This month we publish two magnificent titles – a graphic memoir of a 20th-century literary icon, and a debut novel telling a tale of skulduggery and thwarted passion at the birth of the recorded music industry.

The modernist short-story writer Katherine Mansfield is one of New Zealand’s finest literary figures, whose short, turbulent life was a tale in itself. In Mansfield and Me, writer and artist Sarah Laing charts her own journey towards publication and parenthood against her hero’s dramatic story.

Set in the murky backstage world of late-Victorian theatreland, James Hall’s enthralling novel The Industry of Human Happiness is about the obsessive characters who dreamed of bringing recorded music to the masses. Meticulously researched, it’s both erudite and gripping.