As Imogen Zula Nyoni, aka Genie, lies in a coma in hospital after a long illness, her family and friends struggle to come to terms with her impending death.

Genie has gifts that transcend time and space, and this is her story. It is also the story of her forebears – Baines Tikiti, who, because of his wanderlust, changed his name and ended up walking into the Indian Ocean; his son, Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, who, during the war, took as his nom de guerre Golide Gumede and who became obsessed with flight; and Golide’s wife, Elizabeth Nyoni, a country-and-western singer self-styled after Dolly Parton, blonde wig and all.

With the lightest of touches, and with an overlay of magical-realist beauty, this novel sketches, through the lives of a few families and the fate of a single patch of ground, decades of national history – from colonial occupation to the freedom struggle, to the devastation wrought by the sojas, the hi virus, and The Man Himself. By turns mysterious and magical, but always honest, The Theory Of Flight dwells not on what was lost and what went wrong in a nation’s history, but on the personal triumphs and why they matter.

Katrina Hunt has a disturbing secret. Since her earliest days fighting for survival in the poverty of a trailer park, she’s been able to sense moral corruption. And her gift is never wrong. This strange ability affects every relationship, for people have no way to hide from her.

Katrina harnesses her gift and sets it to work, sniffing out evil in positions of privilege and power. Yet she soon finds she is not the only one who can do it. On the far side of the world, a scientist cracks an algorithm that will forever change law-enforcement. His new scan can detect a person’s genetic propensity for wrongdoing, even before they act.

But what if the most corrupt man in the world, a political figure assuming ever higher office, is able to beat the scan? What if he alone can hide his true darkness? What if he is ... not quite human?

Katrina’s path will lead inexorably to confrontation with an immense power. But can she stop him, before it is too late for humanity?

Twenty-six years is a long time not to be alive.

Since the accident that ruined her life, Catherine has lived on autopilot, going through the motions of work and motherhood without being fully present. Trying to fill the gap, her adult daughter, Julia, is looking for love in all the wrong places, and wreaking havoc on the lives that she touches along the way.

Just what will it take to shock Catherine back into life?

It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of 93 matriculated and the boys went their separate ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the Crazy 8 – Rambo, Mad Dog, Vern, Fatty, Garth Garlic, Boggo, Simon and Spud – have not kept in touch. Or at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives an invitation from the school to attend the 10 Year Reunion weekend, Spud is determined to avoid the event at all costs, but he hasn’t reckoned with the bombardment of intrusive messages and threatening phone calls from his former dorm mates. No one is going to bend his arm, not this time; he is immune to peer pressure and wise to Rambo’s devious manipulation techniques. Spud has moved on. And, anyway, he has enough to worry about on the home front.

At 28 Spud is stuck in a one-third life crisis. Reflecting on a decade of spectacular non-achievement, at a point where he’s coming to realise that his glittering stage career might have stalled before it’s even begun, casts him into deep gloom. For the former scholarship kid, the prospect of once again having to measure up to his blue-blooded school friends – and be found wanting – has him riddled with anxiety. Not only that. Spud still doesn’t have a serious girlfriend, which has seen him resort to a questionable international bathsexting relationship with an old flame. Not to mention that circumstances have forced him to move back in with his parents and his senile grandmother, Wombat, whose walks never end where they began.

After a wildly unsuccessful fishing trip with his father, as well as a return to his old way of figuring things out – writing in his diary – to his own surprise, Spud finds his reunion resistance crumbling. Curiosity and courage win the day. It’s just a weekend, after all … what could possibly go wrong?

There’s a hierarchy to fame – from the Real Celebs who sell their skills as actors and singers, to the Professionally Pretty (the garnish to any occasion), the Hashtag Hustlers, who range from influencers to the social media savvy, to the Hopeless Hangers-On. Everyone has their place in the ecosystem, and knowing your place in that hierarchy is half the fame game won.

For three young women in Joburg, the new age of internet celebrity presents them with obstacles, opportunities, opulence and a chance at fame, fortune and fierce fashion.

LIN
Through sheer ambition and force of will, Lin has rebranded her entire existence. She’s shrugged off her past to fully embrace a new identity: Linfluencer, the high-end influencer whose Outfits Of The Day are obsessively followed by every budding fashionista with a blossoming social media addiction.

LEBO
Then there’s Lebo, who has only ever known a life of fame – real fame – as the former child prodigy behind TV phenomenon Sedi Star. Everyone grew up watching her every move, but now, as she’s grown up, the work, roles and offers have evaporated. But her penchant for scandal, controversy and social media squabbles have kept her in the headlines.

MBALI
And finally there’s South Africa’s reigning Queen of Gossip: Mbali. The entertainment site she runs with an iron fist is known for breaking the hottest news – and the odd celebrity career. With the Hashtag Hustle threatening her media empire, how will she continue to keep her readers enthralled?

As Lin, Lebo and Mbali jostle to take their places in the fame hierarchy, their ambitions, aspirations and agendas collide. Their wins and woes not only affect one another, but can mean that they either individually rise or collectively crumble. Will Lin’s past threaten her future? Will Lebo’s (self-)sabotage prevent her return to the top? Will Mbali’s reign as the Queen of Gossip continue – or reach a dead end? The choices they make can balance or break their entire ecosystem.

Ellie Kent longs to belong

Abandoned as a child and raised in the bleak confines of an asylum, Ellie is taken into service as a governess by a family bound for the distant colony of South Africa. But before reaching their destination, she is abandoned once more – cast adrift in a land as vast as it is unforgiving.

Left with no choice but to join a caravan of settlers, Ellie finds herself in the company of a questionable trader, a mysterious opera singer, and a young Afrikaner, Gysbert de Boer, tasked with delivering her safely to an uncertain future. As war brews on the horizon and the settlers struggle for survival in a land that offers little mercy, Ellie must carve out a home – or be lost to the wilderness forever.

A sweeping frontier fable, The Immortalites is a masterfully crafted tale of survival, sacrifice, and the search for belonging.

On New Year's Eve in 1987, lightning kills Nate's and Danny's mother. To deal with the loss and make sense of a world seemingly governed by chance, their distant and eccentric father creates the Nicotine Gospel.

"According to him, an eight by five cardboard box containing somewhere near twenty machine-made cigarettes would tell you all you needed to know about a man."

The boys throw themselves into the lessons to be close to their dad, but as nate grows up and begins to understand how strange the family gospel (and their father) truly is, he starts to worry. While Nate excels at school and finds ways to escape their father's neglect and the increasingly ramshackle house in Durban, Danny seems to revel in courting danger and death.

Decades later, upon learning of their father's death, Nate and Danny, long estranged, decide to drive from Durban to Cape Town to attend the funeral. On the journey, they must confront each other and their troubled past to find a way forward.

From Ensimbini, in the village of Somizi, in the shadow of the Ntokozo Hills, within the Kingdom of Langabi, during the reign of King Diliza, the cousin of Langabi’s founder, the late Queen Sukumani, there comes a hero.

King Diliza, sun of the sky and leopard of the many markings, Babengabuzang’ elangeni.

Owethu knows your secret.

Drawing on the true history of ‘Farini’s Friendly Zulus’, a group of men who were taken to Britain and then to America as performing curiosities, the novel opens in 1885 in wintry New York City.

The protagonist, Mpiyezintombi, simply called Em-Pee by the English-speakers, loses more than his name in this far-off foreign country; he is seen as little more than a freak-show act – though he is not kept in a cage like the beautiful Dinka Princess, with her gold-painted papier-mâché crown and fur cape. For EmPee, it is love at first sight, but the caged woman is not free to love anyone back: she is the property of Monsieur Duval, proprietor of Duval Ethnological Expositions.

And so begins one of Zakes Mda’s most striking stories, one that depicts terrible historical injustices and indignities, while at the same time celebrating the vigour and ingenuity of the creative spirit, and the transformative power of love.

In an already-great pantheon of Mda love stories and classic gems, this may be his most powerful work yet.

Showcasing African Gothic at its finest, this hypnotic novel tangles together classic texts of madness and female rebellion alongside elements of the jingoistic novels of Victorian adventurer H. Rider Haggard. The result is an extraordinary reinvention of colonial and patriarchal perspectives.

The unnamed narrator spins a web back through a century of colonial possession – political, spiritual and mental – to imagine the stories of conquest and captivity, control and disruption, from the perspective of the women and men ‘half-broken’ by the stigmas attached to race and mental illness. Equally ‘half-broken’ are those dehumanised by their insane greed for dominion and treasure.

With trademark compassion and complexity, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu balances the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire, making for a spellbinding and literally haunting account of love and magic.

Ou geraamtes en nuwe gevare. Mevrou Smit moet haar eie reëls neerlê om te oorleef ...

’n Vloed spoel ’n dekades oue geraamte op die oewer van die rivier oop en Aronspoort is weer vasgevang in ’n blyspel van intriges. Mevrou Smit wil die raaisel oplos voor sy weer paaie kruis met daardie lastige Kaapse speurder.

Intussen kry Hester die ystervark ’n maat en mevrou Smit se smeulende verhouding met dokter Tomas vat vlam. Maar dit is moeilik om op hartsake te konsentreer terwyl ’n moordenaar koelbloedig die verlede probeer toesmeer.

Skuil daar meer agter oom Apie se dood? Wat weet tannie Annatjie en haar heldersiende niggie Hanna? Was die vars sterfte op die dorp werklik ’n ongeluk? En kan die verhouding tussen mevrou Smit en dokter Tomas tot iets lei wat haar uiteindelik op Aronspoort sal anker?

’n Vreemdeling by ’n familiebegrafnis keer Kristie se lewe onderstebo. Haar daaglikse take by die argiteksfirma beleef ook ’n wending: Erik is ’n moeilike kliёnt en ook die onweerstaanbare tipe. Toe Kristie se werklikheid ineenstort, vlug sy na Phuket in Thailand. Maar die eiland bring nie vir haar die gemoedsrus waarop sy gehoop het nie. Terwyl sy van haar omgekeerde wêreld probeer sin maak, begin een van die laaste bastions in haar lewe wankel.

Victor Zulu has to take control of the family-owned club in which both his father and brother were killed. Will he be next?

He’ll have to watch his back with gangsters coveting the club as a place to push drugs. Meanwhile, his brother’s best friend, Fana, wants to buy the club from the Zulus – but with what money? And then there’s Busie, his brother’s widow whom Victor secretly loves, but even she seems to have secrets.

A thrilling tale of mystery and suspense, danger and daring.

Bullish about peaking her psychologist career, she struts around in stilettos whilst leading a new way of thinking in business, with equal gravitas. Married happily, jet-setting the globe, she portrays an image of promise and success.

Believing that talent is enough, she sets about a path towards excellence, yet finds herself wedged in a layered coporate cult. She rebels unwittingly, believing that if she has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. Bitchiness permeates on an extreme scale, as the stakes are high with power, wealth and glamour.

Can Azra maintain her mental stamina or does she fall?

Akbar Manzil was once the grandest residence on South Africa’s east coast near Durban. Nearly a century later, when Sana and her father move to the house, the latest of Akbar Manzil’s long list of tenants, it is in near-ruins, crumbling, shabby and dark. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten.

Full of questions about her new home, Sana is drawn to the deserted and eerie east wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects – and to the locked door at its end, unopened for decades. Soon, Sana begins to discover the tangled, troubling history of the house, awakening the memories of the house itself and dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone – living and dead – at Akbar Manzil.

Sublime, heart-wrenching and lyrically stunning, The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is a haunting love story and a mystery, all intertwined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.

Jacki de Wet is verslaaf aan die internet en sosiale media. Van Facebook, Instagram, X en TikTok weet sy genoeg om gevaarlik te wees. Sy en Pulani vorm ’n formidabele span en hou Die Boekhoek aan die gang. Miskien moes iemand vir Gary, Jacki se baas en verloofde, gewaarsku het toe hy ’n affair met Sally Smith wou begin. “Ebony and Ivory” laat nie met hulle mors nie.

Om van Gary se skelmpie ontslae te raak, is maklik genoeg, maar wat doen sy met die verraad en die woede? Nou sit Jacki sonder iemand om haar ’n bietjie vas te hou, sonder werk en sonder ’n huis. In Tamatiestraat.

Toe die musikant Giovanni Ignacio Mancini sy verskyning maak, verwar hy haar verder. Hy is soos die mooie Vivaldi-musiek wat hy op sy Stradivarius-viool speel – soms guitig of baldadig, soms strelend, smeulend, altyd sensueel. En dan is daar Sebastian, die wonderkind, wat eintlik maar net ’n seuntjie is met ’n groot hartseer.

Jacki sing falsetto, sy weet nie waar sy inpas nie. Sy wil ’n sushi-en-sjampanje-lewe hê, maar die wasabi brand en gee haar sooibrand … en eintlik is sy net ’n vis-en-tjips-meisie.

Kolisile, ’n jong Xhosa uit die Transkei, kyk na die sukkelende mielies op sy pa se lappie grond en besef dat die bestaansboerdery van sy bawu en dié se bawu voor hom nie langer volhoubaar is nie. Hy besluit om stad toe te gaan waar hy geld kan verdien wat hy weer in hulle boerderytjie sal kan inploeg. Met die belofte dat hy sal terugkom én sy verlore broer Mfazwe, wat jare gelede in die stad weggeraak het, sal saambring, vertrek Kolisile vol moed en geesdrif – net om deur die harde werklikheid van die stad ontgogel, getemper en uiteindelik geknak te word.

Op die Johannesburgse myne beleef Kolisile die armoede en uitsigloosheid van plakkersdorpe, ervaar hy die rassisme en uitbuiting van die apartheidsbestel aan eie lyf, word hy vir die eerste keer met werklike haat vir die ander gekonfronteer en sien hy die aantrekkingskrag van misdaad, leuns en drankmisbruik as ontsnaproete uit die byna ondraaglike werklikheid vanuit sy broer Mfazwe se perspektief. Wanneer hy uiteindelik weer sy weg na die Transkei toe vind, is dit – soos wat sy pa gevrees en voorspel het – as ’n liggaamlik én geestelik gewonde mens.

Vyf vooraanstaande sakemanne van Pretoria word koelbloedig met hul eie jagwapens vermoor.

Kaptein Alek Strauss, lid van die Fiskale se Spesiale Ondersoekeenheid, het nog nooit iets so gewetenloos teëgekom nie. Waar gaan die Woestynroos volgende toeslaan? Die Fiskale se forensiese speurwerk lewer geen leidrade op nie, en met elke grumoord word die moordenaar slinkser.

’n Senutergende krimi-debuut deur Marie Lotz – ’n skrywer wat die bloederige donker onder ’n blink oppervlak blootlê.

South African playwright Hannah Meade arrives in London for the opening night of her new play. She has arranged to meet Pierre, the student she was in love with when she taught English in Paris. During their time together, they lied their way towards truths they were too young and inexperienced to endure. Perhaps this time they will have a second chance.

As the reader is drawn from contemporary London back to Paris on the eve of the war in Iraq, the mystery of past events is brought to vivid life in a series of dramatic, intriguing and deeply moving encounters. Written in layered, stark prose, The White Room lays bare many of our assumptions about language, identity, memory, loss and love.

‘Craig Higginson is at the vanguard of the latest and most exciting novelists in South Africa, both robust and sensitive, offering a barometer of the best to be expected from the newest wave of writing in the country.’ – André Brink

‘In its conception and execution, The White Room is remarkable ... Evocative and dreamlike, yet all too nightmarishly real, this is a story so moving that it leaves a powerful afterimage on the reader’s imagination.’ – Craig Mackenzie

An ancient fallen angel is discovered. All hell is about to break loose.

In the year 2233, a mysterious pulsating energy source from Antarctica leads to the discovery of a chained fallen angel deep in the icy trenches of the earth. Micah, a Commander with the Europe, Middle East & Africa Search and Rescue, is feared dead after he plummets down a shaft during this exploratory mission. Lydia refuses to believe that he’s gone and launches her own risky mission with his teammates to retrieve what might be left of the man she loves.

In secret, another dark alliance gathers with their own evil agenda. Demonic entities noticed the discovery of the fallen angel too and plan to use his powers to access an ancient, sealed scroll. Their goal is to reverse Revelation prophecies and bring about their own terrifying version of the apocalypse.

Lydia finds herself in the middle of a treacherous race and an ancient battle that spans back to Day Six of Creation.

Will she find Micah alive? And will they be able to save the world from this supernatural onslaught? Only time will tell if all will be lost in the great divide between good and evil.

The Western Cape is now an independent country. Successful, safe, murderous.

Lisa Robinson has moved from Durban to Cape Town to be with Grant, the prospective next First Minister of the Good Hope Territory. The GHT is the safest and most prosperous country in the southern hemisphere – at a price.

Citizens contract to be tracked by drones, executions are synchronised to the Noon Gun and only those with qualifications are permitted to vote in the Qualified Franchise system.

Life here is picture-perfect. The Mother City is pristine. Everyone has a job. Tourism is booming. But this shiny new state has decided that Lisa is a problem, and problems here disappear quickly and quietly.

Dis die Desembervakansie van 1983/84. Daar’s troepe in Angola, Lady Di is die mode-ikoon van die dag, Geloftedag word nog met groot toewyding gevier – en vakansie is nie vakansie as daar nie iemand is om die beddens op te maak en die skottelgoed te help was nie. Tebatso, self ’n enkelma van drie kinders (haar man is dood in ’n mynongeluk), is so te sê ’n ekstra lid van die Vrystaatse gesin vir wie sy werk: Sy versorg die vier kinders al van babadae af en ken Mies Engela se susters en hul mans se nukke en grille danksy jare se vakansies op die plaas.

Wanneer die uitgebreide familie besluit om ’n strandhuis te huur vir drie weke oor Desember, kry Tebatso vir die eerste keer in haar lewe die geleentheid om haar geografiese horisonne te verbreed (hoewel die “wit” strand danksy apartheidswetgewing vir haar taboe is en sy eintlik maar min van die see te siene kry). Hierdie algehele wegbreek van haar normale milieu is egter ook ’n soort wegbreek uit haar aanvaarde perspektief: Sy sien vir die eerste keer dat daar ánder maniere is om na die wêreld te kyk as dít wat sy as die norm aanvaar het en leer dat daar oor die kleurgrens heen mense is wat ander gebruik en misbruik – en ook dié wat toelaat dat hulle misbruik wórd.

Sy ontmoet ’n Xhosa-man wat al haar vertroude denkpatrone uitdaag en haar meteens laat wonder oor die geordende wêreldjie waarin sy nog altyd geborge voel … en sy begin deur die linksgesinde Adriaan (wat protesteer as sy hom “baas” noem) besef dat daar ook andersdenkendes onder die wit Afrikaners te vinde is.

Aan die einde 1986 kom die Grensoorlog vir Wim Gewers en sy makkers tot 'n einde. 'n Laaste operasie in Angola eindig egter rampsoedig en Wim bevind hom terug in die Nuwe Suid-Afrika, in diens van die Suid-Afrikaanse Polisie, as 'n speurder.

Die laaste gebeure in Angola kom spook egter by Wim en sy makkers. Die Amerikaners se honger na olie lei tot moord en kaptein Wim Gewers moet die saak ondersoek. Die Amerikaners soek wraak en dit ontaard spoedig in 'n kat-en-muis speletjie wat in Suid-Afrika, Namibië, Londen en New York afspeel.

Die boek is nie net spanningsvol nie, maar vertel ook van Wim se vurige verhouding met die olie slagoffer se beste vriendin, Mienke.

Piet van forensies en die aanvallige blondine, Mercia, verskaf genoeg vermaak, sodat jy met al die spanning, moord, misdaad en passie, eenvoudig nie die boek kan neersit nie.