It hasn’t been a great week for struggling actor Arnold Prinsloo. His career has hit rock bottom, he’s about to be evicted from his cottage in Melville, and worst of all, Zelda, the love of his life, has finally run out of patience and left him.

But when Arnold is accused of murdering insurance billionaire JP Mulder, his problems are only just starting.

Now, Arnold must tackle the greatest and most dangerous acting role of his life: pretending to be a hard-boiled East Rand detective in a race against time to clear his name, win back Zelda, and finally take off these way-too-tight polyester pants.

The curtain is rising …

A comedy about a group of book lovers who literally lose the plot.

Norma Jacobs is your average accountant, running a book club on Facebook and living quietly with her boyfriend in London. Except for the part where she’s being threatened by a deranged author and questioned by the police about attempted murder. All just as she’s started a new job as the only forty-two-yearold intern in the history of publishing.

Harry Shields is a crime writer desperate to hit the big time when a negative review of his latest book on Norma’s page results in him having a spectacular public meltdown. He gets cancelled, his events get cancelled, and before you can say ‘author behaving badly’, he’s plotting revenge and stalking his nemesis. By the time Harry’s gone viral, and Norma’s given up trying to stop him, the online book club has over a hundred thousand rowdy members, and the comments section is a (literal) riot. Entertaining until one member ends up
in a coma.

A savagely funny satire about online media and cancel culture for everyone who thinks books are harmless. With elements of The Echo Chamber and The Jane Austen Book Club, this hilarious novel is for all those who love reading, social media and rum-and-raisin ice cream.

In Tasneem’s close-knit Muslim Indian community the stigma of divorce is a heavy burden to carry, and her mother insists on finding her a husband – even if it means orchestrating a traditional ‘samoosa run’.

When she meets Aadil, an unexpected connection sparks and they strike a deal: a pretend engagement to keep their families off their backs.

But a simple ruse soon grows complicated because one of them is hiding a life-changing secret . . .

On New Year's Eve in 1987, lightning kills Nate's and Danny's mother. To deal with the loss and make sense of a world seemingly governed by chance, their distant and eccentric father creates the Nicotine Gospel.

"According to him, an eight by five cardboard box containing somewhere near twenty machine-made cigarettes would tell you all you needed to know about a man."

The boys throw themselves into the lessons to be close to their dad, but as nate grows up and begins to understand how strange the family gospel (and their father) truly is, he starts to worry. While Nate excels at school and finds ways to escape their father's neglect and the increasingly ramshackle house in Durban, Danny seems to revel in courting danger and death.

Decades later, upon learning of their father's death, Nate and Danny, long estranged, decide to drive from Durban to Cape Town to attend the funeral. On the journey, they must confront each other and their troubled past to find a way forward.

When not caring for his ailing mother, twenty-three-year-old Damon can be found swimming laps at the Sea Point Pavillion. Here he meets the confident Nico, who immediately charms him back to his home. Damon is torn between dealing with his mother’s terminal illness and keeping his sexuality a secret from her. His desire to be truthful is tested when her health takes a turn for the worse, forcing him to choose between his young lover and an unspeakable promise to help end her life.

A tender portrait of caregiving, the longing for intimacy and the heartbreak of letting go, Salt Water Pool Boy is a sensual exploration of love and loss charting a young man’s journey from Cape Town to Rome to Paris, from working on a film set in Cinecittà and obsessing over a male prostitute, to trying to salvage his long-term relationship by searching for intimacy in a string of one-night stands.

When a casual hookup threatens to open old wounds, Damon realises he has yet to fully come to terms with his troubled past.

Once upon a time, a young girl Song ventured into a dark forest, looking for a cure for her much-loved elder sister ...

A touching, tender and lyrical fable about what we do for the ones we love, and the beauty and mystery of being alive in a world where we are a part of everything, and everything is a part of us.

As a terrible pandemic rages through the small medieval hamlet of Villingraz, a young girl, Estie, accompanied by her goat Isabel, sets off into the forest, in search of a cure for her sister who is infected with the pox. Her father Merdocai has surrendered himself to the evil Marquis to be experimented upon for the Greater Good; and with her mother long dead, all Estie has to keep her going is the love of her sister, her father and her friend Rainer, a stuttering poet.

As Estie ventures deeper into the forest, she encounters creatures and teachers who hold the answers to all the questions she has about who she is, and where she has come from. Meanwhile, out in the depths of the ocean, a whale is returning to the place he was born, to exhale his last breath. While Estie does not know this, he too holds secrets that belong to Estie's story. The Whale's Last Song is a touching, tender fable, a parable what we must sacrifice for those we love; a rumination on the tragic mistakes in every life - and the steadfastness that is required to overcome those mistakes - and a love song to the natural world.

Maks Ntaka has a target on his back.

After years of loyal work for Arms-Tech Industries, Maks has found proof of serious corruption in his department. Tender fraud, illegal kickbacks, inflated contracts, the same old story. Maks wants to do something about it, turn whistleblower. What else can a good man do?

But who can he tell if he can’t trust anyone? The people in charge seem complicit, while the rest turn a blind eye. Soon suspicions cloud the office, and all the knives are out for whoever turns on them first. As Maks pre-pares his disclosures, he discovers that his longtime mentor has implicated him in the illegalities. Not only is he being set up by his company, but some foreign nationals with deep pockets are also on his trail looking for their cut. For Maks, the walls are closing in, and danger waits at every turn.

Meanwhile, his own private indiscretions are coming to light, and soon his life starts collapsing around him.

In this compelling and harrowing account of a whistleblower, Onke Mazibuko creates a nail-biting, paranoid thriller about a good man pushed to the limit. Drawing from all too real instances of corruption and collapse, this book shows what such a system does to those who still listen to their conscience.

What is a good man to do when your own company made the bullet with your name on it?

Cephus Twala is dying. During his final moments he foresees the arrival of a descendant of his, a man not yet born, January Twala.

Helen Botes, one-time apartheid apparatchik, cannot reach her son. During her anxious marshalling of a home bent on disrepair, she’s attacked by an intruder who wants only to suck on her finger.

And Steven Moyo, environmental refugee and soft-hearted Red Ant, has resolved to seek out the strange squatter who claims to have walked from a fading future to save a neglected past.

A creative reimagining of a true crime story from early-1970s South Africa.

The novel tells the story of teenager Lorraine van Niekerk who despises the fact that her boss and lover, middle-aged André Bekker, won’t leave his wife Sunette and marry her instead. When Lorraine’s life fatefully intersects that of Alfie Geemooi, a recent amputee, she comes up with a hell of a plan.

Is murder an adequate price to pay for love?

An Icelandic volcano has thrown an ash cloud into the atmosphere and, across the world, planes have stopped flying. Overhead, the skies are severely blue. Leah Nash and Niall Lawrence, twenty-somethings in love, grow strangely restless. They set out on different but parallel pathways. He takes on work at an Antarctic polar station and experiences the strange and lonely beauty of the precarious ice-world. She studies writing in England and struggles to find her way. They are both determined to stay together, though separated by thousands of miles.

Elleke Boehmer’s Ice Shock is a love story set against the backdrop of the melting ice caps. The novel asks what it is to be close even when we are far apart—distant yet proximate. How do we go on loving each other when the environment around us is changing catastrophically by the day?’

Set in the Cape Colony during the brutal era of slavery, Song of the Slave Girl is a gripping tale of love, resilience, and survival.

Meraj and Djameela, two young slaves, are bound by a love so powerful that it defies the cruelty of their masters. When Djameela is sold to a distant farmer, Meraj is consumed by grief, spiraling into madness. His anguish turns to fury after one final act of abuse, leading him to kill his master and flee to Zandvliet, a refuge for runaway slaves.

Djameela, now in a new home, faces her own battles as she fends off the advances of her new master’s son. Guided by the wisdom of enslaved women versed in ancient magic from the East Indies, she learns to defend herself and plots her escape. Desperate to reunite, both lovers take bold steps to find each other. But as fugitives from the law, their rekindled passion is haunted by the threat of capture.

In a heart-pounding journey of defiance, Song of the Slave Girl explores the boundaries of love and freedom, ending with an ambiguous finale that invites readers to imagine their fate. Will love triumph, or will their fight for freedom come at too great a cost?

A gripping story of power, ambition, and the price of desire.

From the bustling township of Mamelodi to the heart of European diplomacy in Brussels, Mbali Langa has fought for every opportunity – and sacrificed more than she cares to admit. As a rising diplomat with a sharp mind and an unwavering ambition, she is no stranger to the delicate balance of power and persuasion.

But when an illicit affair threatens to shatter her career, and hidden enemies begin to close in, she finds herself trapped in a game where trust is a luxury she can’t afford. In Brussels, behind the polished façades of diplomacy, lies a dangerous world of secrets, betrayals and high-stakes deception – where one wrong move could cost her everything.

Caught between duty, love and the weight of her past, Mbali must decide just how far she’s willing to go to secure the future she’s always dreamed of.

A poignant tale of self-discovery, love, and community set against the backdrop of post-apartheid South Africa.

The story follows Unathi’s journey as she searches for her mother, Mavis, while navigating her identity. Raised by her grandmother, Gogo, in the village of Moya, where mothers are eerily absent, Unathi must confront the complexities of her sexuality, cultural heritage, and sense of belonging.

As she explores lesbian love, interracial relationships, and the quest for her mother’s truth, Unathi must also contend with the harsh realities of identity politics and the masks she must wear to survive.

Ellie Kent longs to belong

Abandoned as a child and raised in the bleak confines of an asylum, Ellie is taken into service as a governess by a family bound for the distant colony of South Africa. But before reaching their destination, she is abandoned once more – cast adrift in a land as vast as it is unforgiving.

Left with no choice but to join a caravan of settlers, Ellie finds herself in the company of a questionable trader, a mysterious opera singer, and a young Afrikaner, Gysbert de Boer, tasked with delivering her safely to an uncertain future. As war brews on the horizon and the settlers struggle for survival in a land that offers little mercy, Ellie must carve out a home – or be lost to the wilderness forever.

A sweeping frontier fable, The Immortalites is a masterfully crafted tale of survival, sacrifice, and the search for belonging.

Naledi is a woman unravelling slowly, painfully, purposefully. Once full of promise, her life has shrunk into the claustrophobic walls of a home that no longer feels safe, with a husband whose love has curdled into something dark and dangerous. Between Instagrammable scones, lockdown picnics and a nursery that remains heartbreakingly empty, Naledi wages a quiet war against erasure of her name, her dreams, her body and her sanity.

Aunty, the quiet force in the shadows of Naledi’s crumbling marriage, carries her own scars. A Zimbabwean domestic worker with a fierce devotion to the children she left behind, Aunty watches, waits and bears witness. Between the two women, a fragile sisterhood grows – tender, complicated and not without its betrayals.

Told in alternating voices, Bosadi is a devastating exploration of gender, grief, immigration, violence and the impossible expectations that swallow Black women whole.

I came to know the country, I have enacted my life not better or worse than others, the harvest was not richer or poorer than that of others, though full of good shoots. But I knew that I was coming to die here next to the river; I came to look for it like the elephants do.

Poet Antjie Krog returns to the landscape of her childhood. The Free State plains enchant her – it is her home, and the home of her mother, the writer Dot Serfontein. In her nineties, Dot is frail and needs full-time care, but her intellect and sense of humour are razor-sharp, and her writing is comparable to that of her daughter.

In Blood’s Inner Rhyme, Antjie Krog breaks the boundaries between genres and writes about this relationship that continues to fascinate and torment her. Using letters, diary entries and care-home records, the book explores creative influence, ideological disagreements and the realities of ageing.

Krog exposes the insurmountable differences between generations but also shows the love and mutual admiration between two highly skilled writers. Beautifully and poignantly written, Blood’s Inner Rhyme delves into cultural heritage, the country's Anglo-Boer War history, issues of land ownership and race, as well as romantic relationships across racial boundaries.

The story of the relationship between mother and daughter, this is Krog’s most personal book, as well as the most universal.

In the Eastern Cape, the gale force winds have nothing on the chanting gees of the boys at the prestigious local school.

Isaac ‘Izzy’ Kingston, a recent matriculant and newly minted varsity dropout, has several bashers’ worth of hilarious and harrowing school memories to share with a sympathetic audience. Isaac’s nostalgic first-person confessional, peppered with tongue-in-cheek observations, takes readers from the testosterone-fuelled excitement and high drama of the rugby field on Reunion Weekend to near-death encounters on overnight excursions in Cradock.

With Isaac’s overachieving dreams imploding, interhouse plays gone awry, and his queerness firmly parked in the closet, All the Saints is the tragicomic coming of age tale for our time.

Normally quick witted and sharp eyed, Detective Fatima Matthews is being sucker punched by menopause, and that’s not even the half of it. Someone is playing deadly games with a local publisher, there’s a reader found dead with melted eyes and just when she could really use the career boost, her internal polygraph has decided to flatline.

As the threats escalate and one crisis triggers another, Fatima must come to terms with what it means to face your frailties, and whether a second chance is really possible when your greatest adversary is time.

With plagiarism scandals, buried secrets and red herrings aplenty, Andrea Shaw’s thrilling debut gives the local publishing industry its moment in the sun.