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 (B-format) by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)
What exactly is a B-format? I asked Nielsen, and word came back: “It’s a smaller format size consecutively has 92 pages more than the trade paperback version.”
2 Tell Me Lies by JP Pomare (Hachette, $29.99)
From Greg Fleming’s review at Kete: “Pomare’s third book gets off to a cracking start. An unnamed woman pushes a man under the wheels of an oncoming train as it pulls into Melbourne’s Flinders Station…Tell Me Lies delivers another bracing journey into the darker impulses of the human psyche. It’s a taut, entertaining thriller with a sting in its tail that has clearly grown out of Pomare’s wide reading in psychology.”
3 Sister to Sister by Olivia Hayfield (Hachette, $34.99)
4 Tiny Pieces of Us by Pellegrino, Nicky (Hachette, $34.99)
5 Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey (Victoria University Press, $35)
6 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)
Um as opposed to the B-format at number one but IT’S THE SAME BOOK FFS. Nielsen! You’re having a laugh. Sort it out and stop putting the same novel twice in the best-seller chart, it makes a mockery of the whole thing.
7 The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon (Vintage, $$36)
8 The Nine Lives of Kitty K. by Margaret Mills (Mary Egan Publishing, $34.99)
The debut book by an author who is 91-years-old.
9 State Highway One by Sam Coley (Hachette, $34.99)
10 In the Clearing by J.P. Pomare (Hachette, $34.99)
NON-FICTION
1 Supergood by Chelsea Winter (Penguin Random House, $50)
Chelsea’s ex, Mike, who featured in the 2020 season of The Bachelorette, used to feature in her cookbooks, looking handsome and dimpled and dark, but Supergood features her husband, who looks quite happy.
2 The Book of Angst by Gwendoline Smith (Allen & Unwin, $24.99)
3 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
4 Māori Made Easy by Scotty Morrison (Raupo Publishing, $38)
5 Bella: My Life in Food by Annabel Langbein (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
6 Destitute Gourmet by Sophie Gray (Penguin Random House, $35)
7 My Journey Starts Here by Jazz Thornton & Genevieve Mora (Penguin Random House, $30)
8 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55)
9 Gangland by Jared Savage (HarperCollins, $36.99)
It dropped out of the best-seller chart for two or three weeks but it’s no surprise to see it roar back into the top 10. Savage’s book traces a history of the methamphetamine trade in New Zealand, which is also to say it examines the gangs who deal it – and the often brilliant police work that has resulted in huge busts. The author, a reporter with the NZ Herald, knows his subject well, and also has a journalist’s flair for story-telling and drama. A spectacular book.
10 Impossible: My Story by Stan Walker (HarperCollins, $39.99)
