July 2009

Another fifty titles now available!
Penguin books have released another fifty books in their celebrated "Popular Penguin" series. Still only $12.95 each, this batch features fiction, biography, horror, philosophy and journalism. For a full list of available titles, collect a bookmark from vicbooks, or visit popularpenguins.com

HarperCollins Short Story Collections

Six colourful and bold books make up a collectible series of short stories by acknowledged masters of the form. Choose from collections by Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy or Oscar Wilde. $14.99 each.

As the Earth Turns Silver
by Alison Wong $37.00
Penguin

Wellington in 1905 is a place which pretends to civility, whilst ignoring the enormous prejudice shown towards anyone who is not a European male. In these unfriendly circumstances, Yung, a young man, who runs a vegetable shop with his crotchety brother, strikes up a friendship with Katherine, a European widow who is struggling to support herself and her children. At first their affair is conducted only at night - and Yung does not tell her he has a wife back in China. But even as they grow in confidence, the impossibility of their situation becomes ever more apparent, and when Katherine's son discovers what is going on, tragedy seems unavoidable.
An interesting and poetically written exploration of local history and a moving human story make this a novel worth making time for.  Buy now

The Sleepwalker's Introduction to Flight
by Sion Scott-Wilson $27.99 Macmillan Publishing

Mikey dreams of becoming a member of the brotherhood of Acapulcan cliff-divers, but his own backyard attempt fails miserably and he ends up in a coma. When he wakes two years later, his doctors discover he has destroyed his ability to sleep. Whilst recovering he befriends an elderly ex-pilot whose Distinguished Flying Cross was violently stolen from him. Sent home to die, Mikey decides to recover the stolen medal, and recruits his cynical neighbour, the wayward Livia, to the cause. Their ensuing adventures combine slapstick and pathos as they encounter batty old ladies, criminals and truly nasty people in their quest. Buy now

Mirabile Dictu by Michele Leggott $27.99 AUP
Writing a poem a week during her laureateship, Leggott explored language, perception and representation. This collection is the result. Launched at the National Library on June 30th, there is an accompanying audio CD of Leggott's poetry available as well.  Buy now

michele leggott: NEW ZEALAND POETS The Laureate Series $30.00 Jayrem Records
This audio CD draws from her latest collection as well as her previous five volumes of poetry.  Buy now

Between the Assassinations 
by Aravind Adiga $37.00
Atlantic

Full of the energy, anger and humour which made his Booker Prize winning "The White Tiger" so distinctive, this book provides portraits of the inhabitants of the backwater town of Kittur on the southwest coast of India. Adiga's depiction of the dilettantes, doctors, the down-and-out and the way their choices (or lack of them) affect their world is concentrated within the seven years between the death of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv's assassination.  Buy now

Home by Marilynne Robinson $29.99 Virago

Winner of the 2009 Orange Prize, this book returns to the setting of her novel Gilead to take up the story of "bad boy" Jack Boughton, who has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with his father and his past.  Buy now
 

Wild Nights: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway
by Joyce Carol Oates $24.99 HarperCollins

Five acts of literary ventriloquism take us into the minds of these writers as they experience their last (fictionalised) days. Edgar Allan Poe descends into despair during an experimental sojourn in a lighthouse with only his dog for company; Emily Dickinson is resurrected in the future as a couple's combination servant/poet-in-residence; Samuel Clemens entertains his coterie of adolescent admirers; Henry James finds himself whilst volunteering in a World War II hospital and Ernest Hemingway argues with his memory even as he holds a shotgun to his chin. A dark investigation of each writer's psyche which adds up to a bleak picture of the price of creativity, without quite drawing the conclusion that all art naturally springs from madness.  Buy now

Pip Desmond turned her back on her white middle-class upbringing to live with Black Power affiliates in a run-down inner-city house in the 1970s. In her memoir, due in late July, she tells of trying to weld the women she befriended - who often came from poor and/or abusive backgrounds - into a force which could stand up and demand an end to institutionalised gang rape. At the time, prospects for these women looked bleak, but thirty years later, while some remain trapped, others have survived and moved on. Desmond tells their stories with compassion, but also with a clear eye for the high price paid by women who love gang members.  Buy now

Every ideological stance or decision can be justified by appealing to the idea of "learning from history' - but only at the risk of suppressing some of history's lessons in favour of those which seem to suit the current situation or political climate. MacMillan provides many examples where such selective blindness has aggravated events, and urges us to respect all parts of the past, even those which may not be palatable.  Buy now