“Pappa, die sterre is dieselfde hier.”

Milano Kaliempie is Mieta en Hennerik se enigste vlaktekuiken op die plaas Spookwerwe in die dorre Bo-Karoo. Hul buurman, Geelsuiker, leer Milano die geheime van die veld, ook jakkalsjag, en op die werf is dit Mieta wat soggens douvoordag brood inknie en die hartklop van hul bestaan is.

Dis wanneer juffrou Meintjies die dag met haar wit karretjie by die huis aankom, dat die hol kol op Mieta se maag kom sit. Want Milano was dan net die een dag laat vir skool. Maar juffrou Meintjies het ander nuus. Dis Geelsuiker wat raad gee:

“Jy moet nou gaan doen wat die regte ding is, Mieta. Daardie klong,” en hy wys na waar Milano die perd inspan, “vat nou die grootpad. Moenie hom in ’n klein kampie ingekeer hou nie.”

Die kinders van Spookwerwe is ’n roman wat soos die vaal stof van die Bo-Karoo oral inkruipplek kry en diep in jou hart kom lê. Dis ’n roman oor ma-wees, oor grootword, en oor verliese. Maar ook van weer vol word.

She called herself Silent Anna, because she couldn’t tell anyone about what happened between her and her stepfather. Many years later, Anna breaks the silence to reveal the sexual abuse she suffered, its impact on her life and how she has finally managed to overcome it. This is the story of how she finally spoke out to the world and in court.

This book is a must-read. Not only because it relates a young girl’s determination to survive and to overcome her traumatic childhood, but also because it does so with such sincerity.

Written long before the #metoo movement, this story is still an important one – its relevance highlighted even more now. It’s me, Anna: The Full Story is a special edition to celebrate Women’s month as part of Kwela’s 25th birthday campaign. This omnibus contains both novels: It’s me, Anna and The state vs Anna Bruwer.

Based on a true story.

Ellie McKenna likes her new, quiet life in the countryside. She has time to reflect on the death of her dad, that fateful night at the police roadblock, and to recover from her physical and psychological scars - the result of her last mission. Here in her safe haven she even finds time to help out as church organist. But when they finally - inevitably - track her down, she knows that she'll need to find out who is looking for her, and why. The keenly anticipated sequel to Blindside.

Kaapstadse sielkundige Chris se rustige lewe word bedreig. ’n Trigger-happy vrou uit sy verlede probeer hom afpers, sy pasiënte se koppe haak een vir een uit, en sy dirty little secret begin hom kriewelrig maak.

Boonop irriteer sy gay eksvrou hom met haar verhoudingsprobleme, amper net soveel soos sy skoolvriend se skynbaar sorgelose lewe. Op Bella, sy jong Portugese vrou met haar voorliefde vir lawwe YouTube-videos, kan hy darem werklik staatmaak – of hoe?

Hierdie genuanseerde, ironiese blik op seks, intieme verhoudings en eksistensiële krisisse word uit die oogpunt van verskeie karakters vertel, en elkeen het ’n kinkel-einde. Besluit self wie s’n is gelukkig en wie s’n nie . . .

As lykbesorger by White Lily Funerals het Seb al talle lyke gebalsem, organe teruggepak in lyfholtes, bene gekonnekteer en wasbleek gesigte gegrimeer vir die laaste besigtiging deur roubeklaers. ’n Mens het jou werk en jy doen dit, dit help nie om vir ander goed te wens nie, of hoe?

Nietemin wens Seb wel af en toe vir die een of ander ingryping om hom los te ruk uit sy saai bestaan – nie net by die werk nie, maar ook tuis waar hy, sy vrou en tienerkinders verby mekaar leef.

Eendag, toe die sterwende seuntjie Gawie en sy ma by die begrafnisondernemers instap, begin Seb tog in wense glo . . .

“’n Fabel vir moderne tye. ’n Heerlike verhaal.” – Kerneels Breytenbach.

Polisievrou Erica van der Linde het die perfekte manier om te sorg dat mense in die getuiebeskermingsprogram in Kaapstad versteek bly. Sy vermoor hulle. En wanneer die gewese kriminele oorgaan van ’n lewe van misdaad na dié van versteekte staatsgetuies, is daar niemand wat na hulle soek nie. Maar dan kry sy opdrag om Daniël Enslin te versteek, en so ’n getuie het sy nog nooit teëgekom nie.

En skielik is dit vir Erica ook ’n taak van lewe en dood, want nou ken Daniël haar geheim.

Wenner van die eerste KykNET-Rapport Boekprys in die Film-kategorie, nou tot rolprent verwerk.

Coenraad de Buys was the most dangerous man around in the Cape of the late 1700s.

At eight he crossed his first frontier and left his mother’s house behind. Left his home (the first of many); left the Cape; left civilisation.

From the Langkloof Buys roves – a giant, a legend, polygamist and swindler; the bane of government, father to chieftains and a Buysvolk of his own. Everywhere his wild oats are sown; everywhere renegades and criminals join his band of outcasts. He interprets between Xhosa and English but speaks only his own words.

And everywhere on his travels, always there is the pack of dogs and the earless red leader that put Buys on his restless path. In Buys’ tracks, in his head, around his camp fires the slavering jaws snap.

He was born in the Langkloof. He died on the banks of the Limpopo. But Buys is not dead.

Red Dog is a novel about frontiers and borders. The Afrikaans original Buys was hugely acclaimed in 2014. Now it has been masterfully translated by Michiel Heyns.

Sunday. Christmas Eve. There is a break-in at the Stables Estate in Pretoria East. Businessman Lafras van Zyl is left for dead and his family has disappeared without a trace. After six weeks there are still no clues, and Captain AJ Williams has been summoned to solve the case. Alex Derksen and Ranna Abramson are on the trail of Martina Buitendag (17), who went missing in Yeoville. Two crimes. Too many secrets. Nowhere to hide.

Duits Suidwes-Afrika, 1905. ‘n Tyd van oorlog en beroering.

Die tengerige Siegfried Bock kom as soldaat na die protektoraat om sy staal te wys. Maar hy word gou ontnugter toe hy vergrype aanskou wat hy nie kan vergeet nie. Lisbeth Löwenstein is hier om met ’n man te trou wat sy skaars onthou, ’n setlaar wat vir haar armlastige ouers geld gestuur het om haar tot vrou te neem. Mordegai Guruseb ontsnap uit ’n konsentrasiekamp waar gevangenes van ontbering omkom. Maar kort voor lank word sy vryheid weer bedreig. En dan is daar die mislukte dokter Albert Pitzer wat homself ’n wetenskaplike ag en hoop om data te versamel wat sy teorieë staaf. Alvaus Luipert, ’n plaaslike skoolmeester, duld egter nie sy arrogante aannames en vernederende metodes nie.

In die uitgestrekte, majestueuse landskap van Duits Suidwes-Afrika word dié vyf mense se lot vervleg en elkeen se menslikheid word tot die uiterste beproef.

Toe Pamina Vermaak by die werk uitfreak, sit sy skielik sonder inkomste. Boonop verloor sy haar kêrel, haar woonstel in Tamboerskloof, asook die laaste flenters toekomsideale wat sy naarstig aan ’t vasklou was – alles in een dag. Sy is gedwing om druipstert terug te keer na haar ouerhuis op die klein Weskusdorp Witwaterbaai. ’n Plek wat sy gesweer het haar nooit weer sal sien nie.

Intussen basuin die voorblaaie van poniekoerante dit uit dat rockster Wolf de Jager se verlowing met aktrise Daniella du Toit verbreek is en krioel dit op sosiale media van steelfoto’s waar sy hom verneuk. Hy moet weg uit die Kaap en ’n lukrake seleksie op Google Maps bring hom tot op Witwaterbaai, waar sy swart leerbaadjie harder as sy Fender Stratocaster skreeu teen die gehekelde doilies in Ant Leentjie se gastehuis.

Sal Pamina en Wolf op hierdie slakkepas-dorp van bokkoms droog en stoepsit hul probleme kan ontduik? Of lê daar net nog meer komplikasies voor?

Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove.

Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. This is her debut novel and was first published in in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

The fiery birth of a new star of South African fiction, Innards is an incendiary debut of linked stories that narrates the everyday lives of Soweto residents, from the early years of apartheid to its dissolution and beyond.

Set in Soweto, the urban heartland of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday black folks processing the savagery of apartheid. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness and beauty.

Meet a fake PhD and ex-freedom fighter who remains unbothered by his own duplicity, a girl who goes mute after stumbling upon a burning body, twin siblings nursing a scorching feud, and a woman unravelling under the weight of a brutal encounter with the police. At the heart of this collection – of deceit and ambition, appalling violence and transcendent love – is the story of slavery, colonization and apartheid – and it shows in intimate detail how South Africans must navigate both the shadows of the recent past and the uncertain opportunities of the promised land.

Full to bursting with life, in all its complexities and vagaries, Innards is an uncompromising depiction of black South Africa. Visceral and tender, it heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

The CIA have approached IA3 with a strange request; the participation of an assassin in a covert operation in the USA.

How does a rogue US Senator feature in the plot and how are the Russians involved? Will the CIA double cross Bataleur and how is the FBI involved?

The poaching of the abalone in South Africa has reached alarming proportions in recent years. Unscrupulous criminals rape the sea beds in search of the delicacy.

Bataleur and the IA3 team expose and do battle with an evil Chinese gang and with local gangsters. Bataleur and the team need all of their skills to undertake the operation and ensure that they are in control.

The second verse of any song has to be more killer than the first. Always. The rhythm has to slap. The lyrics must be on point. The feeling intense. And the impact mad-definitive. It’s just the way it is. In the same way, if you do well once in life, then you always have to be better from that point onwards. No doubt.

East London, aka Slummies, circa 1998. Bokang Damane is a dreamer and an outsider with mad problems. Things only get worse when everyone thinks he wants to off himself just because he wrote an essay on suicide. Really? Talk about d.r.a.m.a.

Life at the moment is just a sorry son-of-a-checklist of insolvable problems. Problem #1: Not black enough for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Yep, that’s what happens when you attend a mad-pompous all boys’ college and live in the burbs. Problem #2: Family finances are a joke – they can’t even afford Bokang’s initiation. Now he can’t get props like any decent Xhosa man. Problem #3: An alcoholic, gambling attorney for a father who expects the world to bend to his will.

What’s a man gotta do? Apart from freaking the hell out?

Bokang just wants to rap, sketch and be left alone. Everyone keeps yacking on about Bokang reaching his true potential but everyone keeps getting in the way.

So what happens?

Boy meets girl. It wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.

Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature: silver (1990)
Alba Bouwer Prize (1990)
C.P. Hoogenhout Award (1990)

Paul kan die ontydige dood van sy pa nie verwerk nie en bly droom van hom. Hy maak vriende met die ou skoonmaker by hulle woonstelgebou, maar konflik ontstaan wanneer hy Paul se pa se ou Buick, sy "droomwa", wil koop.

Roshana Peterson, a science journalist, wants to escape her traumatic past and mundane reality. She's wondering whether she should leave this world on her own terms. Her failed relationship and dwindling mental health lead her to KwaZulu-Natal to meet a man with a story. The man claims to know the origin of an enigmatic cure that eradicated a global pandemic decades ago. Roshana’s journey takes her to an old, rundown house where the curious lives of Dr Igor Evermore and his intern, Bo Bantu, are unravelled.

Bo dreams of prominence in the science world and discovers a cure for The Worm, but Dr Evermore has secrets and a troubled past of his own. Through their gnawing failures and uncanny methodologies, Bo and Dr Evermore make the scientific discovery of a lifetime, sacrificing their friendship and, eventually, their sanity.

A story that delves into the realms of science, death and consciousness to reveal what it means to die and to truly live.

Cara and Grace are two young women. Cara is a medical doctor who has an exciting career, a loving marriage and a beautiful six-month-old son, Noah. Grace is a teenage girl – young, fit and talented, embarking on all that life has to offer her.

When each one of them is devastated by personal tragedy, neither one knows how to rebuild their own life. But when Grace has the idea, inspired by the Reach For A Dream Foundation, to cycle across South Africa from Durban back to her home city of Cape Town, Cara appears to be the most qualified companion for her.

‘Miles to Go’ is a story about the journey that these companions take – a journey of many physical miles but also one that is filled with just as many emotional milestones as they embark on their journey back to wholeness. It is filled with the struggles and fears, tears and more than a little laughter of two young women who are trying to overcome their loss and find their way back to life, in defiance of the hands that they have been dealt.

Mindie Rochebrandt en haar tweelingsuster, Mandelien, is beide swanger met hul eersteling. Ná ’n onsmaaklike insident tydens Mindie se ooievaarstee besluit sy egter om haar advokaatman, Marius, te verlaat sodra sy geboorte geskenk het.

Maar enkele dae later kom Mindie af op ’n gruwelike toneel in Mandelien se meenthuis. Wie verniel ’n swanger vrou en haar ongebore baba so wreedaardig? En hoekom?

Siembamba is ’n naelbyt-riller. Angswekkend, aksiebelaaid en propvol onvoorspelbare intriges.

Azania receives a call to notify her of her estranged father’s death.

This call prompts her to go to Knysna to seek answers about his life and the circumstances surrounding his death. Detective Welter is investigating the seemingly straightforward suicide case of former politician Joseph ‘Lefty’ Mafu quickly turns into a complicated web of conspiracies.

But the truth is as elusive as whoever is behind it all. If only the dead could talk...

Welcome to Vivo, where the only cemetery is run by old Mateus and his dog, God. Mateus’s eyes aren’t so good these days, which is why he has been burying bodies in the wrong graves, and also why, while out walking with God, he trips over a young homeless girl. On a whim, Mateus decides to appoint the girl as his apprentice.

Novo, who has been sleeping on the street with a dog-eared copy of The Savage Detectives as her pillow, is determined to reorganise the cemetery, but she will have to hurry: buried awry, divorced from their names, the ghosts of Vivo are accumulating, unable to proceed to the afterlife without knowing who they are. Also, someone, or some thing, is on the loose, killing people and closing in on the one person who can make things right.

Vivo is a town with a pigeon-messaging service, a phone booth used for romantic encounters, and a number of residents who are not quite what they seem, including a prostitute, a professor and a prophetic flower-seller. Oh, and the coffee is hellishly strong.

Erudite and wise, magical and quirky, Sven Axelrad’s debut novel is an enchanting adventure that explores what our names mean to us and who we are without them.

Sy’s ʼn boeremeisie, hy ʼn Jood. ʼn Boerejood, ja, maar nogtans ʼn Jood. Vir hulle liefde is daar geen toekoms as hulle dit nie self skep nie.

Terwyl hulle jonk is, dink hulle nie aan die toekoms nie, leef hulle vir die nou, glo hulle die verskille kan oorkom word. En Izak Katz, weet Elizabeth, maak altyd ʼn plan. Altyd.

Hy, met sy lag, sy terg, die sagtheid in sy oë. Die paadjie wat aan hulle toebedeel is, is ongelyk. Soos die middelmannetjie in die drif. Hulle weet van mekaar vermy, van voorgee sodat niemand iets vermoed nie. Van wag. En van liefhê … Totdat Elizabeth gedwing word om ʼn doodsbelofte te maak. En sy weet, sy wéét, hierdie keer is dit verby, nie eers Izak sal nou meer raad hê nie.

Alex het 'n teorie oor chaos. Waar hy ookal gaan, volg dit hom. Dis hoekom hy joernalis geword het en hom nou in Tanzanie bevind. By 'n troue iewers tussen Dar es Salaam en Arusha ontmoet Alex vir Ranna, 'n vryskutfotograaf met 'n bos swart krulhare, 'n t-hemp wat se Dr. Seuss is altyd reg, en 'n verlede waaroor sy nie praat nie. Alex wat lankal nie meer in Die Liefde glo nie, weet: dit is hoe dit voel. Maar dan haal die chaos hom in. Eers begin dit onophoudelik reen en paaie en dorpies spoel weg. En dan, wanneer die lyk van 'n Amerikaanse IT-biljoener op ’n strand uitspoel, word dit duidelik dat Ranna met rede haar verlede probeer begrawe. Waarom anders stel die polisie skielik in haar belang?

When the former assassin, Zikhona, wakes up next to a dead body in an affluent Johannesburg suburb, she knows of only one person who can clean up her mess, uncle Zenzele. The incident unravels ghosts of the past, forcing the Z Gang to crawl out of their Mozambican hideout.

It is not only Zikhona’s situation that is intricate but the gang’s wealth back home is threatened by the torching of their taxis. They are also about to lose their millions through the elaborate laundering syndicate of a murderous underworld mobster while also nursing a terminally-ill member.

Zenzele resorts to the only thing he knows best – guns, treachery and dark powers – while unleashing his battle-hardened gang to fend off the police and the underworld mobsters chasing Zikhona hell-bent on forcing her back into her contract-killing past. Her marriage to a flamboyant Nigerian pastor hits the skids.

With fewer friends and desperate to save their millions, Zenzele is forced to tap deep into the reserves of old connections, where loyalties still hold. His knack to keep everyone in his debt reaches its pinnacle. Staying alive would take ingenuity, conniving, outsmarting the SAPS crime intelligence and a Police Minister, desperate to save his political career. However, discovering that their enemies are closer to home than they had thought is the ultimate betrayal.

Look closely around you. Have you ever asked yourself what happens to all the girls who are in the system?

Girls that are orphans…
The boys…
The mothers in shelters…
All the battered women…
The downfall of the most powerful…

I’m leaving the agenda BARE for those who seek to find it. I have a story for you. No mercy…

Back like I never left!

Tim Morgan
Undisclosed location

The savage, senseless murders of children and the youth. It carries Treasure’s story from Book 1 and ends with the fight for life between Paul and Tim Morgan. We look at the disappearance of young people, human trafficking, cults and mental illness in men.

This story is inspired by real-life events and researched data from global social ills and Jackie looks into SA political faces that have sex scandals as part of her research.