May new releases 2025

The much-awaited follow-up to the award-winning international bestseller Auē.

In Auē, eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in motion the ensuing tragedy, which resulted in Stu’s death. Aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but, silenced by abuse, her voice was absent from the story.

In Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. As one, the famiily recounts her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins — the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of generations of tīpuna; the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the day he was killed.

Unflinching in its portrayal of intergenerational trauma and violence, tender in its harnessing of the hope that future generations represent, Kataraina is a stunning novel that confirms Becky Manawatu as one of the most talented and powerful writers working in Aotearoa/New Zealand today.

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?

In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we’ve invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth — giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons — all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.

His far-ranging adventure takes him across the world. He sits on the thrones of giants in Cornwall, visits the shrine of a beheaded ogre near Kyoto, travels to an eighteenth-century Balkan vampire’s forest dwelling, and paddles among the shapeshifters of the Louisiana bayous. On his travels, he discovers that the stories of the people and places that birthed them are just as fascinating as the creatures themselves.

Artfully written, Monsterland is a fascinating interrogation into why we need these monsters and what they can tell us about ourselves — how they bind communities together as much as they cruelly cast away outsiders.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026

A captivating, polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran.

1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.

1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.

1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.

2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down …

A topical, moving novel about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom.

NO sync test september

This book is not about aspirational living; it’s about practical living. It’s about looking at the world around you and finding where it’s at fault, rather than blaming yourself. It’s about dropping the comfortable prisons we create for ourselves to find the real freedom and happiness we deserve.

We live in a world that is overfed but malnourished, sunlight deficient, overly competitive, sedentary, and sleep deprived. Our blood pressure and stress levels are at record highs, our mental health at record lows. Our eyes are strained from looking at screens all the time, and our backs are killing us. We buy far too much of what we don’t need, and we aren’t even pooing in the right position!

Yet step outside, maybe walk a few minutes down the road, and you will inevitably see plants bursting with nourishment, hear calming birdsong, breath in fresh air, move your stiff body. Perhaps we have the answer to all our modern malaises right here, outside our own homes. Perhaps it is time for a New Wild Order.

Join forager, author, dad, and everyday fella Andy Hamilton, as he answers his own call to the wild, and discovers how it might just save his life — and yours.

An essential guide to one of the world’s most remarkable, and often misunderstood, cities by the author of Why the Dutch Are Different.

When Ben Coates injures his leg and needs to rebuild his strength by walking, he finds himself presented with an exciting opportunity: to rediscover the city he has been working in for over a decade, at a slower pace. He devised ten walks, each demonstrating a different chapter of Amsterdam’s history, from its humble beginnings in the early 1200s as a small fishing community through two Golden Ages, fuelled by the growth of the Dutch colonial empire, two world wars, and countless reinventions.

Join Coates as he meanders past beautiful townhouses and glittering canals, dances at Pride celebrations, witnesses the King’s apology at Keti Koti, attends a WW2 memorial, gets high at a coffee shop, walks through the red-light district, and gazes in awe at Rembrandt paintings, all the while illuminating modern Amsterdam by explaining its past.

Blending travelogue and quirky history, The Invention of Amsterdam is an entertaining and sharply observed portrait of a fascinating and complicated city.