’n Blik op die binnekring van die Krugersdorp-kultus

“Daar was bloedspatsels oor die koffietafel, die banke en die banke se kussings. Peter en Joan was oortrek van steekwonde in hul rûe, nekke en agterkoppe. Nicholas het sy pa en ma gesigte na onder in ’n bloedbad op die mat in die sitkamer gekry. Hulle het hul hek en huis vir hul moordenaars oopgemaak, want hulle het ’n afspraak met hulle gehad.”

Elf wrede moorde oor ’n tydperk van vier jaar ruk die gemeenskap van Krugersdorp en haal landwyd nuusopskrifte. Eindelik word al hierdie moorde verbind met Cecilia Steyn en haar kultusgroep, Electus per Deus (uitverkies deur God). Lede van die groep aanbid die grond waarop Cecilia loop en sal selfs vir haar moord pleeg.

Die moordenaars is slim, gewone mense – ’n onderwyseres, ’n finansiële makelaar, ’n kind wat tussen die moorde deur steeds ses onderskeidings in matriek behaal en boonop keuring kry om medies te gaan studeer. Hul slagoffers het bloot ’n sake- afspraak nagekom, min wetend dat dít ’n afspraak met die dood was.

Wie is Cecilia Steyn? Hoe kan een mens vyf ander manipuleer om moord te pleeg en namens haar in die hof te lieg? Watter rol het Satanisme gespeel? Hoe ontduik onervare misdadigers die polisie vir so lank?

Jana Marx beantwoord dié en ander vrae in ’n waremisdaad-verhaal wat gelei het tot een van die opspraakwekkendste moordsake in die land se geskiedenis.

Met behulp van onderhoude uit diegene in die binnekring, hofgetuienis en polisiedossiere oor ’n tydperk van vier jaar poog Marx om die publiek se vrae te antwoord en ’n blik te gee op die binnewerkinge van só ’n kultus.

Holding My Breath is a candid, heart-breaking and very funny memoir of life in one of Johannesburg’s busiest emergency rooms. Biccard’s warmth and humanity shine through the often harrowing tale, creating an unputdownable, uplifting and inspiring book.

The first customer today reports that, the previous night, his right nipple had moved away from its usual location. He noticed its absence when he looked in the mirror and later found it in his armpit.

‘Wow,’ I say with a slight frown. I have never heard of a migrating nipple before. ‘Let’s have a look.’ I slide the door shut and motion to him to pull his T-shirt off.

‘Oh, it has moved back now,’ he says.

Mteto Nyati knew as a schoolboy in Mthatha, working at his mother’s store, that he wanted to fix and build things. After completing his studies at Natal University, he turned down a Rhodes scholarship and headed for Jo'burg to take up a position at Afrox. He was the only black engineer and the advice he received was ‘don’t mess up’. 

He didn’t and today is one of South Africa’s top CEOs. This is his inspirational story. 

The explosive new book from longtime royal journalist Omid Scobie and author of the international blockbuster Finding Freedom, Endgame a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy.

An unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a queen willing to go to great lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family.

Queen Elizabeth II’s death ruptured the already-fractured foundations of the House of Windsor – and dismantled the protective shield around it. With an institution long plagued by incidents involving antiquated ideas around race, class and money, the monarchy and those who prop it up are now exposed and at odds with a rapidly modernizing world.

Relying on his vast experience as a royal reporter and over a decade of conversations and interviews with current and former Palace staff, trusted friends of the royals and even the family members themselves, Scobie pulls back the curtain on an institution in turmoil to show what the monarchy must change in order to survive.

This is the monarchy’s endgame. Do they have what it takes to save it?

Dana Snyman deel in Seun die deel van sy storie waaroor hy nog nooit gepraat het nie: sy ervaringe in die 1980’s. Dit is die tyd van PW Botha se vinger, van die Voëlvry-toer, AWB-saamtrekke, onderhandelinge en die laaste dae van diensplig. Dana word oneervol ontslaan uit die weermag, maar eers maak hy ’n draai in Saal 24. Werkloos en doelloos eindig hy in ’n gewese bediendekamer in Pretoria. Dié rou, selfonthullende memoir vra: hoe word ’n seun ’n man? Met Seun neem Dana lesers in sy vertroue.

On the face of it, life looks good for Sara-Jayne. She’s a popular radio personality, a bestselling author and she’s recently been reunited with her long-lost father, nearly 40 years after she was given up for adoption as a baby. Best of all, she’s just found out she’s about to become a mother, with Enver, the ‘love of her life’.

She's convinced that she’s finally heading towards her "happily ever after". But six weeks after discovering she’s pregnant, Enver relapses on heroin and disappears, leaving Sara-Jayne devastated. She checks into The Clinic, where despite the little life growing inside her, she realises she’s never felt more alone.

In her much-anticipated follow up to the bestseller Killing Karoline, Sara-Jayne is now forced, for the sake of her unborn child, to find a way to save herself. But first she has to unravel why everyone always leaves her. Why like that song she's always looking for love in all the wrong places? And why she is so obsessed with mad, bad love?

The perfect match. Or so she thinks. Her warmth and empathy. His charisma and ambition. Yet, Cathy feels safer teaching battle-scarred gangsters in a prison classroom than at home with her own partner.

By day she walks on eggshells. At night she sleeps on the backseat of her car. Her safe place is an all-night roadhouse; her best friend, her journal. The slow boil intensifies until, one day, Cathy finds her grandmother’s armoire smashed to pieces in her bedroom, a hammer on the floor, her life in splinters beside it.

Part memoir, part inspiration, Boiling A Frog Slowly is unflinching in its confrontation of abuse and utterly courageous in its portrayal of redemption.

‘Untamed will liberate women - emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal.’ (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love)

Who were you before the world told you who to be?

Part inspiration, part memoir, Untamed explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us. From the beloved New York Times bestselling author, speaker and activist Glennon Doyle.

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There. She. Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high but soon she realised they had come to her from within. This was the voice she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions and social conditioning. Glennon decided to let go of the world’s expectations of her and reclaim her true untamed self.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanising wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is also the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honour our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts.

Untamed shows us how to be brave. And, as Glennon insists, 'The braver we are, the luckier we get.'

A candid account of Patricia Schonstein’s creative, deeply lived life as a novelist.

Annotated with extracts from her writings, this generous memoir welcomes you behind the scenes, into her Workshop and Costumery.

She shows how her own life configures with the scaffolding of her fictions; how characters take up roles both archetypal and simple to tackle existential questions; and how urban landscapes and wilderness serve as the neon-spangled theatres of her story telling.

When Robert and Michael, a pair of starry-eyed twins see a Boeing 707 at an airport in the mid-1960s, it’s love at first sight.

But who's going to one day pay for their dream to work in aviation? This is apartheid South Africa. Coloured boys can't eat alongside white people, let alone jet off to Paris and study aeronautical engineering!

But in high school they discover an unlikely aptitude for French. Armed with scholarships, they head off to Paris and their once ordinary lives are changed forever.

Mzuzephi Mathebula, also known as Jan Note and later as Nongoloza, founded the Umkhosi Wezi-ntaba (Regiment of the Hills), forerunner of the notorious "28" gang. He became known as the King of Nineveh, a man who sought social justice, paradoxically, through antisocial means. Nongoloza's story is also the story of South Africa's violent and racially accentuated past and, to an extent, provides clarification for the criminality that afflicts the present-day society.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over. Van Onselen’s insightful biography tells the story of how a young man became a hardened criminal as the result of a minor incident.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over.

In a telegram dated 29 April 1963, thirty-year-old Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker thanks André Brink, a young novelist of twenty-eight, for flowers and a letter he sent her. In the more than two hundred letters that followed this telegram, one of South African literature’s most famous love affairs unfolds. Jonker’s final letter to Brink is dated 18 April 1965. She drowned herself in the ocean at Three Anchor Bay three months later.

More than fifty years on, this poignant, often stormy relationship still grips readers’ imaginations.

In December 2014, three months before his death on 6 February 2015, André Brink offered these never-before-seen letters, as well as personal photographs, for publication.

Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, pathologically driven, stubborn as hell. But this is his bestselling real story... Humble Pie tells the full story of how he became the world's most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother's heroin addiction and his failed first career as a footballer: all of these things have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about: his tough childhood: his father's alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings, his first career as a footballer: how the whole family moved to Scotland when he was signed by Glasgow Rangers at the age of fifteen, and how he coped when his career was over due to injury just three years later, his brother's heroin addiction. Gordon's early career: learning his trade in Paris and London; how his career developed from there: his time in Paris under Albert Roux and his seven Michelin-starred restaurants. Kitchen life: Gordon spills the beans about life behind the kitchen door, and how a restaurant kitchen is run in Anthony Bourdain-style. How he copes with the impact of fame on himself and his family: his television career, the rapacious tabloids, and his own drive for success.

Jewish Women who rock. Stories that inspire. Illustrations that pop.

If you loved the bestselling Goodnight stories for Rebel Girls series, you will love Goodnight Golda!

Here are 32 Jewish women who have shaped Jewish history and the Jewish mindset. Some use their wits, other their looks, some their talent, others their perspective. They are the trailblazers, achievers, visionaries and preservers of faith that have shaped our reality, and on whose shoulders we, as young (and not so young) 21st Century Jewish (and other) women, stand.

The women featured range from biblical (Yael and Ester) and history-makers (Anne Frank and Hannah Senesh) to contemporary voices (like Sivan Yaári and Donna Karan) and visionary/activists (like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sarah Schenirer), and hail from across the world - from Portugal to USA, UK to Poland, Israel to South Africa, Ethiopia to Canada.

Each heroine has a short biography and entertaining story on how they changed their world and ours. Each heroine has her own gorgeous illustration – contemporary, vivid and fun. This is a book for the future heroines of the Jewish people, and beyond.

There are many miles from the business school and basketball court at the University of Southern California to 50 million viewers for the final episode of a TV show called Magnum P.I. Tom Selleck has lived every one of those miles in his own iconoclastic and joyful way.

Frank, funny and open-hearted, You Never Know is an intimate memoir from a beloved actor, the story of a remarkable life and thoroughly accidental career. Journey to the top in Hollywood, learn of his mistakes and his well-earned success. Selleck clears up an armload of misconceptions and shares never-told stories. His rambunctious California childhood. His clueless arrival as a good-looking college jock in Hollywood (from the Dating Game to the Fox New Talent Program to co-starring with Mae West). What it was like to emerge as a mega-star in his mid-thirties and remain so for decades to come, an actor whose ease on screen connected with audiences worldwide, while redefining the clichés of manhood.

In You Never Know, Selleck recounts his personal friendships with a vivid army of A-listers, everyone from Frank Sinatra to Carol Burnett to Sam Elliott, paying special tribute to his mentor James Garner of The Rockford Files, who believed, like Selleck, that TV protagonists are far more interesting when they have rough edges. He tips his hat to the American western and the scruffy band of actors, directors and other ruffians who helped define that classic genre, where Selleck has repeatedly found a happy home. Magnum fans will be fascinated to learn how Selleck put his career on the line to make Thomas Magnum a more imperfect hero and explains why he walked away from a show that could easily have gone on for years longer.

Hollywood is never easy, even for stars who make it look that way. Selleck explains how he’s struggled to balance his personal and professional lives, frequently adjusting his career to protect his family’s privacy and normalcy. His journey offers a truly fresh perspective on a changing industry and a changing world. Beneath all the charm, talent, and self-deprecating humor, this memoir reveals an American icon who reached remarkable heights through authenticity.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.

Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

Long Walk To Freedom is his moving autobiography, in which he tells the extraordinary story of his life - an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph!

Telling the story of their lives from children to modern day, this fascinating and revelatory new book will look at the fraught relationship (and fiery rivalry) between King Charles and Prince Andrew.

Raised for vastly different futures, one burdened with the responsibility of becoming the future king and the other destined to live in his shadow, Charles and Andrew have spent their lives on different sides of the same coin.

War of the Windsors tells, for the first time, the complete story of Charles and Andrew from their diverging childhoods to their current struggles. It looks at the distinct but overlapping stories of the two heirs, from being separated in their early years and the Queen's supposed overindulgence of Andrew to the competition for Lady Diana and finally, Charles' ascension to throne while his brother is stripped of Royal duties. And it explores whether, with the scandals around Andrew still fresh in public memory, Charles will ever let his brother back into the family.

With extensive research and expert sourcing, War of the Windsors is the incredible inside story of a family in turmoil. Recounting the highs and lows of a brotherhood then turned into a rivalry, royal author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne looks at the makings of a decades long feud and questions whether, ultimately, the brothers will one day band together again.

Martha Solomons is a simple woman, the daughter of a freed slave. Harry Grey is a priest from the British aristocracy, sent to the Cape Colony of the mid-nineteenth century because of bad behaviour. In the rugged Namaqualand their paths cross and a bond of love develops that stays with them throughout the contrasting landscapes of their lives.

Based on the lives of Martha Solomons and Harry Grey, this fascinating story was first published in Afrikaans, and was runner-up for the MNet-Jan Rabie Literary Award. Elsa Silke's masterful translation retains the spirit and the essence of the era in which this historical novel is set.

To celebrate her 14-year clean and sober birthday, Ferguson organises to take a R3.2 million Ferrari California out on a test drive for the day. Twenty minutes before she returns the car, she is involved in a spectacular car crash, during which she experiences a near-death collision.

The crash is a catalyst for a series of life-changing events. Over the following months her long-term relationship implodes in a heart-ripping showdown of betrayal and deception. She is faced with a litany of legal and financial nightmares as a result of the Ferrari being written off, while certain members of the dog-eat-dog motoring journo industry relish in her downfall. “The thing is that any fool should have been able to see that I was traumatised. Finding a Dutch lesbian in your man’s bed, writing off a R3.2-million Ferrari, hardly sleeping for a year, facing the chop at work, watching your recent Ex-Boyfriend’s penis snap, plus writing a book about a stump-legged, murder-accused athlete … Well, hello! Who wouldn’t feel a tad fucking out of control?”

After she admits herself to a clinic to address her meltdown, in her trademark gritty tell-it-all and often hilarious style, she interrogates the controversial pharma-whore psychiatric industry as she is diagnosed and medicated over her three-week stay. Ultimately Crashed sees Ferguson slowly coming to grips with the meaninglessness of outward material success as she embarks on a painful journey of introspection in search of intangible inner peace and self love in a crazy out of control world. It’s South Africa’s very own The Girl (Monk) Who Crashed (Sold) her (his) Ferrari.

Crashed is the highly anticipated final installment of the 3-part memoir trilogy, following in the steps of her South African bestsellers Smacked (2005) and Hooked (2010).

Die daggaplant (Cannabis sativa) word al vir duisende jare gebruik. Dit is, inderdaad, ’n baie nuttige plant om materiaal en toue mee te vervaardig. Dit is egter die bekendste vir die psigotropiese effekte van dagga se aktiewe bestanddeel, tetrahidrokannabinol (THC).

Die kwessie oor of dagga verslawend is, is nog nie heeltemal duidelik nie. Baie navorsing word gedoen om korrekte en interessante inligting vir gebruikers, hul naasbestaandes, handelaars en almal wat oor dagga wonder, beskikbaar te stel.

Hierdie handleiding bring die leser op datum met alles wat ons weet aangaande dagga. Slegs wanneer al die feite op die tafel is, is dit sinvol om ’n opinie oor hierdie wonderlike plant te waag.

In general, lives of noteworthy accomplishment are led by people with an obvious talent, or more than one. Occasionally, though, someone with no discernible gift whatsoever may distinguish him or herself with a remarkable life. Such cases invite the question of how? How did it happen? With age I have realised that mine is such a life, and, inevitably, I have asked that question. It may happen in cases like this that, as one searches for an answer, one looks for precedents: or even for gifts not inherent in oneself but from outside. I did neither: it came to me unbidden. As I sang, the lines in the hymn resonated so powerfully I could not get away from them: ‘As noiseless let Thy blessings fall as fell Thy manna down.’ That was it. Unobtrusively I had been blessed – again and again and again.

A dozy, unsocialised child follows a boringly ordinary course through life until gradually things start to work out for him in increasingly extraordinary ways. The only prize I ever won at school was the Natural History Prize, no academic accolades or colours for any sport. I was rewarded for loving undemanding nature; almost a non-prize. Nearly fifty years later, in a small town I had never visited before I was introduced to the author of a slim volume on the geography of the area. “Not THE Nick Norman,” she asked. I might have blushed. In 1987, aged 42 I had married, and gone on to father two children, one now a top lawyer, the other on a similar trajectory in medicine. Having dreamt of being a farmer, I owned a farm in Franschhoek, which put me in about the most envied group of people in South Africa. After a successful career in mineral exploration in Africa and South America I turned my hand to writing about geology in a way accessible to lay readers. Three best-sellers followed. The Red Sea opened up and the River Jordan stopped flowing, for the Israelites to reach their land of milk and honey. In between, though, there were 40 years in the wilderness.

This is my narrative. Yours will be different. Unpack it and you will find blessing after blessing. See how I found mine.

For sixteen years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany and at the forefront of European and international politics. In her memoir, she looks back on her life in two German states―East Germany until 1990, and reunified Germany thereafter. How did she, coming from the East, rise to the top of the Christian Democratic Union to become the first woman to hold the office of chancellor? And how did she then become one of the most powerful heads of government in the Western world? What guided her?

In Freedom, Angela Merkel recounts daily life in the chancellor’s office as well as the dramatic days and nights when she made far-reaching decisions in Berlin, Brussels, and beyond. She traces the long lines of change in international cooperation and reveals the pressure politicians face when seeking solutions to complex problems in a globalized world. Here, she takes us behind the scenes of international politics, demonstrating both the importance of personal conversations and, crucially, their limits.

Reflecting on politics in a time of increasing confrontation and division, Angela Merkel’s memoir offers a unique insight into the inner workings of power―and is a determined and timely plea for freedom.

The Springbok rugby captain, over more than a century, has represented many things to many South Africans. He has united, and he has divided. He has thrilled, he has disappointed. He has inspired, he has disheartened. He has triumphed, he has failed. But he has always had an impact.

In this revealing narrative, Edward Griffiths and Stephen Nell depict the men who have been able to call themselves ‘Springbok Captain’ through their backgrounds, triumphs and disappointments. Relive the heyday of rugby legends Bennie Osler, Danie Craven, Hennie Muller, Johan Claassen, Naas Botha, Francois Pienaar, Gary Teichmann, Joost van der Westhuizen, Andre Vos and others.

Now fully updated with the accounts of Bobby Skinstad, Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers, The Springbok Captains is the epic story that lies at the heart of South African rugby.

Reflecting Rogue is the much anticipated and brilliant collection of experimental autobiographical essays on power, pleasure and South African culture by Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola, author of the bestelling Rape: A South African Nightmare.

In her most personal book to date, written from classic Gqola anti-racist, feminist perspectives, Reflecting Rogue delivers fourteen essays of deliciously incisive brain food, all extremely accessible to a general critical readership, without sacrificing intellectual rigour.

Nick Compton had it all. A literal golden boy, to many observers it would seem that he was born to be a great in the sporting arena coming as he did from an incredible sporting ancestry.

His grandfather Sir Denis Compton played cricket for England and football for Arsenal. Honed at an elite English boarding school, with a telegenic profile perfectly suited to the modern media environment, Nick appeared to be blessed with that rare ability to be able to stride out and face down the world's quickest bowlers, to survive and thrive in the danger zone at the hands of the hurtling new ball. However, greatness in any field comes at a price and this memoir explores the almost 'Faustian pact' he made in order to secure that time in the sun.

It will show what 'Mistress Cricket' demanded from Nick as his side of that bargain.

The family he left behind, the failed relationships both personal and professional and the utter physical and mental exhaustion which resulted from his drive to stay at the top.