{"title":"The 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Winners","description":"\u003cp\u003eCelebrate all the winners of the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Explore the powerful fiction of Ingrid Horrocks' '\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/all-her-lives-by-ingrid-horrocks-9781776923007\"\u003eAll Her Lives\u003c\/a\u003e', winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction through to the debut poetry collection from the winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry '\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/black-sugarcane-by-nafanua-purcell-kersel-9781776922222\"\u003eBlack Sugarcane\u003c\/a\u003e' by Nafanua Purcell Kersel. Discover the amazing selection of wonderful authors in Aotearoa!\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"a-different-kind-of-power-by-jacinda-ardern-9781776951277","title":"A Different Kind of Power","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at age thirty-seven, the world took notice. But it was her compassionate yet powerful response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, resulting in swift and sweeping gun control laws, that demonstrated her remarkable leadership. She guided her country through unprecedented challenges—a volcanic eruption, a major biosecurity incursion, and a global pandemic—while advancing visionary new policies to address climate change, reduce child poverty, and secure historic international trade deals. She did all this while juggling first-time motherhood in the public eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArdern exemplifies a new kind of leadership—proving that leaders can be caring, empathetic, and effective. She has become a global icon, and now she is ready to share her story, from the struggles to the surprises, including for the first time the full details of her decision to step down during her sixth year as Prime Minister.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough her personal experiences and reflections, Jacinda is a model for anyone who has ever doubted themselves, or has aspired to lead with compassion, conviction, and courage. \u003cem\u003eA Different Kind of Power\u003c\/em\u003e is more than a political memoir; it’s an insight into how it feels to lead, ultimately asking: What if you, too, are capable of more than you ever imagined?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46121374056684,"sku":"9781776951277","price":42.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781776951277.jpg?v=1737422942"},{"product_id":"pastoral-care-by-john-prins-9781991348104","title":"Pastoral Care","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003ePastoral Care\u003c\/em\u003e, Auckland writer John Prins gives us nine clear-eyed, witty and beautifully written stories centred on daily life in twenty-first-century Aotearoa New Zealand. On the shores of Lake Pukaki; in kitchens, bedrooms and Lego-strewn living rooms; at school events; walking the dog, pushing a buggy, or stuck in traffic with a child kicking the back of the driver’s seat—Prins blends wry humour and emotional depth to illuminate the dark gulf between youthful dreams and the reality of adult obligations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Prins reinvigorates the tradition of social realism in New Zealand short fiction, investing character, scene and dialogue with a distinctive, engaging voice. Often moving, frequently funny, and always relatable, \u003cem\u003ePastoral Care\u003c\/em\u003e marks the arrival of a bold new voice in New Zealand fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePastoral Care\u003c\/em\u003e is the second title in the \u003cem\u003eLandfall Tauraka\u003c\/em\u003e Short Stories series, following \u003cem\u003ePretty Ugly\u003c\/em\u003e by Kirsty Gunn.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Nationwide Book Distributors Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46545054335212,"sku":"9781991348104","price":28.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781991348104.jpg?v=1749790775"},{"product_id":"mr-wards-map-by-elizabeth-cox-9781991309068","title":"Mr Ward's Map","description":"\u003ch3 class=\"font-sans text-base font-medium tracking-brand text-brand-gray-600\"\u003eVictorian Wellington street by street\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 1891, a remarkable map of Wellington was made by surveyor Thomas Ward. It recorded the footprint of every building, from Thorndon in the north and across the teeming, inner-city slums of Te Aro to Berhampore in the south. Updated regularly over the next 10 years, it detailed hotels, theatres, oyster saloons, brothels, shops, stables, Parliament, the remnants of Maori kainga, the Town Belt, the prisons, the ‘lunatic asylum’, the hospital and much more, in detail so particular that it went right down to the level of the street lights. Luxuriously packaged with a cloth case and fold-out jacket, Mr Ward’s Map uses this giant map and historic images to tell marvellous stories about a vital capital city, its neighbourhoods and its people at the turn of the twentieth century.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46762792681708,"sku":"9781991309068","price":79.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7b809f0d65121afdd05f3505073de0bd.jpg?v=1756248812"},{"product_id":"black-sugarcane-by-nafanua-purcell-kersel-9781776922222","title":"Black Sugarcane","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlack Sugarcane\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt the heart of \u003cem\u003eBlack Sugarcane\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWithin the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘The poems in Black Sugarcane are laced with panthers and cobras. Nafanua Purcell Kersel yields her machete-pen with ease, humour and aroha, clearing paths, riding waves, carving memory and bending time. Her poetic vision is both minuscule-microscopic and drone-distant, opening space for the va to take shape. She is writing on a branch from the same rakau as Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tusiata Avia.’\u003c\/em\u003e - Anne-Marie Te Whiu\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘I was blown away by this book. The poems are playful and powerful, fresh and original.’\u003c\/em\u003e - Airini Beautrais\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46786601287916,"sku":"9781776922222","price":27.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/3bdc6551be37cd621811e51b9e3783a7.jpg?v=1756939540"},{"product_id":"he-puawai-by-philip-garnock-jones-9781776711680","title":"He Puawai","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAotearoa has at least 2,200 native species of flowering plants that have evolved in our unique conditions, and the vast majority of them grow nowhere else on earth. This has made New Zealand a natural laboratory for studies of flower biology and a vibrant wonderland of gardens and bush for Māori and Pākehā to enjoy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHe Puawai\u003c\/em\u003e is a natural history of New Zealand flowers, focusing on 100 native species to represent the full range of flower phenomena of Aotearoa - from familiar iconic flowers of kōwhai, manuka and pōhutukawa to oddities like the water-pollinated flowers of eelgrass, bat-pollinated blossoms of kiekie, and the world's smallest flowers, Wolffia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEach flower's text describes and explains its structure and functions, alongside over 500 remarkable photographs that enable the reader (with the viewer included in the book) to view the flowers miraculously in 3D.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor gardeners and foragers, for bush walks and coffee tables, \u003cem\u003eHe Puawai\u003c\/em\u003e is an inspirational natural history of the native flowers of Aotearoa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853823889644,"sku":"9781776711680","price":74.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/15989003482820.jpg?v=1759220254"},{"product_id":"all-her-lives-by-ingrid-horrocks-9781776923007","title":"All Her Lives","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAll Her Lives\u003c\/em\u003e follows women across generations as they resist, nurture, and transform. These are lives shaped by love and politics, motherhood and memory, constraint and defiance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom 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 \u003cem\u003eAll Her Lives\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eVast and intimate, \u003cem\u003eAll Her Lives\u003c\/em\u003e 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 own terms. It is Ingrid Horrocks's first work of fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853824446700,"sku":"9781776923007","price":28.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/97817769230072_All_Her_Lives_front_cover_-_reprint_Ockham-2_5.jpg?v=1780882177"},{"product_id":"no-good-by-sophie-van-waardenberg-9781776711789","title":"No Good","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn summer when I picked dandelions\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003efor the geriatric guinea pig I changed the world.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eI killed a weed. I filled a mouth with gold.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this debut poetry collection, Sophie van Waardenberg considers girlhood and grief, love and its loss, distance and the return home, including at its heart a sequence of emotionally raw ‘Cremation Sonnets’. In its essence, this collection is the poet exploring ‘goodness’: ‘I am unbegrudging. I am the openest pair of arms’, she tells us. ‘I am a large dirty lake, a tepid naughty heart.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI cannot accept this ending. I have fallen\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003efrom the highest ledge. I will never land.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eSo what if I am safe? I am not.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46855556137196,"sku":"9781776711789","price":22.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/4d4e84e2f86066c1e95f47629c524ca8.jpg?v=1759285109"},{"product_id":"this-compulsion-in-us-by-tina-makereti-9781776562299","title":"This Compulsion In Us","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's not beautiful, not at all, when it's there in front of you, but writing transforms. Makereti stands at the foot of her mounga and pays careful attention to tohu. With her tupuna at her elbow, she casts around for home, meets taonga in museums, and writes her way towards her father. She walks through the darkness with others, in awe of Te Kore, Te Po, and Te Ao Marama—a universe of potential being, dark and light. These are some of the kaupapa that underpin her work and her way of moving through the world, both enlivened and haunted by a compulsion to write.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIncluded here are frank and moving essays about the wahine who have shown her many ways of being a Maori woman, the pain and dark humour of living with an alcoholic, a blue boob from breast cancer treatment, and the potential of art to return power to survivors of colonialism. What if we could transform the events that made us who we are? What if there were a way back to the beginning?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy turns lyrical, personal, and critical, \u003cem\u003eThis Compulsion In Us\u003c\/em\u003e is many things all at once, and an unforgettable portrait of one of Aotearoa's foremost storytellers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Upstart Distribution","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47260160033004,"sku":"9781776562299","price":32.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/14495193482820.jpg?v=1769642469"},{"product_id":"te-ahua-o-nga-kupu-whakaari-a-te-kooti-by-ta-pou-temara-9781776711499","title":"Te Ahua o nga Kupu Whakaari a Te Kooti","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKo Te Kooti Te Turuki Rikirangi tētahi o ngā maunga teitei o te wā – he kōkōrangi i ngā rā pōuri, he tokotoko i te awa kōpaka. I tū ia hei toa i te whare o Tūmatauenga, engari ki te Hāhi Ringatū, he poropiti – he matakite nāna i hāpai ngā moemoeā, ngā tūmanako, me ngā wairua o te iwi i ngā tau o te ngarohanga: te whenua, te oranga, te mana motuhake.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eI tōna ringa matau te pū me te riri, i tōna ringa māui te whakapono, ngā kupu whakaari, me te tohu rangimārie. Nā Te Kooti i hora atu ēnei kupu ki ngā marae o te motu, hei karere poropiti, hei tohu whakatūpato, hei māramatanga mō ngā uri whakatipu. He kupu e kōrero ana ki te manawa, ki te wairua, ki te whenua.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKo tēnei pukapuka nā Tā Pou Temara – he mema o te Kaunihera Tekau mā Rua a te Kuīni, he ahorangi, he tohunga mō te kupu, mō te whakaaro Māori. Ka wānangahia e ia ngā kōrero a Te Kooti: ngā whakakitenga i tukuna ki ngā marae, ngā waiata i tuhia hei huna i te mōhiotanga, ngā kōrero i poipoia i raro i te maru o te atua. Ka pānuitia, ka wetewetehia, ka uia: kua tutuki rānei ngā kupu a Te Kooti? Kei te ora tonu rānei i ēnei rā?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKo ngā whakaaro o Tā Pou i ahu mai i ngā kōrero tuku iho o Te Whānau-a-Apanui, o Te Arawa, o Ngāi Tūhoe – ngā iwi i whakatupu i tōna ngākau kia mōhio ai ki te hā o te kupu, ki te wairua o te whakapono, ki te tapu o te kōrero tuku iho. Nā konā, ka rere mai tēnei pukapuka hei puna mātauranga mō te hunga e kimi ana i te māramatanga ki te Hāhi Ringatū, ki te poropititanga Māori, ki te reo, ki te hītori o te motu – mai i te uma o ngā marae, mai i ngā whakapono o ngā tīpuna, mai i te kore ki te ao mārama.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTe Kooti Te Turuki Rikirangi\u003c\/em\u003e stands as a towering figure of his time – a storm in dark days, a staff for those adrift. A warrior in the house of Tūmatauenga, yet to the Ringatū Church, a prophet – one who carried the dreams, hopes and spirit of the iwi through years of loss: land, life and sovereignty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn his right hand, the gun of battle; in his left, the word of God. Te Kooti spread these words across the marae of the motu; a messenger, a guide, a beacon of understanding for generations to come. His words speak to the heart, to the spirit, to the land.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis book, by Tā Pou Temara – a member of the Māori Queen’s Council of Twelve, a professor, and a tohunga of Māori language and thought – offers a deep exploration in te reo Māori of Te Kooti’s prophetic messages: his visions, teachings and songs. Through these pages, Tā Pou asks: have Te Kooti’s words been fulfilled? 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