10 Books Lizzy Wants After Auckland Writer's Festival

Maybe Baby

Nate, a grieving widower, is determined to honour his late wife and find a way to have the child they were desperate to raise together. After various attempts to identify a suitable surrogate come to nothing, Nate is compelled to try something radical.He travels to London to take part in a groundbreaking medical trial. As things progress, he becomes caught in the complex hinge of three powerful desires: his loyalty to his late wife, a primal urge to be a father, and his knee-weakening attraction to Sadie, who has her own reasons to resist starting a family.

Empire of AI

Black Sugarcane

Black Sugarcane is a landmark debut collection by Nafanua Purcell Kersel. Restless in form and address, these engaging and generous poems ricochet from light to dark, quiet to loud, calm to violence. We meet a loved twin sister as she dives towards the Sacred Centre, a grandmother who knows everything by heart, a shrugging office clerk, and Nafanua herself, an enigmatic shapeshifter. At the heart of Black Sugarcane is a sequence of erasure poems arising from the seminal essay 'In Search of Tagaloa' by Tui Atua Tamasese Ta'isi Efi. From the worlds contained in the text, these poems rise as if inevitable. Another sequence responds to the devastating tsunami that struck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila in September 2009. Within the line, within the word...

Always Home, Always Homesick

In my brief breath of life, might I find a way to fit light to paper? In a land of ethereal beauty, within a culture soaked in myth, a young woman discovers the story that will change her life. In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to write Burial Rites, the haunting story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland. The novel will go on to launch the author's stellar literary career and capture the hearts of readers across the globe. Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah...

Cursed Bunny

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung blends elements of horror, fantasy, and magical realism. The collection of short stories examines themes of family, love, and economic disparity through imaginative and sometimes unsettling narratives. Each story presents a unique world, inviting readers to reflect on the human condition and the unseen consequences of our actions.

Marigold Mind Laundry

The NEXT irresistibly uplifting read for fans of BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD set in a magical laundry. The #1 International word-of-mouth bestseller. Heartwarming and inspirational, Marigold Mind Laundry will remind you there is always a reason to feel positive. 'A life-changing novel' * reader review 'A book that makes me reflect on my life' * 'Even better when you read it with a loved one' * 'I took leave from work because I needed to finish it in one sitting' * We will wash away your pain and iron away any creases in your heart. Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, old Jieun has conjured up a magical Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences from her customer's hearts, transferring them into...

The Mighty Red

In Argus, North Dakota, a fraught wedding is taking place. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe. Gary thinks Kismet is the answer to all of his problems; Kismet can't even imagine her future, let alone the kind of future Gary might offer. During a clumsy proposal, Kismet misses her chance to say 'no' and so the die is cast. Hugo has been in love with Kismet for years. He has been her friend, confidante and occasionally her lover - and now she is marrying Gary, Hugo is determined to steal her back. Meanwhile Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly truck drives along the highway from the farm to the factories,...

Muckle Flugga

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRES FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A kaleidoscopic and linguistically daring work . . . Scintillating.' OCEAN VUONG 'A quirky and original debut that sizzles with scintillating prose.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 'Michael Pedersen is a rare writer of real passion and power and this debut is phenomenal.' MATT HAIG Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger's arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer's future hanging in the balance. It's no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and...

Taipei Story

TAIPEI STORY is the electrifying new novel by bestselling literary phenomenon Rebecca F. Kuang, a profoundly moving coming-of-age story that explores first love, second language and final goodbyes – all set against the backdrop of one unforgettable summer in Taipei. Yale student Lily Chen arrives in Taipei hungry: for family, for culture, for connection. But her summer of discovery quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate unbearable, and a reckless, deeply awkward trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon ignites vicious gossip. Then her grandfather dies. Grieving and adrift, Lily must confront her own questions about the culture she inherited but never fully understood. She embarks on a wryly funny, often devastating search for understanding: of herself, her family, and the meaning...

All Her Lives

All Her Lives follows women across generations as they resist, nurture, and transform. These are lives shaped by love and politics, motherhood and memory, constraint and defiance. From girls raised in the garden of Plunket founder Truby King, to a queer university student at a mid-2000s Berlin rave, to a mother facing the cost of her son's climate rebellion, the women of All Her Lives are complex, resilient and deeply human. Shadowing their stories is the early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, whose journey of grief and revolution will become a vessel for what endures—and for finding hope. Vast and intimate, All Her Lives explores the layered selfhood of women—all that they inherit, sacrifice, imagine, and carry forward—and the power found in unravelling and reweaving those selves on their...