In ’n pragtige plattelandse dorpie ontvou ’n ondenkbare tragedie. Deveney Nel, ’n talentvolle 16-jarige, se lewe eindig skielik, en die gemeenskap, saam met die res van die land, is geruk. Julian Jansen, skrywer van topverkoperboeke soos Moord op Stellenbosch, het as misdaadverslaggewer vir Rapport van die begin af oor die saak geskryf. Hy benut sy uitgebreide kontakte binne die polisie, sowel as onderhoude met vriende en familie om die gebeure te rekonstrueer en om Deveney Nel te eer.

Uncooperative animals, underperforming crops, and rather less than best-laid plans pursued with unbridled enthusiasm. Clarkson’s farm is the gift that keeps on giving.

But, as one overseas visitor* admitted, he only came to Diddly Squat because he just didn’t believe that Jeremy could be so incompetent.

Not one to be discouraged, however, our hero decides to bring his misunderstood entrepreneurial flair to bear on a new venture: a pub. And just a few short weeks later, the doors open on The Farmer’s Dog.

All British produce, Hawkstone beer on tap, a private bar for farmers and a vintage tractor hanging from the ceiling. The perfect country pub. A welcome distraction from sustainable farming initiatives, psychedelic wheat, angry protests in central London and a headbutting goat.

What, you may be asking, could possibly go wrong?

On top of the lavatories packing up and the electricity running out, you mean? As the Cotwolds’ newest publican quickly discovers, there’s a lot more to landlording than pulling pints.

Just as well, then, that he still has Lisa, Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald to help him through. Especially now his doctor’s told him he’s got to become a vegetablist …

*along with the whole of the rest of China, apparently

On 23 August 2021, a quiet, hardworking single mom was shot down in a hail of bullets as she drove home. Her name was Babita Deokaran, chief accountant at Tembisa Hospital. The izinkabi paid to kill her were caught, but the question remained: who ordered her murder, and why? Crime reporter Jeff Wicks set out to find the answer – a pursuit that would profoundly change, even endanger, his life. This is an explosive investigation into state capture and a moving tribute to the cost of integrity.

At the pinnacle of motorsports, a humble young man from Stevenage, England has risen to become the most dominant and influential Formula One driver of his time. This authoritative biography follows Hamilton's pathway from his early days karting on local tracks to the glitz and pressure of the Formula One circuit. Along the way, we witness Hamilton's single-minded determination to reach the top, even as he challenged racial barriers and opposition at every turn. His triumph over adversity is all the more inspiring given Hamilton's pioneering role in making motorsports accessible to marginalized communities.

Beyond his unparalleled on-track exploits - leveling the record books held by the legendary Michael Schumacher – Hamilton has used his platform to advocate for social justice, environmental sustainability, and diversity. Hamilton has emerged as a voice of moral clarity, leveraging his fame to push Formula One and global sports to be a force for positive change.

As Hamilton nears the twilight of his racing career, this book examines his lasting legacy. From shattering stereotypes to inspiring new generations of motor enthusiasts, Hamilton's impact extends far beyond just his championship trophies. The book culminates with Hamilton's potential final act - chasing a record-setting 8th world title at the wheel of the iconic Ferrari team, the ultimate validation of his greatness.

Captain Jonathan Morris, the Confessor Cop, used empathy to extract confessions from even the toughest criminals. With a 99% success rate, his cases, from catching serial killer Jimmy Maketta to investigating the Sizzler’s Massacre, earned him the respect of prosecutors and profilers. In this memoir, Michael Behr explores Morris’s high-profile investigations and personal struggles, revealing the man behind the badge in a gripping blend of true crime and personal story.

Kaizer Nyatsumba, renowned journalist and commentator turned senior business executive, tells his remarkable story of transition and integrity. From his birth in poverty on a farm at White River in Mpumalanga, to his studies at the University of Zululand, Georgetown University in the United States and the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, becoming a journalist and newspaper editor, and finally a senior business executive on listed and non-listed companies in South Africa.

This is a story of a simple idea that turned into a global movement. This is the story of parkrun, told for the very first time from the man who started it all.

Growing up in the brutal care system of South Africa, Paul Sinton-Hewitt had a lonely, difficult childhood. Yet he found solace in running – a simple pleasure that taught him resilience and offered a young boy a sense of self-worth.

With dogged determination, Paul built a stable family life for himself and eventually settled in the UK. But by 2004 he was struggling to hold it all together. He’d lost the successful career he’d worked so hard for, his marriage had broken down, and now a devastating injury threatened to cut him off from the running club which had been a lifeline.

In search of connection and purpose, Paul came up with a simple idea. He would start a weekly time trial run every Saturday morning in his local park. There would be no winners or losers, it would always be free and Paul would be there every week – even on Christmas Day – whether or not anyone else came. Little did he know that from just thirteen runners on that first Saturday, parkrun would grow into a 10 million strong community across five continents. Twenty years on parkrun continues to grow, bringing together people from all walks of life in search of health, happiness and community.

Filled with hope and optimism, One Small Step is a powerful affirmation of how coming together in simple ways can change our own lives and might even change the world.

Julian Jansen, author of bestselling true crime books like The De Salze Murders, tells the Devené Nel story.

As Rapport’s crime reporter, Julian Jansen has written about the case from the start. He draws on his extensive contacts in the police and interviews with friends and family to reconstruct the events leading to the tragedy, and to honour the murdered young girl. He also investigates the failures of the state and draws lessons on how it can be prevented from happening again.

In her first-ever memoir, Knowles presents a celebration of feminism, identity and pursuing your dreams.

To understand the icons Beyonce, Solange and Kelly, you have to understand where they came from... A deeply personal and revelatory memoir by Ms Tina Knowles - as you've never seen her before.

Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyonce Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: the woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that.

For the first time ever, Tina Knowles shares her remarkable story in Matriarch. A life of grief and tragedy, love and heartbreak, the nurturing of her superstar daughters - and the perseverance and audacity it takes for a girl from Galveston, Texas to change the world.

This intimate and revealing memoir is a multigenerational family saga and a celebration of the wisdom that women, mothers and daughters pass on to each other across generations.

A glorious chronicle of a life like none other and a testament to the world-changing power of Black motherhood.

Dr Franklin Sonn is a struggle icon, diplomat, educationalist and business leader.

He was born in the Vosburg district of Victoria West. As a civil rights campaigner, he was arrested for leading a protest march in 1989. He later served as rector of the (Cape) Peninsula Technikon and as head of the Cape Teachers' Professional Association. He was a good friend and confidant of Nelson Mandela.

In 1995, Madiba asked him to be South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, USA. Sonn celebrated his 85th birthday on 11 October 2024.

For decades, Amy ran. Through the dirt roads of Amarillo, Texas, where she grew up; to the streets of New York, where she built her adult life; through marriage, motherhood, and a thriving career. To outsiders, it all looked, in many ways, perfect. But Amy was running from something – a secret she was keeping not only from her family and friends, but unconsciously from something terrible in her past.
 
When her ten-year-old daughter confronts her on the distance between them, Amy is propelled to confront what she has spent a lifetime trying to escape. So begins Amy’s journey through the world of MDMA-assisted psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and ultimately, home to Texas, where her story began.
 
In her relentless search for the truth, Griffin scrutinises the pursuit of perfectionism, control, and maintaining appearances that drives so many women. She asks the question: When, in our path from girlhood to womanhood, did we learn to look outside ourselves for validation? And what kind of freedom is possible if we better protect girls from being taken advantage of on this journey.
 
Heartbreaking, powerful and raw, The Tell points a way forward for all of us, shedding light on the courage and power of truth-telling that’s required to move through trauma.

On a defining evening of the 1980s, Donald Trump hosted celebrities and high rollers in a Jersey Shore town to witness 21-year-old Mike Tyson knock out Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds, earning more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics combined.

Only eight years earlier, Tyson, a troubled child from Brooklyn, was taken under the wing of boxing legend Cus D’Amato in upstate New York. Their story of mutual redemption captivated novelists, screenwriters, and the emerging cable TV industry. Tyson became HBO’s leading man long before Tony Soprano.

Despite the immense success, Tyson's story was more complex and darker than it appeared. Over the decades, he has been villainized, lionized, and fetishized―but never fully humanized until now. Acclaimed biographer Mark Kriegel, who first encountered Tyson as a young reporter, explores Tyson's life through what he survived rather than whom he knocked out.

Tyson, often compared to Jack Dempsey, was more akin to Sonny Liston―Black, feared, and expected to die young. What made Liston a pariah made Tyson a touchstone for a generation influenced by hip hop and gunfire. Kriegel captures not just Tyson’s rise but his profound impact on the American psyche.

The long-awaited memoir of legendary Lionel Richie

As a storyteller second to none, Lionel Richie is ready to tell it all. In this intimate, deeply candid memoir, Lionel revisits hilarious and harrowing events to inspire all who doubt themselves or feel their dreams don’t matter. Lionel chronicles lessons learned during his unlikely story of remarkable success—his dramatic transformation from painfully shy, 'tragically' late bloomer to world-class entertainer and composer of love songs that have played as the soundtrack of our lives.

Funny, warm and riveting, Lionel recalls his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he grew up on its university campus during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, raucous adventures as a member of The Commodores, coming-of-age in late 1960s Harlem, culture shock playing gigs on the French Riviera, the big break of being signed to Motown, his meteoric solo career that included an Olympics performance witnessed by two billion around the globe, all the way through to writing and recording 'We Are the World' and his current multi-generational fame as a judge on American Idol. Even with its turbulence, loss, and near-calamity, Lionel’s journey takes us on a thrill ride and delivers a memoir for the ages—reminding us of the power of love to elevate our own lives and our world.

Lionel Richie’s memoir includes three eight-page photo inserts.

‘Sharing food is one of the purest human acts'

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.

In What I Ate in One Year, Tucci records twelve months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.

‘Nozipho’s story shows how all our experiences are rehearsals getting us ready for the big stages of life. It’s a wonderful piece of work!’ – Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former Deputy President of South Africa

When the flames of life’s challenges have swept through you, who do you become from the ashes?

Nozipho Tshabalala is a high-performing, excellence-driven, successful black woman. Being in control of everything in her life was crucial to her survival and success. For the most part, it had always served her well – until it didn’t.

In this captivating and deeply personal memoir, conversation strategist Nozipho invites you into her world – one shaped by political violence, professional triumphs on global stages and the intimate battles with loss that would test her most fundamental beliefs. Now in her 40s, she has realised that what she needed most to survive may not be what she needs to thrive.

After the Fires is a call to reclaim the narrative amid life’s unexpected turns. It honours the complexity of womanhood while celebrating the possibility of becoming exactly who you were meant to be, even when that person looks nothing like what you imagined.

With vulnerability and wisdom, Nozipho demonstrates how surrender becomes not an act of defeat but a pathway to freedom. Her story reminds us that sometimes our greatest strength lies not in holding tighter but in opening our hands to release what no longer serves us.

In this poignant memoir, Lesley Lysaght unravels the complex tapestry of her childhood in colonial Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. At its heart is Silas, the man she called Sekuru—grandfather—who cared for her as a child and shaped her worldview.

Separated by war and politics, Lesley spends decades searching for Silas across continents. Her journey weaves through Zimbabwe’s tumultuous history, from white minority rule to independence and beyond.

More than a personal quest, Sekuru is a meditation on love that transcends racial boundaries, the lasting impacts of colonialism, and the power of human connection. As Lesley reconciles her privileged upbringing with her evolving understanding of injustice, she grapples with questions of identity, belonging, and responsibility.

Lyrical and introspective, Sekuru offers a unique perspective on family, race relations, and the enduring bonds that define us.

A majestic biography of two young geniuses who merged their talents to create one of the greatest bodies of music in history.

John & Paul begins in 1957, when two teenagers in suburban Liverpool meet and decide to play rock n'roll together. It ends twenty-three years later, when one of them is murdered. In between, we see them become global stars, create countless indelible songs, and play a central role in shaping the modern world.

Lennon and McCartney were more than friends, rivals or collaborators. They were intimates who both had the fabric of their world ruptured at a young age, and who longed to make emotional connections; with each other, and with audiences. The pop song was a vessel into which they poured feelings of grief and euphoria and everything in between. When they couldn't speak what they felt, they sang it. After the break-up of their group, they maintained a musical dialogue at a distance, in songs full of recrimination, regret, and affection.

Ian Leslie traces the twists and turns of their relationship through the music it produced and offers rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration and human connection. Drawing on recently released footage and recordings, this is a startlingly fresh take on two of the greatest icons in music history.

Leslie's majestic and wildly enjoyable biography will make us see and hear Lennon and McCartney anew.

For over three decades, the remarkable story of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Special Operations Unit has remained largely untold. Formed under the direct command of ANC president Oliver Tambo and senior ANC and SACP leader Joe Slovo, this elite unit executed some of the most daring and high-profile attacks against the apartheid state in the 1980s. From the spectacular 1980 Sasol bombings to the 1987 attack at the Wits Command, Special Ops was at the forefront of the armed struggle, targeting strategic economic and military sites with precision and determination.

In this groundbreaking book, the history of Special Ops is brought to life through the voices of its surviving participants. Based on interviews with 48 individuals, this oral history offers an intimate and comprehensive look at the unit's operations, challenges, and achievements. Also drawing from press reports, TRC records and official documents, the narrative provides a balanced assessment of the political context, role, and significance of Special Ops within the broader ANC-led national liberation struggle. Attacking the Heart of Apartheid is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle, the dynamics of armed resistance, and the power of collective action in the pursuit of justice and equality.

In the style of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings, filmmaker Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America.

Jill Damatac left the United States in 2015 after living there as an undocumented immigrant with her family for twenty-two years. America was the only home she knew, where invisibility had become her identity and where poverty, domestic violence, ill health, and xenophobia were everyday experiences.

First traveling to her native Philippines, Damatac eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge, fully investigate her roots, and process what happened to her and her family. After nine years, she was granted British citizenship, and returned to the United States, for the first time without fear of deportation or retribution.

Damatac weaves together forgotten colonial history and long-buried Indigenous tradition, taking us through her time in America, and cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, and belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food can answer them.

Juliet Prowse was a young South African dancer who burst into the international spotlight in her first Hollywood movie. Considered talented and exotic, she caught the media’s attention and her engagement to Frank Sinatra fuelled their fascination further. But was it true love and what did Sinatra make of Juliet’s relationship with Elvis during G.I. Blues?

Unhappy with 20th Century Fox, Juliet broke out of her contract, created her own company and became one of the highest paid dancers of her era. While Juliet won awards for Sweet Charity in Las Vegas and London, opening on Broadway seemed to be elusive. Juliet continued to build her world-class modern dance company, winning Female Entertainer of the Year in Las Vegas three times with competition from Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine. By the mid-1970s, she was on a $1 million contract as a Desert Inn Million Dollar Baby. Considered a triple threat, Juliet featured on the international stage for over four decades.

This story is personal. Told by Juliet’s niece, it includes Juliet’s words from letters written to her mother, family anecdotes and amusing insights from those who worked with Juliet. With her endless legs and playful charm, Juliet had many romances and married actor John McCook of The Bold and the Beautiful. But in her search for love and professional fulfilment, could she accomplish it all?

An intimate and revelatory biography of Yoko Ono from bestselling author of Beautiful Boy

David Sheff met Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1980 when conducting an in-depth interview with them just months before John’s murder. In the aftermath, Sheff and Yoko became close friends as she rebuilt her life, survived threats and continued creating groundbreaking art and music. Drawing from their decades-long friendship and interviews with Yoko, her family, close friends and collaborators, Sheff shares the story of one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived.

Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo and her harrowing experience as a child during WW2 to her arrival in the avant-garde art scenes of London, Tokyo and New York. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history.

So often remembered only for her impact on The Beatles, Yoko has been caricatured as an opportunistic seductress or manipulative impostor. Yoko delves into her life as an artist, musician, feminist and activist, reframing her incredible achievements independent of Lennon.

Yoko is a harrowing, moving, propulsive and vastly entertaining biography of a woman whose story has never been accurately told. It highlights Ono’s incredible talent and acknowledges her as a true artistic icon.

In the heart of a village untouched by the world’s chaos, five-year-old Popina took solace in the simple joys of childhood – climbing mango trees, chasing baby baboons, and exploring the fields. But her innocence was shattered in an instant when a group of strangers invaded the village, bringing with them a terror that a young girl could never have imagined.
 
The Smallest Ones  is a harrowing and powerful account of survival and resilience in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in the early 2000s. Popina, her family and friends were captured by rebel soldiers and were subjected to torture and rape. After several years of captivity, Popina and her older sister managed to escape, and began an epic journey all the way to South Africa. But even there, their nightmare was not over.
 
Written with raw emotion and unflinching honesty,  The Smallest Ones  takes readers on a journey through the darkest corners of human experience, yet it is also a testament to the enduring power of hope and the will to survive. This is not just a story of tragedy, but a poignant exploration of the human spirit’s capacity to endure and overcome.
 
After eventually finding refuge in a children’s home in Despatch in the Eastern Cape, Popina started building the life she dreamt of as a child. Having had no schooling, she now found herself in a classroom and held a pen for the first time. And so began her journey to education and freedom.

The brilliant autobiography from the ‘saviour of Nike’

If you’re a sneaker head, you know him as the Savior of Nike. If you’ve watched Air you saw Matt Damon’s portrayal of the man who discovered Michael Jordan and how he revolutionized the payment structure of endorsements for athletes. Legends and Soles tells Sonny’s story – his blind-sided firing by Nike Chairman Phil Knight, the landmark 2021 Supreme Court decision that upended big-time college sports, the countless days and nights of watching athletes compete, and so much more that only Sonny can retell.

Written in collaboration with six-time New York Times bestselling author Armen Keteyian, Legends and Soles provides truth to storylines and headlines including:

· Vaccaro’s pivotal role in the never-before-told story of the courting and signing of Michael Jordan
· How Nike, at the behest of an embittered Knight, went as far as having the Portland FBI investigate Vaccaro who was working for archival Adidas on a RICO charge of corporate espionage
· His close relationships with NBA superstars Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett and Tracy McGrady and Hall of Fame coaches Jerry Tarkanian of UNLV and John Thompson of Georgetown
· The high stakes drama behind the O’Bannon lawsuit that changed the entire landscape in college sports
· Filled with in-depth stories and photos illuminating some of Sonny’s most treasured career memories, Legends and Soles is the long-awaited memoir of a giant in the story of American sports.

Suid-Afrika se Mnr. Pinotage, Beyers Truter, se passie vir die lewe en wyn is oral bekend. In hierdie boek kyk hy terug op sy eerste treë as wynmaker van Kanonkop, asook die deftige funksie in Londen toe hy in 1991 as Wynmaker van die Wêreld aangewys is.

Hy vertel ook van die vlammetjie wat altyd in hom gebrand het om op sy eie plaas wyn te maak en die groot oomblik van Beyerskloof se eerste oes. Sy lewensreis as eienaar en wynmaker van Beyerskloof is een van vriendskap, nederigheid en lojaliteit. Die bekende ou skrywer van cowboy-boeke Louis L'Amour se betekenis van traildust was nog altyd vir hom 'n rigsnoer in sy lewe as wynmaker, ouer en vriend.

Beyers sien altyd die humor in situasies raak en dis een van die redes hoekom hy die wyntoere so baie geniet het saam met Jannie Engelbrecht, Jan-Boland Coetzee, Kevin Arnold en Johan Malan. Hy het ook 'n lang paadjie geloop met die bekende Etzebeth-rugbybroers, asook Koos Kombuis. Hy deel ook sy liefde vir sy honde, duik, seekos en Namibië.

Alex la Guma was a major twentieth century South African novelist. His first novel, A Walk in the Night, in 1966 brought him instant recognition as a pioneering writer on the African continent. Its ‘startling realism and accurate imagery’ drew high praise from his contemporaries. Wole Soyinka, later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o . The critic and writer, Lewis Nkosi, likewise, compared La Guma’s intense and sombre vision of the individual in society to that of Dostoevsky. La Guma was also an important political figure. As leader of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation and a communist, he was charged with treason, banned, house arrested and eventually forced into exile. At the time of his death in 1985 he was serving as chief representative of the African National Congress in the Caribbean.

Published on the centenary of Alex La Guma’s birth on 20 February 1925, The Early Writings of Alex La Guma contains a selection of his early work as a journalist and short story writer, before he became a published novelist and was forced into exile. It provides unique cameos of South African life and politics during a turbulent time in the country’s history – the late 1950s and early 1960s, the years around Sharpeville – at the same time giving us insight into the making of a novelist. The ‘hidden’ world of Alex La Guma – material, social, emotional, political and intellectual – at a time when he was developing into a serious writer, is revealed. Many of the themes in his fiction are first encountered and developed in these early newspaper articles, providing useful material for literary scholars seeking to understand the progression of his work.

A reviewer wrote that this book, like Alex La Guma’s novels, captures not only the misery of poverty and oppression in South Africa, but also the rich song of everyday life beneath the surface. It reads easily as fiction and adds significantly to our understanding of popular culture in Cape Town, as well as to the social and political history of the city. When asked what one of his novels was about, La Guma – born and bred in District 6 – replied, ‘Ag, just about the folks back home’. La Guma peels off, as if with a scalpel, the glossy covers of the Cape’s tourist-brochure ‘liberalism’ to reveal the hard realities faced by the majority of its (non-) citizens: This is District Six talking. It is unmistakable – terse, racy, humorous, as convincing as truth.’

La Guma’s insider accounts of contemporary politics also help with the recovery of important aspects of the history of the South African liberation movement.