From a brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls.

Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can't resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.

Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West - a bewitching combination of beauty and danger - as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon.

As Mrs. Parks says, 'Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise . . .'

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author, Steve Berry, comes the latest Cotton Malone adventure, in which the discovery of a lost historical document challenges the global might of the United States.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom, one separate, apart, and in lieu of Bavaria. A place he could retreat into and rule as he wished. But a question remains: did he succeed?

Enter Cotton Malone. After many months, Malone’s protégé, Luke Daniels, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group intent on winning Bavarian independence from Germany. Daniels has also managed to gain the trust of the prince of Bavaria, a frustrated second son intent on eliminating his brother, the duke, and restoring the Wittelsbach monarchy, only now with him as king. Everything hinges on a 19th century deed which proves that Ludwig’s long-rumored search bore fruit--legal title to lands that Germany, China, and the United States all now want, only for vastly different reasons.

In a race across Bavaria for clues hidden in Ludwig’s three fairytale castles--Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee--Malone and Daniels battle an ever-growing list of deadly adversaries, all intent on finding the last kingdom.

*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.

“You’ll always be mine.”

The latest taunt from my stalker reminded me I was nothing more than a possession to my father, to the Reapers, to Archer D’Ath. Even to Kody and Steele. Princess Danvers—the prize.

His wife.

Archer D’Ath’s wife.

I hated them. They lied to me. Over and over again. I knew they lied and I hated myself for letting it happen. For believing in the fake relationships I had wanted so desperately to be real.

Fake.

It was all fucking fake. My stalker isn’t letting me go. None of them are. Archer and his boys think they control me. My stalker wants to possess me. I’m not an idiot, I know my newest allies are using me, too.

That’s fine.

I’ll use all of them. I’ll use them to take back what’s mine.

My life. My freedom. My name.

No one owns Madison Kate Danvers.

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain’s ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin’s brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still celebrated the Soviet Union, claiming that the terrors of its show trials, summary executions and secret police were either exaggerated or necessary. But, to Orwell, Stalin was always a “disgusting murderer” and he wanted to remind people of this fact in a powerful and memorable way. But how to do it? A political essay would never reach a wide enough audience; a traditional novel would take too long to write. Orwell hit on the inspired idea of combining the moralism of the traditional ‘beast fable’ with the satire of Gulliver’s Travels.

A group of farmyard animals, led by the pigs, overthrow their human masters. Their revolution is inspired by high ideals: the farm will be run in the interests of its animals with no more slaughtering, plenty of food for all and comfort in retirement. But when Napoleon the pig takes command, he quickly corrupts their principles, creating a new tyranny worse than the old.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm in the middle of the Second World War, but at first no publishers wanted to touch it. It was finally published in August 1945, once the war was over. This little book quickly became a seminal text in the emerging ‘cold war’ (a phrase that Orwell himself coined). It also became a site of that conflict itself, suffering various attempts to subvert or change its meaning. Today, Animal Farm remains a powerful fable about the nature of tyranny and corruption which applies for all ages.

Our edition also includes the following essays:

• Shooting an Elephant;
• Charles Dickens;
• Inside the Whale;
• The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda;
• Literature and Totalitarianism;
• Fascism and Democracy;
• Patriots and Revolutionaries;
• Catastrophic Gradualism;
• Some Thoughts on the Common Toad;
• Why I Write;
• Writers and Leviathan

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant.

November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on - to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century. Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.

Light Perpetual is a story of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, it is a sweeping and intimate celebration of the gift of life.

Flora Beukes woon saam met haar pa Frans, ma Siena en drie jonger sibbe op die Myburghs se plaas, Vlakpoort, ’n klipgooi ver van Keimoes. Siena is bekommerd oor Frans wat te veel tyd oor naweke saam met hul buurman, Jan Olyn, langs die bierpotte deurbring en dan laataand besope soos ’n besetene kom moles maak by hulle rietdakhuis.

Tydens die Kersvakansie van 1982, terwyl Siena besig is om planne te maak om van Frans te skei, word die gesin onvermydelik en tragies uitmekaar geruk. Flora voel verantwoordelik vir haar jonger broers en suster se welstand, maar in die herberg op Doringvlei word die kinders se lewens verder omvergegooi wanneer hulle van mekaar geskei word.

Flora, Engela Ovies se tweede roman, is ’n hartroerende verhaal oor ’n dapper twaalfjarige se liefde vir haar sibbe en die opofferings langs die pad om haar ma se droom te laat waar word. Eerlik, deernisvol en opreg soos die oop vlaktes van die Noord-Kaap.

Broke young man + chainsaw dog demon = Chainsaw Man! Denji was a small-time devil hunter just trying to survive in a harsh world. After being killed on a job, he is revived by his pet devil Pochita and becomes something new and dangerous-Chainsaw Man! In order to achieve the greatest goal in human history-to touch a boob-Denji will risk everything in a fight against the dangerous Bat Devil. But will getting what he wants actually make him happy...?

Edited by Kerry Hammerton, this is an anthology of flash fiction and non-fiction.

Contributors:
Sally Cranswick | Stephen Symons | Werner Labuschagne | Sue Woodward | Karen Jennings | Yvonne Sliep | Siphosethu Siwaphiwe Zazela | Chantal Stewart | Sarah Buchner | Karina M. Szczurek | Máire Fisher | Kerry Hammerton | Stephen Devereux | Cynthia Kistasamy | Lerato Mahlangu | Nontobeko Mtshali | Erica Livingston | Anne Schlebusch | Bonnie Espie | Wentzel Lombard | Mary Grace McGeehan | Colleen Higgs | Gemma Allan | Megan Ross | Charisse Louw

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.

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead comes the thrilling and entertaining sequel to Harlem Shuffle.

1971 - Trash is piled on the streets, crime is at a record high, and the city is careening towards bankruptcy. A shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Ray Carney, furniture-store owner and ex fence, is trying to keep his head down, his business up, and his life on the straight and narrow. His only immediate need is Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May, so what harm could it do to hit up Munson, his old police contact and fixer extraordinaire? And suddenly, staying out of the game becomes more complicated - and deadly.

When one of Ray's tenants is badly injured in a fire, he enlists the enduringly violent Pepper to look into how it started, leading the duo to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupt.

In scalpel-sharp prose and with unnerving clarity and wit, Colson Whitehead writes about a city that runs on cronyism, threats, ego, ambition, incompetence and even, sometimes, pride. Crook Manifesto is a kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem, and a searching portrait of how families work in the face of indifference, chaos and hostility.

A whimsical and innovative debut novel, HAPPY is the story of a starry-eyed cinephile who leaves his rural village in Punjab to pursue his dreams - set against the global migration crisis.

In a small farming village in Punjab, India, a boy crouches over his brother's phone in a rapeseed field watching clips of Godard's Bande a part on YouTube.

His name is Happy Singh Soni and when he's not sleeping among the cabbages and eating sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy roles; the sad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. He plans a clandestine journey to Europe, where he'll finally land a breakout role.

After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions on a radish farm by the syndicate involved in smuggling him to Europe to pay off the supposed debt they claim he has accrued. While disillusionment amongst the farm workers rise, Happy will find the love - and tragedy - that his favourite films always promised.

At turns funny and heart-breaking, sunny and tragic, Happy is a formally ambitious novel about the psychic fissures produced by the splintering of nations, and the lovely, generative, artful coping mechanisms created by generations of diasporic people. With this ingenious, daringly cinematic debut, Celina Baljeet Basra argues for the things that are basic to human survival: food, water, shelter, but also pleasure, romance, art, and the right to a vivid inner life.

This edition of Oliver Twist provides depth and context for A Level students, with the complete novel in an easy to read format, and a detailed introduction and bespoke glossary written by an experienced A Level teacher with academic expertise in the area.

The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

Features:

• Affordable high quality complete text of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist
• Perfectly pitched introductions provide the depth and demand required by AS and A Level English
• Explore the contemporary context, Charles Dickens’ writing, the novel’s critical reception and subsequent interpretations for a deeper reading of the text
• Expand your further reading with a list of key articles and critical and theoretical texts
• Improve your understanding of the novel with unfamiliar concepts and culturally-specific terms defined in the glossary

'Stop what you are doing and go get Christina Lauren's My Favourite Half-Night Stand!' That's Normal The perfect friends to lovers romcom from the bestselling queen of romcoms, Christina Lauren! Millie has always been one of the guys. A professor at a respected university, she's great at witty backchat but terrible at getting personal. Like her four best male friends, she's perma-single. So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, they all make a pact to join an online dating service and find plus-ones. There's just one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and her best friend Reid secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, before deciding the friendship is better off strictly platonic. But online dating isn't for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with dream dates, Millie's profile attracts nothing but creeps. So she invents an alter ego in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she's ever been in person. But when Reid and her alter ego hit it off, Millie finds herself struggling to resist temptation - both online and off. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear - intimacy - or risk losing her best friend for ever. Find out why readers LOVE Christina Lauren: 'Pure, irresistible magic from start to finish' Emily Henry 'Witty and downright hilarious . . . perfect feel-good romantic comedy' Helen Hoang 'Pure joy' Sally Thorne 'What a joyful, warm, touching book! This is the book to read if you want to smile so hard your face hurts' Jasmine Guillory 'A sexy, hilarious rom-com . . . Perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory and Sally Thorne' Booklist 'Christina Lauren hilariously depicts modern dating' Us Weekly

An early morning on a beach in Virginia. As he is taking his daily swim, Arman Bajalan - formerly an interpreter in Iraq - discovers a dead body. After surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US. Now, sure that the murder is connected to his past, he knows he's still not safe.

Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her fresh-off-the-beat partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the man's pocket. It leads them to Sally Ewell, a local journalist as grief-stricken as Arman by the Iraq war, who is investigating a nefarious corporation: one on the cusp of landing a multi-billion-dollar government defence contract.

As victims mount around Arman, taking the team down wrong turns and towards startling evidence, they find themselves in a race, committed to unravelling the truth and keeping Arman alive - even if it costs them everything.

A Line in the Sand is a sinuous, powerful and white-knuckle thriller, from the award-winning author of The Yellow Birds, shot through with treachery, trauma and the long tentacles of war.

This is the future world that haunts portrait photographer and narrator, James Baldwin, as he alternates between present-day South Africa and the Frontier — an existential dystopia where women are inexplicably completely and permanently wiped from the world. This, according to him, can only mean extinctions of varying and catastrophic degrees.

He is a lover of women, and there are countless things he would terribly miss: how women hold and shake rainwater from umbrellas, the musical click of stilettos on concrete or tiled floors, the way light falls on their face during cosy, candlelit dinners. He would miss the patience of female psychologists who fix the world one madman at a time, there would no longer be eye-catching and dramatic fashion statements at weddings or funerals, florists would eternally be emptied of their stock, and the rate of tunes belted out in showers would drop dramatically if not completely cease, the world would not be the same without the gossip mill of some women, their petty jealousies and catfights, their ever-evolving and varied insecurities…

A lull would befall the land.

Erotic, perceptive and transcendental; Breasts, etc. is a novel of double consciousness. It is an exploration of, and meditation on the existential strife and tragic comedy at the Frontier, a post-apocalyptic and desolate landscape that forms the backdrop to an examination of masculine vulnerabilities and wickedness in a world stripped of feminine presence and wisdom.

A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say no―something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal―another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

Sy liefde is soos die eerste lenteblom.

Mia se gunstelingmens is haar ouma en haar gunstelingplek is haar ouma se blommewinkel, Die geel katstert. Daarom sal sy enigiets doen om te verhoed dat die nuwe indringer, sexy Emil Mühlbacher, die plek toemaak. Hy kan dreig, skreeu, vlei; niks gaan haar oortuig nie.

Sy is bestand teen mans met geheime ná Jacques se verraad. Emil is wel nie 'n hartelose sakeman nie; hy het ʼn sagte kant maar ʼn troebel verlede. Hy het nie per toeval in dié pragtige dorpie kom bly nie. Mia moet ʼn plan maak om die winkel te red én sy moet haar hart beskerm. Hoe moeilik kan dit nou wees?

Die verhaal handel oor hoe gemeenskappe in klein dorpies laer trek wanneer daar moeilikheid is. Die bykarakters is heerlik driedimensioneel, wat sorg vir ʼn genotvolle leeservaring.

Die Prins-egpaar aanvaar die jong Delmarie Kemp met ope arms nadat sy in haar matriekjaar wees gelaat word. Sy word deel van hul familie en doen alles in haar vermoë om eendag onafhanklik te wees.

Waarmee sy egter nie tred hou nie, is die feit dat die hart hom nie laat voorskryf nie. Deur die loop van jare het die Prins-boeties ontwikkel in aantreklike, selfversekerde jong mans, en tydens ’n gesinsvakansie by die see ontdek Delmarie dat sy in diep-diep moeilikheid is.

Dit is immers een van haar “broers” teen wie sy haar hart moet staal, en sy moet probeer kophou om nie die grense van haar aanneemfamilie se lojaliteit te oorskry en hul vertroue in haar te skaad nie. Want hoe sal sy haar tweede stel ouers teleurstel as sy vir hulle moet vertel wat in haar hart brand? Veral as die gevoelens vir iemand is wat, deur die wêreld en haar aanneemouers gesien, veronderstel is om haar broer te wees? ’n Broer wat dit ook telkemale duidelik gemaak het dat hy haar nie in die familie wil hê nie!

Twee broers, seuns van ’n skatryk volstruisboer, wil vir beeldskone Margaretha hê. Sy kies Michael, die erfgenaam, en John gaan veg in die Boereoorlog.

Later stort die veremark in duie en hulle is bankrot. Margaretha kry die geleentheid om te wys dat sy nie net ’n mooi gesig het nie.

Are you yourself if you are unaware of whom you can become?

A once assertive Amari finds herself challenged as she attempts to assimilate into the life of a Kenryk and the ever-demanding role of an Avaris.

Will she be able to reach within and awaken that fiery warrior she stifled in time to defend the tribe from the looming threat of the Emoryk Army?

Following Artefact and Legion, Origins is the third and final book of the Lazarus War, an action-drenched space adventure series from one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction. For someone who has died and come back as many times as Conrad Harris, the nickname Lazarus is well-deserved. His elite military team are specialists in death - running suicide missions in simulant bodies to combat the alien race known as the Krell. But now the Krell Empire has wreaked such devastation that military command is desperate for a new strategy against the alien foe. Harris and his team are being sent on a mission that could finally turn the tide of the war. Intelligence has been uncovered that indicates the location of the UAS Endeavour, a ship that went missing years ago deep in Krell territory. The ship could hold secrets to harnessing an ancient alien technology - possibly the most powerful weapon in the known universe. But if this power falls into the wrong hands, the consequences for humanity are unimaginable ...Praise for The Lazarus War novels: 'A gripping read that moves at warp speed' Jack Campbell, author of the Lost Fleet novels 'Hyper-speed entertainment from a new master of science fiction' William C. Dietz, author of the Legion novels and HALO tie-in novels 'An adrenaline shot of rip-roaring military SF' Stephen Deas, author of Elite: Wanted, Empires: Infiltrationand Extraction 'Gripping, gritty and unsentimental - Sawyer shows us how perilous future war can be' Michael Cobley, author of the Humanity's Fire series 'A fun, gripping adventure story, with a mystery at its core' Gary Gibson, author of Stealing Light 'Starships sporting particle beam weapons, railguns the size of skyscrapers ...This, dear readers, is the good stuff' Neal Asher, author of the Agent Cormac novels

Smart and sassy relationship expert Siggy Flicker is your new fairy godmother. Having matched more than a thousand couples and embraced her own second chance at love, she knows finding a prince is no picnic. Now she’s sharing the keys to building a fairy-tale romance, beginning with a honest assessment of what you really want to be happy.

To help readers create the healthy, lasting relationships they deserve, Siggy is sharing her honest, empowering advice, including:

• Define the relationship you want. Set an intention and true love will follow.
• Forget what looks good “on paper.” Sure he’s Mr. Right, but is he right for you?
• Take a break from your dating rut with a Dating Detox. Step back and reevaluate your dating behavior.
• Learn how to make the most of the first five minutes. First impressions are important, so learn to send the right signals.
• Happily ever after means forever. Continue to work hard to keep your relationship strong and passionate.

In Write Your Own Fairy Tale, readers will get a tried-and-true comprehensive guide to the first six months of dating and Siggy’s exclusive plan to get over heartbreak ensuring you’ll get from agony to over it in just six simple steps.

Featuring practical exercises, real-life success stories, and lessons Siggy learned the hard way, Write Your Own Fairy Tale is a wake-up call for everyone looking for love—and a guide for making sure you get the happiness you truly deserve.