Mangawhai Books & Gifts is an independent bookshop and gift store on Wood Street in Maungaturoto, serving readers across the Maungaturoto and Mangawhai districts. The shelves carry current new releases and popular series alongside a well-stocked children's section, and the wider store adds magazines, puzzles, games, toys, stationery, art supplies and gifts — plus the pool equipment that gives the place the feel of a true country general store.
Shopping is flexible: browse and order online by keyword, title, author or ISBN, then choose Click & Collect or delivery, with delivery times and charges published on the website. Gift cards, copy services and postage round out the practical side, and a SALE 60% OFF section rewards bargain hunters.
In winter the shop opens 10.00am to 2.00pm on Sundays, and its Facebook page carries updates and new arrivals.
On Wood Street in Maungaturoto, Mangawhai Books & Gifts does what the best small-town bookshops have always done: it brings the wider world to a rural community, one shelf at a time. The shop serves readers across the Maungaturoto and Mangawhai districts with a stocked range of new books, a substantial magazine wall, puzzles, games, toys, stationery and gifts. Behind the shopfront sits a full online catalogue, so customers can browse from home, reserve what they want and collect it in store or have it delivered.
The book range is impressively current for a shop this size. Recent bestsellers and talking points share the shelves with long-running series: Heartstopper Volume 6, the final chapter of the phenomenally popular graphic novel series (also on Netflix), sits near The Hybrid Prince, book sixteen of Wings of Fire, and Clown Town, the ninth Slough House novel. Fiction readers will find titles like The Secrets We Hide and Blood Moon, the first book of the Snowlands series, while the non-fiction shelves hold current commentary such as Angertainment.
Younger readers are well looked after. The Wonky Donkey, complete with its downloadable song, is on hand for a new generation of Kiwi kids, while The Folk of the Faraway Tree continues a much-loved classic series in paperback. There are chapter books like Club Kiwi from the Ella and Olivia series, activity titles such as Inkcredibles Ocean Adventure, and School Zone flash cards for early number learning. This is very much a shop where children are catered for, not tolerated.
Step past the fiction and the range opens up. The magazine wall runs from food and lifestyle — Dish, NZ Life & Leisure, Mindfood, Denizen, Here, Bay Buzz, M2Woman and Country Living UK's Modern Rustic special — to TV Guide for the week's viewing, plus a deep bench of puzzle titles: Lovatts Mega crosswords, celebrity code crackers, Puzzler Simply Code Crackers and a sudoku a day. Families can grab the Kids Mag Pack, a bundle of children's magazines, and pick up Tide Times Northland/Auckland before a trip to the coast.
The games shelves are equally practical: assorted Kiwi card games — Crazy Kea, Go Fish, Snap — alongside Monopoly Deal, playing cards, a retro gamer stack, micro-bricks miniature arcade machines and a desktop pickleball set that makes a reliably funny gift. Add stationery, art supplies through Draw Art Supplies, toys and general gifts, and the store covers most of a household's wants. Even pool equipment gets its own section — the clearest possible sign of a genuine country general store.
The website works like a proper shop catalogue. Search by keyword, title, author or ISBN, check live stock counts, and add items to a cart. Click & Collect lets you reserve an item online and pick it up at the counter on Wood Street, while delivery is available with times and charges published on the site. Gift cards take the guesswork out of buying for the reader who has everything, and the SALE 60% OFF category rewards a regular browse. The shop also offers copy services and postage — the kind of practical extras that turn a bookshop into a town fixture.
Opening hours shift with the seasons; through winter the shop opens 10.00am to 2.00pm on Sundays, so it is worth checking ahead. The shop's Facebook page is the easiest place to catch new arrivals and updates, and the website's search and ordering tools make special requests straightforward.
However you arrive — online at midnight or in person on a Sunday morning — the idea is the same: a local shop that knows its community, stocks what it reads and watches, and throws in the tide times for good measure.