Catherine Chidgey's The Starving Bride Is the First Aotearoa NZ Book of the Month

Catherine Chidgey's novel The Starving Bride is the first pick for Aotearoa NZ Book of the Month, a new campaign that puts one New Zealand book in front of readers each month, the Coalition for Books announced on November 1. The campaign started the same day. It brings booksellers, libraries and publishers together behind a single title.

How the campaign works

The Coalition for Books is an umbrella group for New Zealand's book trade: booksellers, libraries, authors, publishers, festivals and reading organisations. Its release on October 30 laid out the plan. Every month one book gets a national push, with branded digital and printable materials, paid advertising and book club questions, and any bookseller, librarian or other group can use that material without paying for it.

The sponsor is Libby, the library reading app from OverDrive. The campaign is opt-in. Bookshops and libraries hear about each title two months ahead, under embargo, so they can plan stock. The marketing materials reach them two weeks before launch.

To be chosen, a book has to be readily available in print, ebook and audio, and its publisher has to agree to take part. The coalition says the picks will be deliberately varied, from prize winners and new releases to backlist favourites, children's books and nonfiction.

Getting copies to readers

The coalition says it works with each publisher so print copies can be supplied quickly, and with OverDrive so the ebook and audiobook can be borrowed throughout the month. Libraries will have extra copies on the shelf and on their digital platforms. For booksellers, the coalition plans a buying group offer, an advance listening copy on Libro.fm and confirmed supply for each title.

Renee Rowland manages Booksellers New Zealand and is the coalition's deputy chair. In the release she said: "We hope it will be good for sales and borrowing, but we're playing the long game."

From the sponsor's side, OverDrive's ANZ manager Malcolm O'Brien put it this way in the same release: "NZ has a vibrant and successful publishing industry that deserves the support of companies that benefit from their work." OverDrive supplies 95% of New Zealand public libraries, the release says.

The first book

Te Herenga Waka University Press published The Starving Bride in October; it is Chidgey's tenth book. The novel is set in a near-future England. Hazel Whitlock signs on as a sideshow act in Blackpool, lying in a glass coffin while a lion prowls close by. Chidgey's last novel, The Book of Guilt, was the country's number one fiction bestseller of 2025, according to the announcement.

Chidgey said in the announcement that she loves "the idea of New Zealand readers being encouraged to seek out local writing," and her publisher, Fergus Barrowman, called the scheme "a collaborative way to connect readers with our authors and their work." A new pick lands on the first of every month, and the coalition has already put up book club questions for The Starving Bride next to the campaign kit.

Photo: Catherine Chidgey at the WORD Christchurch festival in 2018. Photo by Johannes van Kan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.