Toe Adelie haar aantreklike Franse tutor ontmoet, begin haar hart volksvreemde tale praat. Sy moet besigheidsterminogie leer, maar bewys gou sy is dit reeds baas. Daarna maak Sihan elke oomblik tussen hulle kosbaar en leer haar die werklike betekenis van die
sinnetjie “Je t’aime”.

Dis nou tot haar eerste liefde, Shane, weer op die toneel verskyn.

Dieselfde Shane wat in die boomhuis in hul agtererf talle beloftes aan haar gemaak het en toe haar hart gebreek het. Al uitweg wat Adelie sien, is dat sy en Sihan hul eie boomhuisbeloftes moet maak.

Tot die dag toe alles skielik in duie stort ...

“I am his first wife.”

Is that how low you think of me? You think I will run and rat you out to Raymond? Let me tell you something, Raymond is not my husband without you. He needs you, he inhales and exhales because of you, he adores you, Anelisa, because you are his first wife.

Nadine Bester is ’n traumasuster op lugambulanse. Toe haar seun gedragsprobleme toon, stel die laer skool se jeugwerker, Rusty, voor dat Nadine w eer begin uitgaan.

Haar seun hou egter glad nie v an haar nuwe kêrel nie. Daarby verhuur haar ma die tuinwoonstel op hulle er f aan Rusty en nou is die jeugwerker onder haar neus en kom telkens tot haar redding.

Kan Rusty haar seun help om Nadine se nuwe liefde te aanvaar?

Of is die aantreklike rooikop jeugwerker juis die probleem?

Dis twaalf jaar vandat Anika se pa afgedank is en hulle gesin van die Grahams se plaas af weggejaag is. Sy is seker die man wat haar as perdetemmer aangestel het besef nie wie sy is nie, en dit is goed.

Sy is terug vir vergelding.

Dis tyd dat die hoogmoedige Grahams besef hulle is nie beter as enigiemand anders nie. Veral die oudste seun, Ian. As sy hom tot ’n val kan bring, kan sy weer begin dink aan drome droom oor haar eie toekoms.

Maar die lewe loop soms onbeplande draaie ...

Juliëtte geniet haar werk as juffrou en sy en haar trouman, Lodewijk, beplan om verloof te raak. Dis nou tot haar grootword-boetie, Arendt, onverwags uit Frankryk terugkeer.

Die seun uit haar kinderdae is nou ’n aantreklike dokter. Hy wek gevoelens in haar op wat Juliëtte nie kan verstaan of beheer nie. Sy doen haar bes om Arendt te vermy en spandeer selfs meer tyd saam met Lodewijk.

Maar haar hart wil nie na rede luister nie en dwing haar telkens terug in Arendt se arms.

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

A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-times winner of the Booker Prize

In The Childhood of Jesus, Simon found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Ines. In The Schooldays of Jesus, the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive.

In The Death of Jesus, David, now a tall ten-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends in the street. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to go and live with Julio and the children in his care, Simon and Ines are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness.

With almost unbearable poignancy J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.

When Natasha, a novice writer from South Africa, is nominated for a major British literary prize, Terence, a young university lecturer, undertakes to introduce her to the sights of London.

However, London and its literary cliques are a far cry from Natasha’s Karoo hometown: through no fault of her own, she is disqualified, and their affair ends in tragedy. Terence, whose best friend accuses him of suffering from a Good Samaritan complex, now takes an interest in a rough sleeper and his dog that he meets outside a tube station.

This turns out to be a complex undertaking. As the ghosts of his past relationships are visited upon him, Terence is forced to reconsider the meaning of human connections – how our lives touch, and are touched by, others.

Michiel Heyns’s Each Mortal Thing shows us the metropolis through fresh eyes, calculates the cost of acts of kindness, and speaks to the grace that friendship can bestow on us.

Joernalis Cecile se humeur is net so warm soos haar vlamrooi hare en kaptein Ruan de Wet laat dit elke keer opvlam. Cecile is nuut by die plaaslike koerant en niks gaan haar keer om die scoop te kry oor die diefstal van die blou diamante nie.

Dit plaas haar egter direk in die spervuur. En dan dreig haar hart boonop om sag te word om Ruan.

Gaan hy haar hart kan vasboei of gaan sy weereens eerder vlug as veg?

When an emaciated little girl is found on an icy Cape mountainside, investigative journalist and criminal profiler Dr Clare Hart is baffled that no one has reported her missing. Where does she come from, who does she belong to? In another troubling turn of events, a distraught man approaches Clare to help him locate his granddaughter, a gifted cellist who has abandoned her music scholarship and been seduced by a cultish religious community and its charismatic leader. In a race against time, Clare battles to unravel the two cases which she discovers are connected in ways too horrifying to fathom.

A single moment can change a life forever… A van full of men armed with AK47s is stopped by two policemen while driving through Bethlehem in the Free State. They open fire on the policemen and, from that moment, their lives are irrevocably changed. So to for Fusi Mofokeng, resident of Bethlehem, who was not at the scene of the crime but was the brother-in-law of one of the perpetrators. He is accused of being an accomplice and tried, sentenced and jailed.

Nineteen years later, in 2011, Fusi is released into a world that has changed beyond recognition, a world in which his mother, father and brother have all died. Throughout his incarceration he fought for his release, appearing before the TRC, and schooling himself in law. Even today, he seeks a presidential pardon.

It is to this life that award-winning author Jonny Steinberg turns his attention in One Day in Bethlehem. In examining the life and struggle of Fusi Mofokeng, Steinberg shines a searing light on the burden of the 'everyman' in his quest for justice. In doing so, he also captures a country as it violently sheds the skin of the past to emerge, blinking, into the modern era.

Vir Armin en Gia is dit liefde met die eerste oogopslag toe hulle op ’n vlug tussen Dub ai en Londen ontmoet, maar die noodlot gryp in. Toe hulle mekaar vyf jaar later weer op ’n vlug raakloop, is Gia getroud.

Byna drie jaar later kruis hulle paaie weer en alhoewel Gia intussen geskei is, is Ar min nou verloof. Sal die vonk tussen hulle dié keer behoorlik ontvlam? En wat van die geheim wat Gia tenalle koste van Armin wil weerhou?

Ná ’n huwelik vol leuens en ontrou, is Riana klaar met mans.

Tot sy een aand op aandrang van haar vriendinne ’n spoedafspraak-geleentheid bywoon en vir Jacques ontmoet.

Jacques is aantreklik, selfversekerd en laat haar hart vinnig klop. Ná sy egskeiding, het hy net op sy werk gefokus, maar ’n ligte hartaanval het hom sy prioriteite laat heroorweeg.

Van die eerste ontmoeting spat die vonke tussen Riana en Jacques. Maar kan hulle dit waag om weer te vertrou en lief te hê?

Yvette, Paul, Mila, Emma, Adriaan, Liane, Max, Bobby, Ralph, Philip: Tien karakters wie se verhouding in Wegkomkans oor ’n tydperk van tien jaar eb en vloei soos die getye van die see wat telkens die agtergrond vir hulle “wegkomkanse” vorm.

Vanaf die politieke noodtoestand in die jare tagtig tot die demokratiese bevryding in 1994: Dié vriendekring se samesyn bly die konstante in ’n andersins veranderende wêreld waarin die ontnugterings en teleurstellings van die werklikheid soms met niks anders as goeie kos, goeie wyn en ’n stewige skeut selfspot getemper kan word nie. Soos hulle jeugdrome vervorm en hulle naïewe optimisme oor die lewe verdof, groei en verander die vriendskap. Verhoudings kom en gaan, ouerskap word ’n al hoe prominenter onderwerp van bespreking, die jeugdige passie oor ’n “nuwe” Suid-Afrika word ’n neutraler, meer besadigde gelatenheid oor wat nié verander kan word nie.

“Verlore liefde tussen twee mense,” verklaar een van die karakters, “kan so tragies wees soos verlore menseregte vir miljoene.” Uiteindelik is dit vriendskap wat die aanslag van tyd en trauma deurstaan; wat ’n skans teen verlies vorm.

Die nuwe Slotwoord tot hierdie roman, skryf Marita van der Vyver: “Hierdie roman, so vertel hulle my, kan ’n nuwe geslag lesers help begryp hoe Afrikaanse stedelinge in die laat jare tagtig en vroeë jare negentig, tussen die laaste stuiptrekkings van die Ou Suid-Afrika en die skrikwekkende geboortepyne van die Nuwe Suid-Afrika, dit reggekry het om op die rand van ’n afgrond te bly dans.”

Wegkomkans bied op hoogs vermaaklike dog erg simpatieke wyse insig in Suid-Afrikaners se versugtinge en ontnugterings – wat byna 20 jaar nadat die teks oorspronklik verskyn het nog net so relevant is soos destyds.

Alicia van Aarde is tuis in haar werk as bibliotekaresse en in Amsterdam. Toe haar ma, Elizabeth, vir Alicia na haar troue uitnooi, word hulle bande weer versterk.

Alicia is aanvanklik geïrriteerd met Ruben Retief, die neef van Elizbeth se aanstaande, wat ook in Europa werk en vir die troue Suid-Afrika toe reis. Tog verras Ruben, ’n operasanger, haar met sy andersheid.

Hulle families het verwagtinge oor hulle twee, maar albei is versigtig vir seerkry. Sal die liefde die gaping tussen hulle kan oorbrug?

Pandora se kruik is oop ...

Ná ’n liefdesteleurstelling en ’n moeilike inperktyd, is Emma uiteindelik reg om weer uit haar dop te kruip. Net betyds vir baas Wim se aanloklike aanbod: ’n Projek neem hom Midde-Ooste toe en hy kort haar ondersteuning. Binnekort verdaag Emma na Siprus onder die voorwendsel om by haar suster te gaan kuier.

Maar die skone Siprus is nie net kristablou waters, sonnige strande en Griekse oudhede nie. Emma is immers daar om internasionale geldwasnetwerke oop te vlek, en gou ontdek sy dat die gevaar nader is as wat sy of Wim besef.

Wat kom maak die superseiljag saans naby die seegrotte? Waar lê hulle plaaslike agent Nikos se lojaliteit? Weet die vissermanne dalk meer as wat hulle voorgee?

Skielik lyk dit asof Pandora al die wêreld se euwels opnuut vrygelaat het. As Emma ooit weer vir Wim wil sien, en hom wil vertel hoe sy oor hom voel, sal sy een stappie voor moet bly.

In haar derde boek soek Marie Spruyt in die antieke wêreld na liefde en hoop vir al ons moderne euwels.

Original and forceful, At Fire Hour delivers Bheki Makhathini, a South African character study for the ages.

Suspected of betraying the ANC, the young poet leaves home for exile in 1976, and until his return home after the unbannings in 1990, Bheki writes the story of a revolution – an unfinished one.

Gilder allows Bheki the freedom to deal with the big ideas of art and love, freedom and struggle in a shrewd and vivid way, the result being an unforgettable and deeply moving tale.

Retha Malan sien dokter Isak Vermeulen die eerste keer toe hy ontstoke uit haar dosent se spreekkamer storm en haar amper onderstebo loop. Hy hoor lat er dat sy hom ’n brombeer noem!

Soos hulle mekaar leer ken, besef hulle hulle is geesgenote en Isak begin selfs praat van trou. Dan sien Isak vir Retha in ’n vurige omhelsing met ’n ander man. Hy konfronteer haar en sy sien sy gebrek aan vertroue onvergeeflik.

Sal liefde en vergifnis dié struikelblokke kan oorwin?

Maya is ’n suksesvolle eiendomsagent by haar flambojante verloofde, Douw, se agentskap. Een die kliënte vir wie Maya huis soek, is dokter Reinhardt Enslin. Hulle is aangetrokke tot mekaar, maar hy rou nog oor sy vrou wat dood is, en hy het twee kinders op universiteit.

Toe Maya uitvind Douw is ontrou aan haar en knoei met die agentskap, sneuwel hul verhouding. Is daar vir haar ’n toekoms saam met die aantreklike, innemende Reinhardt, of droom sy verniet?

Saamgestel deur Stefaans Coetzee en Anschen Conradie

25 kortverhale, die een sondiger as die ander, sal die leser vermaak, ontroer, laat naels kou en dalk selfs laat glimlag.

Volgens oorlewering bestaan daar sewe dodelike sondes waaruit alle ander onheilighede voortspruit: hoogmoed, gierigheid, wellus, afguns, vraatsug, toorn, en luiheid.

Ná ’n nag van passie het Jacqueline en Boshoff hul harte op mekaar verloor, maar haar noodgedwonge leuens oor haar verlede het hulle uitmekaar gedwing.

Dan besoek Jacqueline ’n gewilde wynplaas om ’n artikel na te vors, net om uit te vind Boshoff is mede-eienaar. Boshoff maak asof hy haar nie ken nie en dan hoor sy dat hy boonop verloof is. Jacqueline moet veg teen haar eie gevoelens en Boshoff se giftige verloofde.

Gaan Jacqueline en Boshoff mekaar weer vind?

Joseph Mabaso is used to his father Sobhuza’s long absences from the family home in Lusaka. Sobhuza is a freedom fighter and doing important work, and Joseph has learned not to ask questions. But when Chanda, his mother, disappears without a trace, leaving him and his siblings alone, Joseph knows that something is terribly wrong.

And so begins a journey, physically arduous and dangerous and emotionally fraught, that no 14-year-old boy should have to undertake alone. Following the most tenuous of threads, Joseph finds some unlikely guides along the way: courageous Leila and her horses; Sis Violet and the guerrilla unit she commands; Mr Chikwedere, stonecutter and illicit trader; Madala at the Lesedi Repatriation Camp, who helps him find his voice; and Aunt Susie Juma, unofficial Zambian ambassador in Yeoville, Johannesburg, whose detective skills are legendary.

As Joseph navigates unfamiliar and often hostile territory in his search for his parents, he is on a parallel journey of discovery – one of identity and belonging – as he attempts to find a safe house that is truly safe, a language that understands all languages, and a place in his soul that feels like home.

The sun begins to set and twilight falls over the Cape Town suburb of Salt River. The year is 1960, the year of the Sharpeville massacre. Three friends, Ainey, Haroun and Cassius, comrades in arms and merry pranksters, make a discovery that changes their lives. Mired in their troubled families, they valiantly struggle through their childhood. With the help of a mysterious yet powerful woman they confront an awful truth that forever changes their lives…

The prologue of By The Fading Light sets up the story by an unidentified narrator who, it is later discovered, is one of the three main characters, now grown up, reflecting on the past. A young boy, Amin Gabriels, disappears, an event that creates fear and anxiety in the community, especially for his friends, the main characters, who are three eleven-year-old boys, Ainey, Haroun and Cassius.

The boys’ adventures offer a poignant, compelling but also humorous glimpse into the world from their youthful perspectives. Ainey lives with his fussy grandmother and his authoritarian father who blames him for his mother’s death. Haroun lives with his depressed mother and bigamist father. Cassius lives with his sister and snobbish mother who wishes that she were white. Through these and other minor characters, a mysterious yet powerful older woman, a police officer, and a murderer, the reader encounters a spirited and robust community.

With its elements of historical fiction, literary realism and absurdist humour, By The Fading Light weaves together themes of troubled families, vibrant Muslim culture, South African politics, the resilience of children, loss of innocence and coming of age.

If only a young boy had not taken the long way home on a cold winter’s day. If only he had gone straight home, things might have been different. But he did not, and events in the tight-knit community of Salt River take a turn that inspire fear…

Emma keer ná sestien jaar na Silver Creek Ranch terug, salig onbewus van die chaos wat sy op die plaas veroorsaak. Sy was James, die eienaar se oudste seun, se jeugliefde, maar hy het nou ’n ander meisie. Emma en James het albei verander, en hul onskuldige kinderliefde verander stadigaan in iets onstuimiger.

Gaan Emma se gladde mond haar en James vir altyd uitmekaar dryf? Of gaan James dit reg kry om Emma finaal te tem?