Festival Fiction

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...

'Katabasis is a formidable, timeless work, destined to be a modern classic' OLIVIE BLAKE 'Katabasis is more than a novel to savor. This book is an experience. I envy those who get to read it for the first time' REBECCA ROSS 'A witty, gory, harrowing ride' LEIGH BARDUGO Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld. Grad student Alice Law...

From 2014 to the year 2119, in a world submerged by rising seas, What We Can Know spans the past, present, and future to ask profound questions about who we are and where we are going. A masterpiece and Ian McEwan's finest novel yet. 2014 - A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate...

In a sinisterly skewed version of England in 1979, thirteen-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a New Forest home, part of the government’s Sycamore Scheme. Each day the boys must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. Children who survive are allowed to move...

'You knew I'd write a book about you someday' Our narrator understands good love stories — their secrets, their highs, and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire...

The latest novel from Charlotte Grimshaw, best-selling author of The Mirror Book. A woman haunted by family denial, secrets and a shadowy figure . . . While her brother Cedric spirals into addiction, Alice Lidell finds herself confronted not only by his decline, but by memories of the past. From their chaotic Auckland childhood to her present day life, Alice...

Tomorrow - if morning comes, if the storm stops raging - Cora will register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalise who he will become. It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband...

From 2025 Booker Prize Winner author David Szalay comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. 'A revelatory novel' - Sunday Times 'Brilliance on every page' - Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital Fifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town...

THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION NOW A MAJOR FILM BY CHLOE ZHAO STARRING JESSIE BUCKLEY AND PAUL MESCAL 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART. On a summer's day in 1596, a...

Rita considered the dead. Shut her eyes. Rolled their names around her brain. Stacked each person in order like folded laundry, warm and crisp from the sun. She wondered how her name would sound amongst them. In the rural reaches of Auckland, the women of the eclectic Gordon family gather for Christmas. They may push each other's buttons, but know...

The brand new Slough House thriller from the #1 bestseller Mick Herron Now an award-winning Apple TV+ series starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren't much better than clowns. Or so David Cartwright used to say, but he forgot to add they can be dangerous too, especially if they've fallen...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves, a novel about a family living alone on a remote island, when a mysterious woman washes up on shore. 'At once a gripping mystery, an exquisitely written ode to the natural world, and a taut, psychological thriller, Wild Dark Shore is a triumph. Charlotte McConaghy is...

An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine. Brilliant ... funny and smart, full of science, longing and adventure, all the while reminding us what the world stands to lose, and what it has already lost. This is essential reading' ANN PATCHETT A fantastic novel PERCIVAL EVERETT Heartbreaking, hilarious, profound,...

‘A thrill for the sickos among us’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘Utterly inimitable’ RAVEN LEILANI ‘Unrelentingly brutal and gut-bustingly funny and spares no one’ CARMEN MARIA MACHADO 'Symbiotically serious and funny' MEGAN NOLAN 'The funniest, darkest thing' ST VINCENT LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION An audacious and original novel-in-stories following a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection...

Funny and heartbreaking, Writers & Lovers by Lily King is the bitingly clever story of Casey, a young writer who has lost her direction in life, until two men step into her world and offer her two very different futures. The New York Times Bestseller 'Captivating, potent, incisive, and wise' - Madeline Miller, author of Circe 'Extremely funny' - Sunday...

Hamnet, a novel by Maggie O'Farrell, offers a poignant and immersive exploration of life, love, and loss in 16th century England. Set in Stratford-upon-Avon, the narrative beautifully intertwines the lives of ordinary people with extraordinary events, centred around a family dealing with unforeseeable grief. As the story unfolds, we follow the lives of Agnes, a woman with mystical healing powers...

Things are going well for Matt Buchanan. After some hard times, life is peaceful as sole-charge constable for the small, isolated settlement of Haast on New Zealand's wild West Coast. He's made friends among the locals, won their trust. He keeps their little world safe. And he's working in spectacular surroundings - the fierce Tasman Sea, the dense beech forest,...

Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, Land, the new novel from the author of Hamnet, is at once intimate and epic: a portrait of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and loss with love and hope. On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great...

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—a novel about mothers and daughters, about friendship and sisterhood. Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find—smart and funny. ANN PATCHETT Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbours since earliest childhood, but are...

From the International Booker Prize Shortlisted author of Heaven and Breasts and Eggs Hana has nothing but she's hopeful. She's fifteen years old. She lives in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears. Kimiko is older, a bright light...

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...

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a stunning story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city. 'A new book by Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you'll be turning pages for hours' - Los Angeles Times 'Patrick Radden Keefe [is] one...

An absorbing true crime account of years at the frontline of crime scene reconstruction - from cold-blooded killings and gang wars to cold cases revived by a single clue. A compelling account of Ruben Miller's years working as a forensic scientist, visiting crime scenes and gathering evidence. His detailed descriptions of what he sees are often heart-breaking. The behaviour of...

The Number One Global Sensation Foyle’s Fiction Book of the Year Amazon Book of the Year Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year Fiction Book of the Year 2024 – British Book Awards ‘Addictive’ Grazia ‘Hugely entertaining’ Observer ‘Provocative’ Mail on Sunday THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY. IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL. When failed writer June Hayward...

Jane Harper's Force of Nature meets the wild and atmospheric setting of The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah in this twisty, stay-up-all-night thriller about family, love, and loyalty, and the fight for survival in the most beautiful but dangerous New Zealand wilderness. On the remote West Coast of the South Island, vast forests stretch out between mountain ranges and rugged...

The first novel written about the enigmatic literary legend. Australia, 1901. Just twenty years old and the daughter of struggling bush farmers, Miles Franklin pulls off the impossible—publishing My Brilliant Career, a fiery, fearless debut that takes the English-speaking world by storm. She hides behind a male pseudonym, but when her true identity is revealed, the backlash is swift and...

The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of...

Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman 'The best thriller writer in Britain today' Daily Express 'As a master of wit, satire, insight... Herron is difficult to overpraise' Daily Telegraph 'The greatest comic writer of spy fiction in the English language' The Times 'Kill us? They've never needed to kill us,' said Lamb. 'I mean, look at us. What...

Katabasis is a formidable, timeless work, destined to be a modern classic. – OLIVIE BLAKE Katabasis is more than a novel to savour. This book is an experience. I envy those who get to read it for the first time. – REBECCA ROSS A witty, gory, harrowing ride. – LEIGH BARDUGO Only available in select territories. Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek....

Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as...

Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is...

Te Motu Kairangi Miramar Peninsula, Wellington 1912. Doctor Matti Loverock spends her days and nights bringing babies into the world, which means her daughters—seven-year-old triplets Ada, Oona and Hanna—have grown up at Wonderland, the once-thriving amusement park owned by their father, Charlie. Then a grieving woman arrives to stay from the other side of the world, in pain and incognito,...

Calcutta, September 1969 Varsha Gupta wants fish for her lunch. Her family can't understand it; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different...

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and is the winner of a PEN/Heim Translation Grant. A woman is haunted by her own bodily waste. A pregnant woman is told she must find a father for her unborn baby or face horrific consequences. A young monster, forced to fight, discovers the extent of his...

THE MULTI-AWARD-WINNING DEBUT SENSATION OF THE DECADE In northern Iceland, 1829, authorities condemn Agnes Magnusdottir to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. Agnes is sent to the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson and his family to await execution. She is shunned by all, except the young reverend appointed as her spiritual guardian. As the...

Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 'The finest new crime series this Millennium' - Mail on Sunday Slow Horses is set in Slough House, a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who've screwed up: left a service file on a train, say, blown a surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They're the service's poor relations —...

A beautiful picture book retelling of Witi Ihimaera's bestselling novel The Whale Rider, illustrated by Bruce Potter. Witi Ihimaera's bestselling novel The Whale Rider is retold in a beautifully illustrated picture book format for young readers. From the time of her birth, Kahu is destined to become the leader of her tribe in the East Coast village of Whangara. But...

DI Nyree Bradshaw and her team have their work cut out for them once again. Local woman Lizzy Bean has been found dead, garrotted with a piece of wire. Lizzy's property, a 1970s beach house overlooking a pristine Northland bay, is overflowing with rubbish. Inside, the house is even worse. As Nyree and her team delve into the case, clues...

Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine's sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes...

The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the acclaimed author of Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait is a dazzling evocation of the Italian Renaissance in all its beauty and brutality. Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner, it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso...

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...

Moving, insightful, lyrical, and at times very funny, this novel is a supple, disarmingly frank exploration of parenthood. Liam and Iris have one son—Billy, a bright toddler puddling about like a penguin, leaving surrealist art installations all over the house—a tiny cow in a teapot in a hat on the doorstep, of course! A stuffed crocodile in a silk camisole...

Our foremost storyteller returns with an audacious new novel, Machines Like Me. Number One Sunday Times Bestseller In an alternative 1980s London, Machines Like Me unfolds in a world where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher is clinging to power, and Alan Turing has made breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, we meet Charlie, a directionless man...

The Water's Dead by Catherine Lea is a gripping thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Detective Inspector Nyree Bradshaw is called to investigate a chilling case – a body is found floating in the river, face down. As Nyree delves deeper into the mystery, she uncovers a series of dark secrets that threaten to tear...

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a series of events at her family's country estate that she doesn't fully understand. From her vantage point, she sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden, watched by their childhood friend Robbie Turner, who has recently returned...

The International Bestseller A New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century Soon to be an FX TV series streaming on DISNEY+ 'Unquestionably one of the greatest literary achievements of the 21st century' — Nick Hornby From the author of Empire of Pain – a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions....

The instant Sunday Times bestseller, a mesmerising story of love, regret and a restless search for answers. While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well...

A captivating and deeply personal novel from one of Australia's most respected authors. Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their...

Pounamu Pounamu by Witi Ihimaera is a timeless collection that captures the essence and spirit of Māori culture and New Zealand life. First published in 1972, this compelling anthology of stories marks Ihimaera's debut into the literary world, offering readers a profound and insightful portrayal of his experiences and the rich cultural tapestry of his homeland. Set against the backdrop...

The new novel from the WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION longlisted and DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD shortlisted author of Remote Sympathy"Chidgey is a find."-TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT"A writer of formidable resources, a deft stylist possessed of uncanny imaginative acuity."-THE GUARDIANLike every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher and longs to be her pet. However,...

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF ENDLING'Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!' MARGARET ATWOOD (via Twitter)This brilliant and bitingly funny novel-in-stories, set in and around a single crumbling apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine, heralds the arrival of a major new talent.A cast of unforgettable characters--citizens of the small industrial town of Kirovka--populate Maria...

'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...

From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a new novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research centre that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it's disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they're running from are their own... The acclaimed Korean horror and...

A NEW EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NEEL MUKHERJEE The international bestseller from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author 'Ghosh has established himself as one of the finest prose writers of his generation' Financial Times Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of social and...

It's the end of summer in Atlanta, and fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison will discover that back-to-school means facing everyday challenges in a new world of safety lessons, terrified parents, and constant fear. Because it was the summer during which Atlanta's African-American children were vanishing. The moving story of their struggle to grow up and survive...

By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. "Nothing concentrates the mind like Chung's terrors, which will shrivel you to a bouillon cube of your most primal instincts" (Vulture), yet these stories are suffused...

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artefact that—if he can find it—would redefine history. Travelling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds...

Destiny can take many shapes. For Henry, a writer struggling to finish a book about the Holocaust, it arrives in the form of a puzzling envelope from a stranger. The envelope takes him into a taxidermist's workshop. Filled with lovingly preserved animals from all corners of the globe, this place is unlike anywhere he has ever been. Among the hundreds...

From the multi-award-winning author of Burial Rites Growing up in the village of Kay in Prussia, 1836, Hanne Nussbaum would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. Hanne is friendless and misunderstood... until she meets Thea. When Hanne and her family are forced to flee religious persecution, they board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound...

A classic novel that became a classic film. This classic has been released in the Popular Penguin format to mark 50 years of publishing in New Zealand. The format reaches further back to 1935, when Allen Lane founded Penguin Books with a clear vision: 'We believed in the existence of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low...