This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias
FICTION
1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)
Last year’s winner of the Ockham award for fiction. This year’s winner will be announced on May 12 at the Auckland Writers Festival, which features numerous should-see events, such as a panel on cancel culture, Rebecca Macfie on her biography of Helen Kelly, Jared Savage on his book about the methamphetamine trade, Dick Frizzell in conversation with Finlay Macdonald, oh and Steve Braunias and pathologist Judy Melinek will talk about murder, death, grief and that sort of thing.
2 Quiet in Her Bones by Nalini Singh (Hachette, $34.99)
3 Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey (Victoria University Press, $35)
Shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham award for fiction.
4 Sister to Sister by Olivia Hayfield (Hachette, $34.99)
5 The Jacaranda House by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $36.99)
6 Tell Me Lies by J.P. Pomare (Hachette, $29.99)
7 Sprigs by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, $35)
Last year’s winner of the Ockham fiction prize was a hard-hitting, well-told story in the social realism tradition, published by an agile independent; Sprigs, too, fits that description. It’s a powerful and careful novel centred on a sexual assault. The perpetrators and the survivor tell their truths.
8 Landmarks by Grahame Sydney & Owen Marshall & Brian Turner (Penguin Random House, $75)
Not a book of fiction; it doesn’t belong in this category.
9 The Nine Lives of Kitty K. by Margaret Mills (Mary Egan Publishing, $34.99)
10 The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon (Penguin Random House, $36)
The one that got away: the most commercially successful literary novel of 2020, but only got as far as the Ockham longlist. Whatever. Really good book, recommended.
NON-FICTION
1 Supergood by Chelsea Winter (Penguin Random House, $50)
If you took away cookbooks, the non-fiction list would cease to exist.
2 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
3 Farm for Life: Mahi, Mana and Life on the Land by Tangaroa Walker (Penguin Random House, $38)
4 Bella: My Life in Food by Annabel Langbein (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
5 The Book of Angst by Gwendoline Smith (Allen & Unwin, $24.99)
6 My Journey Starts Here by Jazz Thornton & Genevieve Mora (Penguin Random House, $30)
7 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55)
8 Impossible: My Story by Stan Walker (HarperCollins, $39.99)
9 Destitute Gourmet by Sophie Gray (Penguin Random House, $35)
10 Māori Made Easy by Scotty Morrison (Penguin Random House, $38)
