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.

“Hillbrow, 1967. The New York of Africa. Someone wrote that the place would soon have more people per square kilometre than Tokyo. Everyone quoted that article to everyone. Some even cut it out and kept it folded in their wallets.”

While other boys daydream about racing cars and football, eleven-year-old stutterer Phen sits reading to his father. In number four Duchess Court, Phen’s dad looks like a Spitfire pilot behind his oxygen mask. But real life is different from the daring adventures in the books Phen reads and he is forced to grow up faster than other boys his age. This is until Heb Thirteen Two shows up: in his pinstriped suit pants and tie-dyed psychedelic top, the stranger could be any old bum, or a boy’s special angel come to live among men.

Poignant, witty and wise, John Hunt's "The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head" is a meditation on being alive and shows us the power of books when we need them the most.

This is not a love story. This is IMPOSSIBLE.

"Sometimes love doesn’t come in the form you think it will."

Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner.

Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast.

When fate brings them together over a misdirected email, the connection is instant. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives...

It should have been the perfect love story. Instead it was IMPOSSIBLE.

First there is the killing of the minister of energy. Then the cop investigating the murder commits suicide. Fearing a conspiracy, the minister’s lover hires pi Fish Pescado to find the killer.

Then she goes missing. And Fish is being stonewalled by the cops because in the dark shadows of Cape Town there’s another game being played out. A complex one involving Iranian agents, the theft of highly enriched uranium, the kidnapping of a top scientist, and ex-spy Vicki Kahn being bribed by her former handler to track the terrorists.

The hunt is deadly and nothing is what it seems. A sleeper has been awoken. ISIS is involved. So is the CIA. And chatter leads to talk of a dirty bomb...

Evil is stalking South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve. Viewers around the world are shocked when a live lockdown webcast of a safari game drive exposes them to the brutal reality of rhino poaching. A wily poacher then disappears into thin air, confounding logic and baffling ace trackers Mia Greenaway and Bongani Ngobeni.

Detective Colonel Sannie van Rensburg, still reeling from a personal tragedy, is dealing with an angry community on the border of the Kruger National Park – two young girls have been abducted and the local people fear the children have been taken for use in umuti, sinister traditional medicine practices. Umuti is also being employed by poachers, who pay healers for potions they believe will make them invisible and bulletproof.

When another young girl disappears, this time a tourist, Mia and Sannie must confront their own personal demons and challenge everything they believe, in order to follow a trail that seems to vanish at every turn.

Kapteine McKelly en Mhlanga ontmoet op die misdaadtoneel van ’n mislukte plaasaanval in Muldersdrift. Nog ’n lyk met ’n gapende linkeroogkas word gevind. Dit bring die getal slagoffers wat vanaf Februarie in die Gauteng-area met dieselfde modus operandi vermoor is op ses te staan.

Die wet van Gauteng het ’n eg verweefde Suid-Afrikaanse intrige: politieke faksiegevegte, korrupsie en geldwassery. Hoogs leesbaar, aksiebelaaid en meesleurend.

This short story collection is filled with memorable characters, intriguing plots and twist endings.

With his keen observations and insights into human nature, Mhlongo explores the things people do for each other, but also to each other. Injustice, corruption, love and desire are just some of the aspects of human interaction featured here.

A family refuses to leave when the bank repossesses their house; stalking has an unexpected outcome; a desensitised morgue manager is spooked; and more!

Durban North, 1997. Following two shocking and insidious incidents of violence, nineteen-year-old Mary Da Costa is flying to Auckland ahead of her parents to make a new start. She is riddled with reservations – New Zealand is where her late brother was supposed to move – and all she really wants to do is keep to herself and work on her art.

On arrival, Mary comes under the wings of the South African ex-pat community, struggling with its own tensions between homesickness and belonging. Finding work at a local dairy, she meets self-appointed Māori leader Nepukaneha Cooper – Buck, as he’s better known. He and his family have some history with these rugby-mad lovers of apartheid, even more now that they’re encroaching on his turf. If only he had the means to fight them off and realise his life-long dream of establishing a marae on the beautiful strip of coast he has always called home.

Meanwhile, adrift between past and present, Mary is forced to dig deep in order to find her own truths and place in the world.

Nick Mulgrew’s long-awaited debut novel – of grand metaphors, silences, absences, and two cities and countries in flux – is a delightfully innovative, surprising, and warm-hearted meditation on family, loss, and home, as well as a deft examination of dislocation, dispossession, and the cultural blind spots of two very different (and in some ways similar) communities.

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.

20 South African Short Stories brought to you by Short.Sharp.Stories.

A fraudster cashes out of a life of crime, a mother has a splendid affair, a brave woman never gives up, a graffiti artist spray-paints the city; a poignant friendship comes to a climax in a retirement home, a storyteller understands his true power, a friend delivers a heart-rending eulogy; a young South African searches for belonging in Hong Kong, while another takes a risk assisting a local artist; a photographer explores eroticism through the lens and the body, a group of reggae fans cross borders to seek freedom with Bob Marley, a drummer is haunted by the jazz of Sophiatown; a book on slavery offers a troubled woman a way out, a student faces an impossible choice, the blood moon shines on a forbidden passion … and so much more, as each short story captures the unique moment and meaning of ONE LIFE.

The anthology’s contributors are largely established South African authors who have a track record in the publishing industry, as well as exciting emerging writers. The writers include Stella Douglas, Carmen Gee, Karen Jennings, Joel Kelly, Werner Labuschagne, David Mann, Lerato Mahlangu, Don Makatile, Juliette Mnqeta, Tshidiso Moletsane, Nontobeko Mtshali, Vuyokazi Ngemntu, Jana van Niekerk, Thango Ntwasa, Andrew Prior, Sihle Qwabe, Srila Roy, Khensani Sayiya, Megan Tennant and Jarred Thompson.

Speurder-kaptein Alek Strauss van die FSO word saam met sy span uitgeroep na ’n raaiselagtige moordtoneel. Die liggaam van ’n vrou is in ’n afgeleë bouval in Pretoria-Oos gevind. Advokaat Lynn Rawlins is skynbaar verwurg. Teen die muur staan in bloed geskrywe: Sprich nichts Böses.

Doktor Nadiya Patel, forensiese sielkundige, is vas oortuig die moordenaar se modus operandi is ’n waarskuwing dat nog lewens in gevaar is.

’n Meesleurende spanningsroman deur Marie Lotz, die skrywer van Roofdier.

Although conceived and birthed well before the ANC’s December 2017 elective conference and the changes of the political and governance guards that ensued, The List imagines a ‘New Dawn’ for South Africa in the closing years of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Rumours have abounded since the early days of South African democracy of a list or lists given to Nelson Mandela and the TRC by old apartheid securocrats of their agents infiltrated into the upper echelons of the ANC during the struggle years. These rumours gained new currency with the death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in April 2018 and the revelations of the machinations of apartheid’s Stratcom securocrats.

The List tells the story of a group of veterans of MK, of ANC intelligence and of the post-apartheid intelligence service, who are formed into a highly secret task team by the newly elected president to investigate the possibility of such remnants of apartheid security threatening to obstruct the radical changes the new president and his team are planning.

The List follows these veterans and their nemeses through the struggle years, exile, the MK camps and into the years of democracy and hope, disillusion and hope again. It observes while the struggle veterans painstakingly attempt to pick through the detritus of the old regime in the new, but just as the moment of optimism begins to blossom, the task team uncovers a ghastly betrayal. Is it too late to save the president and the country?

The novel is narrated from the future by one of the veterans of the task team from his second exile in a bedsit in London.

In A Coat of Many Colours, award-winning author Fred Khumalo presents a patchwork of various vibrant stories befitting the collection’s title.

A boy plays detective, investigating the case of a goat and a coat; a woman takes revenge; an inhlabi bites off more than he can chew; teenage enmity rears its head in a prestigious school for girls; a man is cursed with an ever-growing sexual appetite; and more thoughtful stories with an entertaining zing!

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.

Omstrede en skatryk oud-politikus Armand Deysel is vermoor, en Kassie en Rooi het nie minder nie as ses verdagtes.

’n Britse ondersoeker is op die spoor van die waardevolle Doolhof-halssnoer, en ’n platsakman steier telkens terug van die samelewing se dwarsklappe. Kassie en Rooi pak hul ondersoek sonder forensiese rugsteun aan, en al die verdagtes hardloop kringe om hulle.

Gaan iemand dié keer vir Kassie ore aansit ̶ en met die perfekte moord wegkom?

The fondly nurtured idyll of the Karoo as a place of tranquillity is shattered when recently graduated journalist Grant Asher’s first real investigative assignment in the mid-1980s draws him into a series of unexplained murders in three quiet Karoo towns.

There are two mystifying links: the victims were once part of a group of five hundred Polish-Jewish children housed at an orphanage in Oudtshoorn during the Second World War, and each victim was missing the tip of their little finger, removed post mortem.

Exquisitely written, Wilson’s debut novel will stay with you long after the last page is turned.

In Rudie se eerste Kassie Kasselman-roman, Slagyster, ontmoet ons vir Carl Bester, gevalle oudspeurder. In Vloek is Carl terug. Hy kan na SA kom – sy bannelingstatus uitgewis, teen ’n prys. “Ons vergeet jou sondes in ruil vir ’n teenprestasie,” sê sy nuwe werkgewer. Hy moet ’n lykbesaaide saak van internasionale belang help ontrafel. Nou sal hy weer soos ’n volbloedspeurder moet redeneer om dié saak saam met ’n spul rookies op te los.

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.

Speurder-sersant Luna Joubert van die Stellenbosch polisiediens word gestuur om die eienaardige dubbele moord op die eienaar van ’n kwekery en sy vrou te ondersoek. Die De Winters is beide met ’n skerp voorwerp aangeval, maar daar was geen teken van ‘n struweling of enige getuies om sin te maak van die voorval nie.

Terwyl Luna sukkel om ’n moord sonder verdagtes of leidrade op te los, maak Mike Grant weer sy onverwagte verskyning. Hierdie keer is hy op ’n geheime sending onder die geledere van ’n plaaslike dwelmsindikaat. Ten spyte van sy nuwe voorkoms vind Luna dit onmoontlik om nie die deur oop te maak wanneer hy klop nie.

Soos Mike homself in die onderwêreld ingrawe, begin Luna op tone trap om haar eie raaisel op te los. Was die De Winters wie almal dink hulle was? Weet die kinders dalk meer as wat hulle voorgee? Wat gaan aan by die studentehuis oorkant die straat? En wie is die man in die sportmotor wat so op die buitewyke van haar ondersoek beweeg?

Om antwoorde te kry sal Luna die donkerte en als wat daarin skuil moet trotseer. Bloedbande is die vierdie boek in Jeanette Stals se Luna Joubert-reeks.

The lives of South Africans have always been interwoven in complex ways. There is a long history of division; but also of profound (and often surprising) instances of mutual recognition. Recognition is an exciting anthology of short stories in which twenty-two South African writers render these intricate connections.

The writers whose stories have been selected use the transformative power of the imagination and the unique appeal of the short story to illuminate aspects of our past and present. Cumulatively their stories tell of a history tainted by misrecognition but not, finally, bound by it. Amongst the twenty-two contributors are some of our best-known short story writers: Pauline Smith, Herman Charles Bosman, H.I. E. Dhlomo, Can Themba, Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Dan Jacobson, Miriam Tlali, Ahmed Essop, Njabulo Ndebele, Mandla Langa, Chris van Wyk, Damon Galgut, Achmat Dangor and Zoe Wicomb. And there is also a selection of vibrant newer voices: Makhosazana Xaba, Nadia Davids, Mary Watson, Lindiwe Nkutha, Wamuwi Mbao and Kobus Moolman.

Chronologically the collection ranges from the 1920s to the twenty first century. It builds on its predecessor, Encounters, but devotes significant attention to the transitional and post-apartheid years: almost half the stories were published after 1994. The anthology includes a generous and detailed introduction, written by David Medalie. It traces the motif of recognition, discusses the general characteristics of short stories and the narrative devices used by writers, and includes a brief analysis of each short story.

Recognition will appeal to teachers and students of literature. It will be enjoyed by all those who love short stories and appreciate the craftsmanship involved in telling a memorable tale.

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.

Skatryk tweelingbroers wat vyf jaar gelede verdwyn het, se geraamtes word in ’n veld opgediep.

Op aandrang van die Wes-Kaapse polisiehoof moet Kassie en Rooi die saak ondersoek, maar dit moet in die grootste geheimhouding plaasvind. Anders kan Kassie-hulle ook die gevaar loop om vermoor te word soos die drie speurders wat by die destydse verdwyningsaak betrokke was.

’n Stikdonker onderwêreld, waar antieke voorwerpe miljoene rande op swartmarkveilings behaal, duld nie inmenging nie . . .

Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they?

Being fifteen is tough – tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town in 1996.

Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervour of teen friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town's most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago. Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive.

As the police investigate, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.

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?

Speuradjudant Storm van der Merwe is terug vir die grootste uitdaging van haar loopbaan. Al is sy steeds besig om haar pa se dood twee jaar tevore te verwerk.

Intussen hou Hermanus ’n eerste skrywersfees. Deel van Storm se afgesaagde verpligtinge is om by die gemeenskapsaal kywie te hou voor die laaste Covid-regulasies uiteindelik opgehef word. Maar toe daag Isa du Bois, die sterskrywer van die dorp, nie op vir haar sessie nie. Haar liggaam word dieselfde oggend nog in Kwaaiwater se Mosselrivier gevind. Vier en twintig uur later kom ’n visterman af op nóg ’n lyk – weer ’n vrou, dié keer jonk en swart. En dan is daar ’n derde slagoffer, ’n belangrike kulturele rolspeler op die dorp. Drie dae, drie vroue. Hoekom drie, hoekom hierdie drie?

Storm is so toegegooi onder werk, sy is skoon bly oor oudkollega Andreas Moerdyk se knaende aanbod om haar te help. En al sukkel sy om dit aan haarself te erken, is dit nogals lekker om ’n slag weer spanmaats te wees . . .