"He was mine to protect. Mine to adore. Mine to lose forever."

*A scorchingly hot modern retelling of Poseidon and Icarus.*

Icarus may not have flown particularly close to the sun, but he has fallen…right into the rough hands of Olympus's own Poseidon. Being held captive by the gentle giant wouldn't be so bad if Olympus wasn't on the eve of destruction…or if Poseidon stopped looking at him with those irresistibly stormy eyes.

Poseidon doesn't have time to babysit his increasingly bratty prisoner, but he has no choice: Olympus is officially at war, and someone has to keep their best bargaining chip out of harm's way. The thing is, the longer Poseidon is with Icarus, the more he starts to care for his sworn enemy...and the more he realizes that Icarus isn't the villain he's been made out to be. There's a warmth to him, a vulnerability, that Poseidon finds difficult to ignore or deny.

Now with Circe and the Aeaens at the gate and Olympus a hair's breadth away from falling, Poseidon will have to make a difficult choice: about himself, about his allegiances, and about the man who woke his heart from its long slumber only to threaten to break it for good...

Sail the seas. Master the blade. Protect your heart.

What would you do to have it all?

Even though she's not one of them, Brynn has spent her life among the Alaha - a community exiled to live at sea - training to be a guard and waiting for the chance to attend the annual market hosted by the Kenta - the very same people who exiled her adopted community. Going to the market is a rite of passage eagerly anticipated by all young guards, but Brynn does not anticipate breaking a century-long peace treaty while there... Or for an intense encounter with an enemy soldier to threaten the fragile peace between their people and everything Brynn once believed to be true.

Soon, Brynn's loyalty to the Alaha is tested when an unexpected visitor tracks her down - none other than said enemy soldier - sworn under oath to awaken Brynn to her true identity. Sent to sea and feeling more alone than ever, there a world of denied magic is unveiled. With rumours of a growing rebellion, Brynn's future has never looked so unsure. She was once certain of her fate and where she belonged, but the dark, knowing eyes of this stranger have her questioning everything, including her heart...

Annelie Botes se afsterwe op 12 Desember 2024 het die einde van ’n era ingelui. ’n Era van byna meer as twee dekades waarin sy gedagtes, opinies en insigte oor die lewe met ’n toegewyde lesersgehoor gedeel het. Vir Afrikaans lesers was haar weeklikse rubrieke ’n bron waaruit hulle mildelik geskep het om sin te maak van die wêreld en om inspirasie te vind sodat hul eie skale kon balanseer.

Die rubrieke in hierdie bundel het van 2020 tot 2024 verskyn en volg op Voetstoots, ’n keur van Annelie se rubrieke tussen 2006 en 2020. Vir die menigte lesers vir wie Annelie se stem oor die jare ’n vertroude instelling geraak het, is haar menings ’n besielende kleinood
waarheen hulle meermale sal terugkeer om woorde te vind wanneer dit in hul eie stemme ontbreek.

Hierdie bundel is ’n versameling kantaantekeninge tydens tydperke van ingrypende inkeer en verlies. In Maart 2020 het die Covid-19-pandemie die wêreld getref – bunkertyd in Annelie se taal. In haar wêreld was die tyd van korona ’n voorspel tot haar eie finale
periode van aflegging, siekte, amputasie en uiteindelik, die onvermydelike seisoen van “die engele met raspervlerke”.

Since taking on a famous celebrity client, defence attorney Jane Smith has been chased down, shot at, and threatened with contempt of court. She’s a survivor. For now.

Jane Smith represents a Hamptons real estate mogul with more enemies than clients.

When Jane’s own life is threatened, mounting a legal defence turns into self-defence.

Knowing every day in court could be her last, she’s armed and ready: with brilliant arguments, hard evidence - and two Glocks.

Until she hears the words “not guilty,” Jane Smith will Never Say Die.

WHO WOULD YOU SACRIFICE AT THE ALTAR OF AMBITION?

Singapore, 1996. Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Bedok, she is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead.

At once collaborators and sisters, Gen and Arin grow up inseparable, navigating the intensity of life in working-class Singapore - where urgent insistence on achievement demands self-immolation in the realms of imagination, work, and play. But as the rapidly modernising, winner-takes-all world threatens to leave one behind as the other's star rises exponentially, the sisters must weigh their allegiances and bonds, the cost of success and ultimately reckon with who they've become. What results is a story that cracks open the fault lines of Singaporean society, our desperate need for acceptance and our yearning to be loved.

Vivid and visceral, The Original Daughter is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.

Earthworld is a thing of the past. Welcome to the future.

After the collapse of life on Earth as it once was known, 600 people are selected for passage on Shipworld, a spacecraft charting a 360-year voyage to a new planet. Their mission will see generation after generation born, living and dying on board – until one day their descendants finally step foot on the 'Super Earth' that might offer the last chance for humankind's survival.

But life aboard Shipworld is far from a waiting game. The spacecraft promises a world of its own, a harmonious system free of class distinctions and wealth accumulation. Yet with each new generation comes daunting challenges to the future of their civilisation – from creeping doubts about the nature of reality to an outbreak of disease that could eradicate their population, from rebels who threaten the unity of the mission to a traumatic encounter with a mysterious space phenomenon.

An intergenerational epic populated by pioneers and chroniclers, enemies and friends, leaders and legends, Here and Beyond is an intricate and imaginative exploration of the arc of human endeavour.

May 1998: Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day’s travelling left before they would land back home on Vietnamese soil. While they prepare to board, the unimaginable happens.

Seventeen years later, two best friends are discussing their summer plans before college over a piece of mooncake. Both have trips ahead in search of their roots: Sabrina is preparing to travel to China to meet her mother’s family. Kit leaves for Tokyo, convinced that her biological mother is Japanese. Their parents watch on from the quiet suburbs of Chestnut Hill, nervous of what their daughters might find.

Meanwhile, Mimi returns to Philadelphia in search of her lost child, tracing memories from that fateful day waiting at the gates. Each of these women are looking to find their place in the world. Eventually Mimi, Kit and Sabrina come face to face, and have to confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

Meet Adina: a woman who has never felt at home on Earth

Born at the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space, Adina is a baby of unusual perception. Tiny and jaundiced, she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognises she is different, not least because of her strange knowledge of a faraway planet. Then a fax machine arrives at home. Her mission is clear: she must report on the oddities of humankind.

As Adina grows up, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and delights of human existence. But then she starts to wonder. Is there a chance there are others like her out there?

Adina sees our world differently. And her gentle, perceptive – and funny – observations offer a quietly joyful new view of life on Earth, the challenge of knowing ourselves and the miracle of finding our people in this vast universe.

An extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination.

Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognises Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn’t turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand’s biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne’s stories about him. But how can he be certain that she’s telling the truth?

In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatised man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne’s word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest works of literature can achieve.

We can fix you.

It's a promise that Betsy has heard far too many times. From the child psychologist, from her husband, and from the wellness trends that scream at her from her screen.

So far, it's been a lie.

But this time, she believes it. Because Betsy has been offered a place at Carn - a luxurious, unorthodox retreat, where healing really is possible. At Carn, she discovers that her imperfections make her unique, not weak. She isn't broken, just special.

All Betsy has to do is follow the rules . . .

Frankie Elkin usually prefers her cases cold. Until she finds herself in the broiling streets of Tucson, Arizona, where an Afghan refugee has been missing for three weeks.

The woman she is looking for, Sabera Ahmadi, is a wife and young mother, haunted by war, scarred by her past.

The police and Sabera’s husband seem indifferent to her disappearance.

But Frankie knows trauma. She knows it can fuel or destroy you.

And when she sees the distress in Sabera’s daughter’s eyes, she makes a decision she soon regrets: find Sabera.

But in order to solve the mystery of Sabera’s present, Frankie must revisit her past in order to uncover the dark secret she is hiding.

A secret so dangerous it might kill them both …

The beautiful new novel that will make you laugh and cry, from the global bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later...

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.

A hidden maze with secrets in its walls. A young woman on a journey to unravel the truth...

1924. Lord and Lady Kearsley's glittering Summer Ball is in full swing when their betrothed daughter Xanthe slips out of the Orangery and into the maze for a secret encounter. By the next morning, the grand house will be in ashes and two bodies removed, but no one will ever know what happened that night in Winterthorne.

2024. Juliet Stewart discovers she has inherited a cottage in the cliff-top village of Winterthorne from a relative she never knew existed. Stumbling upon the ruins of Kearsley Castle, she learns about the fire that destroyed the family. Puzzled by the disturbing gifts appearing on her doorstep, Juliet realises that someone doesn't want her in Winterthorne.

But as she becomes drawn deeper into Xanthe's story, she discovers that danger lies not only in uncovering the past, but in the present too...

What's a little murder in the name of true love? A hilarious, darkly funny debut from an exciting new crime voice...

Julie Tudor is 49 and has it all: a fantastic job (well-maintained spreadsheets are the lynchpin of an efficient office), a beautiful house (some may wonder how she got the money for it, but nothing has been proved) and the man of her dreams. Sean is 25 and the love of Julie's life. The only problem is, he thinks he's in love with someone else.

But Julie has found herself in a similar situation before. And if there's one thing Julie knows, it's how to get rid of the competition...

After all, what's a little murder in the name of true love?

Bestselling author James Lee Burke tells his most thrilling and insightful story yet through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Bessie Holland.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world.

Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father Hackberry, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie's spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy.

A welcome return to the beloved Holland series and populated with characters both radiant and despicable, Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie is an epic story of a remarkable young girl who fights against potentially overwhelming forces.

Set in a near-future enhanced by AI technology, a Black British journalist comes into her power, literally and figuratively, when her strange, spiritual destiny is awakened by an assignment to Benin. She then must use her newfound abilities to defeat an otherwordly conspiracy concerning missing Black kids...

In a near-future London where technology affects everything from our bodies to our politics, journalist Pels Badmus wants to make a real difference. She's desperate to solve a spate of disappearances of young Black kids-including her friend's brother. But her boss doesn't want to hear it. Instead, he assigns her to cover the "unreasonable" protests thousands of miles away in Benin, against culturally oblivious tourists travelling to partake in sacred Spirit Vine rituals.

Pels soon finds herself in West Africa, ignoring her boss's motives in assigning her to this piece and hoping to use it as leverage later. She's also trying to ignore the strange, ethereal dreams she's been having...

However, when Pels takes the Spirit Vine herself, she experiences something mind-boggling. Something that points to an unfulfilled destiny that could change the course of her life. But first she must return home and confront an otherworldly conspiracy related to the missing children.

Because she may just be the only one able to stop it.

A bold imagining of our future through the lens of ancient spirituality, Awakened is a page-turning fable about a Black woman coming into her power, perfect for fans of N.K Jemisin and Netflix's Supacell.

I loathe the day I ran smack dab into the hard chest of Alister Howl, Avix University's second-string quarterback. I should've run the moment that beautiful liar smiled my way.

Unfortunately for me, he takes my dismissal as a challenge and comes back twice as hard. But how can I be with him if I can't trust him?

And that is how I end up at a party, locking lips with campus playboy and ultimate bachelor, Brady freaking Lancaster. Just like that, I'm "Brady's girl".

I have no idea where things go from here.

But one thing is for sure, fake dating one football player while his teammate tries to win me back is going to be one hell of a ride...

God. Hero. Idol. Monster. Murderer. The story of Hercules is one of the most famous ever told. But what if it's wrong? Locus and Nebula Award-winning author John Wiswell brings his gentle, human storytelling to the most infamous of stories and discovers the heart inside us all.

Furious with Zeus for once again siring a child with a mortal woman, Hera finds herself redirecting all her fury at the baby himself, Heracles, an innocent named in her honour. As Heracles grows into a man - an unfathomably strong, loving man - he thanks Hera for all the blessings he feels she's seen fit to bestow upon him.

In a moment of misdirected rage, however, Hera sends a fury to kill Heracles' family. Heracles sets out on an epic quest to discover the name of the god who set their murders in motion. Desperate to keep him busy until she can come up with a solution, Hera sets Heracles a series of tests, as impossible as they are deadly: the Nemean lion, the hydra, the Stymphalian birds, the Aegean stables . . .

But Heracles' innate kindness, along with his determination to discover the identity of the god who cost him everything he loves, carries him through each task. As his legend grows, so does Hera's desperation.

A novel of friendship, of found family, of kindness and of legend, this is the story of Hercules as it has never been told before.

A rare masterpiece by Picasso is about to go to auction, and the whole world is watching.

But bright art student Halston Graham sees an opportunity. One that could secure millions for her future – and freedom for her wrongly imprisoned father…

To pull off the crime of the century, she must assemble an unlikely crack team: an expert in forgery, a ruthless mob boss, and an eccentric fashion designer.

In a game where trust is a luxury and failure is not an option, will Halston’s brilliance be enough to outsmart her enemies?

There are three things Jennifer 'Jinx' Sullivan promised herself she would never do:

1. Eat fast food.
2. Go on a coach trip.
3. Die without exacting revenge on the people who ruined her life.

She's about to let herself down on the first two, but she can still keep her word on the third.

On a coach trip to Florence, 89-year-old Jinx is going to face her painful wartime history, unearth long-buried skeletons (quite literally) and plan long overdue vengeance on the worst best friend a woman ever had. That's the best friend who trained her in etiquette, cocktail-mixing and silent killing.

It's going to be a tough journey - not least because she's sharing it with twenty senior citizens and a recalcitrant teen. But Jinx knows that some promises are worth keeping, no matter how hard it may be.

A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.

A special deluxe edition of the extraordinary and beloved international bestseller.

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book – a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, follow your dreams. The Alchemist has become a modern classic.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho’s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people’s lives.

A charming slow-burn romantasy featuring a duty-bound noblewoman with a chronic illness, a prince who would rather be in a library than on a throne, and a magical ride through a world of cosy enchantment.

Bianca knows her duty comes before her heart. So when the threat of war looms, she agrees to marry the neighbouring kingdom's heir. But not all royal weddings are a fairytale, and Prince Aric, Bianca's betrothed, is cold, aloof, and seems to hate her on sight. To make matters worse, on their wedding night, an assassination attempt goes awry - leaving Aric magically transformed into a horse. Bianca does what any bride in this situation would do: she mounts her new husband and rides away to safety.

Sunset returns Aric to human form, but they soon discover the assassination attempt is part of a larger plot against the throne. Worse, Bianca has been framed for Aric's murder, and she's now saddled with a husband who is a horse by day and a frustratingly attractive man by night.

As an unexpected romance begins galloping away with their hearts, Bianca and Aric must rely on each other to unravel the curse and save the throne.

Every flame tells a story...

George McGlory has been struggling since the death of his beloved wife, Audrey. But when he witnesses a public health funeral - with no flowers and no mourners - he is inspired to create The Light a Candle Society.

As George and his friends join together to celebrate forgotten lives, their care, compassion, humour and friendship become gifts not only to the people they are remembering, but to each other.

And the kindness of strangers gives them strength to confront the secrets of their own histories, forging joyful and unexpected new connections...

The play date started well. The children happy in one room while their mothers relaxed and drank wine in another.

But then the stranger appeared at the window. And then he was inside the house. And then he grabbed the knife...

Alice only means to stop him. She doesn't mean to hit him so hard. She didn't mean to kill him.

The police conclude that she acted in self-defence, but wracked with guilt, Alice sets out to apologise to Linda, the mother of the young man she killed - only to find she is unable to come clean about who she really is. But as Alice learns more about Ezra and why he was at her house, she starts to wonder whether she really has the full picture about what happened that day...

This latest simmering suspense novel from the internationally bestselling Katherine Faulkner is a unputdownable must-read that will have you hooked from the first twist to the last.