Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex is the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Not surprisingly, the Christchurch Press loves it: “A fantastic story, beautifully crafted, and artfully told.” It’s the tale of a 41-year-old hermaphrodite called Calliope, and the gene that passes through three generations of his Greek-American family. Highly recommended, by all accounts: Eugenides was recently named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.

The Press also rates The Claddagh Ring by Malachy McCourt. The book reveals the mystique behind the traditional Irish ring cast in the form of two hands reaching for each other and a heart.

Dare To Dream: The John Britten Story is written by Felicity Price, a cousin of Britten's widow Kirsteen. But according to reviewer Mike Crean, “she never shrinks from due mention of Britten's wild partying, boozing, drug-taking, and fondness for sporty cars and equally fast women.” Britten was a Christchurch boy and his local paper likes the biography: “The book is lavishly illustrated, a fitting monument to a flower of Christchurch that bloomed brightly but for all too short a time.”