BookHub April
Highlights
Kia ora koutou and welcome to BookHub’s April Highlights
The Bookshop Detectives are back! Garth and Eloise, the fictional booksellers of Sherlock Tomes in Havelock North are back solving another crime from their bookshop. Ina from University Book Shop Otago has reviewed ‘Tea and Cake and Death’, scroll down to hear her thoughts on the second instalment to the bestselling NZ cosy crime series.
The fiction selection for April will take you from Havelock North NZ to Oxford University in the 1920s; to Japan where a man facilitates meetings between the living and the dead; to picturesque Italy where a family grieves their famous father and even to a dystopian future where a government agency uses algorithms to anticipate crimes before they occur.
Aotearoa history, fashion, art and lifestyle shine in our non-fiction section this month and Ruth Shaw, the Bookseller at the end of the world is back with the second part of her best-selling memoir. And if that’s not enough, the kids’ section is bursting with fun for all ages: giraffes, dinosaurs, horses and some very untrustworthy fish.
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Wishing you all a wonderful month of reading!
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BookHub was founded by Booksellers Aotearoa NZ to support Aotearoa New Zealand bookshops. Through BookHub you can shop online, browse the collections of NZ’s amazing indie bookshops and find a bookshop near you. When you buy a book through BookHub, 100% of your purchase goes to your chosen store and with millions of books available, there’s sure to be something for everyone.
Featured Review
The Bookshop Detectives 2: Tea and Cake and Death
Gareth Ward & Louise Ward
The Bookshop Detectives’ second instalment is another boisterous and joyful mystery set in the book universe in the northeast corner of Aotearoa New Zealand. Told in turn-taking chapters by bookshop owners Eloise and Garth, while their bookselling crew and four-legged friends – pleasingly! – have much more than supporting roles this time around.
Follow-ups can be tough, especially when the debut comes to both critical and commercial acclaim. The Ward writing duo stood their ground and belted out a great, if not better, book two. I particularly enjoyed the lead up to the showdown, where the crew of booksellers turns into some sharply organised, A-team vibe quasi-assassins. At a book quiz, mind you. This is what makes these books so entertaining: the marrying up of the mundane (endless coffee making) with the twisty turning international serial killer mystery poisoning plot that unravels underneath it all, practically without you noticing.
If you haven’t read the first book in the series, definitely start with it. The Bookshop Detectives are for you if you enjoy Richard Osman, Amanda Hampson or Benjamin Stevenson and love a good name drop of authors and places you know. A tremendous read.
Reviewed by Ina at University Book Shop, Otago
Adult Fiction
Adult Non-Fiction
Children’s Books
Don’t Trust Fish
Leonie Agnew & Julia Hegetusch
