Without much fanfare Ahmed Kathrada worked alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other giants in the struggle to end racial discrimination in South Africa. He faced house arrest and many court trials related to his activism until, finally, a trial for sabotage saw him sentenced to life imprisonment alongside Mandela and six others.

Conversations with a Gentle Soul has its origins in a series of discussions between Kathrada and Sahm Venter about his opinions, encounters and experiences. Throughout his life, Kathrada has refused to hang on to negative emotions such as hatred and bitterness. Instead, he radiates contentment and the openness of a man at peace with himself. His wisdom is packaged within layers of optimism, mischievousness and humour, and he provides insights that are of value to all South Africans.

In Rule Of Law, Glynnis Breytenbach reflects back on her career as a prosecutor, including specific cases she has tried, and on her life to provide a fascinating commentary on the importance of the independence of judicial institutions and the precariousness of this independence.

Her current challenges are directly linked to how outspoken she is and how she continues to campaign fiercely for the rule of law in this country.

John Kane-Berman is uniquely qualified to look back over the enormous political and social changes that have taken place in his lifetime in this fractious country. In his career as student leader, Rhodes Scholar, newspaperman, independent columnist, speech maker, commentator, and Chief Executive, for thirty years, of the South African Institute of Race Relations, Kane-Berman has been at the coal face of political change in South Africa.

The breadth and depth of ideas and events covered here are striking: the disintegration of apartheid, the chaos of the ‘people’s war’ and its contribution to the broader societal breakdown we see today, the liberal slide-away, the authoritarian ANC with its racial ideology and revolutionary goals, to mention only a few. Kane-Berman’s willingness to confront received wisdom is thoroughly refreshing, and he is forthright about the threats to freedom, democracy, and growth in contemporary South Africa, many of which he identified even before the ANC came to power.

Writing, debate, and reasoned argument have been Kane-Berman’s stock in trade and his clarity of vision and personal insight have created a memoir of rare candour and absorbing interest.

The fascinating true story behind South Africa’S most notorious bank robbers.

Five bank robberies. Fifteen years in jail. That was the sentence handed down to Allan Heyl in 1977. He was twenty-six years old and couldn’t face that many years behind bars. By the time André Stander, ex-police captain and convicted bank robber, arrived at the prison, Heyl was well advanced with his plan to escape. The two of them teamed up, made their escape and proceeded to rob banks at an unprecedented rate.

In this fast-paced, no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled memoir, Heyl exposes the hell of prison life, revels in the sheer gung-ho audacity of robbing banks and hiding in plain sight, and reveals an inept and incompetent police force. As a member of the notorious ‘Stander Gang’, which both appalled and enthralled South Africans in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Allan became a career criminal. But this choice of lifestyle had its consequences …

With humour, fresh insight and self-revelation, the last surviving member of the socalled Stander Gang turns a critical eye on himself and the times in which he operated. This book takes you into the heart of a bank robber.

From beginnings on a gravel court on a farm in rural South Africa, Gordon Forbes went on to travel the world with his long-time tennis partner Abe Segal during the late 1950s and early 60s: the glory days of Fred Perry, Roy Emerson and Virginia Wade. In this delightful insider’s account of tennis on the international circuit, Forbes looks back with laughter at his tennis playing years through a varied, successful and often outrageous career on the world’s courts.

This newly published edition of A Handful Of Summers brings back a cult classic, revealing an era populated by the most colourful tennis players of all time. More about the hilarious escapades of players than the game itself, the book begins with a short series of vignettes from Forbes’s childhood on an Eastern Cape farm in South Africa, then takes the reader on a tennis tour – into locker rooms and restaurants, narrow streets and small hotels, and onwards to the lawns of Wimbledon and the caramel coloured clays of Roland Garros.

A player of international repute, Gordon Forbes has managed to capture the irresistible charm of an era while telling the story of a young man striving to follow signposts on the winding roads of life.

Upon encountering Historian, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quote “Well behaved women seldom make history” – Malebo knew that she was tired of everyone else but herself having a say on who and what she should be. Appropriating this quote, Malebo boldly renounces societal expectations placed on her as a Black woman and shares her journey towards misbehaviour. According to Malebo, it is a norm for a Black woman to live through a society that will prescribe what it means to be a well behaved woman. Acting like this prescribed woman equals good behaviour. But what happens when a black woman decides to live her own life and becomes her own form of who she wants to be? She is often seen as misbehaving.

Miss Behave challenges society’s deep-seated beliefs about what it means to be a well behaved woman. In this book, Malebo tracks her journey on a path towards achieving total autonomy and self-determinism. Miss Behave will challenge, rattle and occasionally cause you to reflect on your own life – asking yourself the question – are you truly living life the way you want to?

Inspired by the fortunes and misfortunes of the Getty family, whose most extraordinary and troubled episode - the kidnap and ransom of grandson Paul Getty - is now a major motion picture, directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay written by David Scarpa and starring Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg.

The definitive final word on the world's greatest rock band, Led Zeppelin.

Over ten years after When Giants Walked The Earth, Mick's seminal biography of the band, comes this major and extensively researched revision, which will provide an unflinching look at life inside one of the biggest-selling rock bands of all time, and present the definitive, final word on Led Zeppelin.

They were 'the last great band of the sixties; the first great band of the seventies'; they rose, somewhat unpromisingly, from the ashes of the Yardbirds to become one of the biggest-selling rock bands of all time. Mick Wall, respected rock writer and former confidant of both Page and Plant, unflinchingly tells the story of the band that wrote the rulebook for on-the-road excess - and eventually paid the price for it, with disaster, drug addiction and death.

When Giants Walked The Earth reveals for the first time the true extent of band leader Jimmy Page's longstanding interest in the occult, and goes behind the scenes to expose the truth behind their much-hyped yet spectacularly contrived comeback at London's O2 arena in 2007, and how Jimmy Page plans to bring the band back permanently - if only his former protege, now part-time nemesis, Robert Plant will allow him to. Wall also recounts, in a series of flashbacks, the life stories of the five individuals that made the dream of Led Zeppelin into an even more incredible and hard-to-swallow reality: Page, Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and their infamous manager, Peter Grant.

"Why walk when you can soar..."

These are the opening words on Tracy Todd’s website and they are a powerful affirmation of the person Tracy is today – a sought-after inspirational speaker whose uplifting presentations have inspired and given hope to many people. But it is difficult to imagine what she has overcome in a tough and often lonely journey.

At the age of twenty-eight her life was turned upside down when a horrific road accident left her a quadriplegic, paralysed from the neck down. Her life as an athletic, marathon-running young mother and teacher was abruptly shattered. Despite months of rehabilitation, Tracy often found herself wondering if her life was worth living. Everything she had taken for granted was now beyond her reach and frustration at her helplessness threatened to overwhelm her. Against the odds, Tracy chose to live.

Her strength of character and determination prevailed and, sustained by the support of her son, family and friends, her care assistants, and an unbelievably caring community, she set about gaining the independence to rebuild her life and reclaim her identity – which she has done, with dignity and grace. Brave Lotus Flower Rides The Dragon is an honest, inspiring and engaging memoir in which Tracy’s natural warmth and humour are tangible and, most importantly, she embodies what the human spirit can achieve.

At just 17, Fatima Meer threw herself into resisting racism, her first public act of defiance in a long and pioneering political life. Despite assassination attempts, she persevered on the courageous path she had chosen.

In this intimate memoir, Fatima Meer shares her story of growing up and of love, joy, longing and loss. As Meer open-heartedly reflects on her regrets as well as her triumphs, an enchanting tale emerges of a rebellious, revolutionary woman who never shied away from the truth.

When leaders of the ANC were raided and arrested in Rivonia, South Africa in July 1963, AnnMarie Wolpe knew that her husband Harold - member of the banned movement and lawyer to Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others - would inevitably be imprisoned. Suddenly, alone with three children, one of them very ill, AnnMarie found herself at the heart of an intense political and social drama.

She smuggled a saw and files to Harold and helped him and three others in a dramatic prison escape. While Harold took flight to Dar-es-Salaam, via Swaziland, Botswana and Zaire, AnnMarie waited anxiously. Finally the news came Harold was safe. AnnMarie left for London, joined soon by Harold and later by the children. In London they made a new life for themselves until, after nearly thirty years in exile, they were able to return 'home' in 1991 with excitement and huge misgivings.

Telling for the first time the saga of the escape that made world headlines, and exploring the consequences of being the wife of a political figure, The Long Way Home is an extraordinary, gripping autobiography.

Redi Tlhabi, warm-hearted, charismatic and loved throughout South Africa is as well known for her 702 and Cape Talk radio show as she is for her TV performances and Sunday Times newspaper column. In this astonishing debut, Endings & Beginnings, she makes the painful journey back to her death-marred childhood, a journey in which she eventually finds peace and allows her demons to rest.

Redi grew up in the '80s in Orlando, Soweto, with thoughts and emotions so intense they nearly swallowed up her childhood. It was a time when Soweto was under siege from two forces - apartheid and endemic, normalized crime. It was not strange or unusual to refer to so-and-so as `the rapist' or so-and-so as `the killer'. It was also at this time that her father - her hero - was violently murdered, his body discovered on the street, with one eye removed. The perpetrators were never found, and the neighbourhood continued to talk about how he had to be buried without his eye. And then Redi meets Mabegzo: handsome, charming and smooth; Mabegzo, rumoured gangster, murderer and rapist, a veritable `jack-roller' of the neighbourhood. Against her family's wishes she develops a strong and sometimes uncomfortable attraction to him. Redi herself doesn't understand why she is drawn to Mabegzo and why, at eleven, she feels the way that she does for this man known to many as a menace. Then he too is found lying dead in a pool of blood, two years after the death of her father. Redi has to remind herself to stay sane.

Endings & Beginnings is Redi's quest to find out the truth about the circumstances surrounding her father's death. As an adult she visits his grave and decides to find the people that killed her father and ask them why. She also goes on a quest to finally humanise Mabegzo who was hated and abhorred by so many when he was alive. She visits and speaks to his family, friends and neighbours and pieces together the life of this man who came fleetingly through her life but whose presence she would feel for a long time to come

From the New York Times bestselling author of Return of the King comes the story of LeBron James's incredible transformation from basketball star to sports and business mogul.

With eight straight trips to the NBA Finals, LeBron James has proven himself one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan before him, LeBron has also become a global brand and businessman who has altered the way professional athletes think about their value, maximize their leverage, and use their voice. LeBron, Inc. tells the story of James's journey down the path to becoming a billionaire sports icon - his successes, his failures, and the lessons both have taught him along the way.

With plenty of newsmaking tidbits about his rollercoaster last season in Cleveland and high-profile move to the Lakers, LeBron, Inc. shows how James has changed the way most elite athletes manage their careers, and how he launched a movement among his peers that may last decades beyond his playing days.

The former Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison in the Trump White House provides a jaw-dropping look into the corruption and controversy of the current administration.

Few have been a member of Donald Trump’s inner orbit longer than Omarosa Manigault Newman. Their relationship has spanned fifteen years—through four television shows, a presidential campaign, and a year by his side in the most chaotic, outrageous White House in history. But that relationship has come to a decisive and definitive end, and Omarosa is finally ready to share her side of the story in this explosive, jaw-dropping account.

A stunning tell-all and takedown from a strong, intelligent woman who took every name and number, Unhinged is a must-read for any concerned citizen.

In 2016 South African film audiences were mesmerised by the film Noem My Skollie, which was written by - and based on the life of - John W. Fredericks. In this book Fredericks tells the full story on which the film was based.

Growing up in a dusty township on the Cape Flats, Fredericks formed a gang with his friends, and at the age of seventeen he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in Pollsmoor prison. There the number gangs vied to initiate him into their ranks, but he resisted their advances, offering instead to help them push their time by telling stories. And so he became the prison ‘cinema’, drawing on his storytelling abilities and cementing his ambition to become a writer.

Life after prison became a nightmare when he was arrested for a murder he hadn’t committed, his childhood friends were sentenced to die on the gallows, and a gang boss tried to kill him. Slowly he turned his life around, getting a job and building a family, but society kept judging him as a gangster. Struggling to deal with his past, he turned to storytelling again, and painstakingly learnt the art of scriptwriting. The result was Noem My Skollie, which was watched by almost 90 000 people and won numerous awards.

Written in a powerful and authentic voice, Skollie is a gripping memoir of life on the Cape Flats, of prison and gangs, and of one man’s struggle to survive all this by telling stories.

First published to international acclaim in 1996, The Seed Is Mine is a bold and innovative social history concerning the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa.

After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbours, employers, friends, and family – a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication – Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.

'Let me say to Mr Botha: apartheid is doomed! It has been condemned in the Councils of God, rejected by every nation on the planet and is no longer believed in by the people who gave it birth. Apartheid is the god that has failed.' So preached Bishop Peter Storey in 1986. Challenging apartheid wherever he could, he led the SA Methodist Church into what many whites saw as uncomfortable 'political' territory.

Join him in his inspiring journey from sailor-turned-minister to the South African Council of Churches leadership in its darkest hour, from tending to Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, through the forced removals of District Six and the storm surrounding Stompie Seipei's murder. I Beg to Differ spans a parish minister’s sorrows and joys, founding Life Line SA, the bombing of Khotso House and a close shave with death with Desmond Tutu. Storey shares the convictions that inspired him to minister amid the teargas, violence and intimidation of the apartheid regime.

In 1957 emigreer die negejarige Henk van Woerden vanaf Nederland met sy gesin na Kaapstad – leertas in die hand, mussie oor die ore, serp om die nek, glasoog in die oogkas. Eers veertig jaar later ontdek hy wat die rede was vir hierdie vertrek na Suid-Afrika: Sy pa was ’n kollaborateur in die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. Die emigrasie is die begin van ’n lewe as buitestaander en vorm later die goue draad in sy skilderye en literêre werk.

Koning Eenoog is ’n boeiende biografie van die ewig soekende emigrant Henk van Woerden (1947–2005), ’n skrywer wat nie net ’n bekroonde oeuvre agtergelaat het nie (Een mond vol glas – Alan Paton Award en die Frans Kellendonk-prys, Ultramarijn – Gouden Uil en Inktaap) maar ook die Nederlandse literatuur oor Suid-Afrika verander het.

In 2011 the world was shocked when the news broke that Joost van der Westhuizen, known for years as the golden boy of South African rugby and a former Springbok captain, had been diagnosed with motor neuron disease (MND).

This rare condition attacks the central nervous system, causing progressive disability. There is no known cure. All who have seen Joost in action will know that he is not one to give up without a fight. His game-changing prowess as a brilliant scrum half is now focused on a battle for survival and, more importantly, on making a difference to the lives of others with the disease. In a race against time, Joost has a dream to fulfil. He says: “In the beginning you go through all the emotions and you ask, ‘Why me?’ It’s quite simple. ‘Why not me?’ If I have to go through this to help future generations, why not me?” His acceptance of his symptoms is equally pragmatic: “One day you can’t move your arm, another day you don’t have speech. Every day you are reborn and you take the day as it comes.”

Glory Game – The Joost van der Westhuizen Story is a compelling narrative of redemption set against the backdrop of an illustrious career in rugby. It is the story of a modern-day warrior forced to face his own human frailty. Joost shows us that beyond ambition, success and fame lies the true wealth of family and friends, and that within a ravaged body the spirit can remain invincible.

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Gypsies. Mick Jagger. Drugs. Knitwear empire. Ralph Lauren. A few of the elements comprising the life of Hillary Rohde, once an ordinary girl from Cape Town. Hillary might be a mother, writer and avid gardener now, but she hasn't always lived an ordinary life. Hillary has spent her life pretty much on 'the other side'. If there is a back route, long route or detour, Hillary has taken it. In her appropriately titled memoir, The Other Side, Hillary tells her extraordinary life journey, with equal amounts of sparkle and drama.

Her journey is at times so unbelievable one might be inclined to think of it as fiction. Hillary's writing is as honest as it is unflinching. Her ability to draw the reader in is nothing short of spectacular. At the end of the book, you have sat on the sunny beaches of Formentera, experienced an opium high, met Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol, been a horse-riding gypsy, lived in the most isolated location in Scotland, and sold a knitwear empire. Throughout the journey, you'll want to either slap Hillary, give her a hug, or cheer her on. Hillary's is a story of adventure. A sense of incompleteness that makes you seek and find yourself, as she did. She will leave you inspired to undergo your own adventure.

This is the story of a South African girl who grew up to become a woman of the world. It is a tale of hope, as you discover that any dream is achievable. The Other Side is a message to all South Africans; a reminder that a bigger world lies beyond OR Tambo International - if you can find it.

Award winning novelist Karin Cronje has established herself as a fearless writer unafraid to expose issues usually considered off limits. There Goes English Teacher, which spans three years of adventures and misadventures as an English teacher in a small Korean village and later at a university, continues her pursuit of truth. This unusually honest memoir reflects amongst others, the nature of identity and the loss of it; sexuality; belief; ageing; displacement; belonging; and nationhood. Karin Cronje has a real talent for tongue-in-cheek observations of herself and her world. Her accounts of her own confusion and incomprehension as she navigates the collision of two cultures worlds apart are told with a mix of irony, pathos and humor. Yet underneath the lighthearted narration this intimate account shows how a disruption of the familiar can lead to fundamental change.

What further sets this memoir apart is that it is as close to first-hand as a reader may possibly ever get. Karin Cronje seldom allows us out of her head; she doesn’t give us anything like a travel writer’s perspective, a dispassionate description of landscape or exterior view. We inhabit this foreign place exactly as she did. Whilst in Korea, she completed a novel, which won the Jan Rabie/Rapport prize. She takes us with her through the various stages of writing it and we experience her internal processes that lead to an end she was unable to predict. Her return to South Africa poses unforeseen troubles. We are right there with her as she makes one disastrous and scandalous decision after another.

There Goes English Teacher is ultimately a celebration of the gifts the world has to offer while it entertains with a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes acerbic and ironic, but always humane voice. There are few South African memoirs that dig as deeply into what it means to be fully human. It is a compelling, moving story, unusually told and one that will not only linger long after finishing the book but will demand a second slower read to savour the writing.

In 2008, two broke art school graduates and their coder-whiz friend set up a platform that - in less than a decade - became the largest provider of accommodations in the world. Now valued at $30 billion, Airbnb is in the very top tier of Silicon Valley's 'unicorn' startups. Yet the company has not been without controversy - disrupting a $500 billion hotel industry makes you a few enemies.

This is also a story of regulators who want to shut it down, hotel industry leaders who want it to disappear and neighbourhoods that struggle with private homes open for public rental. But beyond the headlines and the horror stories, Airbnb has changed the terms of travel for a whole generation - where a sense of belonging has built trust between hosts and guests seeking a more original travel experience that hotels have struggled to replicate. This is the first, definitive book to tell the remarkable story behind Airbnb in all its forms - cultural zeitgeist, hotel disruptor, enemy to regulators - and the first in-depth character study of its leader Brian Chesky, the company's curious co-founder and CEO.

It reveals what got Airbnb where it is today, why they are nothing like Uber, and where they are going next.

Skollie, saint, scholar, hippest of hippies, imperfect musician with a perfect imagination, Syd Kitchen was, like all great artists, born to enrich his art and not himself.

Plagued by drugs, alcohol and depression, too much of an outlaw to be embraced by record companies, he frequently sold his furniture to cover production costs of his albums, seduced fans at concerts and music festivals worldwide with his dazzling ‘Afro-Saxon’ mix of folk, jazz, blues and rock interspersed with marvellously irreverent banter, and finally became the subject of several compelling documentaries, one of which - Fool in a Bubble - premiered in New York in 2010.

The twelve stories in this book, taken from Shaun Tomson's own life experiences in and out of the surfing world, offer the simple message "I will" as a model to face life's challenges and help you achieve your goals. All you need is to be encouraged to find your voice and commit yourself to positive values. The stories resonate with positivity and hope for the future, and are infused with the belief that even in the darkest time, light shines ahead to show you the way forward.

Shaun Tomson's impossibly handsome visage has long ago been carved deeply into the pantheon of surfing's elite. He need do nothing more than continue to surf Rincon well and make a few aloha-shirted public appearances now and then to stride off gloriously into surfing immortality. But in recent years, at least partially brought on by the devastating loss of his teenaged son Mathew, Tomson has waded into the world of inspirational writing and speaking, endeavoring to pass on the lessons he's learned from a life extraordinarily well-lived.

These stories will inspire you to believe in yourself and to believe in the power that each and every one of us has to shape our lives through the power of “I Will.”