Between the USA and SA lies the deep Web. Inside the heaving party hub that is Cape Town’s student playground, someone is preying on the young and unwary. As allegations of drink spiking and illicit sex hit the local papers, university authorities move quickly to limit the damage... A world away in Seattle, Carlos De Palma, the shadowy operator behind Dark Video, is plotting his survival strategy in the ever-changing Internet landscape. With his precious clients clamouring for heightened thrills, Carlos begins tapping into a new service that blur the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds... Enter Robbie Cullen, nice guy and average student, dumped by his girlfriend and struggling with grades. But when it comes to the crunch, Robbie doesn’t know the meaning of stepping back. Once he encounters the beautiful and mysterious Fallon, his small-town bravado is set to make him some powerful enemies. Bitter Pill is a gripping thriller that sweeps through the intoxicating haunts of Cape Town’s nightlife and lingers on the sugary sand of Plettenberg Bay—before exploding on the streets of the Mother City’s exclusive southern suburbs.

Footprints in the Quag highlights the occurrence and effects of domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment in the township of Soweto.

Yet her women characters are not victims – they fight back, physically or through educating their communities. They carve out for themselves social spaces where they are able to organize against such abuse.

Wat is dit wat mense dryf om daardie fyn lyn tussen reg en verkeer doortesteek, welwetende dat hulle in die proses oor die krans gaan ry? Die karakters in Dryfveer is geen uitsondering nie.

'm Mpumalanga Wholesale Supplies spesialis word vermoor en Karl-Jan Schoeman ontbloot bedrog. Beleef die spanning saam met hom, Eileen Wessels wat die rekenaarskelm moet soek en kaptein Marcus Dube wat die kriminele ondersoek na die moord en 'n ontvoering lei.

Voeg hierby ʼn sluimerende romanse, 'n listige vrou wat bedreig voel, en die vonke spat.

Geboortereg se tema handel oor die feit dat elke baba die reg het tot ouers, twee oumas en oupas. Ruan die hoofkarakter se grootouers aan vaderskant weier om hom te aanvaar as hul kleinkind. Ruan word groot by sy ma en haar man, wat nie die grootouers se seun is nie.

Albei sy ouers sterf. Ruan ontmoet twee vroue tot wie hy aangetrokke voel. Die verhaal stel die leser bekend aan die families en stories van die twee vroue.

Die boek is geskik vir manlike en vroulike lesers.

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.

A run-down block of flats in central Cape Town, home to refugees and illegal immigrants, becomes a young girl's gallery of self-discovery in this moving story of the emotional carnage caused by Africa's civil wars.

Drug dealers from Nigeria, Zimbabwean wire-workers, immigrants from Rwanda and Sudan, a Mozambican refugee - all seeking the peace of a newly democratic South Africa - bear down on her fragile world, then scoop her up into theirs.

Skyline is an unflinching look at one girl's coming of age in the colourful and violent streets of a city waking up to the rest of Africa.

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.

Die vrou van die klippesee vertel hoe die lewe vir Hendrik tot nou toe gerol het soos ’n stormsee. Hy is ’n visserman van ’n klein dorpie aan die Weskus wat jou aan Paternoster laat dink en in sy lewe het hy reeds sy broer aan die dood afgestaan. Maar dit is die verdwyning van sy vrou wat hom bitter maak en na die papsak wyn laat reik. Só staan hy dronk en droewig in die koue see, reg om homself te verdrink terwyl sy hond op die strand vir hom wag wanneer die roman begin. Hendrik se lewe begin handomkeer verander wanneer hy ’n gewonde gedierte, miskien iets soos ’n meermin, huis toe bring. Die vrou van die klippesee wys hoe goed fiksie sosiale en politieke kwessies kan ondersoek wanneer die skrywer lig werp op die lewe van ’n karakter wat aanvanklik niksseggend en nietig blyk te wees.

Those Who Live in Cages captures an astonishingly intimate view of life in Eldorado Park, a coloured township south of Johannesburg, through five women - Bertha, Kaylynn, Laverne, Janice and Raquel.

These unforgettable characters' lives intersect as they attempt to do the most important thing: survive another day in "The Park"

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.

*Winner of the UJ Debut Prize*

Family secrets run deep for Grace, a young girl growing up in Cape Town during the 1980s, spilling over into adulthood, and threating to ruin the respectable life she has built for herself.

When an old childhood friend reappears, Grace’s memories of her childhood come rushing back, and she is confronted, once again, with the loss that has shaped her. The novel is permeated with the long shadow cast by personal trauma, violence and loss on people’s lives.

Back in South Africa after working with the FBI, Creed is haunted by his past mistakes, including the death of his fiancée. When a young woman is murdered and dismembered in her Johannesburg apartment, Creed’s long-time friend and head of the SAPS’ Investigative Psychological Unit, Major Eli Grey, enlists his help in investigating the murder – an attempt to save the self-destructing Creed from himself. But not all the Unit’s members welcome his involvement, and there are those intent on exposing his secrets while the murder is being solved.

The young woman’s community are convinced she was the victim of a witch called Nomtakhati, but Creed’s hunch points to an angry ex-boyfriend. Who, or what, is really behind the murder? Could it be Nomtakhati, who believes Nick Creed is uSatane?

In the Midst of Wolves is a dark psychological thriller about metaphorical demons from the past and the living monsters who target the innocent.

“I could have guessed that one day I’d hear something I shouldn’t have on that party line. It was one thing listening to the gossip and the small talk that buzzed along its wires all the time, but it was something else to hear, on a hot Saturday morning before you started high school, that your best friend’s mother, the woman you wished you could somehow have married one day, was dead.”

Dangerous boyhood memories surface when a letter brings news of Karl’s suicide.

Karl, Max’s enigmatic friend who taught him how to toughen up when he’d first arrived in their small Lowveld town. Karl, whose beautiful mother became the object of Max’s raging teenage obsession.

Her tragic death brought a brutal end to the two boys’ friendship. But why exactly did Karl and his family leave town so soon thereafter?

As Max tries to make sense of what is transpiring, his complicity in the ills of the past begins to gnaw at him.

Due South of Copenhagen is Mark Winkler’s masterful tale of the friendships between men, small-town living during the height of South Africa’s Border War, and about what it takes to put the past to rest.

“You will now be tried in this fifth heaven for five crimes committed in the Herebefore. First, mass murder; second, racism; third, grand theft of Africa’s natural resources and land; fourth, exploitation and enslavement of African workers; and fifth, egotism and a vainglorious quest for immortality.”

Set over five days in an African Hereafter called “After Africa”, this story revolves around the British South African imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, awakening in an After African Limbo after being asleep for 120 years. Guided by Ghanaian writer Efua Sutherland, he is taken on a tour of After Africa’s five heavens, experiencing Africa’s great civilisations, its Nobel laureates, its writers, its musicians and its sporting legends. The novella centres on the grand trial of Cecil Rhodes in the fifth heaven for five crimes committed in the Herebefore.

Two Counsel for Damnation – Olive Schreiner and Stanlake Samkange – face off against two Counsel for Salvation – Nelson Mandela and Harry Oppenheimer. The seven judges from Africa’s five sub-regions and its North American, Caribbean and South American diasporasare also well-known figures: Ruth First, Wangari Maathai, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Patrice Lumumba, Taslim Elias, Maya Angelou and Toussaint l’Ouverture.

Wie gaan haar hart wen?

Jane Roos skilder soos sy lewe: In volkleur en groter as die werklikheid. Sy glo daar is iewers die ideale pasmaat vir haar en dis beslis nie die stil, ernstige oorlogskorrespondent, JJ Richter, nie. Soms tree hy baie vreemd op en dis duidelik dat hy nie veel respek het vir haar nie.

Die feit dat JJ haar nuwe buurman op Bietjiebaai is maak dit nie juis maklik om hom te vermy nie. Boonop word hulle verplig om saam te werk aan ’n projek wat hulle heeltemal te dikwels saamgooi en dwing om mekaar te leer ken.

Kobus van Rensburg, spanningsverhaalskrywer, daag intussen ook by Bietjiebaai op. Hy deel Jane se lewensvreugde en die twee kom uiters goed oor die weg. Is hy die een wat haar hart gaan vermurwe, of dalk haar knorrige buurman met al sy emosionele bagasie en die veraf kyk in sy oë?

Samuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude …

A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?

A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

The family – that small circle of beings where love should flourish – can be an arid and alienating territory where hatred and violence may ignite.

On the surface, Small Circle of Beings, the novella which gives its title to this collection, concerns a family living what would appear to be an idyllic life. When the couple’s only child falls ill, tension and strain begin to take their toll, and the hairline cracks and fissures in his parents’ relationship gradually widen and split open until a marriage that seemed solid and secure falls irretrievably apart. Galgut’s economy of style and his chilling gift for understatement and the macabre are nowhere more eloquently displayed than in this gripping story.

The same sensitive and atmospheric writing can also be seen in the shorter stories – ‘Lovers’, ‘Shadows’, ‘The Clay Ox’, and ‘Rick’.

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?

Leading politician and anti-apartheid campaigner turns the spotlight on to elephant poaching in South Africa. Gripping and pacey this is an epic tale of corruption, collusion and courage.

Having thwarted murderous poachers in The Rhino Conspiracy, the Veteran, Thandi and Mkhize are back in a new fight – battling to save elephant herds from being callously killed for their ivory, whilst trying to block wholesale political corruption and money laundering in contemporary South Africa.

Will diminishing elephant numbers be reversed? Will the forces of good triumph over the vicious looters? Can the annual trillion-dollar money laundering trade by brought to heel by a brave whistle blower?

Peter Hain’s gripping second thriller builds to a dramatic climax, the action switching from wildlife to politics, from bushveld to city, from high finance to poaching. A vivid and gripping journey into the competing worlds of activism and corruption.

Nuwe plek, nuwe skool, nuwe mense. Ek het my eenkant gehou, net in die middae pinball gespeel by die Griek se kafee op die hoek. Pinball was my ding. My nuwe klasmaats het gesien hoe ek speel.

“Kyk hoe jive die cat daar agter die pinball,” lag die een. “Ek scheme dié Randfontein cat is nie te bad nie.”

Omdat ek ’n soort van pinball wizard was, het hulle my nie so geboelie soos vir my kleinboet Johnny nie.
 
Ná ’n lewe in die skadus neem ’n man stelling in, rewolwer in die hand, om sy allerlaaste misdaad te pleeg.
 
Terwyl hy in ’n donker sitkamer wag, loop sy herinneringe wye draaie: na harde grootwordjare in Randfontein en Germiston se strate, waar selfs jou eie familie jou kon bloedmond slaan. Hy onthou die Suid-Afrika waarin hy opgegroei het: die Castle Lager en Lucky Strikes agter skoolpawiljoene, die seuns met aanvalsgewere op die grens.
 
Vir ’n hierjy soos hy was sy pad reeds vroeg uitgemeet: hoëtroustelle steel, baie Klipdrift, verbeteringskool, daarná die army. En toe sluk Sunnyside se nagklubs en onderwêreld hom in.
 
In André Krüger se aangrypende roman oor familie, verraad en wraak – geskryf in die taal van die straat en die tyd – voer een man ’n uiterste stryd teen sy lotsbestemming.

1994. The world is about to change. The first truly democratic election in South Africa’s history is about to unite Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation at the ballot box. And, across the world, those in exile, those who could not return home, those who would not return home, wait. Watch and wait . . .

London. Martin O’Malley isn’t one of those watching and waiting. He is too busy trying to figure out if Germaine Spencer really is the girl for him and why his best friend is intent on ruining every relationship he gets involved in. And then . . . And then Germaine is pregnant and suddenly the world really has changed for Martin O’Malley.

South Africa. A land of opportunity. A place where a young black man with an MSc from the London School of Economics could have it all, would have it all. But what does Martin O’Malley, London born and bred with an Irish surname, really know about his mother’s country? His motherland. A land he has never seen.

Een stad. Vyf mense. Wraak se bloedspoor.

DIE SLAGOFFER EN SY SUSTER
Freya Rust glo sy weet alles van haar tweelingbroer Ben, maar wanneer hy vermoor word, besef sy sy lewe was vol geheime. Sy is vasberade om sy dood te wreek, al kos dit wat.

DIE ONDERWYSER
Rugby-afrigter meneer Oktober het sy hande vol met sy wilde tienerdogter, maar dit is sý duister verlede wat by hom spook wanneer hy snags in Pretoria met ’n gelaaide vuurwapen ronddwaal.

DIE DWELMHANDELAAR
Slick se wrede mentorskap by Mama Afrika leer hom moord en mag loop hand aan hand. Hy regeer sy dwelmkoninkryk met ’n ystervuis.

DIE SPREUDER
Benjamin Rust se moordsaak land op inspekteur Nolwazi Mngadi se lessenaar. In die korrupte slangnes van ’n polisiestasie in Pretoria begin sy met haar ondersoek.

Hoekom is Ben dood? Wie het hom vermoor? En wat is vergelding se prys? Wrok breek die misdaadroman se reëls en werp lig op die morsige gevolge van verdriet, woede en wraak.

In a village in Venda, Thandeka has a chance encounter with a business tycoon that offers her the words of comfort she has been longing to hear. They don’t exchange names but she is shocked to learn from a friend that he is a serial womaniser. Gundo is delighted when the beautiful woman he met in Venda shows up as a cleaner at his company in Johannesburg. He would love to get to know Thandeka better. He doesn’t realise that she has been misinformed about his identity and his intentions . . .

Beeldskone Elzibi Nel, eks eerste prinses in ’n Mejuffrou Suid-Afrika kompetisie, het absoluut geen gemis in haar lewe nie. Sy is heeltemal gelukkig met haar vriende en haar gimnasium wat sy van haar huis af bedryf. Tot dokter Luca Cronje en sy twee seuntjies langs haar intrek. Haar hart klop dadelik vinniger, maar dis nie vir die aantreklike en arrogante pa nie, maar vir die twee seuntjies wat sonder ’n ma grootword. Opinies verander. Skielik is daar ’n gemis. ’n Leemte. Sy wens die kinders was hare. Dit raak erger toe Luca haar soen. Dit gaan nie meer oor die hondjie nie, maar oor die halsbandjie. Om Luca te besit is egter ’n onmoontlike droom, want haar beste vriendin het ook gevoelens vir Luca. Kies sy jare lange vriendskap of kies sy liefde?