Part 1 of a new two-book series by bestselling author Jackie Phamotse!

It is 2005, a time of silent anticipation and hidden possibilities in the rugged Cederberg mountains. Cameron Coal is embroiled in a desperate fight to save his family’s rooibos farm, which is a hair’s breadth from bankruptcy, while wrestling overwhelming grief after his wife’s death and trying to build a relationship with his blind daughter. His father, John, might be the family’s last hope to save their farm from an enemy lurking in plain sight. But in the shadows, Cameron’s brother, Sole, harbours a secret that could shatter their world.

Amid the chaos of a veld fire, Cameron’s gaze falls upon an enigmatic nurse, Luna Parks, who is new to their town. As Luna and Cameron grow closer, her mysterious past and closely guarded secrets could shatter the very foundation of their relationship.

In the meantime, several questions must be answered: Who wanted Cameron’s wife dead?

How far will Cameron go to keep his enemies at bay? Will Luna ever tell him the truth about her past? Who really owns South Africa’s indigenous plant, the illustrious rooibos?

And will Cameron’s decisions cost another life, or will they ensure the rise of the Tea Merchant?

In the wake of her beloved grandfather’s death, Lou and her family gather at their coastal family home for a long-awaited family reunion.

The windswept and wild surroundings remind Lou of who she was before being a mother, a wife, and a professional failure. They bring back memories of Michael, her toxic first love and, according to the family, her ‘bad luck penny’. Then a shocking crisis in the country disrupts the funeral arrangements and forces the family together for longer than planned.

As secrets rise to the surface, the threads of Lou’s life unravel and she faces a difficult choice – after all, it’s only a bad luck penny if you pick it up.

Brenda has always worked hard to fit in – from her school days, when her talent in athletics gave her access to a richer world, to marriage to her soulmate, which bound her to that world.

It’s hard to know how much of her discomfort comes from the ongoing presence of Denver in her life. From the time when they were the two fastest girls in the athletics team, through years of marriage and parenthood, Denver has always offered friendship, worthy competition … and simmering resentment.

When Brenda realises that Denver is a threat to her family’s wellbeing, there’s nothing she won’t do to protect them. And Denver will do anything to protect herself. After years of rivalry, who will cross the finish line first?

Toe Ami hoor dat ’n man voor haar gim geskiet is, weet sy daar is moeilikheid. Hoekom is die Valke op die misdaadtoneel? Was dit ’n sluipmoord? En wat is dit wat die speurder optel en in sy sak druk? Voor Ami hierdie raaisels kan oplos, kruis haar pad met dié van ’n Duitse joernalis wat bewerings van ’n ontstellende voorval in Mosambiek ondersoek. Is daar werklik ’n verband tussen die twee stories?

June has worked hard for her family, but she is starting to feel like the dull accountant trope. She is safe and comfortable and bored. June wants more.

On the eve of the new year, when the radio DJ encourages listeners to make the most of it, June feels like he’s talking to her, and she decides to make a vision board — magazine cutouts, silver glitter and all.

Maybe 2022 is the year that June Cupido reinvents herself.

Vividly set against the backdrop of 19th century India and the British-owned sugarcane plantations of Natal, written with great tenderness and lyricism, Children of Sugarcane paints an intimate and wrenching picture of indenture told from a woman’s perspective.

Shanti, a bright teenager stifled by life in rural India and facing an arranged marriage, dreams that South Africa is an opportunity to start afresh. The Colony of Natal is where Shanti believes she can escape the poverty, caste, and troubling fate of young girls in her village. Months later, after a harrowing sea voyage, she arrives in Natal only to discover the profound hardship and slave labour that await her.

Spanning four decades and two continents, Children of Sugarcane demonstrates the lifegiving power of love, heartache, and the indestructible bonds between family and friends. These bonds prompt heroism and sacrifice, the final act of which leads to Shanti's redemption.

Two problems. One fake dating solution. And a crash landing into love...

Things Pippa enjoys: her job, airplanes, synonyms and tropical fish.
Things Pippa does not enjoy: repeating patterns, tight clothes, people asking why she's single and school reunions.

After four months of only speaking over intercom, when air-traffic controller Pippa Edwards finally meets pilot Andrew Boyce-Jones face-to-face, they discover they've got much more in common than simply working at the same airport. In fact . . . they both need a date. Tired of every relationship ending before it's even begun, Pippa wants to evade the inevitable questions at her dreaded ten-year school reunion in Cape Town. And Andrew needs to get his well-meaning family off his back about settling down.

The solution seems simple. A pact - a fake dating pact - for as long as it's mutually beneficial. It's perfect.

Or at least it would be if their very real attraction wasn't about to make Pippa question everything she thought she wanted. . .

Durban North, 1997. Following two shocking and insidious incidents of violence, nineteen-year-old Mary Da Costa is flying to Auckland ahead of her parents to make a new start. She is riddled with reservations – New Zealand is where her late brother was supposed to move – and all she really wants to do is keep to herself and work on her art.

On arrival, Mary comes under the wings of the South African ex-pat community, struggling with its own tensions between homesickness and belonging. Finding work at a local dairy, she meets self-appointed Māori leader Nepukaneha Cooper – Buck, as he’s better known. He and his family have some history with these rugby-mad lovers of apartheid, even more now that they’re encroaching on his turf. If only he had the means to fight them off and realise his life-long dream of establishing a marae on the beautiful strip of coast he has always called home.

Meanwhile, adrift between past and present, Mary is forced to dig deep in order to find her own truths and place in the world.

Nick Mulgrew’s long-awaited debut novel – of grand metaphors, silences, absences, and two cities and countries in flux – is a delightfully innovative, surprising, and warm-hearted meditation on family, loss, and home, as well as a deft examination of dislocation, dispossession, and the cultural blind spots of two very different (and in some ways similar) communities.

Burnt out after years as a professional dancer, Ella Burchell moves to a small town on the KwaZulu Natal north coast hoping to rebuild her life. Things look up when she gets a job teaching dance to children at a for-profit private school.

But Ella hasn't reckoned with the cabal of private-school mums who run the Pines Academy as their own personal fiefdom. Circling into cliques at the school gates every morning, the mums are a force to be reckoned with.

Soon Ella is too busy fielding their demands to concentrate on her own troubles. Distraction arrives in the form of an attractive cricket coach, but Ella hardly has time to pay attention.

Fun, fast-paced and hilarious, this novel by an award-winning author skewers the world of private-school privilege.

The Western Cape is now an independent country. Successful, safe, murderous.

Lisa Robinson has moved from Durban to Cape Town to be with Grant, the prospective next First Minister of the Good Hope Territory. The GHT is the safest and most prosperous country in the southern hemisphere – at a price.

Citizens contract to be tracked by drones, executions are synchronised to the Noon Gun and only those with qualifications are permitted to vote in the Qualified Franchise system.

Life here is picture-perfect. The Mother City is pristine. Everyone has a job. Tourism is booming. But this shiny new state has decided that Lisa is a problem, and problems here disappear quickly and quietly.

Omstrede en skatryk oud-politikus Armand Deysel is vermoor, en Kassie en Rooi het nie minder nie as ses verdagtes.

’n Britse ondersoeker is op die spoor van die waardevolle Doolhof-halssnoer, en ’n platsakman steier telkens terug van die samelewing se dwarsklappe. Kassie en Rooi pak hul ondersoek sonder forensiese rugsteun aan, en al die verdagtes hardloop kringe om hulle.

Gaan iemand dié keer vir Kassie ore aansit ̶ en met die perfekte moord wegkom?

’n Reeksmoordenaar maai bekendes op ’n streep af.

En Kassie en Rooi moet hom vastrek. Maar dit is makliker gesê as gedaan.

Die moordtonele is smetloos, met slegs bisarre boodskappe by die lyke. Die slagoffers se hoë profiele veroorsaak ook ’n ongekende mediaherrie, wat bykomende druk op die ondersoekspan plaas.

Die Spesiale Spookeenheid se elite-speurspan tas behoorlik in die duister rond. Het hulle dié keer hulle meerdere teëgekom?

Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they?

Being fifteen is tough – tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town in 1996.

Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervour of teen friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town's most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago. Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive.

As the police investigate, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.

Vimbai, a final-year law student at the University of Zimbabwe, is determined not to join the long line of unemployed graduates. She'd would rather trade sexual favours to get a job than go back to living with her aunt-turned-stepmother. Unlike her roommate, Nosihle, she prides herself on being pragmatic. Nosihle is the good girl who mistakenly falls in love with the wrong man and then there’s Ruby, the spoilt socialite who is leading a double life.

Through their messy choices, their lives become intertwined. Vimbai is looking for someone who can offer her the opulence and grandeur of the Sunshine City. Even if it means sleeping with Cheropa, the former first son and Ruby’s boyfriend. It’s a dog-eat-dog world after all. But Vimbai soon learns that every action has a consequence and some of our wishes come to haunt us when we are at our happiest.

Her carefully orchestrated life takes a nosedive when her secrets are held against her by a mysterious well-connected man.

Rebekkah Keller was ’n tiener toe haar pa oorlede is. Om aan die knaende verdriet te ontsnap begin sy lengte ná lengte vryslag in die skoolwembad te swem. Meer as twintig jaar later woon Rebekkah steeds in Bloemfontein. Sy is geskei van haar man en sy werk voltyds by ’n prokureursfirma. Sy swem nooit meer nie. Een oggend stuur Rebekkah se beste vriendin vir haar ’n nuusberig wat die mat onder haar voete uitruk. Die verlede spoel soos ’n fratsgolf oor haar.

Gaan hulle mekaar vind of vernietig?

Lucas Jordaan sluit sy bosveldlodge naby Hoedspruit nadat sy meisie onder raaiselagtige omstandighede verdwyn. Dan stop joernalis Renske du Toit voor Jagtersrus se hekke, gestuur deur ’n reistydskrif om oor die lodge te skryf.

Die aantrekking tussen hulle is dadelik tasbaar, al probeer albei dit ontken. Maar wanneer Renske begin stories hoor van die duiwel-in-die-bos wat glo sy eks uit die weg geruim het, ontdek sy ’n donker kant aan Lucas wat haar bang maak, maar ook bedwelm.

Intussen duik nog onheilspellende raaisels op. Wat steek hy vir haar weg? Hoekom waarsku almal haar oor hom? Wat beteken die hangertjie om sy nek? En wie stuur vir hom gedurig kriptiese, dreigende boodskappe?

Hoe meer Renske hom leer ken, hoe sterker haar aangetrokkenheid, maar ook hoe groter die gevaar. Gaan hulle mekaar in hierdie waaghalsige stryd vol begeerte vind of vernietig?

Droomjagter is ’n erotiese spanningsverhaal vol kinkels wat jou om meer as een rede uitasem sal laat.

Those who live on the surface desire what the darkness offers. In tough times, crime is the only thing that soothes their souls. It is the South Africa you choose not to see.

The constitution forms the backbone of the South African democracy, yet the youth bleed for it. What does South Africa truly have when its children are traded for a good time and tenders? It is an accurate reflection of the social decay under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa. Are your children safe in this trauma-infested country?

Daphne Morgan's death results in two worlds colliding: Gibson Kente demands nothing more than respect for the bloodshed, while Tim Morgan seeks his mother. Treasure is caught in the crossfir eof hell and fury. She desires freedom, but Tim Morgan's business is blissful pleasure, camouflaged by revenge. Will Rita Thomas provide the answers to Treasure's prayers?

If you had a choice to worship two gods, would you sell your soul for money or freedom?

Will this curtain call be Treasure's last?

This collection consists of 29 stories – 5 in English, 24 in Afrikaans. Several of the stories have been adapted from stage productions over a period of three years: BUTTERFLY, LOVESICK TIM, MOSCOW, SIX IN A BOAT, DIE SMITSTRAAT SUITE, ROME ’62 and PASSI PASSIO.

Hierdie jongste versameling van Nataniël bevat 29 stories – 5 in Engels, 24 in Afrikaans. Verskeie van die stukke is verwerk uit Nataniël-produksies oor ’n periode van drie jaar: BUTTERFLY, LOVESICK TIM, MOSCOW, SIX IN A BOAT, DIE SMITSTRAAT SUITE, ROME ’62 en PASSI PASSIO.

Cape Town, South Africa. Retired police chief Piet Pieterse has been murdered, necklaced in fact. A tyre placed round his neck, doused with petrol, set alight. An execution from the apartheid era and one generally confined to collaborators. Who would target Pieterse this way, and why now?

Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is trying to forget the past. But Pieterse was his old boss and when Schalk is put on the case, he finds the past has a way of infecting the present.

Meanwhile, it's an election year. People are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe but there's opposition and in this volatile country, unrest is never far from the surface.

Schalk must tread a difficult path between the new regime and the old, between the personal and the professional, between justice and revenge.

This investigation will change his life, and could alter his country's future.

One evening in early autumn, ten people drive into a tunnel through the Cape mountains – and find themselves trapped.

As their limited supplies dwindle, what do they do? Where can they go? What will they find?

Tunnel burrows deep into the psychologies and coping strategies that connect and disconnect these protagonists in a dark, tense and compelling human drama.

An urgent new novel, told through many eyes; a journey – terrific and mystical – through despair, memory, and love.

Tthe debut title of new South African publisher, Mirari Press.

In an alternate history where the Church rules Europe through the Holy Roman Empire, a young woman. is hunted for witchcraft as she seeks the purpose of her family's dark powers. When second-year Dresden University student Nell Blythe is accused of witchcraft, not even the Holy Office knows just how guilty she is.

She may not believe in spells, but she does nave rightening abilities she keeps hidden and can't explain. The same abilities that made her mother infamous, then got her killed. Forced to flee, Nell meets a powerful stranger with abilities like hers. He can answer questions about her mother and their dark gifts that she has spent her whole life asking. But she is not nearly prepared for what he will show her. No one is.

As the Holy Office closes in on her, how far will Nell go to uncover the secrets her mother died for? Secrets that could cut to the heart of the Church itself.

Drie jaar ná die dood van een van Afrikaans se grootste skrywers kom ’n Nederlandse vrou Suid-Afrika toe om navorsing vir ’n biografie oor sy lewe te doen. Sy besoek die skrywer se voormalige vakleerling om meer oor die enigmatiese figuur vas te stel – bykans dertig jaar nadat die twee mans se weë pynlik geskei het.

Onder die priemende blik van die biograaf lê die vakleerling, eens ’n aspirantskrywer en nou ’n Zen-monnik, sy lewe bloot in die bestek van een nag.

Wie was die groot skrywer werklik? Waarom was die impak van sy kluisenaarsbestaan en sy werk op die jong man so enorm? Hoekom het die skrywer hom na sy eensame sterfbed laat kom? Wat is die ware rede agter die Nederlander se biografie?

Sluitstuk is ’n elegiese roman oor verlange, verlies, wraak en versoening wat die roete na stilte en die skeppingsimpuls oopskryf.

Katrina Hunt has a disturbing secret. Since her earliest days fighting for survival in the poverty of a trailer park, she’s been able to sense moral corruption. And her gift is never wrong. This strange ability affects every relationship, for people have no way to hide from her.

Katrina harnesses her gift and sets it to work, sniffing out evil in positions of privilege and power. Yet she soon finds she is not the only one who can do it. On the far side of the world, a scientist cracks an algorithm that will forever change law-enforcement. His new scan can detect a person’s genetic propensity for wrongdoing, even before they act.

But what if the most corrupt man in the world, a political figure assuming ever higher office, is able to beat the scan? What if he alone can hide his true darkness? What if he is ... not quite human?

Katrina’s path will lead inexorably to confrontation with an immense power. But can she stop him, before it is too late for humanity?

From the bestselling author of The Search for the Rarest Bird in the World comes On That Wave of Gulls. An audacious novel, the tale is told by three characters – an architect, a Khoisan vagrant and a seagull, all of whom recount their lives in Cape Town.

Hieronymus Vos is an overweight, white architect, recently fallen on hard times, and married to a beautiful, black British-Caribbean woman. Although he hates the ocean, his practice has, until recently, been doing very well by designing glitzy millionaires’ mansions on the Atlantic Seaboard. Pooi is a homeless man, recently arrived from the Kalahari, with a patchy grip on reality. He thinks he is the moon and wants to teach himself to swim so that he can reach Robben Island and fulfil a promise. The third narrator is Calypso, a female seagull who needs to find a mate and lay an egg to pass on her legacy and her identity.

On That Wave of Gulls is a shrewd and lyrical tour de force by a natural storyteller. By times heartbreaking and thrilling, this unforgettable novel propels the author into the lives of the novel’s three main characters, throwing light on living and being in Cape Town – a Cape Town that is part wilderness, part glamorous high-rise developments, part ocean. Their interactions are at times fleeting, at times profound, and behind them lies the joy, pain and tragedy of living at the southern tip of Africa.

When she answers a call from an old friend, Dr Erin Taylor is catapulted into the drama of decades past.

In 1996, three university students united to investigate the assault of a fellow student, Rina. But Erin and ‘The Furies’, as they called themselves, unwittingly triggered a time bomb. Two decades later, at a reunion lunch, Rina does not arrive. Within hours, Erin is missing as well, fighting for her life.

Past actions and present decisions — her choices will draw blood.