl safe isn’t enough to stop Noah from losing his job, his wife, and from being kicked out of Acacia Pines. He’s told if he ever returns, he’ll be put in jail and left there to rot. Now, 12 years later, comes a phone call. Alyssa is missing again and her father wants him to honour the promise he made to her all those years earlier – that he would never let anything bad happen to her again. To find her, Noah is going to have to head back to the pines, and come face to face with the past…”

3 A Dream of Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $34.99)

4 This Mortal Boy by Fiona Kidman (Penguin Random House, $38)

5 The Track by Paula Green (Seraph Press, $25)

Publisher’s blurbology: “In the spring of 2015 Paula Green walked Queen Charlotte Track, her poet’s eye taking in the beauty of her surroundings and the history of the land. Early on the final day she slipped and injured herself, and had to walk out for nine hours on her broken foot – a journey made more dramatic by the ongoing storm.To get through, and alleviate the pain, she composed poems in her head.”

6 Moonlight Sonata by Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House, $38)

7 Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee (Upstart Press, $37.99)

8 Nailing Down the Saint by Craig Cliff (Penguin Random House, $38)

Publisher’s blurbology: “Duncan Blake is a Kiwi filmmaker whose move to LA has not gone to plan. After a series of setbacks, he’s working at a chain restaurant, his marriage is on shaky ground after a porn-related faux pas and his son won’t stop watching Aladdin. When Duncan gets the chance to scout locations for a fêted director’s biopic of Saint Joseph of Copertino, it’s the lifeline he’s been searching for. But in Italy, in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century levitator, he must confront miracles, madness and the realities of modern movie making.”

9 Call Me Evie by J.P. Pomare (Hachette, $34.99)

10 The Unreliable People by Rosetta Allan (Penguin Random House, $38)

NZ Non-Fiction

1 Brothers in Black by Jamie Wall (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)

ReadingRoom looks forward to a review of this new book on sporting brothers by Brian Turner, who knows rather a lot about that subject.

2 Perform Under Pressure by Ceri Evans (HarperCollins, $39.99)

3 How to Escape from Prison by Paul Wood (HarperCollins, $37.99)

4 The Shearers by Ruth Entwistle Low (Penguin Random House, $45)

Four years ago she wrote a best-selling book on drovers; now she’s written a book about shearers.

5 Rich Enough? by Mary Holm (HarperCollins, $36.99)

6 A Conversation with my Country by Alan Duff (Penguin Random House, $38)

7 A Mild Touch of the Cancer by David Downs (Bakita Books, $39.99)

Light-hearted memoir of life with cancer. From Liz Wylie’s story in the Whanganui Chronicle this week: “Downs was facing the reality that he had exhausted treatment options and his prognosis was poor when a reader told him about a clinical trial for CAR T-cell therapy in the United States. Because he had the type of cancer likely to respond to the treatment, he was accepted for the trial. Downs described his story as having a ‘fairytale ending’…He is due to fly to the United States for a blood test at Massachusetts General Hospital next week.”

8 High Adventure by Mike Allsop (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)

Memoir of a good keen man who survived what should have been a fatal air crash, ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, became an Air New Zealand pilot, and climbed several mountains in several countries including Everest.

9 Brain Connections by Giresh Kanji (Pain Publications, $34.99)

Sub-title: “How to worry less, sleep better and feel happier.” Yeah good luck with that.

10 Maori Made Easy: Workbook 1 by Scotty Morrison (Penguin Random House, $25)

Steve Braunias is the literary editor of Newsroom's books section ReadingRoom, a noted writer at the NZ Herald, and the author of 10 books.

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