This week’s bestselling books – March 6

2026-03-05 - 16:07

NONFICTION 1 Surviving White Island by Kelsey Waghorn (HarperCollins, $39.99) A tour guide who survived the Whakaari tragedy tells her story. It starts well, and the chapter on the explosion is harrowing. The final chapters also make for powerful reading. But in between there are 150 pages—yes, 150 pages—taken from a family group chat on Messenger while she recovered in hospital. It’s pretty much what you would expect. “So, so proud of our precious girl. Xx”, etc. The publisher ought to have insisted on a complete manuscript. It’s a shame they didn’t; in the remaining pages, Waghorn proves herself a good, direct writer. 2 Champions Do Extra by Brad Thorn (HarperCollins, $39.99) 3 Lessons on Living by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $39.99 4 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin Random House, $40) 5 The Hollows Boys by Peta Carey (Potton & Burton, $39.99) Shortlisted this week for the nonfiction prize at the 2026 Ockham NZ national book awards—and up for grabs alongside every single shortlisted book in the greatest book prize of all times. Enter now! Full details appeared on Thursday. To cut full details short, all 16 titles shortlisted in this year’s Ockham awards are free to a good home belonging to the winner of our contest. We’re talking four novels (including the favourite, The Book of Guilt by the sage of Cambridge, Catherine Chidgey), four books of poetry, four massive illustrated coffee-table table books, and four books of nonfiction, including a memoir by Sydney resident Jacinda Ardern, and The Hollow Boys by Peta Carey. The contest rules are simple. Readers need to nominate their favourite NZ book of last year, and share a few lines stating why that is so. They can draw from the shortlist of 16 books; they can draw from books that got as far as the longlist; or they can draw from any NZ book whether it was nominated or not, so long as it was published in 2025, and you genuinely loved it. The book that receives the most votes will be crowned as winner of the People’s Choice Award on the morning of the Ockham awards on May 13. To enter, send in your vote (with comments) for your favourite NZ book of 2025, and email it to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line I WANT TO WIN ALL 16 BOOKS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 OCKHAM NZ AWARDS PLEASE. The deadline is midnight on Sunday, April 26. So you’ve got a bit of time to give it some thought but some contest judges look favourably on early birds and why put off tomorrow what you can do today to stand a chance of winning the greatest book prize of all times. 6 The Dead Speak by Thomas Coyle (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) 7 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $59.99) Shortlisted this week for the nonfiction prize at the 2026 Ockham NZ national book awards—and up for grabs alongside every single shortlisted book in the greatest book prize of all times. Enter now! Full details appeared on Thursday, 8 Nadia’s Farm Kitchen by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55) 9 Edmonds Cookery Book by Goodman Fielder (Hachette, $39.99) 10 Everything But the Medicine by Lucy O’Hagan (Massey University Press, $39.99) FICTION 1 The Secrets of the Lost Vineyard by Erin Palmisano (Hachette, $37.99 This week’s fiction chart is a bit flat but last week’s chart was illuminated by the presence, at number 2, of Party Boy by Breton Dukes (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38). It’s the best literary novel of the year by a long stretch so far—and something really, really good is going to have to come along in 2026 to achieve a higher standard of art, intensity, action—and a free copy was up for grabs in last week’s giveaway contest. Party Boy is set in Dunedin. The protagonist is a cook haunted by his teenage years among the bullies and paedophiles at Otago Boys High School; in the opening chapter, he goes kind of crazy in the bar kitchen trying to keep up with orders. As such, readers wanting a copy of Party Boy were asked to share their own kitchen nightmare. It was a very popular contest. Emails flooded in from terrible waitresses and hard done-by cooks. Among the best entries were from Margaret, who wrote of stabbing a rat dead with a two-pronged fork in the kitchen of Eichardts Hotel in Queenstown in the winter of 1952; a very strange story from Colin, who wrote of working behind the bar at his parents’ hotel in Devon, and meeting Warren Mitchell, then famous for playing that appalling bigot Alf Garnett in the TV series Till Death Do Us Part, who moaned on and on that the hotel’s cheese sandwiches tasted of onions; and the story told by Bronwen about a famous NZ actor “who was so rude to all the staff at a particular iconic Auckland steakhouse that the chef threw his steak on the floor and stomped it before chucking on the grill and sending it out. Kitchen and waitstaff smirked as the steak was delivered, and devoured. And yes, the Reebok print was visible.” Choke on that, Temuera! But the winner was Wellington writer Tim Grgec, who wrote an epic so good that I dare not edit a word. “In 2014 I went to Melbourne to make my fortune and found work as a dishy at Imperium, a soon-to-open café and restaurant on Chapel Street. Luigi ran the kitchen, a navy-spotted bandana knotted over his bald head. He spoke of Rome as if it were still an empire. He wrote the shopping list in looping Italian – latte, pomodori, basilico – and handed it to me without looking up. Federico, his shadow, spoke no English and spent the days rolling endless sheets of dough. Rolando, the head waiter, practised his glide across an empty floor. The owner watched from his tiny upstairs office, boxes and paperwork stacked to the ceiling behind him. “Chapel Street hummed outside – mothers with prams, gym-goers, thrifters, young professionals. The tradesmen finished the wood-fired oven the day before we opened. The owner gathered us at nine, shirt damp at the armpits, and warned of the rush. We unlocked the door. “By two we had poured one coffee and sent out a single bowl of pasta. Luigi plated it as if for a critic. The bell at the pass did not ring again. We laughed at first – at Rolando polishing the same cutlery, at Luigi rearranging the menu for customers who never came. Weeks passed in a state of readiness. We ordered bread for breakfast, reduced stock for dinner, piped cannoli that sagged untouched. At four each afternoon an old man ordered a long black and sat by the window. “Months thinned us out. The owner began pacing. He ran a finger along the pass and showed us invisible dust. He accused us of laziness, of sabotage. Luigi slammed fridge doors and invoked standards no one had seen before. I scrubbed grout with a toothbrush. We froze veal, thawed it, threw it away. Eventually even the old man stopped coming. One afternoon the owner came downstairs and told us to close early. He said it softly, as if asking a favour. Luigi untied his bandana and folded it once before putting it in his pocket. My fortune was the echo of a bell that never rang.” Tim Grgec is the author of an excellent book of poetry published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. I hope he writes a memoir. Huzzah to Tim; he very deservedly wins a copy of Party Boy by Breton Dukes. 2 Black Velvet and Vengeance (Tatty Crowe 3) by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $37.99) 3 Seed by Elisabeth Easther (Penguin Random House, $38) 4 The American Boys by Olivia Spooner (Hachette, $37.99) 5 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Shortlisted this week for the nonfiction prize at the 2026 Ockham NZ national book awards—and up for grabs alongside every single shortlisted book in the greatest book prize of all times. Enter now! Full details appeared on Thursday. 6 What to Wear by Jenny Bornholdt (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $25) New collection of poetry by the former poet laureate. As ever, the lines are poised, balanced, steady; here is the complete text of ‘My Mother’s Friend’s Hair’: I used to watch her brush it out, long down her back, then wind and clip it up, all life’s disappointments coiled there. 7 Julia Eichardt by Lauren Roche (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99) 8 The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (Hachette, $37.99) 9 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $28) 10 See How They Fall by Rachel Paris (Hachette, $27.99)