Young Naledi wants to trade her bantu knots for Nonhle Thema’s hair on the Dark and Lovely box. She wishes she looked more like her light-skinned mother too. Ledi grows up in Pimville with her strict grandmother Mama Norah, while her mother, Dineo, is out chasing the blesser lifestyle.

Bantu Knots follows Ledi as she navigates the pressures of her circumstances, womanhood and beauty ideals – and pursues her dreams in spite of it all.

Burnt out after years as a professional dancer, Ella Burchell moves to a small town on the KwaZulu Natal north coast hoping to rebuild her life. Things look up when she gets a job teaching dance to children at a for-profit private school.

But Ella hasn't reckoned with the cabal of private-school mums who run the Pines Academy as their own personal fiefdom. Circling into cliques at the school gates every morning, the mums are a force to be reckoned with.

Soon Ella is too busy fielding their demands to concentrate on her own troubles. Distraction arrives in the form of an attractive cricket coach, but Ella hardly has time to pay attention.

Fun, fast-paced and hilarious, this novel by an award-winning author skewers the world of private-school privilege.

When, after twenty-six years of marriage, Margaret Crowley’s husband leaves her for a younger man, she has to rethink her priorities and consider her options: as a free agent, with no ‘appurtenances’, how best to turn that freedom into a meaningful future rather than a mulling over the past?

Opting to leave behind her support system of family and friends, she moves to a seaside town with her dog, Benjy, intent upon a simple, uncluttered existence. But simplicity, it seems, can be a complicated affair. When the charismatic young Jimmy Prinsloo-Mazibuko enters her life and her home, apparently intent upon establishing himself as a general-purpose handyman and cook, she finds herself torn between distrust and attraction. Is he merely the helpful, cheerful young man he seems, or is there a darker purpose to his assistance?

As in his award-winning Lost Ground, Heyns situates his novel in contemporary South Africa, with a lively cast of characters: Margaret’s forthright best friend, Frieda, her loose-limbed son, Carl, her exasperated daughter, Celia, and, most insistently of all, her opinionated ‘domestic’, Rebecca. Friends and family, it seems, are not to be left behind at will. And new acquaintances may not be what they seem.

In the wake of her beloved grandfather’s death, Lou and her family gather at their coastal family home for a long-awaited family reunion.

The windswept and wild surroundings remind Lou of who she was before being a mother, a wife, and a professional failure. They bring back memories of Michael, her toxic first love and, according to the family, her ‘bad luck penny’. Then a shocking crisis in the country disrupts the funeral arrangements and forces the family together for longer than planned.

As secrets rise to the surface, the threads of Lou’s life unravel and she faces a difficult choice – after all, it’s only a bad luck penny if you pick it up.

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of What Will People Say?, Rehana Rossouw takes us into a world seemingly filled with promise yet bedevilled by shadows from the past. In this astonishing tour de force Rossouw illuminates the tensions inherent in these new times.

Ali Adams is a political reporter in Parliament. As Nelson Mandela begins his second year as president, she discovers that his party is veering off the path to freedom and drafting a new economic policy that makes no provision for the poor. She follows the scent of corruption wafting into the new democracy’s politics and uncovers a major scandal. She compiles stories that should be heard when the Truth Commission gets underway, reliving the recent brutal past. Her friend Lizo works in the Presidency, controls access to Madiba’s ear. Another friend, Munier, is beating at the gates of Parliament, demanding attention for the plague stalking the land.

Aaliyah Adams lives with her devout Muslim family in Bo-Kaap. Her mother is buried in religion after losing her husband. Her best friend is getting married, piling up the pressure to get settled and pregnant. There is little tolerance for alternative lifestyles in the close-knit community. The Rugby World Cup starts and tourists pour up the slopes above the city, discovering a hidden gem their dollars can afford.

Ali/Aaliya is trapped with her family and friends in a tangle of razor-wire politics and culture, can she break free?

Told with Rehana’s trademark verve and exquisite attention to language you will weep with Aaliya, triumph with Ali, and fall in love with the assemblage that makes up this ravishing new novel.

Darlings of Durban follows the stories of four friends and how their lives intersect and influence each other.

Natasha owns a successful beauty company and is in a serious long-term relationship with the charming Sizwe. Natasha worries that his family will never truly accept her because of her mixed heritage. Does she even believe in marriage? Natasha often seeks the advice of her friend Sofia who's happily married with children. Sofia is the glue that holds the darlings together. The cousins, Farhana and Razia, both have their own complicated marriages. Farhana tries her best to support her husband in his harebrained schemes - even when it's to the detriment of her friendships. While Razia, the only darling in Johannesburg, feels stuck in her role as subservient wife to a husband whose attention is elsewhere.

All four women are navigating the complexities of love and life. But whatever life throws their way, the darlings always have each other.

Infused with rhythm and melody, Zakes Mda’s new novel invites you to travel from Lesotho’s Mountain Kingdom to the City of Gold through the history of famo.

Famo music was born in the drinking dens of migrant mineworkers in Lesotho, where the men would sing to unwind after work, accompanied by the accordion, a drum and sometimes a bass. Meet the boy-child Kheleke, a wandering musician, and his surprising sister Moliehi. Then sigh with pleasure at being reunited with Toloki, the professional mourner from Ways of Dying, and his beloved Noria.

Passionate and ambitious, Kheleke is a weaver of songs, and his own story is intertwined with the incredible yet true social history of the music: the Time of the Concertina and the Accordion, the wars of the famo gangs, and the battle for control of illegal mines.

The end is always a journey – and what a journey this is!

‘Those in the know claim Michael K disembarked from a diesel-smoke-spewing truck one overcast morning, looked around, and without missing a beat, chose a spot where he set down a small bucket (red, burnt and disfigured) that contained an assortment of seedlings, some fisherman’s twine and a rudimentary gardening tool – probably self-made.’

How is it that a character from literary fiction can so alter the landscapes he touches, even as he – in his self-imposed isolation – seeks to avoid them? How is it that Michael K, bewildered and bewildering, can remain so fragile yet so present, so imposing without attempting to be so? In this response to JM Coetzee’s classic masterpiece, Life & Times of Michael K, Nthikeng Mohlele dabbles in the artistic and speculative in a unique attempt to unpack the dazed and disconnected world of the title character, his solitary ways, his inventiveness, but also to show how astutely Michael K holds up a mirror to those whose paths he inadvertently crosses. Michael K explores the weight of history and of conscience, thus wrestling the character from the confines of literary creation to the frontiers of artistic timelessness.

Willem Prins bewandel die strate van Parys. Eens was hy op koers om ’n gerekende skrywer in Suid-Afrika te word, maar na jare se probeer wink die koue water van die Seine – miskien sal sy verdrinking sy boekverkope bietjie opstoot, dink ’n swartgallige Willem.

Tot sy skaamte is dit die erotika wat hy onder ’n skuilnaam skryf wat hom na Frankryk gebring het. Terug na die stad waar een van sy drie eksvroue saam met sy oudste seun woon, ’n jong man wat sy pa skaars ken.

Vir Willem is Parys nie juis die stad van liefde nie, maar dit is hier waar hy vir Jackie ontmoet, ’n jong Suid-Afrikaner wat as au pair werk. Dit is ook sy wat saam met hom is dié Vrydagaand die dertiende toe terreur in Parys losbars.

Misverstand is die dertiende roman van een van Suid-Afrika se gewildste skrywers. ’n Roman oor die ontnugtering van die middeljare, die lewe se onweerswolke wat dikwels dreig, en oor bande tussen mense wat beskut.

Dié boek kry dit reg om peripheral characters en vertellers oppie voorgrond te plaas.

Die tailor-dokter met sy briefcase vol sample-lappe, maatband en pen. Die pyn vanne vrou wat haar pasgebore tweeling moet begrawe. Ennie stryd vannie pligsgetroue, prim en proper Mareldia. En dan is daar oek Ghoemeira wat tradisionele waardes mettie modern moet versoen.

Hier hoor jy die klanke vannie gemeenskap, musky en soet soes ryke uit die Jannat.

After a mental breakdown costs him his job in New York, a young man returns to Cape Town.

He and his husband want to rebuild their lives and start a family by adopting a child, but the application forces him to confront his own past. As his life becomes enmeshed with that of his house cleaner and her toddler, his marriage begins to unravel and violence threatens to upend their new beginning.

Can he help them while finding a path to healing?

The Cape Peninsula carries secrets known only to the wind, the fynbos, and the creatures that live there. One day, six teenage boys are found raped, murdered, and dumped down the side of its mountains.

It is two years since the discovery of the first body and Detective Junaid Japtha is no closer to cracking the case. With pressure mounting, and without any tangible evidence, he can only rely on his experience and instinct to track down the killer.

Fifteen-year-old Tyrone May from Macassar spends his days in limbo. He has no one to talk to. No one listens. He is curious and confused about his feelings. Like most boys, he has yet to develop a sense of his own mortality. It allows for a daring that will dissipate as he grows older, but, for now, Tyrone will accept the friend request a handsome stranger sends him.

Elton Baatjies is the newly appointed teacher at a local high school. These are his people, and he is soon embraced by the close-knit community. But he is tied to the six dead boys in ways no one could have predicted, and the secrets among them threaten to tear the sleepy mountain town apart.

If You Keep Digging is a moving collection of short stories, which will resonate with a South African audience. The selection of stories highlights marginalised identities and looks at the daily lives of people who may otherwise be forgotten or dismissed.

Monkeys is a skillful commentary on domestic violence, toxic masculinity, patriarchy (and how it is racialised), power dynamics between white and black men and how children come to “know” that they are white or black. Skinned, whose protagonist is a woman with albinism, is a powerful story about learning to accept that you deserve love when the world constantly tells you otherwise. In Fourteen the author deftly demonstrates the ability to play with concepts of time and reality. It is a compelling story about potential and how one can feel unfulfilled despite having hopes and ambitions.

The collection is also deeply concerned with covering the early post democracy years in South Africa. Each of the characters deals with questions around the “new” country. The book implores one to think about diverse topics and perspectives, difficult family relationships, abandonment, social and class issues, power dynamics at school and at work, mental illness, witchcraft, sexuality, domestic abuse and the ancestral realm, among other things.

Max Lurie’s navel-gazing podcast about his life has become an unexpected success. But its embellishments and inventions are starting to leak into his everyday life.

As Max tries to navigate the grey areas between fact and fiction, things begin to spin out of control. He juggles real and imagined girlfriends, an illegally procured firearm, an unpredictable friendship with a homeless schizophrenic, his acerbic immigrant producer, his dying father, his famous childhood sweetheart, an unlikely romantic entanglement and his critical and growing audience. Can he keep all of these balls in the air and finally bring them safely to rest?

This story takes a deep and satiric dive into the worlds we imagine for ourselves and the lives we actually live, particularly in a time when our real and digital personas intersect and merge in chaotic ways. Free Association casts a steely and comic eye on the great and small concerns of being human: the chances we take and miss, the pain of not fitting in, the fragility of the psyche, the unpredictability of love, the dull certainty of death, the importance of listening to others and the careening craziness of it all.

A thrilling array of African writers, including Fred Khumalo, Sibongile Fisher, Lucas Ledwaba, Vonani Bila, Lynn Joffe and Christopher Mlalazi, tell surprising and unnerving tales in this collection of commissioned stories from the master of narrative writing, Niq Mhlongo.

These stories give answers to the question: what does being haunted and hauntings mean in our southern African world, in the past, the present and the future?

Adam Askew, a young man in a hurry, always wanted to be financially independent. Armed with guts, determination and a cocky self-assurance, he sets up a shipping company with a view to take on the world, one ton of cargo at a time.

Fed up with the cliquey set-up in Durban, he takes a gutsy gamble – the biggest risk of his life – one that will ultimately make or break him. He heads for the big city lights of swanky 80s Joburg and is soon wining and dining at the top of the Carlton, sipping the best champagne in London and making some enemies along the way.

Set in the closing decades of the 20th century in sanction-wracked South Africa, Pleasures of the Harbour navigates a world of dodgy business partners, dubious deals and a few failed attempts at love before Adam can finally, and honestly, say he’s made it.

Part adventure, part action, and lots of wheeling and dealing means readers are in for a rollicking ride in this highly entertaining novel that traverses the high seas and low roads of Southern Africa, while opening boardroom and a few bedroom doors along the way.

Op ’n winterdag in 1945 ontferm ’n kinderlose wit egpaar, Sara en Erik de Graaff, hulle oor ’n driejarige halwe weeskind – Mina Afrika. Hulle wil haar graag ’n kans in die lewe gee. Terwyl Mina nog vol ambisie haar toekoms beplan dryf die verraderlike daad van ’n ryk jong wit man haar weg uit die Vallei, laat haar beland in ’n eindelose spiraal van bedrog. ’n Lewe van vernedering in Groenpunt en tussen die bendes van Distrik Ses.

Samuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude …

A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?

A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

The Near North is a vivid account of life in Johannesburg in times of crisis.

From the stony ridges of Langermann Kop in Kensington to the tree-lined avenues of Houghton, we follow the writer through the city's streets, meeting its ghosts and journeying through time and (often circumscribed) space, finding meaning in the everyday and incidental.

At once an echo of Ivan Vladislavić’s award-winning Portrait with Keys and an original work of intense acuity and quiet power, The Near North is both intimate and expansive, ranging from small domestic dramas to great public spectacles.

Wryly playful at times, fiercely serious at others, it is certain to move and delight all who accompany the writer through its pages.

Following on from his bestselling novels A Year in the Wild and Back to the Bush, James Hendry returns to the setting of Sasekile Private Game Reserve for another tale that takes the reader behind the scenes with the MacNaughton brothers, Angus and Hugh.

It is three and a half years since Angus’s last year in the wild when he was newly appointed to the position of head ranger at Sasekile. Much has happened in the interim.

In Return to the Wild there is high drama, much hilarity and many close encounters with wildlife, fire and human incompetence as Angus unexpectedly returns to Sasekile to take on the training of a motley group of would-be game rangers with his usual stark but eloquent honesty. Alongside him, Hugh manages the lodge and its colourful staff with a varying degree of competence as events lurch from mishap to potential catastrophe.

Whether you are a fan of the MacNaughtons’ previous misadventures or a reader new to their story, Return to the Wild is a highly amusing, engaging and heartfelt read.

Paris, 1958. A skirmish in a world-famous restaurant leaves two men dead and the restaurant staff baffled. Why did the head waiter, a man who’s been living in France for many years, lunge at his patrons with a knife?

As the man awaits trial, a journalist hounds his long-time friend, hoping to expose the true story behind this unprecedented act of violence.

Gradually, the extraordinary story of Pitso Motaung, a young South African who volunteered to serve with the Allies in the First World War, emerges. Through a tragic twist of fate, Pitso found himself on board the ss Mendi, a ship that sank off the Isle of Wight in February 1917. More than six hundred of his countrymen, mostly black soldiers, lost their lives in a catastrophe that official history largely forgot. One particularly cruel moment from that day will remain etched in Pitso’s mind, resurfacing decades later to devastating effect.

Dancing The Death Drill recounts the life of Pitso Motaung. It is a personal and political tale that spans continents and generations, moving from the battlefields of the Boer War to the front lines in France and beyond. With a captivating blend of pathos and humour, Fred Khumalo brings to life a historical event, honouring both those who perished in the disaster and those who survived.

When the taxi Mandy is riding in runs out of petrol, she and her companion are stranded alongside a country road with their fellow passengers, all of whom are Zulu.

While they wait for help, friendships develop as they share problems and stories and Mandy finds herself drawn to 8-year-old Jabulani, an AIDS orphan. She determines to help the boy, but what she proposes to do is not an easy road to follow; she faces legal and logistical problems, and much opposition.

There is one person who supports her though, a lawyer whom she meets in Durban. Meeting him adds to her dilemma and she is torn by conflicting loyalties.

Joburg Noir is a collection of writings about memories, legends, loss, jokes, stories, myths and experiences by twenty-two gifted and versatile authors in South Africa. It makes the reader experience present-day Johannesburg as if one were in the past. The stories seek to understand, reconstruct, reinvent and recover this city space of loss, joy, deprivation, resistance and possibility by revealing its complex dynamics. They are funny, shocking, violent, absurd, strangely tender and memorable.

Their lasting resonance lies in the fact that they invoke the joys and traumas of the past and present, making the two to co-exist and interlock. After reading this uncompromising and gritty anthology, the reader is bound to feel like a time-traveller who has voyaged into a magical alternate city and a reality that was either misnamed or not named at all. The intention is to help the readers to delve into their own memories in search of pictures of their sweet childhood and fractured identities.

Contributors: Sam Mathe; Fred Khumalo; Lidudumalingani; Keletso Mopai; Sibongile Fisher; Kgomotso Masemola; Styles Lucas Ledwaba; Mapule Mohulatsi; Khanyi Magubane; Sifiso Mzobe; Gloria Bosman; Nedine Moonsamy; Yewande Omotso; Mabel Mnesa; Nthikeng Mohlele; Eusebius McKaiser; Siphiwo Mahala; Nkateko Masinga; Mzuvukile Maqetuka; Sydney Mojoko; Michelle van Heerden.

It’s 1899 and Philippa’s fiancé Nduku has just broken off their engagement. She is heartbroken – after all, she has followed him from Kimberley, where they first met, to the goldfields of Johannesburg. In this bustling new city, tensions are mounting between the South African Republic and the gold-hungry British Empire. When war is declared, the mines are shut down and migrant workers ordered to leave town.

But how do you get home and out of harm’s way when there are no running trains and home is hundreds of kilometres away? You walk. Over perilous terrain Nduku and Philippa and seven thousand others walk to Natal. Disguised as a mineworker’s wife, for Philippa is white, she and Nduku talk about their true histories, about their fears and hopes, and with every footfall the possibility of lasting happiness seems within reach – if only they can survive, and if only they can weather the storm of an unexpected third player in their troubled romance.

Set during an incredible event in South African history, The Longest March is a tale of heady determination, and a tribute to the perseverance and courage of ordinary men and women when faced with extraordinary circumstances.

Daniel is a journalist, moving between London and Cape Town, until his elderly father passes away.

There is an unusual clause in the old man’s will: Daniel will only inherit his half of the estate once he has paid his estranged cousin a visit on the family farm in the Free State. It is a visit that will result in Daniel, his cousin and a sick young boy making a hopeful trip to Tokyo – a journey that will change all of their lives.

An exquisite, tender novel by the award-winning writer SJ Naudé.