The Waters
By Carl Nixon
Award-winning New Zealand novelist Carl Nixon’s series of short stories traces the trials of familial love for the three Waters children between 1979 and 2029. It begins when their father sells the farm and invests the family’s money in a doomed property development in Christchurch and continues as a story of how early trauma impacts us throughout our adult lives, and whether failure is a legacy we inherit or something we can forgive and overcome.
One of Them
By Shaneel Lal
Condemned for being different from as young as five, Shaneel Lal recalls in their defiant writing an upbringing in Fiji rife with extreme ‘therapeutic’ measures from a village’s conservative elders. After escaping to Aotearoa as a teen, Lal joined the fight to have conversion therapy banned, which succeeded in 2021. This powerful, heartbreaking story provides earnest context to Lal’s continued work to protect the rights of other young New Zealanders.
Pageboy
By Elliot Page
Just as Juno actor Elliot Page’s dreams were coming true, the pressure to perform pushed him to the brink and his dream career became a nightmare. We’ve seen celebrities suppressing their authentic selves in exchange for success in popular culture before, but not quite to the same extent as Page, who in his coming-of-age memoir takes readers behind the scenes with intimate interrogations of sex, love, trauma and Hollywood.
Big Swiss
By Jen Beagin
Take a break from worrying about the world’s afflictions with this off-beat love story filled with humour. It follows New Yorker Greta, who’s employed to transcribe a sex therapist’s sessions from home and falls in love with a client (well, the idea of her, anyway) she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, then meets her at a dog park. Told by an incredible voice in contemporary fiction, this tale is outlandish, frustrating and potentially offensive — but never boring.
Feast
By Emily O’Grady
Satiate your appetite for scandal with Feast, the chilling fictional story of three women connected beyond blood, whose darkest secrets are hauled into the light. Set in Scotland over the course of one dysfunctional weekend disguised as a celebratory send-off for 18-year-old daughter Neve, this compelling, complicated, unsettling novel from lauded Australian author Emily O’Grady is all but impossible to put down.
Your Name is not Anxious
By Stephanie Dowrick
Nobody would dispute that we’re in an anxious era. Emphasising the profound relationship between mind and body, Your Name is not Anxious offers hope by way of life-giving strategies for lasting self-care. Of all the possible blows to your emotional health, anxiety is among the most treatable. Recognising that the affliction is never the whole ‘you’, this self-help book tells how to restore the inner security it takes away.
