The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending March 27

1 Fahrenheit-182 by Mark Hoppus (Sphere, $40)

The blink-182 co-founder was in Tāmaki for “An Evening of Story Telling” this week, and those stories were clearly good enough that a good chunk of the audience promptly rushed out to grab a copy of his memoir.

2 Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate, $37)

Gotta love a campus novel.

3 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, $38)

This is top of my Easter reading pile – anyone else?

4 Hooked by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $37)

From the queen who gave us Butter!

5 Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester (Faber & Faber, $38)

While this title is giving Taylor Swift, the book is a satirical thriller / black comedy. Here’s a snippet from Clare Clark’s fairly mixed review on The Guardian: “It is hard to say more without risking spoilers, but if the novel has a state-of-the-nation agenda, it lies in the inequity between the boomers who have helped themselves to everything and the millennials who must live with the consequences. This is not new territory for Lanchester. In Capital, the battle lines are drawn between those who have profited – mind-bogglingly and usually by dumb luck – from spiralling property values, and those for whom home ownership has become an impossible fantasy. Cold and hungry, the beleaguered young soldiers guarding The Wall know exactly who to blame for their predicament: ‘the world hadn’t always been like this and … the people responsible … were our parents – them and their generation’.”

6 The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw (Penguin, $38)

This is second on my Easter reading list: there are quite a few takes out there now. The Spinoff’s is coming …

7 Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs by Antony Beevor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $60)

“How could a barely literate peasant from Siberia determine the fate of the world? Undoubtedly, the so-called ‘mad monk’ Rasputin bewitched Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Yet their strange and scandalous relationship conceals a riddle, one that casts an intriguing light on the controversial ‘great man’ theory of history.” And from there you must read to find out more.

8 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin, $38)

“It might sound as if McConaghy’s novel asks a lot of its readers, but in fact it’s a suspenseful, rushing read, full of short chapters, emotional twists, and a landscape it’s all too easy to sink into and live in.” So says the Chicago Review of Books.

9 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Penguin, $28) 

Brontë takes back the narrative from the clumsy hands of Fennell.

10 Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton, $40)

Compelling and brilliant and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction.

WELLINGTON

1 The Only Way is Up: On Foot to Rome by Jennifer Andrewes (Parallel Lives, $35)

A new local walking book to add to this list. Immersing in Andrewes’ account of walking the pilgrimage trail from Canterbury (UK) to Rome is a mesmerising and uplifting experience – it also sheds light on what it’s like living with Parkinson’s diagnosis.

2 Every Second Counts by Charlotte Glennie (Moa Press, $40)

“Set in New Zealand, Australia, Asia and Europe, this is the adrenaline-fuelled life of a journalist during the heyday of television news, doing whatever it took to uncover the facts. From being the first New Zealand correspondent to report from North Korea, telling stories from far-flung places in Mongolia and Russia, reporting live in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami which killed over 230,000 people, to battling monsoon rains in the world’s largest refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, Charlotte writes about people living in extreme circumstances, and what it is like to be there alongside them.”