Five very different women... Cape Town is home to each one of them. Surrounded by its mountains and seas, but also by the struggles and difficulties of a young post-transformation country, each one lives out her separate life. Then fate begins to intertwine their lives through a series of circumstances...

Faith, who has taken on a job as part-time receptionist in Bethany’s practice, is physically abused by her manipulative and controlling husband. Between Bethany and Rafiqah, the detective who investigates her case, they manage to persuade her to prosecute him and this involves the legal help of Lindiwe, the public prosecutor. But Lindiwe’s nightmare past means that her involvement in cases of abuse can never be totally objective. Ayesha, who teaches Bethany’s young daughter notices subtle changes in the little girl’s behaviour and, together with Faith, makes a shocking discovery.

The Silence of the Shadows is a novel about the strength and frailty in each of us, the recognition that at different times we can be either the helper or the helped and that it is totally acceptable to be both.

“Nyakale. This has always been my name. It lost vowels and consonants and got rearranged into “Kay” by my Grade Three teacher. “Easier to pronounce,” she said.

Aunty Mercy’s response was to accept. “After all, muwala wange, we are in this country, and ours is not to stand out but to survive.”

“Survive” sounds lifeless, inanimate, not like the survive of Aunty Mercy’s stories of growing up in Uganda. There, survival was active, done daily. In South Africa, the word had taken on a new meaning. No longer doing, but hiding to make existence easier. Gradually becoming chameleons. I learnt to lurk in the shadows. Drawing just enough attention, not too much. No sudden movements, everything calculated and measured.”

Upon giving birth to twin girls in rural Uganda, Nyakale’s mother decides to send one away to her sister in South Africa for a shot at a better life.

In the heart of this beautifully woven coming of age story, is the story of twins growing up in two different worlds one in rural Uganda and the other in South Africa. The novel follows theirs lives and journeys of navigating the politics of their respective worlds.

Nyakale and Achen grew up despising each other for what they imagine the other to have because of their mother’s drastic decision. When they finally meet , how mirrored will they feel by the other?

In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy falls in love with Muhammad Ali. He begins to collect cuttings about his hero from the newspapers, an obsession that grows into a ragged archive of scrapbooks. Forty years later, when Joe has become a writer, these scrapbooks both insist on and obscure a book about his boyhood. He turns to his brother Branko, a sound editor, for help with recovering their shared past. But can a story ever belong equally to two people? Is this a brotherly collaboration or a battle for supremacy?

This is an intricate puzzle of a book by a writer of lyrical power and formal inventiveness. Against a spectacular backdrop, the heyday of the greatest showman of them all, Vladislavić unfolds a small, fragmentary story of family life and the limits of language. Meaning comes into view in the spaces between then and now, growing up and growing old, speaking out and keeping silent.

South Africa – 1976 to 1994. A time of turbulence as the struggle against apartheid reaches its zenith, pushing South Africa to the brink.

But for a one small boy in the leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg ... his beloved housekeeper is serving fish fingers for lunch. This is the tale of Hamish Charles Sutherland Fraser – chorister, horse rider, schoolboy actor and, in his dreams, 1st XV rugby star and young ladies’ delight. A boy who loves climbing trees in the spring and a girl named Reggie.

An odd child growing up in a conflicted, scary, beautiful society. A young South African who hasn’t learnt the rules.

Grondhervorming jaag verskillende emosies by verskillende mense op net soos die kunsmatige skeiding tussen mense. Die onsinnigheid van hierdie skanse blyk eers wanneer verhoudings spontaan ontstaan en toegelaat word om natuurlik te ontwikkel.

Dié boek toon hoe die aktuele werklikheid van grondhervorming in Suid Afrika deur die spontane goeie verhoudings tussen blanke boere en bruin plaaswerkers tot sinvolle en vreedsame naasbestaan kan lei. Hierdie goeie verhoudings is dan uiteindelik verantwoordelik vir die suksesvolle afhandeling van dieselfde plaaswerkers se grondeise op dieselfde en aangrensende plase waarop hulle grootgeword en gewerk het. Die teenoorgestelde word ook in die boek getoon hoe jy weens onaanpasbaarheid en selfsug alles kan verloor indien jy nie hierdie nuwe strewes in Suid Afrika kan aanvaar en daarby aanpas nie.

Die skrywer toon ook die beperkings van eie beheer oor mense se keuses in die lewe. Jy loop jou paaie soos wat dit vir jou uitgestraat is. Die vraag of dit “nie beter sou wees” as die mens vooraf “sy paaie wis” nie, word in die boek aan die orde gebring met die oopvlek van ou geheime van familievetes en buurtwiste. Verbode manewales oor die destydse kleurskeidslyn heen deur die baas van die plaas het drastiese gevolge op die grondeise van al die voorheen benadeelde plaaswerkers. Die aanvaarding van hierdie gevolge laat geen eie keuse nie maar is ook ‘n werklikheid waarmee die lewe almal dan dwing om te lewe.

As he nears his fifth birthday, Sam’s curious dreams of a lost child begin to steal quietly into his waking state.

Sam’s mother, Grace, watches with growing fear the disturbing changes taking place in her charming, spirited son – the fighting at school, the bed-wetting, the meteor showers of defiance. Grace is determined to find out what lies behind Sam’s nightmares, and the search will take her deeper and deeper into layers of love and bonding buried beneath the surface of the family, and into its molten heart.

Cry Baby is not just a story about boyhood and motherhood. It’s about what binds families, the past to the present, about suffocation and deliverance. It is at once a stinging satirical slap across the face of barren suburbia and a poignant hymn to the extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives.

Daar is ’n kluis in ’n winkeltrollie op die dak van Wille Willemien se 4×4.

Want sy en haar sus is op pad. Richtersveld toe. Om tussen Eksteenfontein en Khuboes hul pa se kluis – en sy sneeujas – nou ná sy dood oor ’n afgrond te boender.

Terwyl die twee vroue reis, ontvou die verhaal van Willemien en haar pa:

’n Storie oor ’n Afrikaanse Al Capone, ’n man wie se duister sakeondernemings nie net tot die grense van Suid-Afrika beperk was nie. In Palm Springs dra sy lyfwagte koeldrank vir die fbi-agente aan vanwaar hulle sy huis dophou. Vroeër jare moet Willemien in haar pa se kattebak wegkruip terwyl hy sake in verlate parkeerareas doen. Ná sulke uitstappies was haar beloning altyd ’n lekkerny, en só word haar lewenslange stryd met kos aangevuur.

Van Kaapstad na San Francisco en selfs Sri Lanka, met ’n wavrag vol seks, drugs & rock ’n’ roll, tref Anoeschka von Meck se nuutste roman jou soos ’n reusegolf en spoel sy die verhoudings oop wat van ons denkende, spirituele wesens maak.

Meet Zinhle, the glamorous Siren, as she reels through the highs and lows of fame-seeking in Jozi.

Zinhle lives through a sham marriage, a stint as the lover of a Nollywood high-roller, sex parties, and an affair with a football star. She bed-hops from man to powerful man, overcoming cattiness, rivalry, cheating and dodgy agents, to nab a starring role in Heritage, a highly successful soapie. She has attitude and sass in bucket loads and is never far from the latest front-page scandal.

Siren, Kuli Roberts’s gripping debut novel, is a classic rags-to-riches tale, jam-packed with drama, hot sex and reversals of fortune that will keep readers zipping through the pages until the very end.

Bandile Ndala is a once-successful scriptwriter who now struggles with substance abuse, anxiety and depression as he starts to lose his tenuous grip on reality.

His career has stagnated with the rejection of his literary work and life at home with his family is under strain. His life starts to descend into a living nightmare, literally. Bandile is desperately searching for inspiration so he can make a much-needed comeback. When Bandile finds himself in room 28 at the Cariba Inn with a sultry temptress he wonders whether he has gone crazy. Has the formerly brilliant writer who churned out hit TV show after hit TV show lost his mind? Is he on drugs? Or is it all in something he ate at a dinner a few years back…?

Buthelezi takes us through the inner workings of Bandile’s mind as he thinks about his writing and battles with the possibility of not producing something meaningful, ever. The Last Sentence introduces us to a remarkable literary talent. Tumelo Buthelezi is an exceptional storyteller.

A young man makes three journeys that take him through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way – including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge – he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man’s best intentions, each journey ends in disaster.

Together, these three journeys will change his whole life.

A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man’s search for love, and a place to call home.

A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-times winner of the Booker Prize

In The Childhood of Jesus, Simon found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Ines. In The Schooldays of Jesus, the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive.

In The Death of Jesus, David, now a tall ten-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends in the street. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to go and live with Julio and the children in his care, Simon and Ines are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness.

With almost unbearable poignancy J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.

’n Meesleurende roman oor ’n verbode passie en ’n politieke intrige. Dis gebaseer op ’n werklike historiese insident, en die gevolge daarvan: Die ontmoeting in 1940 tussen Dr DF Malan en ‘n Duitse spioen, mev Thyra Denk. Nou, in 1946, kry Dieter Bergman, ’n senior polisieman, instruksies om mev Denk per trein van Windhoek na Kaapstad te vergesel, waar sy voor ’n Gekose Komitee van die Parlement moet getuig. As daar bewys kan word dat Malan met die Nazi’s meegewerk het tydens die Tweede Wereldoorlog, kan hy van hoogverraad aangekla word en sal dit die einde van sy politieke loopbaan beteken. Tydens die lang reis per trein ontstaan daar ‘n verhouding tussen Bergman en die beeldskone spioen. Op die trein is egter ook ene adv Doerkstra. Sy missie: hy moet die spioen in die geheim te sien kry en haar oorrreed om nie met haar getuienis Malan se loopbaan te vernietig nie...

Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena vertel die lewensverhaal van ’n swart vrou teen die agtergrond van apartheid. Hierdie hartverskeurende, tog inspirerende roman word steeds beskou as een van die beste romans wat Afrika in die twintigste eeu opgelewer het.

Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced.

Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity.

But why has Emil’s life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it? Prize-winning novelist Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu traces Emil’s life from boyhood to manhood – from his days at a privileged boarding school with the motto ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, to his falling in love with the ever-elusive Marion, whose free-spirited nature has dire consequences for his heart – all the while showing how Emil becomes a man apart.

Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility – told with empathy, generosity and a light touch – is an excursion into the interiority of the coloniser.

Adam Human het ’n verskriklike geheim. So groot, om die waarheid te vertel, dat hy eers sou moes doodgaan as hy ooit ’n kans vir oor begin wou hê. Hy sou alles moes agterlaat en wegraak in een van die laaste wildernisse op aarde.

Maar elke reisiger is in ’n sekere sin ’n vlugteling, en elke voortvlugtige ’n ontdekkingsreisiger wat soveel meer met hom saamdra as net die dinge in sy rugsak ...

Dis moeilik om te glo dat so iemand rêrig bestaan, sou die mense later sê.

Onwetend hoe vreemd sy ware storie eintlik is. Want dit was ’n waterwese wat hy as kind in ’n droom raakgeloop het, wat hom gelei het na die spikkel op ’n kaart, Noord van Lamu.

Met ’n nuwe naam was hy op soek na lewe ná die dood. En soos met amper elke ware ontdekkingsreis, sou sy vlugtog oor land en see ook na ’n afgeleë eiland lei. ’n Plek waar hy uiteindelik alleen kon wees, weg van alles en almal.

Of so het hy gedink.

Sy lewe was nie een lang uitgerekte storie nie, maar eerder ’n bondel erg teenstrydige verhale, in chaos verweef. Van hulle naïef en selfs onskuldig. Van hulle wreed en donker en verskriklik en boos . . . en van hulle, so beautiful soos die bewegings van Lamu se laaste doegong.

Based on true events, Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch uncovers what really goes on behind closed doors in the seemingly up-standing community of Stellenbosch, one of South Africa’s wealthiest small towns, where 3,400 dollar millionaires live (before they invested in Steinhoff shares). Written as fiction to protect the innocent, the book exposes the explosive dark truths of the Winelands’ elite.

All is revealed through the eyes of stay at home mom, 49-year-old Jen, who is the wife of John, a renowned wine farmer and businessman. Jen, like many of her privileged friends, lives a charmed life provided by her husband, in exchange for conjugal sex and obligatory wifely gratitude. When Jen stumbles upon her playboy husband in a compromising position with his sexy employee, things fall apart. Jen is forced to choose between leaving her marriage, jeopardising her standing and stability in the community or turning a blind eye to his infidelity. The book follows Jen’s passage to self-discovery and self-fulfillment, while other characters’ perspectives move the story forward as each is privy to (and eventually reveals) at least one ‘truth’ or ‘lie’ which Jen must face.

Jen’s exposition of her husband’s infidelity inadvertently mirrors the underbelly of the patriarchal and often duplicitous community of the seemingly perfect Stellenbosch. Led by prominent wine farmers, international businessmen and renowned academics, business and private interests, even if ethically compromised, are staunchly guarded. The unfolding chapters irreverently explore both the emotional growth of the protagonist, Jen, as well as the moral ambiguities of the other players in the book.

Winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award.

Since coming of haemorrh-age, Frith must wear a LipService patch to write or speak. The words the patch produces are not her own. Scripted by copywriters, they promote one sponsoring brand or another. With them, ‘You’ – a voice in her head that is the patch’s brand persona and her conformist alter ego – appears.

Through the noise of You talking a variety of different LipService brands, Frith struggles to find her way back to speaking for herself. She believes her tastures – her ability to taste things she touches – are the key. But other elements of this consumerist society are equally interested in tastures for commercial gain.

’n Nuwe novelle van die gewilde skrywer Jeanne Goosen verskyn binnekort by Hemel & See Boeke. Sneeu in die Karoo ’n uiters rare boek, waarin twee novelles verskyn: Eerstens Jeanne Goosen se beskrywing van ’n maand se verblyf in Nieu-Bethesda. Sy gaan juis na dié klein Karoodorpie om te skryf en neem haar huishulp, Agnes Morao, saam.

Om Agnes besig te hou, koop Jeanne vir haar ’n Croxley oefenboek en ’n pen. Agnes begin skryf oor alles wat sy in Nieu-Bethesda ervaar – en oor haar kinderdae – terwyl die eintlike skrywer, Jeanne Goosen, nie aan die werk kan kom nie.

Die verskyning van Agnes se boek – dit is ook die titel daarvan – in een band saam met Jeanne Goosen se novelle is heel waarskynlik ’n eerste in wêreldletterkunde!

“disruption[noun] - Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.”

The title and topic chosen for our seventh collection of stories from around Africa, decided before the world as we knew it changed, turned out to be eerily prescient. Drawn from the four corners of the continent, from Libya and Sierra Leone to Kenya and Botswana, these twenty-one stories serve up an imaginative feast, many unfolding the consequences of the environmental degradation of the planet.

But the contributors have not parroted the doom and gloom often found in dystopian or apocalyptic fiction. Instead, they have opted for wildly original narratives featuring sea monsters, zombies, time and space travel, cyborgs, immortals, gods and goddesses both benevolent and terrifying, and even a one-eyed octopus. This riot of colour and creativity offers fierce and rich allegories of colonial conquest and late capitalism, and probes patriarchal family and social structures with deft fingers.

The reader will find comedy, the absurd, and the surreal in these pages, as well as lovingly drawn and often valedictory accounts of the natural world and its denizens. Above all, these stories tell of human connection in the face of impossibly difficult circumstances, providing much-needed comfort and inspiration.

Prepare to be disturbed, moved, and entertained. This is the disruption you’re really looking for.

In a moment of weakness, lawyer Ian Brand sends out a tweet; it changes his life irrevocably. Thuli Khumalo, Fallist leader on a campus that stinks of petrol and teargas, must choose between betraying her father and forsaking her principles. Snaar Windvogel, once the little violin girl of Matjiesfontein, is now in transition under the knife of Piekenier Leqluerck, plastic surgeon and fossa impresario.

These colourful characters populate a carnivalesque landscape where the only certainty is that the Mother City’s mysterious crossbow killer will strike again . . . while Twitter gangs spread suspicion, truck drivers are attacked on national roads, and Number One meets with gang leaders – all under the watchful eye of the Institute for Encouragement in a nameless city in China.

An astonishing novel documenting the turbulent time in which we live, where issues such as privacy and identity, fake news and fact, and race and ethnicity inflame passions.

Translated by Henrietta RoseInnes.

A single moment can change a life forever… A van full of men armed with AK47s is stopped by two policemen while driving through Bethlehem in the Free State. They open fire on the policemen and, from that moment, their lives are irrevocably changed. So to for Fusi Mofokeng, resident of Bethlehem, who was not at the scene of the crime but was the brother-in-law of one of the perpetrators. He is accused of being an accomplice and tried, sentenced and jailed.

Nineteen years later, in 2011, Fusi is released into a world that has changed beyond recognition, a world in which his mother, father and brother have all died. Throughout his incarceration he fought for his release, appearing before the TRC, and schooling himself in law. Even today, he seeks a presidential pardon.

It is to this life that award-winning author Jonny Steinberg turns his attention in One Day in Bethlehem. In examining the life and struggle of Fusi Mofokeng, Steinberg shines a searing light on the burden of the 'everyman' in his quest for justice. In doing so, he also captures a country as it violently sheds the skin of the past to emerge, blinking, into the modern era.

Henk Andreas de Melker, eerste museumassistent in 'n klein dorpie in die Oos-Kaap, kry onverwags 'n brief van 'n juris in Nederland. Die brief lig Henk in dat hy sy lankverdwene Tante Zan se huis in Amsterdam geerf het. Tante Zan met die geheime lewe, waarvan Henk in Amsterdam gaan uitvind. Ook Tante Zan, die aktrise met die onverwoesbare erotiese drif en die politieke aktivis met die voorliefde vir vreemde vriende, soos die rolprentmaker Cecil Dimaggio en die Luandese straatmusikant van die Leidse plein. Ten slotte moet Henk kies of hy in Amsterdam gaan woon, en of hy na Suid-Afrika gaan terugkeer. Maar eers moet hy alles oopvlek wat van hom weggesteek is, en sy eie lewe opnuut leer ken. Sy dertig nagte in Amsterdam verander die besadigde Henk de Melker se lewe vir altyd.

Karl Louw, ʼn prokureur, word deur Helen Brodie genader om haar in ʼn regsgeding te verteenwoordig. Die regsaak veroorsaak dat Karl en sy vrou Wilma ook met ou wonde van die verlede gekonfronteer word: verraad, verkragting, die mag wat mans in ’n patriargale, chauvinistiese samelewing oor vrouens aanvaar.

Terwyl Karl en Helen veg om haar professionele reputasie te beskerm, worstel Wilma met haar eie donker skuldgevoel en probeer haar man se verlede ontrafel. Sy onskuldige en ietwat idilliese skoolromanse is die grondslag vir alles wat Karl glo van die liefde, verhoudings en intimiteit – en die rede waarom Wilma nie haar geheim met hom kan deel nie.

Hoe vergewe jy as daar nie om vergifnis gevra word nie?