Top 20 for the week ending 30th December 2023

Lola in the Mirror

1.

Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies, Trent Dalton.

'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?' A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside a van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy who's waiting for her on the bridge that stretches across a flooding, deadly river. A life beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror. From international bestselling author Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror is a big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror: all our past, all our present, and all our possible futures.

The Year of the Locust

2.

The long awaited follow-up to global bestseller I AM PILGRIM - and a massive event publication from Transworld If, like Kane, you're a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again - by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide - and when to shoot. But some places don't play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane's experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place - a place where violence is the only way to survive. Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West - but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart...

Prophet Song

3.

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

The Secret

4.

Jack Reacher, "the coolest continuing series character" (Stephen King), returns in a brand new, pulse-pounding read from Lee and Andrew Child. 1992. Two strangers bring a hospital patient a list of names. They ask him for one more, but it's a question the patient can't answer. Minutes later he is dispatched through the 12th floor window. His death generates some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defence, who brings in an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher, recently demoted from Major to Captain, is assigned as the Army's representative. Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people's secrets under the carpet isn't part of his skill set. As he races to find the killer, he must navigate around the ulterior motives of his new 'partners'. And all while moving into the sight line of some of the most dangerous people he has ever encountered. His mission is to uncover the truth. Fast. The question is: will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way . . . or his way?

Good Material

5.

Every relationship has one beginning.
This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy.
And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . .
1. Without a home
2. Waiting for his stand-up career to take off
3. Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about women, and flat-sharing, and his friendships has transformed beyond recognition, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of their broken relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story. From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a sharply funny, beautifully observed and exquisitely relatable story of heartbreak and friendship, and how to survive both.

The Axeman’s Carnival

6.

Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. ‘If it keeps me awake,’ says Marnie’s husband Rob, a farmer, ‘I’ll have to wring its neck.’ But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple’s future. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds – and all of the precarity, darkness and hope within them – bleed into one another.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

7.

Stylish and open-hearted, this is a very different kind of love story, elevated and energised by being set in the world of creativity and video gaming.
This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It's not a romance, but it is about love. When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one winter morning he is catapulted back to the brief time they spent playing together as children. Their unique spark is instantly reignited. What comes next is a story of friendship and rivalry, fame and creativity, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And, ultimately, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Fungi of Aotearoa

8.

The complete introduction to finding, identifying and using mushrooms and other fungi in New Zealand Enter and explore the fascinating world of fungi.

In this practical and up-to-date guide, forager and fungus enthusiast Liv Sisson shares her top tips and takes the reader on a journey to discover the unique and diverse fungi Aotearoa has to offer.

Birnam Wood (Paperback)

9.

Birnam Wood is on the move ... A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in the South Island of New Zealand, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. This land offers an opportunity to Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn’t figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place.

Our Land in Colour

10.

Our Land in Colour celebrates the rich story of Aotearoa through the restoration of images never before seen in colour. Two hundred images have been meticulously colourised, opening a window back in time with remarkable detail. Aotearoa New Zealand from 1860 to 1960 was a world of black and white. It was a time when communities were isolated, made their lives from the land and lived an identity forged by the outdoors. Our Land in Colour is the way New Zealanders experienced life for a century before colour photography became prevalent, before large-scale urbanisation, and before the arrival of television and jet-airliners changed the nation forever. From how the people adapted to the environment and the way they had to feed, clothe, house and transport themselves across an at times inhospitable land, to how they banded together with a spirit that would become famously Kiwi - each image in this 400-page book is a reminder of who we were and where we've come from.

Tom Lake

11.

In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

The Bee Sting

12.

From the author of Skippy Dies comes a dazzlingly intricate and poignant tragicomedy about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good man at the end of the world The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's car business is going under, but instead of doing anything about it, he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking local wrongun Big Mike. Their teenage daughter Cass, usually top of her class, seems determined to drink her way through the whole thing. And twelve year old PJ is spending more and more time on video game forums, where he's met a friendly boy named Ethan who never turns his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home. Digging down through layers of family history, the roots of this crisis stretch deep into the past. Meanwhile in the present, the fault lines keep spreading, ghosts slipping in through the cracks, and every step brings the Barneses closer to a fatal precipice. When the moment of reckoning finally arrives, all four of them must decide how far they're willing to go to save the family, and whether - if the story's already been written - there's still time to give it a happy ending...

The Covenant of Water

13.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship.

A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Winter Turning (Wings of Fire #7)

14.

Daring mission ... or deadly mistake.
Winter has always been a disappointment to his royal IceWing family. Now he has a chance to save his sister, Icicle, from making a terrible mistake — if he can find her. Winter’s new clawmates, Moon, Kinkajou and Qibli, insist on joining his dangerous journey. They don’t understand that IceWings, the most superior of all dragon tribes, can fix their own problems.
When their search leads the dragonets straight into Queen Scarlet’s vicious talons, Winter is grateful to have some help. But even the bravest dragons can’t follow him to the Ice Kingdom. There, he’ll be alone to face the greatest threat of all: his own family.
The #1 New York Times best-selling Wings of Fire series comes to life in this seventh graphic novel edition, with art by Mike Holmes.

Bookshop Dogs

15.

Heartwarming and charming stories of dogs and books from the bestselling author of The Bookseller at the End of the World. Dogs of all shapes and sizes visit Ruth Shaw's three wee bookshops in Manapōuri in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. Local dogs, holiday house dogs, travelling dogs: many have great stories, be they funny, sad, strange, bemusing, quirky or sweet.

Woven throughout are tales of the very special Hunza, the dog who worked with troubled teens alongside Ruth when she was a youth worker.
This is a window into the wonderful world of Ruth and her generous love of people, books and dogs. It's a must-read for dog fans, book fans and anyone who loved her first book, The Bookseller at the End of the World.

Water

16.

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.

But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?

Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.

The Blunders

17.

Million-copy bestseller David Walliams’ funniest book yet – a laugh-out-loud tale of the most blundering and lovable family in history Meet the Blunders: Bertie, Betsy, their children, Brutus and Bunny, along with their beloved grandma Old Lady Blunder, and their petostrich, Cedric. An ostrich is not a sensible pet, but then the Blunders are not sensible people.

This family of upper-class twits lives in a crumbling country house named Blunder Hall. When their home comes under threat, they must embark on a series of comic misadventures to save it.

Absurd and hilarious, The Blunders is David Walliams’ funniest book yet. A laugh-out-loud tale of the most blundering and lovable family in history.

The Seventh Son

18.

A CHILD WILL BE BORN WHO WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING When a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman's child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences. Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it. Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention. The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.

Small Things Like These

19.

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him — and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

Atomic Habits

20.

Transform your life with tiny changes in behaviour, starting now. People think that when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions: doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls them atomic habits.