Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced.

Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity.

But why has Emil’s life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it? Prize-winning novelist Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu traces Emil’s life from boyhood to manhood – from his days at a privileged boarding school with the motto ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, to his falling in love with the ever-elusive Marion, whose free-spirited nature has dire consequences for his heart – all the while showing how Emil becomes a man apart.

Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility – told with empathy, generosity and a light touch – is an excursion into the interiority of the coloniser.

"I am unleashed from my mother’s womb while she is choosing tomatoes at Ralphs. My birth is one of her favourite stories to tell." This is how the reader is introduced to Jane, the main protagonist, in Alex van Tonder’s new novel, A Walk at Midnight.

Jane is a complicated character who readers will empathise with as the novel moves between past and present, revealing some very dark secrets. Secrets that daren’t be spoken of. Van Tonder’s wit, sarcasm and sharp characterisations make for compelling reading.

Her Twitter bio states, "All that we see and seem is but a screen grab from someone else's WhatsApp", and in this carefully crafted psychological thriller, all is not what it seems. A ‘griplit’ novel at its best, Alex van Tonder captures domestic suspense at its finest.

Die vonke spat toe Christie Grey haar pa se nuwe voorman, Brand, ontmoet. Wie is hy om haar sommer so af te keur? Die ergste is dat haar kêrel, Paul, haar hart nie naastenby so wild laat klop nie.

Brand raak teen sy sin betrokke by Christie se fotografie. Die aantrekkingskrag tussen hulle laat Christie twyfel oor haar verlowing aan Paul.

Maar Brand se korttermynplanne sluit nie ’n vrou in nie. Boonop is hy ‘n man wat by sy standpunte hou. Is Christie die een wat hom van plan sal laat verander?

Toe Mia Roux, kunstenaar en eienaar van ’n kunsgalery, in Jaco Botes se uitsonderlike oë kyk, besef sy hier kom moeilikheid. Sy soek nie ’n verhouding nie, maar hierdie man doen dinge aan haar.

Jaco, ’n suksesvolle korporatiewe prokureur, kan sy hande nie van haar afhou nie, maar soek nie ’n lewensmaat nie. Hy stel voor dat hulle vriende met voordele word. Tussen die lakens is hulle beslis ’n uiters goeie kombinasie, maar is dit genoeg vir hulle?

“Sy vingers glip teen haar voet op tot by die soom van die jeans wat sy aanhet.

Hy kyk op na haar. Terwyl hy stadig regop kom, beweeg hy sy hande bo-oor die jeans teen haar bene op. Stadig kom hy regop en vou sy hande om haar middel. In die sagte lig van die woonkamer blink haar oë. “Doug ...”

“As jy nie wil hê ek moet jou soen nie, is nou die tyd om weg te stap.”

Vir ’n oomblik staar hulle na mekaar. “Malligheid, absolute malligheid,” prewel sy voor sy sy hemp in haar hande vasgryp en hom nadertrek.

Dis al waarvoor hy gewag het. Hy buk af en gryp haar lippe met syne vas. Haar rose- en nartjiegeur vou om hom en half bedwelmd, glip sy hande onder haar T-hemp in. Satyn. Sag. Maar dis nie genoeg nie, lank nie meer nie.

Mieke stap tussen sy bene in, trek-trek aan sy hemp. Hy wil haar help, maar hy is te besig. Eers toe die gespe van haar bra los is, lig hy sy kop en pluk sy hemp oor sy kop.

“Ek wil jou sien. Ek moet jou sien,” hyg hy, sy hande op die onderkant van haar T-hemp. Sy lig haar arms op.

“Bliksem ...” Hy lig die hemp oor haar kop, trek haar bra eenkant toe. Met ontsag, vou sy hande om haar sagte kurwes. “Hierdie ... ek droom al ’n week lank hiervan,” fluister hy.

Mieke se suster Fleur vra of sy haar swaer wat sy vrou verloor het, kan kom help met sy baba. Mieke stem in, maar op die vlug na Kaapstad beland sy langs ’n sexy rooikop.

Wewenaar Doug Sutherland is aangetrokke tot die groenoog donkerkop langs hom op die vlug. Hul vurige omhelsing op die lughawe, het egter onverwagse gevolge, want Mieke is die nuwe au pair wat na Doug se baba moet kom kyk.

Gaan hulle mekaar weer in die oë kan kyk?

Vywervrou? Nee, ‘n kaivrou. Dis wat sy is.

Omring met haar geliefde vywervroue, weet Marilyn sy is nie een van hulle nie. Sy is ʼn kaivrou, die waterwese wat mans en kinders die dieptes intrek en verdrink. Daarvan getuig haar hele lewe tot hier toe.

Met die pandemie wat die wêreld op sy kop keer en die ouderdom wat Marilyn al hoe meer bewus maak van haar sterflikheid, is dit seker nie vreemd om bestek op te neem van wat agter lê nie. So ver terug as daardie jaar toe sy Paul Avenant ontmoet het, en uiteraard ook die tragiese gevolge van dié ontmoeting.

Nie dat dit daarna veel beter gegaan het nie. Een onbesonne ding na die ander het sy aangevang tot sy hier op Vywerbaai beland het.

Sy was sowaar naïef genoeg om te dink die meetsnoere begin nou vir haar in die regte plekke val. Tot die dag voor die eerste grendeltydperk toe sy besef ‘n mens se sondes haal jou altyd in. Selfs sondes wat jy nie self gepleeg het nie ...

Speursersant Mthembu se huwelik lê aan skerwe. Nyandi het die kinders gevat en is sak en pak terug Lesotho toe. Terwyl Parkwegstasie se ace-speurder in ’n gastehuis in Bloemfontein wakker lê en tob oor sy aandeel, brand Xanadu-galery, tuiste van die wêreldberoemde SA kunstenaar Aretha Hattingh, tot op die grond af. Haar oeuvre ’n hoop as. En in die middel van die ruïne: die oorskot van ’n vrou, vermoedelik dié van Aretha.

In Parys ontmoet Sollie ’n hand vol verdagtes: ’n kunsagent, ’n prokureur, ’n slagter, ’n bouer en ’n koerier. Voeg hierby ’n venynige aanneemkind, ’n jaloerse, skatryk eksman, die dorp se sprankelvrou én ’n stasiebevelvoerder wat die septer na haar eie reëls en tyd swaai, en jy het die wenresep vir ’n intrige gevul met hoogdrama.

Is dit moord? Selfdood? Of bloot ’n fratsongeluk?

Sollie geniet reeds groot aftrek onder Afrikaase lesers. En Vlam, die nuwe roman deur Gilroy, beloof om soos sy vorige twee krimi’s te boei en te vermaak tot op die laaste bladsy.

When the body of a Bushman is discovered near the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the death is written off as an accident. But all is not as it seems.

An autopsy reveals that, although he’s clearly very old, his internal organs are puzzlingly young. What’s more, an old bullet is lodged in one of his muscles … but where is the entry wound? When the body is stolen from the morgue and a local witch doctor is reported missing, Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu gets involved. But did the witch doctor take the body to use as part of a ritual? Or was it the American anthropologist who’d befriended the old Bushman? As Kubu and his brilliant young colleague, Detective Samantha Khama, follow the twisting trail through a confusion of rhino-horn smugglers, foreign gangsters and drugs manufacturers, the wider and more dangerous the case seems to grow.

A fresh, new slice of ‘Sunshine Noir’, Dying to Live is a classic tale of greed, corruption and ruthless thuggery, set in one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, and featuring one of crime fiction’s most endearing and humane heroes.

Nozizwe and her mother, sister and aunt escape a group of rebels that have captured them to be sold into slavery. In their escape they end up in the clutches of human traffickers, imprisoned on a farm.

Nozizwe escapes, pretending to be a boy, and makes her way to Johannesburg to become a street child.

No one she approaches believes her fantastic tale and they ignore her appeals for help.

Karen is vir die eerste keer verlief en George is enige vrou se droomman: lank, aantreklik, sjarmant én suksesvol.

Hoekom bring sy dan al hoe meer tyd saam met die “kreupel kluisenaar” Werner Scholtz deur? En hoekom roer dit haar so wanneer sy saam met hom na Maria Callas se “Saggies ontwaak my hart” luister?

Dalk, besef Karen, is verliefdheid nie ware liefde nie. Maar wie is die vrou vir wie Werner elke week ’n gerf blomme neem?

Raw, beautiful prose exposes a world in which humour and despair exist in equal measures, a world where the need to succeed, to strike it rich, brings out the best and the worst of human nature. Room 207 takes the reader to a Johannesburg that is the very heart of South Africa, to a room in which six young men struggle to make their dreams come true in the “dream city”.

For more than ten years, they have lived in Room 207 of a dilapidated block of flats in Hillbrow. By day, they are hustlers – they hustle production companies, they have their own music company, they survive. At night, they party. Room 207 paints a vivid, engrossing picture of their lives and their sense of hopelessness of having to compromise their lives.

They are artists, these men, but have to make a living. Otherwise, fate would call them back home – not driving their own BMW, but leaving the way they arrived: in a taxi, with empty pockets, and nothing to show for their years in Johannesburg.

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.

Isa Konrad laat die sonderlinge speurder van Karibib, Conrad Dorfling, weer krap waar daar 'n lyk is. Sommer gou-gou ontdek Dorfling twee goed, nee drie:

- Die lyk is oud. Dit gaan moeite kos om uit te vind wat aangaan.
- Alet Gouws is terug in Karibib. Hoekom weet hy nie, maar hy is nie seker dat dit goeie nuus is nie.
- Die hele polisiestasie weet skynbaar van sy en Alet se afskeidsoen …

Conrad weet nie wie se lyk dit is nie, maar hy is dankbaar dat dit 'n geraamte is, 'n doodloopsaak dus. Hy kan nie twee moorde in twee weke onder sy neus laat gebeur nie. En boonop krap Alet se teenwoordigheid hom om. Hy het regtig gedink daardie soen was vaarwel. Sy is 'n mooi vrou en Con se vorige huwelik het rampspoedige gevolge gehad ...

Alet het per ongeluk 'n getuie in sy vorige moordsaak geword. Namibië is nie haar wêreld nie, haar lewe en haar man is in Kaapstad. Hoekom het sy skielik teruggekom Karibib toe? Alet het hom laat glo sy was op pad om van haar man te skei. Intussen warm sy doodloopsaak op. Binnekort is hulle op soek na 'n tweede lyk, en binne in sy eie lyf bewe die geraamtes in hulle kaste.

Doodsake op Karibib word uit die manlike hoofkarakter se perspektief aangebied en die skrywer kry dit reg om ʼn lieflike onbeholpe karakter met 'n goeie hart en vergeefbare tekortkominge te skep wat enige vrou se knieë lam sal maak. Die skrywer se fyn waarnemingsvermoë en lekker sin vir humor, asook haar deerniswekkende karakters sorg vir suiwer leesplesier.

Doodsake op Karibib volg op Moord op Karibib. Isa Konrad se boeke vergelyk goed met Sandra Brown s'n.

Karien het hom al vyf jaar lank lief, maar hy het iemand anders bo haar gekies en ver weg gegaan. Nou is Schalk terug en ondanks haar beste voornemens laat hy haar hart steeds vinniger klop. Hy durf nie uitvind dat sy steeds snags wakker lê oor hom nie. Hy het immers haar liefde versmaai en haar hart gebreek.

Schalk het gedink hy en Ronika sou vir altyd saam wees, maar iets het skeefgeloop en nou vertrou hy nie meer sy oordeel as dit by vroue kom nie, veral nie sy ontwakende gevoelens vir Karien nie...

Om sake te vererger, span die familie saam om die twee bymekaar te kry. Sal Schalk besef hy het destyds die fout van sy lewe gemaak of gaan hy Karien weer deur sy vingers laat glip?

"I wrestled with life and lost." So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering way – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and anger, humility and ambition, trust and distrust, selfishness and selflessness. A flawed individual with an acute understanding of the roads that must be navigated to achieve even the slightest insight into the human condition.

In this study in introspection, embroidered with lyrical prose and astonishing intuition, the hero, meditative and melancholic, is at once both tragic and comic.

Maretha Maartens en Magda Slabbert neem hande om in Klankgrens die verhaal van pyn, oorlewing en die diepe worstelinge van die grensoorlog se weermagvroue oop te vlek.

Uit die oogpunt van die vrouens wat moes agterbly, wat moes aanhou, wat moes verstaan, en kop bo water hou, leer ken ons vir Jo en haar kinders en die stryd wat die vrouens gevoer het, weg van die grens.

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.

Ná ’n ongeluk beland Shiloh en Azalay op onverklaarbare wyse saam in die Arabiese woestyn. Hulle kom ook agter hulle het duisende jare terug in tyd gereis, en bevind hulle in die jaar van Jesus se geboorte ...

Saam met die drie wyse manne volg hulle die Bethlehemster.

Azalay is ’n toegewyde Christen, Shiloh is opstandig en glo nie meer nie. Hul omstandighede dwing hulle nader aan mekaar, maar laat ook die vonke spat.

Kan die liefde so ’n vreemde reis oorleef?

Winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award.

Since coming of haemorrh-age, Frith must wear a LipService patch to write or speak. The words the patch produces are not her own. Scripted by copywriters, they promote one sponsoring brand or another. With them, ‘You’ – a voice in her head that is the patch’s brand persona and her conformist alter ego – appears.

Through the noise of You talking a variety of different LipService brands, Frith struggles to find her way back to speaking for herself. She believes her tastures – her ability to taste things she touches – are the key. But other elements of this consumerist society are equally interested in tastures for commercial gain.

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.

Yellow Means Stay is a collection of enthralling, sad, humorous, and heart-touching love stories from across Africa and the black diaspora. It features new and award-winning writers from across the African continent and beyond.

The stories are a dynamic blend of the poetic and narrative, the spousal and familial, the suggestive and explicit, the dramatic and measured, the straight and queer, the sad and humorous, the past and future, life and afterlife. Through its pages, readers enter the world of African literature, love, and romance

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.

An evocative and finely detailed novel of ordinary life under apartheid that follows the lives of a family, particularly the women of various generations, who are named Dikeledi, who together form the backbone of the story.

Dikeledi captures, carefully and movingly, the essence of the turbulent days in which it is set. The focus on family drama within an incredibly difficult social situation, the small daily struggles rather than the huge challenges that conventionally make for ‘good’ archival footage, are what sets the novel apart from other literature that deals with the period.

Dis iewers in die nabye toekoms. Kolonel “Rooipiet” Moolman se lieflingprojek is die jaarlikse Versoeningsfees­opvoering, ’n eietydse weergawe van die Slag van Bloedrivier, wat by ’n inryteater bo­op Welkom se mynhoop gehou word. Enkele seisoene tevore is ’n merkwaardige vonds gemaak: ’n koperplaatfoto wat tydens die destydse veldslag geneem is . . en dit wys drie engele teen die oggendmis!

Net daar besluit Rooipiet dat die engele deel moet word van sy toneelstuk. Die neerdaal van die engele word die hoogtepunt van die opvoering, en vanjaar is daar ’n spesiale engel wat almal se asem wegslaan. Rooipiet is heimlik verlief op haar. Toe sy egter tydens die kleedrepetisie oënskynlik vermoor word en die koperplaatfoto boonop verdwyn, word Rooipiet se kultuurryk tot in die fondamente geskud.

En hiervandaan raak die intrige net méér interessant.

Weerlose meganika is ’n heerlik aweregse roman, sowel ryke verbeeldingsvlug as skerp satire.

Lija is ’n meisie van Joods-Romeinse afkoms en die aangenome dogter van Pontius Pilatus. Sy bevind haar in ’n gereëlde verlowing met Silva, ’n Romeinse tribuun. Eers dink sy hy is nes al die ander Romeinse mans, harteloos en ongenaakbaar.

Tot haar verbasing begin liefde egter in beide van hulle harte vir mekaar ontwaak ...

Silva en Lija het uiteenlopende gevoelens oor die man wat die Jode soveel hoop gee en die Romeine omkrap. Lija glo die man wat hulle die messias noem bring genesing en ’n nuwe begin. Sy skaar haar by die Selote om wapens uit ’n Romeinse arsenaal te steel om die skaal van gesag te laat kantel. Sy doen dit met die wete dat dit Silva se lewe ook in gevaar kan stel, maar haar oortuigings vuur haar aan. En Silva doen die onvergeetlike ... hy is deel van die groep soldate wat die Jode en Lilja se hoop – die messias – kruisig.

Albei is diep seergemaak en ontnugter deur die ander se optrede en die vertroue tussen hulle lê aan skerwe. Is hulle liefde vir mekaar vir altyd verlore? Of sal Lija en Silva vanuit die as kan opstaan en vir hul liefde veg ...