The Suicide Club: A Virgin Tea Planter's Journey by Herman Gunaratne

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

The Well at the World's End by A. J. Mackinnon

$12.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

When A.J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the Well at the World's End, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth. Determined not to fly ('It would feel like cheating'), he sets out with a ru cksack, some fireworks and a map of the world and trusts chance to take care of the rest. By land and by sea, by train, truck, horse and yacht, he makes his way across the globe - and through a series of hilarious adventures. He survives a bus crash in Australia, marries a princess in Laos, is attacked by Komodo dragons and does time in a Chinese jail. The next lift - or the next near-miss - is always just a happy accident away. This is the astonishing true story of a remarkable voyage, an old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. ...Show more

Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity and Rotten Luck by Paul Collins

$14.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

Breaking Faith: The Pope, The People and the Fate of Catholicism by John Cornwell

$15.00 NZD

Category: Religion | Reading Level: very good

To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world's mountains - holy to one fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, it is claimed by myth to be the source of the universe created from cosmic waters and the mind of Brahma. This book tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. ...Show more

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

$16.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: good

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy BookA GoodReads Reader's Choice   The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. The first true "talking picture," Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, was filmed, forever changing the motion picture industry. All this and much, much more transpired in the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things--and when the twentieth century truly became the American century. One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order. ...Show more

Shoot For the Moon. Achieve the impossible with the Apollo Mindset by Richard Wiseman

$14.00 NZD

Category: Self-help | Reading Level: very good

The Japanese by Jack Seward

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

Kicks: The Great American Story of Sneakers by Nicholas Smith

$12.00 NZD

Category: Fashion | Reading Level: very good

Psychology for a Better World : Working with People to Save the Planet by Niki Harre

$15.00 NZD

Category: Psychology | Reading Level: very good

Can you save the planet and have some fun along the way? Aimed at the teacher who updates students on the latest climate change negotiations, the conservationist who works to protect endangered species, the office manager who buys fair-trade coffee, or the city counselor who lobbies for cycle lanes, th is book is a guide for everyone who is trying to create a more sustainable planet. Based on the latest psychological research, Niki Harré shows which strategies work (drawing on positive emotions, role modeling, and social identity), which don't, and why. The book ends with a self-help guide for sustainability advocates that outlines how we can work for change at the personal, group, and civic level. This edition is fully revised and updated with new material on hope, sadness, worldview and climate change, behavioral contagion, moral foundations, and more. The book is now accompanied by a free online manual with exercises to illustrate the key concepts and apply them to real world sustainability issues. ...Show more

The Wife's Tale: A Personal History by Aida Edemariam

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

A Finalist for The Governor General's Award for Nonfiction in Canada In this indelible memoir that recalls the life of her remarkable ninety-five-year old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia--a nation that would undergo a tumultuous transformation fro m feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy, over the course of one century. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, Yetemegnu was married and had given birth before she turned fifteen. As the daughter of a socially prominent man, she also offered her husband, a poor yet gifted student, the opportunity to become an important religious leader. Over the next decades Yetemegnu would endure extraordinary trials: the death of some of her children; her husband's imprisonment; and the detention of one of her sons. She witnessed the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia and the subsequent resistance, suffered Allied bombardment and exile from her city; lived through a bloody revolution and the nationalization of her land. She gained audiences with Emperor Haile Selassie I to argue for justice for her husband, for revenge, and for her children's security, and fought court battles to defend her assets against powerful men. But sustained, in part, by her fierce belief in the Virgin Mary and in Orthodox Christianity, Yetemegnu survived. She even learned to read, in her sixties, and eventually made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Told in Yetemegnu's enthralling voice and filled with a vivid cast of characters--emperors and empresses, priests and scholars, monks and nuns, archbishops and slaves, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents--The Wife's Tale introduces a woman both imperious and vulnerable; a mother, widow, and businesswoman whose deep faith and numerous travails never quashed her love of laughter, mischief and dancing; a fighter whose life was shaped by direct contact with the volatile events that transformed her nation. An intimate memoir that offers a panoramic view of Ethiopia's recent history, The Wife's Tale takes us deep into the landscape, rituals, social classes, and culture of this ancient, often mischaracterized, richly complex, and unforgettable land--and into the heart of one indomitable woman. ...Show more

Empire of Illusion. The End of Literacy and The Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges

$14.00 NZD

Category: America | Reading Level: very good

In this New York Times bestseller, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Chris Hedges has written a shattering meditation on American obsession with celebrity and the epidemic of illiteracy that threatens our cultural integrity. Reporting on such phenomena as professional wrestling, the pornographic film in dustry, and unchecked casino capitalism, Hedges exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political, and moral collapse around us. Empire of Illusion shows us how illiteracy and the embrace of fantasy have impoverished our working class, allowed for the continuance of destructive public policy, and ushered in cultural bankruptcy. ...Show more