Ou liefde roes nie, selfs nie eers op jou oudag nie.

Dít ontdek Mara toe Vincent vyftien jaar na hulle egskeiding weer haar buurman word. Die ou vonk is onmiddellik terug, maar so ook al die ou koeie uit die verlede. Vincent het in die vyftien jaar ná hul egskeiding ‘n hele harem vroue vir hom bymekaar gemaak met ‘n string mislukte verhoudings. Wanneer sy pad weer met Mara kruis, besef hy dat sy nog altyd sy hart in haar hande gehou het en dat hy nie ‘n tweede kans op geluk wil verloor nie.

Maar vir Mara lyk dit of Vincent weer besig is met sy ou streke. Sy stel glad nie belang in Vincent en sy skielike vlerkslepery nie. Sal hul harte mekaar weer kan vind? Of het Mara haar hart vir ewig teenoor Vincent gesluit?

Nadat sy weens die eise van haar loopbaan en lewe byna uitbrand, neem Hanna ’n blaaskans in Hawaii.

Daar ontmoet sy die charismatiese Richard, sakeman en medeeienaar van ’n groep koffiewinkels. Hulle is dadelik aangetrokke tot mekaar en Hanna vergesel Richard op ’n sakebesoek aan Maui.

Hanna verloor haar hart, maar Richard glo nie in langtermynverhoudings nie. Kan sy hom van plan laat verander of gaan hy haar hart flenters breek?

Deziré Kriek, ‘n bestuursinstrukteur, sukkel om kop bo water te hou en die enigste manier waarop sy haar onderneming kan red is om ‘n kontrak te sluit met ‘n wildsplaas wat gevorderde bestuursopleiding vir hulle werknemers wil hê. Nico, die veearts op die wildsplaas, maak egter haar knieë lam en dreig om haar fokus van haar onderneming af te haal. Boonop het die wildsplaas se finansiële bestuurder, Kylie, ook háár oog op die aantreklike diere-dokter. Die verhouding tussen Deziré en die Nico ontwikkel in meer as net ‘n werksverhouding tydens ‘n safari na Botswana. Sake word egter bemoeilik wanneer Nico se sesjarige seun uit ‘n vorige huwelik, verdwyn. Terug in Suid-Afrika probeer Kylie alles in haar vermoë om Deziré en Nico uit mekaar uit te hou. Maar gaan sy daarin slaag?

A new collection of short stories by one of South Africa’s most original writers, A Little Light is a timely and sensitive evocation of places, bodies, politics, regrets and hope, all revealed in tightly controlled and beautifully lit stories.

Mohlele’s daring writing is on full display with the publication of this volume.

Ashton McKenzie weet wat hy in die lewe wil hê én hoe om dit te kry. Hy is gefokus, ‘n uiters suksesvolle sakeman met ‘n volmaakte lewe waarin hy niks meer nodig het nie. Totdat hy vir Jessica Hayes ontmoet wanneer sy aangestel word om ‘n forensiese ondersoek by sy maatskappy in Miami te loods. Jesse gooi Ashton se perfek georganiseerde lewe omver. Vanuit die staanspoor word sy vir hom die enigste werklike waarheid in sy lewe wie hy met sy lewe sal beskerm. Die enigste vlieg in die salf is Michael Evans, die huidige Formule Een Wêreldkampioenrenjaer waarmee Jesse ‘n verhouding het. Of só dink hy. Vir Jesse word Ashton die één man waarna haar hele wese smag, maar haar verstand waarsku haar dat daar nie vir hulle ‘n toekoms saam kan wees nie. Maar hoe dwing jy jou hart, én liggaam, in die teenoorgestelde rigting?

Olivia Welgemoed se toekoms lyk rooskleurig: Sy is ’n mediese dokter met ’n suksesvolle praktyk en verloof aan ’n predikant met ’n gemeente wat uitsien na ’n lojale predikantspaar.

Dan kom haar pa, ’n bekende dokter van die Noord-Kaap, skielik tot sterwe. Asof sy ná ’n skeepsramp alleen in ’n reddingsboot sit, reik alle hande na haar vir hulp: haar verloofde, haar stiefma, haar stiefbroer en ’n gesondheidskliniek wat oorstroom ...

Op haar erfgrond, Koepelplaas, is daar boonop ’n vreemdeling wat volgens haar wederregtelik op die oewer van die rivier uitkamp. Hy lyk soos ’n boemelaar en word haar grootste probleem.

Beskik Olivia werklik oor die spirituele eienskappe van die berghaan soos wat die mense sê? En sal sy tussen al haar probleme en verantwoordelikhede kan leer onderskei tussen plig en ware liefde?

Nelia Baker’s life gets turned into one of her fantasy writing pieces, when the handsome tv series producer Jake Anderson wants to work with her. Life in the fantasy world is more complicated than she anticipated as it starts to confuse her reality.

Recovering from her Mother’s death, Nelia focuses most of her energy into escaping in one of her writing realms, where she is most at home these days. Her Father, Nate tries his best to be her support system, but things get a bit complicated along the way when Nelia’s college boyfriend proposes to her and simultaneously she receives a job opportunity in Italy to be a screenwriter. Which world will she prefer, the written fantasy or her reality?

With her fiancé Lucas waiting for her back home to become his trophy wife, Nelia gets spun into a love triangle whilst in Italy. Things get really complicated when one of her love interests happens to be Jake Anderson, her soon to be boss. All the chaos affects Nelia negatively, as she tries to hide her skin flare ups whilst trying to spin herself out on the straight and narrow. Everything gets a bit much and she decides to flee back home. How will the insecure Nelia choose which life is best for her and also which guy?

All this whilst trying to find herself in this crazy world she has written about.

Hierdie bundel is ‘n postmoderne spanningsverhaal in epiese digvorm in die voetspore van moderne tekste soos Awater en The Waste Land.

Dit vertel die verhaal van die verset van ‘n baie gewone man teen sy mislukkings en teen die magte wat sy lewe beheer – ‘n verset waarin hy hom gaandeweg laat verlei om ‘n bomplanter te word.

Die sentrale temas van liefde, verraad en vergelding word uitgespeel in ‘n ryk intertekstuele verwysingsveld.

Nielsen BookData Bookseller's Choice-prys (2005) Sy het haarself Stom Anna genoem. Omdat sy aan iemand kon vertel van dit wat tussen haar en haar stiefpa plaasgevind het nie. Nie aan haar ma nie, nie aan haar beste vriendin nie, en selfs nie aan haar eie pa nie. Dit is 'n verhaal wat sy nou eers, jare later, kan uitskryf. Nou eers kan sy die swye verbreek oor hoe haar stiefpa haar diepste menswees aangetas het. En hoe sy uiteindelik anderkant uitgekom het. Dis ek, Anna is gebaseer op 'n ware verhaal en is ook in Engels beskikbaar as It's me, Anna. Elbie Lotter is 'n skuilnaam.

Zara is vasbeslote om nooit ’n vervelige getroude lewe te lei nie, maar een van avontuur. Sy leer vir Fernando ken en raak verlief op sy eksotiese voorkoms en geheimsinnige identiteit.

Daar is egter reeds ’n vrou en ’n baba in sy lewe. Hy betaal Zara met silwer munte om na die baba om te sien terwyl hy na die ma gaan soek. Hy weier egter om te sê waar die munte vandaan kom. Sy begin vermoed dat hy die seerower is wat ’n trommel vol soortgelyke muntstukke van ’n handelskip in die hawe van Tafelbaai geplunder het.

Sy bewaar egter sy geheime, want die geld help om haar pa se dobbelskuld aan Hendrick Vanloveren te vereffen. Op dié manier sal haar pa se skandes ten minste ’n geheim bly. En sy hoef nie met Hendrick te trou as betaling van haar pa se skuld nie.

Katja voel reeds gemaklik met haar plekkie op die rak. Haar lewe is ongekompliseerd en gevestig tot sy Xavier en sy seuntjie ontmoet. Xavier is haar nuwe bevelvoerder en hopeloos te aantreklik in sy uniform. Katja voel hoe ‘n onsigbare band tussen haarself en Xavier begin vorm, want hul albei dra littekens van die verlede. Haar lewe word verder omver gegooi deur ‘n versoek van maatskaplike dienste dat haar biologiese familie haar graag wil opspoor. Dis presies wat sy haarself nog altyd voorgeneem het om nooit óóit te doen nie. Alles voel oorweldigend, en om haar wegholskoene aan te trek klink na die beste oplossing. Maar wat as twee gebreekte harte saam geluk kan vind? Kan ou wonde behandel en genees word? Is dit tyd om kanse te waag?

Gracie-Jane Coetzee se eerste kleinkind word gebore kort voordat die president die eerste inperking aankondig. Gracie is ’n skrywer en illustreerder van kinderboeke, en nie juis ’n konvensionele ouma nie. Sy verkies die geselskap van haar getroue basset-hond bo enige ander verhouding in haar lewe. Saans wanneer PTS haar tussen die mure van haar huis rondjaag en die gevoel van onheil soos ’n uil op die dak kom sit, dokter sy graag die kompulsief obsessiewe simptome met ’n glasie wyn of twee . . . 

Dokter Madeline du Bois se man verkul haar met ʼn verpleegster en sy besluit om die huwelik te beëindig. Sy doen aansoek vir ʼn pos in die Kaap by die nuwe Jonkershoek-kliniek buite Stellenbosch waar sy die eienaar, dokter Brian Thompson, ontmoet.

Madeline voel dadelik sterk aangetrokke tot Brian, al is sy nou versigtig vir mans. Brian reken hy rou nog oor sy oorlede vrou, maar besef ook dat hy Madeline nie kan weerstaan nie. Nie een van die twee beoog weer ʼn verhouding nie, maar hulle kan ook nie die aantrekkingskrag tussen hulle ignoreer nie.

Sal hulle die vele uitdagings kan oorwin en toelaat dat die liefde ou wonde genees?

Few in his native Scotland know about Thomas Pringle – the abolitionist, publisher, and – some would say – Father of South African Poetry. A biography of Pringle is in order, and a reluctant writer takes up this task.

To help tell the story of Pringle is the spectre of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave whose history he had once published. Also offering advice is the ghost of Hinza Marossi, Pringle’s adopted Khoesan son, and the timetraveller Sir Nicholas Greene, a character exhumed from the pages of a book.

While Mary is breathing fire and Sir Nicholas’s heart is pining, Hinza is interrogating his origins. But what is to be made of the life of Pringle so many years after his death by this motley crew from the 1800s?

As the apparitions flit through time and space to put together the pieces of Pringle’s story and find their own place in his biography, Zoë Wicomb’s novel offers an acerbic exploration of colonial history in superb prose and with piercing wit.

’n Vrou, Katerina Steenkamp, haar oog ferm op die berg, gaan op ’n aanlyn dating site en ontmoet mense met onverwagse gevolge. ’n Man, sy kop vol apokaliptiese frases, patrolleer die strate sonder enige sigbare voorneme of doel. ’n Ander man hou die naghemel dop en wag op die koms van ’n elliptiese tuig. Nog ’n vrou, aan die einde van haar lewe, besin oor haar huwelik, en die lewens van haar drie susters. ’n Uitdagende roman, wat bowenal dui op vernuwing in Winterbach se werk. 

Zinzi has a talent for finding lost things. To save herself, she has to find the hardest thing of all... the truth. Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a client turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she's forced to take on her least favourite kind of job - missing persons. Being hired by famously reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass, marked by their animals, live in the shadow of the undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the underbelly of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she'll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives - including her own. Set in a wildly re-imagined Johannesburg, it swirls refugees, crime, the music industry, African magic and the nature of sin together into a heady brew.

"Stick with me, baby. Ek kan nie belowe dat ek jou famous sal maak nie. Maar jy sal fun he langs die pad. "Met die woorde lei die mooi, rebelse Dalena haar nuwe vriendin, Mart, 'n wereld in waaroor ordentlike tienermeisies net in die donker fluister. So begin 'n inisiasieproses wat met opwinding, maar ook met ontnugtering en pyn gepaard gaan. Die dinge van 'n kind is ’n onthutsende eerlike boek oor die begin van vrouwees, en die verlies van onskuld op seksuele, politieke en morele vlak.

Three young professionals set off on a hiking trail to a campsite in the upper regions of the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal little knowing what lies ahead when a stranger who has been following them lures them into performing a bizarre mind game which has a concealed dark intent.

What unfolds against the spectacular mountainous amphitheatre is the stranger’s journey into South Africa’s historical landscape in which he manipulates the hikers into taking on the identity of key role players in shaping the country’s destiny, scripted in such a way as to serve his sense of disillusionment of a political ideal that has come to nothing. His feelings of betrayal and anger merge with a past personal vendetta that he has with one of the hikers to the point that the mind game takes on threatening undertones.

In The Rainbow Epilogue Neville Herrington moves away from the personal experience of living in a country undergoing socio-political change in his autobiographies Growing up in White South Africa and Growing Old in Black South Africa to a more objective, critical perspective of a South Africa in which the aspirations encapsulated in the Rainbow Nation, (a term coined by Desmond Tutu and used by Mandela at the end of apartheid), have for many failed to materialise, as it has for his central character, Reginald Taylor, who supported an ideal that has not only failed to deliver, but turned on him destroying everything that is meaningful in his life.

Vier ouens, ‘n meisie in ‘n kortbroek en ‘n man in ‘n rok – so kan die hoofkarakters in die boek opgesom word.

Husky en sy drie vriende is na hul Graad 12 eindeksamen op pad na ‘n Karooplaas, Blouwater, vir ‘n heerlike vakansie van niksdoen en kuier. Die plaas behoort aan een van die vriende se pa, een van die rykste mense in die land. Langs die pad laai hulle ‘n pragtige, blonde ryloper op, ‘n meisie met ‘n verlede en ‘n .38-rewolwer in haar handsak. Sy aanvaar die uitnodiging om saam op Blouwater te gaan uitspan, min wetend dat sy in doodsgevaar gaan beland.

Op die plaas stuur alles egter op ‘n afgryslike bloedbad af. Onverklaarbare gebeurtenisse, ‘n waansinnige pastoor met sy lang swart gewaad, ‘n kerkie, grafstene, kraaie en ‘n bejaarde gravin met haar haelgeweer skep ‘n atmosfeer van spanning, misterie en Gotiek. Blouwater sal nooit weer dieselfde wees nie.

Jonk en oud sal hierdie spanningsverhaal geniet met ‘n ontknoping aan die einde wat die leser uitasem sal laat.

What makes Pat Simmons, a retired engineer, give up his comfortable middle class living and wade across a crocodile infested river with a bicycle strapped to his back, in order to teach chess to schoolchildren at the Mission station?

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.

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.

How do stories begin, and why? What are the conditions for writing fiction? Need, compulsion, a listener, opportunity, rhetoric …

In The Snow Sleeper, the art and meaning of storytelling is illuminated in four magically interwoven tales of friendship. In each, a narrator’s narrow vision is gradually broadened and transformed into piercing self-knowledge.

“The Swan Whisperer”: A creative writing lecturer receives a series of bizarre missives from an eccentric student, which bring into question her most dearly held literary convictions.

“The Percussionist”: At his best friend’s funeral, a clockmaker delivers a eulogy that, in recalling the writer’s voyeuristic obsessions, explores the nature of love and friendship.

“The Snow Sleeper”: A fieldworker interviewing the homeless is confronted with her own grief by a most articulate and charismatic vagrant.

“The Friend”: The confidante of a famous photographer acknowledges her role in his decline. A story that resonates with the interplay of the artistic and political in South Africa today.

These characters, all alter egos, are linked each to the other in strange, recurring loops, drawing the reader into the depths of a beautiful snowstorm.     

In 1909, four women board a ship in Madras to cross the Kala Pani, the ‘black water’, to Natal. Lutchmee, a young widow, has escaped her vengeful mother-in-law and self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre. Vottie, from the Brahmin caste, is an educated girl whose abusive husband tries to hold on to his caste at all costs. Chinmah, heavily pregnant when she boards the ship, is married to an older man as part of an unpaid debt. Dazzling but shy Jyothi is single. On board the ship, the women will form friendships and alliances. They will help each other through trial and trauma, even after they arrive and are separated.

Like many Indians desperate to escape unbearable conditions in their home country, these women are only too eager to believe what they’ve been told: that a better life awaits them in South Africa, where caste doesn’t matter, food is plentiful, and liberty will be theirs after just five years. But the reality of life on the plantations reveals the truth about the crossing: that it is usually a one-way journey, rife with misery, and that the hardship doesn’t end after the ship has dropped anchor in Durban harbour.

The epic stories of these immigrants – the brave, the bold, the kind; the weak, the cruel, the cowardly – are woven into the fabric of South Africa’s Indian population today. Shevlyn Mottai has drawn on her ancestors’ history to highlight the bonds formed between women during adversity, and to celebrate their journeys of tragedy and triumph.