t's never too late for the adventure of a lifetime . . .

Heather Winterbottom has worked side by side with her husband as GPs in their idyllic rural practice for over forty years. But as the time comes to hang up their stethoscopes, the Winterbottoms discover that they have rather different visions of retirement . . .

Heather dreams of exploring the Greek Islands, of escaping the shackles of her routine life and embracing an exciting new adventure. Alan dreams of growing his own vegetables.

When things come to a head at a family lunch, Heather announces that she has decided to take a year off. From her old life, from her marriage - from Alan. Alone in beautiful Greece, Heather embarks on her very own odyssey - complete with peak experiences, pitfalls and temptations. But what if coming home is the biggest adventure yet?

Internasionaal gevierde misdaadskrywer Deon Meyer se bundel tydskrifverhale Bottervisse in die jêm het in 1997 verskyn. Nou is dié lekkerleesverhale in ’n splinternuwe, hersiene gedaante te kry, mét vyf verhale wat nog nooit voorheen gebundel is nie, onder andere "Die ballade van Robbie de Wee".

Elke verhaal ontlok ’n gevoel van deernis met die karakters, of ’n uitbundige skaterlag. En die romantiek bly nie agterweë nie.

Van eerste tot laaste krul die leser se tone van pure leesplesier.

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

"There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine."

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

Gaan Kayla se lewe ooit weer oukei wees na Die Ramp?

Die Ramp waarin hulle geliefde huis, Miernes, heeltemal afgebrand het en nou moet haar hele groot gesin in haar pa se ou werkswinkel, Ghrieshuis, gaan bly. Die Ramp waarin haar pa, motorwerktuigkundige en kranige fotograaf, sy sig verloor het en nou nie meer kan werk nie. Die Ramp wat alles verander het.

Maretha Maartens skryf met haar ervare skrywershand ’n deernisvolle verhaal oor verlies, hoop en geloof.

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.

An addictive workplace romance from the bestselling author of Love in the Time of Serial Killers.

Lauren Fox is the bookkeeper for Cold World, a tourist destination that's always a winter wonderland despite being located in humid Orlando, Florida. Sure, it's ranked way below any of the trademarked amusement parks and maybe foot traffic could be better. But it's a fun place to work, even if 'fun' isn't exactly Lauren's middle name.

Her coworker Asa Williamson, on the other hand, is all about finding ways to enliven his days at Cold World - whether that means organizing the Secret Santa or teasing Lauren.

When the owner asks Lauren and Asa to propose something (anything, really) to raise more revenue, their rivalry heats up as they compete to come up with the best idea. But the situation is more dire than they thought, and it might take these polar opposites working together to save the day...

An evil man is reincarnated as a terrible smell and over time falls in love with a woman. A stranger arrives at the door of a heavenly house, but unlike everyone else there, she will only live once. A person dies and goes to a place where all living things go – a menagerie of animals roaming an endless meadow – and he finds love in familiar faces. A mother and a son reunite in a heaven that is also a hell – depending on how you see it. Two people die on the moon and live undead through eons, moving through the phases of love while watching the lights on Earth flicker out.

From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, a deeply heart-wrenching novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard's library. He knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve 'American culture' in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic - including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can turn a blind eye to the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

This is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a worldly treasure as fabulous as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him

With Paulo’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

Discover the sixth and final book in the ludicrously inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

Arthur Dent led a perfectly ordinary, uneventful life until the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hurled him deep into outer space. Now he's convinced a cruelly indifferent universe is out to get him. And who can blame him? His life is about to collide with a pantheon of unemployed gods, a lovestruck green alien, a very irritating computer and at least one very large slab of cheese.

If, that is, everyone's favourite renegade Galactic President can get him off planet Earth before it is destroyed . . . again.

A masterful, intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide - from the Booker-shortlisted, Pulitzer prize-winning author of THE RETURN.

Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed.

Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.

When FBI profiler Kaely Quinn's mother is diagnosed with cancer, Kaely takes time off work to go to Dark Water, Nebraska, to help her brother care for their mother. Upon her arrival, she learns of a series of fires in the small town, attributed by the fire chief to misuse of space heaters in the frigid winter. But Kaely is skeptical, and a search for a pattern in the locations of the fires bolsters her suspicions.

After yet another blaze devastates a local family, Kaely is certain a serial arsonist is on the loose. Calling upon her partner from St. Louis, Noah Hunter, and her brother's firefighter neighbor who backs Kaely's suspicions, Kaely and her team begin an investigation that swiftly leads them down a twisted path.

When the truth is finally revealed, Kaely finds herself confronting a madman who is determined his last heinous act will be her death.

Now an Amazon Original series starring Sigourney Weaver, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is the internationally bestselling novel by Holly Ringland.

On the Australian coast, miles away from the nearest town, nine-year-old Alice Hart lives in fear of her father's dark moods. She is sheltered only by the love of her mother, Agnes, and Agnes' beautiful garden.

When tragedy changes Alice's life irrevocably, she is sent to Thornfield, a native flower farm run by the grandmother she has never known. Thornfield gives refuge to women who, like Alice, are lost or broken, and it is there that Alice learns to use the language of flowers to say the things she cannot voice.

But as she grows older, Alice realizes that there are things that even the flowers cannot help her say. Family secrets are buried deeper than the flowers' roots and, if she is to have the freedom she craves, she must find the courage to unearth the most powerful story she knows: her own.

From the author of million-copy bestseller The Little Paris Bookshop comes a tender story about how a love of books is a love of life itself.

In a small town in balmy Provence, a dazzling encounter with Love itself changes the life of orphan Marie-Jeanne forever.

As a girl, Marie-Jeanne realizes that she can see the marks Love has left on the people around her - tiny glowing lights on their faces and hands that shimmer more brightly when the one meant for them is near. Before long, Marie-Jeanne is playing matchmaker in her village.

As she grows up, Marie-Jeanne helps her foster father, Francis, set up a mobile library that travels through the many small mountain towns in the region of Nyons. Their library will offer entertainment, guidance, reassurance and comfort - balm for the heartbroken and lonely. Marie-Jeanne soon finds herself bringing soulmates together everywhere they go, with books always playing an essential part in her quest.

However, the only person that Marie-Jeanne can't seem to find a partner for is herself. She has no glow of her own, though she waits and waits for it to appear. Everyone must have a soulmate, surely - but will Marie-Jeanne be able to recognize hers when Love finally comes her way?

They say the fall is only as great as the ability to rise, and The Belters know plenty about going both ways. Growing up in the best schools and moving in the continent’s aristocratic circles, the road to carving out their ideal life is clear. But that path is rarely straight, and for the four university friends, the sharp turn into teenage pregnancy, infidelity and the erosion of love’s grand illusion delivers blows that would derail most.

Chic and haughty, entitled and oblivious, Lolo, Nala, Runako and Qhayiya, aka The Belters, grow to realise that while flair is hard work, it doesn’t work hard enough. Nala learns the hard way that a trust fund is finite, but death isn’t. Lolo discovers that everyone betrays everyone sometime in life. Runako realises that the heavier the carats, the harder it is to run, and Qhayiya finds herself in a world where saints, monsters and bystanders are the same people.

With sharp wit and the wisdom of hindsight, Ringfence reflects on four lives that touch the foot of heaven, fall to the depths of hell, and grow to become women whose hard-earned insights cut right to the heart of Africa’s elite.

A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK.

What if you had the winning lottery ticket that would change your life forever, but you couldn't cash it in?

Lucky Armstrong is tough, talented and in real trouble. Having just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, she's preparing to start a brand new life, complete with new identity, when everything goes sideways. Suddenly Lucky finds herself completely alone, without the help of either her father or her boyfriend, the two figures from whom she's learned the art of the scam. When Lucky discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means she'll be arrested for her crimes.

As Lucky tries to avoid capture and make a future for herself, she must find a way to confront her own past and learn what it means to be independent and honest . . . before her luck runs out.

A wildly ambitious story of the making of a colossal, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film, and the humble comic book that inspired it all.

Spanning 80 years of a changing America and culminating in the opening of the film, we meet a colourful cast of characters including a troubled soldier returning from war, a young boy with an artistic gift, an inspired and eccentric director, a pompous film star on the rise, a tireless production assistant and countless film crew members that together create Hollywood magic.

Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece offers an insider's take on the momentous efforts it takes to make a film. At once a reflection on America's past and present, on the world of show business and the real world we all live in.

Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy. She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They'd been up since four am. Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she'd left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour?

She was so sure it would be okay. Now, the state has decided that Frida is not fit to care for her daughter. That she must be re-educated. Can this mistake cost her everything?

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS is an explosive and thrilling novel about the pressures of perfectionism, parenthood and privilege.

Longing for independence, a young sheltered Kenyan woman flees the expectations of her mother for a life in New York City that challenges all her beliefs about race, love, and family.

Soila is a lucky girl by anyone’s estimation. Raised by her stern, conservative mother and a chorus of aunts, she has lived a protected life in Nairobi. Soila is headstrong and outspoken, and she chafes against her mother’s strict rules. After a harrowing assault by a trusted family friend, she flees to New York for college, vowing never to return home.

New York in the 1990s is not what Soila imagined it would be. Instead of finding a golden land of opportunity, Soila is shocked by the entitlement of her wealthy American classmates and the poverty she sees in the streets. She befriends a Black American girl at school and witnesses the insidious racism her friend endures, forcing Soila to begin to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the blind spots afforded by her Kenyan upbringing. When she falls in love with a free-spirited artist, a man her mother would never approve of, she must decide whether to honor her Kenyan identity and what she owes to her family, or to follow her heart and forge a life of her own design.

Lucky Girl is a fierce and tender debut about the lives and loves we choose—what it meant to be an African immigrant in America at the turn of the millennium, and how a young woman finds a place for herself in the world.

his is Salman Rushdie at his best. A magical realist feminist tale in an historical setting that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries - from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.

In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl's mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana's comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world.

Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that Parvati set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry - with Pampa Kampana at its center.

Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.

For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this soul-stirring Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can help us fulfil our dreams.

Sayuri Komachi is no ordinary librarian. Sensing exactly what someone is searching for in life, she provides just the book recommendation to help them find it.

In this uplifting book, we meet five of Sayuri's customers, each at a different crossroads:

• the restless retail assistant eager to pick up new skills
• the mother faced with a demotion at work after maternity leave
• the conscientious accountant who yearns to open an antique store
• the gifted young manga artist in search of motivation
• the recently retired salaryman on a quest for newfound purpose

Can she help them find what they are looking for?

What You Are Looking For is in the Library is about the magic of community libraries and the discovery of connection. Already loved by thousands of readers all over the world, this inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfil our long-held dreams.

Which book will you recommend?

Die tienjarige Elsie, oftewel Gogga, is 'n regte rabedoe wat eerder saam met die seuns op die plaas rondhardloop as om pop te speel soos haar perfekte sussie, Riette.

Dit is die veertigerjare en daar is 'n Wereldoorlog wat woed, maar Elsie se grootste bekommernis is die droogte wat die gebied teister. Saam met haar gesin moet sy veg om hulle geliefde plaas, Stofvlei, te red.

’n Innemende, universele verhaal oor familie, kontrei en die natuur.

Martha Solomons is 'n eenvoudige vrou, die dogter van 'n vrygestelde slaaf. Harry Grey is 'n gewese priester uit die Britse adelstand, wat weens wangedrag na die Kaapkolonie van die middel-negentiende eeu gestuur word. In die dorre Namakwaland kruis hulle paaie en ontstaan daar 'n liefdesband wat hulle deur die kontrasterende landskappe van hulle lewens bybly. Martha is hulle meersleurende verhaal.

Tillie het ’n heel goeie lewe, dankie. Ja, sy werk haar oor ’n mik as kelnerin in Mellville, en ja daar’s nie iemand spesiaals in haar lewe nie, en ja, haar beste vriendin Milanka ís high­maintenance, maar so ken Tillie haar, en Milanks het al vir haar báie beteken. Haar eksieperfeksie, #blessed vriendin Milanka.

Maar uhm… Sy’t nou nie verwag Milanka sal aandring sy wat Tillie is, moet sorg dat Milanka en Jacques se troue gereël kom nie!

Eensklaps is Tillie in ’n warrelwind van warmlugballonne, dringende missed calls en uitheemse Milanka­bestellings: reënbooghoringperde, en ’n Alice in Wonderland­tema, en en en… En dít terwyl Jacques eintlik aanvanklik Tillie se date was!

Soos Milanka ál meer op Bruidzilla begin trek, begin Tillie bemerk iets is nie pluis nie. Wat skuil agter Milanka se monster­mondering? Sal sy en Jacques ooit gekerk kom – en sal haar vriendskap met Tillie dit oorleef?

The Good Place meets Sliding Doors, Begin Again is an uplifting novel about life's what if's, missed chances and new beginnings.

Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can't help feeling something's missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after yet another dud of a first date.

But life isn't over for Frankie. Instead, she is offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her away from that fateful takeaway and on to the fulfilling life she's always dreamt of.

Soon, Frankie will see what her life would have been if only she'd caught that one-way flight, accepted the marriage proposal or attended the intimidating job interview. Will she finally find her Mr Right? Or discover she already had?

What would you change if you could begin again?