McLeods Booksellers

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

$24.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: very good

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo. They work at home as freelance writers. They no longer have very much to say to one another. One day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. She is a beautiful creatu re. She leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. New, small joys accompany the cat; the days have more light and colour. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife; they go walking together, talk and share stories of the cat and its little ways, play in the nearby Garden. But then something happens that will change everything again.The Guest Cat is an exceptionally moving and beautiful novel about the nature of life and the way it feels to live it. Written by Japanese poet and novelist Takashi Hiraide, the book won Japan's Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, and was a bestseller in France and America. ...Show more

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

$25.00 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: very good

Eleanor lives a highly regulated life, struggles with social cues, has no mouth “filter” and relaxes on the weekend eating pizza and consuming two bottles of vodka, feeling she’s completely fine.  When her work computer malfunctions, tech support Raymond enters Eleanor’s lif e, unintentionally ending her profoundly sad and isolated existence.  Eleanor is cranky but so very funny, her humour contrasting her underlying dark past. The human need for connection is the central theme of this endearing, original, heartfelt novel. I absolutely loved it.   No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.   But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.   Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .   The only way to survive is to open your heart. ...Show more

The Dry (PB) by Jane Harper

$19.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: very good

WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY? It hasn't rained in Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the farming community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are discovered shot to death on their property. Everyone assumes Luke Hadler committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six- year-old son. Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to his hometown for the funerals and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and his childhood friend Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth ... ...Show more

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

$24.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: very good

*Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence* A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.   Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.   Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only T ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.   Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others? ...Show more

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

$26.00 NZD

Category: General Fiction

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014. A novel of the cruelty of war, tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love. August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two year s earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost. 'The Narrow Road to the Deep Northis a big, magnificent novel of passion and horror and tragic irony. Its scope, its themes and its people all seem to grow richer and deeper in significance with the progress of the story, as it moves to its extraordinary resolution. It's by far the best new novel I've read in ages.' - Patrick McGrath 'Beyond comparison . . . an immense achievement . . . Wilfred Owen wrote of his Great War verse- "My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity." Flanagan's triumph is to find poetry without any pity at all.' - Geordie Williamson, The Australian 'A story of war and star-crossed lovers, the novel is also a profound meditation on life and time, memory and forgetting . . . a magnificent achievement.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser 'A masterpiece . . . The Narrow Roadis an extraordinary piece of writing and a high point in an already distinguished career.' - Michael Williams, The Guardian ...Show more

Where the Heart Is

$34.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

$21.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

"Ingenious... Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century." --The New York Times   WINNER OF THE 2018 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION   LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences   Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she's accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma's worst fears are confirmed.   Then Eamonn enters the sisters' lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to--or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz's salvation? Suddenly, two families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love? ...Show more

Eve A Novel by William Paul Young

$26.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

From the author of the twenty-five-million-copy bestseller The Shack comes a captivating new novel destined to be one of the most talked-about books of the decade.Eve is a bold, unprecedented exploration of the Creation narrative, true to the original texts and centuries of scholarship—yet with breathta king discoveries that challenge traditional beliefs about who we are and how we’re made. Eve opens a refreshing conversation about the equality of men and women within the context of our beginnings, helping us see each other as our Creator does—complete, unique, and not constrained by cultural rules or limitations. When a shipping container washes ashore on an island between our world and the next, John the Collector finds a young woman inside—broken, frozen, and barely alive. With the aid of Healers and Scholars, John oversees her recovery and soon discovers that her genetic code connects her to every known race. No one would guess what her survival will mean… No one but Eve, Mother of the Living, who calls her “daughter” and invites her to witness the truth about her own story—indeed, the truth about us all. As The Shack awakened readers to a personal, non-religious understanding of God, Eve will free us from faulty interpretations that have corrupted human relationships since the Garden of Eden. Thoroughly researched and exquisitely written, Eve is a masterpiece that will inspire readers for generations to come. ...Show more

The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff

$29.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Series: Mira Ser.

A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War II, The Orphan's Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give u p her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep... When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night. Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond. But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another--or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything. ...Show more

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

$26.00 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Reading Level: good

Now a Major Motion Picture starring Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, and Fionn Whitehead.  One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, BookRiot Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family division. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity. But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis. At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes. Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith? In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital--an encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both. ...Show more

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

$24.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction

A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska, Eowyn Ivey's THE SNOW CHILD was a top ten bestseller in hardback and paperback, and went on to be a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Alaska, the 1920s. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on a fresh start in a remote homestead, but the wild erness is a stark place, and Mabel is haunted by the baby she lost many years before. When a little girl appears mysteriously on their land, each is filled with wonder, but also foreboding: is she what she seems, and can they find room in their hearts for her? Written with the clarity and vividness of the Russian fairy tale from which it takes its inspiration, The Snow Child is an instant classic. ...Show more

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; Valerie Grove (Introduction by)

$17.99 NZD

Category: General Fiction | Series: Vintage Classics Ser.

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" is the memorable first line of this enchanting coming-of-age story, told in the form of Cassandra Mortmain's journal. Cassandra wittily describes life growing up in a crumbling castle, with her father who suffers from crippling writer's block, her glamorous but ineffectual step-mother and her vain but beloved sister Rose. When two visiting Americans arrive, all of their lives are turned upside down, and Cassandra experiences her first love.This is a classic coming-of-age story, beloved of generations of teenage and adult readers, by Dodie Smith, who also wroteThe Hundred and One Dalmatians. ...Show more