Awful cover.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ohagnba.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
10 Underworld by Jared Savage (HarperCollins, $39.99)<\/p>\n
One of the best books of nonfiction of 2025, up there with Everything But the Medicine by Lucy O\u2019Hagan and, you know, that book about bloody old Polkinghorne.<\/p>\n
FICTION<\/p>\n
1 The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (Hachette, $37.99)<\/p>\n
Number 1 for the fifth consecutive week, this thriller about a family hidden in the bush was spookily published in the same month as the Tom Phillips case reached its deadly end, and has really captured the public imagination.<\/p>\n
2 Julia Eichardt by Lauren Roche (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99)<\/p>\n
3 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)<\/p>\n
L\u00e0 Chidge will preside at a special literary event next weekend in Hamilton: as the convenor of the Sargeson Prize, New Zealand\u2019s richest short story award, she will be on hand when the winner and finalists are announced. Stories placed first, second and third, as well as the winner of the secondary schools division, will be published at ReadingRoom on consecutive Saturdays from October 17. I know the names of the winners but haven\u2019t been sent the stories, judged by Elizabeth Knox; I look forward to reading them and hopefully look forward to publishing them.<\/p>\n
4 See How They Fall by Rachel Paris (Hachette, $37.99)<\/p>\n
5 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $26)<\/p>\n
6 Tea and Cake and Death (The Bookshop Detectives 2) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $38)<\/p>\n
7 Hooked Up by Fiona Sussman (David Bateman, $38.99)<\/p>\n
A free copy of the new thriller by a master of crime writing was up for grabs in last week\u2019s giveaway contest. The premise for the book is that a serial killer is at large in Auckland. I loved the book but hated the premise; and readers were invited to send in their thoughts on the remote possibility that New Zealand would ever harbour a serial killer. It was not an overly popular contest and most of the entries were kind of incoherent, which I think is apposite to the book\u2019s premise.<\/p>\n
One entry was particularly gnomic. I do not know what it is getting at but I like it, and it qualifies as the winning entry. Margaret wrote, \u201cToo many babies, hard work and a weak heart made my grandmother an old lady at sixty.<\/p>\n
\u201cNana kept her little state house neat as a pin and the smell of her delicious baking, and her loving arms welcomed you in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I would stay with her in the school holidays in the 1950\u2019s, I was included in her morning ritual.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter her chores were completed, she would prepare morning tea on a tray. She would take off her pinny and fold it neatly in her lap as we sat down by the radio to wait in hushed anticipation for the start of the serials.<\/p>\n
\u201cPortia Faces Life and Doctor Paul were her favourites.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have all been killed off.<\/p>\n
\u201cQED.\u201d<\/p>\n
What? Oh well; huzzah to Margaret, who wins a copy of Hooked Up by Fiona Sussman.<\/p>\n
8 May You Always Know by Jessica Urlichs & Bethany Gale (Hachette, $24.99)<\/p>\n
Instapoems.<\/p>\n
9 Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro (Allen & Unwin, $27.99)<\/p>\n
Tauranga writer Anne Cleary was announced this week as the winner of the 2025 Allen & Unwin fiction prize. Her winning entry, Apple Man, a psychological thriller about a young boy who goes missing while on a fishing trip with his father, merits her an $10,000 advance and publication with Allen & Unwin. It\u2019s a hell of a good prize and it can change a writer\u2019s life. The inaugural winner of the fiction prize was Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro, published in May 2023, which has sold more than 12,000 copies. Shapiro\u2019s second novel, Good Things Come and Go, is published by Allen & Unwin at the end of this month. Look out for it; when this author tells a story, she tells a story.<\/p>\n
10 Wonderland by Tracy Farr (The Cuba Press, $38)<\/p>\n
Fiona Kidman describes it as \u201cpassionate\u201d. The blurbology is passionate, too: \u201cMiramar Peninsula, Wellington 1912. Dr Matti Loverock spends her days and nights bringing babies into the world, which means her daughters\u2014seven-year-old triplets Ada, Oona and Hanna\u2014have grown up at Wonderland, the once-thriving amusement park owned by their father, Charlie. Then a grieving woman arrives to stay from the other side of the world, in pain and incognito, fleeing scandal. She ignites the triplets\u2019 curiosity and brings work for Matti, diverting them all from what is really happening at Wonderland. In a bold\u00a0reimagining,\u00a0Marie Curie\u2014famous for her work on radioactivity\u2014comes to Aotearoa and discovers both solace and\u00a0wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marie Curie! Dr Matti Loverock!<\/p>\n
Great cover.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Wonderland-final-front-cover.jpg\")
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