Pre-order
1
of
1
A Parish Chronicle
Series: Brief Encounters
Brief Description
Experience a brief encounter with Halldór Laxness, the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, in this rich, rustic and charming novel. An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley—an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever. The resting...
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2400
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Pre-order
Releases
20th
October 2026
(Approx. Date)
Pre-order "A Parish Chronicle" now to secure your copy from our first shipment
Found a better price? Request a price match
A Parish Chronicle
$2400
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Latest News
Romance for Spring - Groundbreaking!
Lizzy is sharing her top picks for Spring reads in the romance and romantasy genre...
The ‘Fourth Wing’ graphic novel covers have been revealed
The covers for ‘Fourth Wing, The Graphic Novel: Volume One’ have officially been revealed, with...
Books about Bookshops (across almost every genre)
Books about books, bookshops, and booksellers - it's my favourite thing. Here's a small selection...
What the Book Hero team is excited for
With so many pre-orders coming in the last few months of the year, we asked...
Meet Reverie Puzzles: Puzzles Made for Book Lovers
Reverie Puzzles have arrived at Book Hero and they might just be the perfect puzzles...
See more
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
Experience a brief encounter with Halldór Laxness, the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, in this rich, rustic and charming novel.
An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley—an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever.
The resting place of the legendary Viking warrior Egil Skallagrimsson's skull, Mosfell Church is a lonely, country church, fated to be destroyed. But as the plans to destroy it take shape, stories, myth and folklore abound in one magical last attempt to leave Mosfell standing.
Brief Encounters: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Series: Brief Encounters
View all-
Pre-orderA Gentle Spirit & A Faint Heart
Experience a brief encounter with Fyodor Dostoevsky, titan of Russian literature, in these two searing novellas of love, despair, and the weight of the human soul. Two of Dostoevsky's most powerful novellas of obsession, cruelty, and the fragility of the heart. A pawnbroker paces beside his young wife's body, attempting to piece together the circumstances that led to her suicide....Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
An Undesirable Friend
Enjoy a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Natsume Soseki, Japan's greatest modern novelist, in this sly, comic tale of cats, humans, and the absurdities of friendship. From Japan's most famous, classic novelist comes a remarkable gem of wit, irony, and feline observation. A stray kitten, catapulted to literary fame, loudly observes the world of Meiji Japan in all its absurdity. But he's...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-orderA Parish Chronicle
Experience a brief encounter with Halldór Laxness, the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, in this rich, rustic and charming novel. An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley—an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever. The resting place of the legendary Viking warrior Egil Skallagrimsson's skull, Mosfell Church is a lonely,...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-orderApe and Essence
Relish a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Aldous Huxley, the visionary author, in his dystopian satire. Huxley's dystopian classic is a nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world. After a devastating global catastrophe, a group of scientists arrives in a ruined future shaped by fear, ritual, and violence. Humanity has survived—but at a terrible cost, and not in...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-orderA Souvenir of Japan
Embark on a brief encounter with Angela Carter, weird fiction's most influential pioneer, and her transformative stories of finding oneself in the face of another world. Five stories of desire and discovery set in 1970s Japan, from weird fiction's most influential pioneer - Angela Carter. An Englishwoman muses on her affair with a younger Japanese man. A spurned lover seeks...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-orderBartleby, The Scrivener
Enjoy a brief encounter with Herman Melville, the great, epic storyteller of Modern America, and his enduring tale of a man who takes refusing to conform to its extreme limits. Herman Melville's enduringly comic and affecting tale of a man who takes quiet quitting to its extreme. A new clerk in a Wall Street lawyer's office causes dismay and confusion...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
Behind a Mask
Experience a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Louisa May Alcott, beloved chronicler of girlhood, in this surprisingly dark, subversive novella of deception and desire. This is Alcott as you have never seen her before – gothic, and gloriously unsettling. A young governess arrives at a grand country house and quickly wins the confidence of its family. Humble and modest, Jean Muir seems...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
Bewitched
Experience a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Edith Wharton, grande dame of American letters, in these spectral tales of longing, loss, and the uncanny. Edith Wharton's ghost stories whisper of passion, exile, and the things we cannot forget. In an old Dorset house, a couple settle into a life of quiet comfort — until a presence makes itself felt. At a country...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
Cain
Experience a brief encounter with José Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning author, in his provocative and philosophical retelling of the biblical story of Cain. Written in the last years of Saramago's life, Cain is a controversial and witty story of a wilful, authoritarian God. After killing his brother, Cain is condemned to wander the earth. As he moves through time, he...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
A trail-blazing, transportive novella that contains all the energy, history and charm of one man's lifetime, this is Bohumil Hrabal's most unique masterpiece. This ebullient, gallivanting novella encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. An ageing man holds court, spinning a single, unbroken stream of stories about his life—loves won and lost,...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-orderDistant Star
Enjoy a brief encounter with Roberto Bolaño, the 21st century's first, great classic author, and his novella Distant Star—a dark, haunting, yet delightfully magical story of two poets outplaying one another in a sinister endgame of cat-and-mouse. A dazzling, daring tale of poets at the end of the world, Distant Star is Roberto Bolaño's miniature dystopian masterpiece. Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order -
Pre-order
Down by the Riverside
Relish a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Richard Wright, trailblazing voice of African American literature, in this devastating story of survival, love and betrayal during a Southern flood. A flood brings not only rising waters but the full force of a brutal, racist world. With the Mississippi flooding, a Black farmer struggles to get his pregnant wife to safety. In the chaos,...Paperback$2400Unit price /UnavailableOut 20 Oct 2026Pre-order
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781529985757
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 02 July 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Contributors:
- Translated by Philip Roughton
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 10.0mm
Width: 131.0mm
Height: 199.0mm
Weight: 110g
Pages: 128
About the Author
Halld r Laxness (1908-98) was born near Reykjavik, Iceland. His first novel was published when he was seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the outstanding novelists of the twentieth-century, he wrote more than sixty books. Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.
Also by Halldór Laxness
View all-
Independent People
A magnificent Icelandic epic by the Tolstoy of the North First published in 1946, this is a humane, epic novel set in rural Iceland. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family, will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja,...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Under the Glacier
Darkly funny and surprising novel about superstition and religion in an isolated Icelandic town. With an introduction from Susan Sontag. 'Wildly original, morose, uproarious... It is also one of the funniest books ever written' Susan Sontag A naive young man is sent by the bishop of Iceland to investigate a small town that has reportedly lost its faith. The church...PaperbackSold Out
More from Historical Fiction
View all-
The Parisian Chapter
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and The Librarians of Rue de Picardie comes a charming and cinematic novel following a young woman from Montana who lands a job in the American Library in Paris, where she discovers the power of storytelling and writes her own Parisian chapter.'Stirring and rich with detail' New York Times...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Inferno
AD 60. Nero Claudius Caesar is Emperor. He is feared for his temper. He is known to be intoxicated by the power he wields. And why not? The Roman Empire stretches from the wilds of Britain to the deserts of Parthia. Nero is god of all he surveys. Yet dangerous traitors lie close at hand. Generals commanding legions. Senators whispering...Paperback$3100Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Circle of Days
From the master of epic fiction comes the deeply human story of one of the world's greatest mysteries: the building of Stonehenge. A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his...Hardback$4499Elsewhere:$6000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Soldier's Daughter
The heart-stopping new blockbuster by the bestselling author of The Fallen Woman. Violet Nash has grown up in the shadows of her father Charlie's shattered dreams. It's been years since he walked away from the battlefields of France, a WWI hero but his heart in tatters, only to see it broken all over again in the worst way possible. In...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Girl with the Suitcase
The enthralling new novel from the 10-million-copy, No. 1 bestselling author. London 1941 When Mary meets a glamorous stranger named Elizabeth, she realises their lives couldn't be more different. But when an air raid forces them to take shelter underground, Mary's life is set to change forever. After waking up in hospital, injured but alive, the nurse mistakes her for...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Lost Bookshop
Evie Woods' stunning new novel The Story Collector is available now. The Echo of Old Books meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets. ‘The thing about books,’ she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.’ On a quiet street in...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
All the Diamonds in Paris
Kristin Harmel is firmly in the top echelon of WW2 storytellers - HEATHER MORRIS A master storyteller - SANTA MONTEFIORE The best at sweeping historical drama - KELLY HARMS A dazzling diamond of a novel - HAZEL GAYNOR * Paris, 1942: Anabel Martinet is a jewel thief, descended from a family that has spent centuries stealing from the unkind and...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
19% offThe Listeners
‘By turns a beautiful love story, a fascinating glimpse into the horrors of history and a haunting tale of loyalty and courage. A marvel of storytelling’ CHRIS WHITAKER, bestselling author of All the Colours of the Dark The Avallon Hotel offers unrivalled luxury in the wild Appalachian Mountains, its curative sweetwater washing away the troubles of high society. June 'Hoss'...Paperback$2900Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Song of Achilles
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is a brilliantly crafted retelling of the ancient Greek epic of Achilles and Patroclus, transforming the classical myth into a profoundly moving love story. Set against the richly depicted backdrop of Greece during the heroically tumultuous age, the narrative follows Patroclus, an awkward and exiled young prince, who is taken to the court...Paperback$2100Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinMythos
Mythos by Stephen Fry is a compelling retelling of the classic Greek myths, reimagined with a wit and elegance that only Fry can deliver. This volume transports the reader to a world where mortals intertwine with the divine, and the timeless tales unfold in a spellbinding narrative that captures the imagination. From the cosmogony—the birth of the cosmos—to the exploits...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Four Winds
Kristin Hannah is a classic storyteller and The Four Winds sees her at the top of her game - Matt Haig Powerful and compelling - Delia Owens, number one international bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing A story of love, family, unbreakable bonds, bravery and hope. I loved this book so much! - Christy Lefteri, bestselling author of The...Paperback$2000Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Lost Apothecary
Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary's fate is jeopardised when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$2799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
