Red Ink is a gripping thriller, originally released in 2013. Set in present-day Johannesburg, it has a distinctly local flavour and brings the city to life through all its contrasts and contradictions.

When public relations consultant and ex-journalist Lucy Khambule – young, beautiful and ambitious – receives an unexpected call from Napoleon Dingiswayo – a convicted serial killer, nicknamed The Butcher by the media – her life takes a dramatic turn. Dingiswayo wants Lucy to tell his story. Intrigued by Dingiswayo’s approach, Lucy decides to take this opportunity to fulfil her life-long dream of writing a book, but it comes at a cost she could never have imagined.

After their initial contact, Dingiswayo becomes an all-too-obliging subject and Lucy soon discovers that her choice of topic is not for the faint-hearted. Soon after meeting him in Pretoria’s notorious C-Max Prison, Lucy’s world is turned upside down by a series of violent and disturbing events.

Dingiswayo is behind bars, but Lucy begins to suspect that the brutal attacks may have something to do with him. Who is this frightening man, and what motivates him? As Lucy learns that there is more to Dingiswayo’s story than the police have uncovered, she is forced to decide what price she is willing to pay to pursue her dream.

Red Ink is a gripping thriller. Set in Johannesburg, it has a distinctly local flavour and brings the city to life through all its contrasts and contradictions.

The nanotale is a quick fix that guarantees to transport readers into another world and back - in seven minutes. But - like any good drug - the results can be mixed, taking the reader on a journey through pain, panic, euphoria or ecstacy, depending on the story.

Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.

From Laurie Frankel, the New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is, a Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, comes One Two Three, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry...and laugh again. In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does... Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can't speak. Monday is the town's purveyor of books now that the library's closed--tell her the book you think you want, and she'll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab's job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne. For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother's endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone's seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they've been alive. Because it's hard to let go of the past when the past won't let go of you. Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-grab-a-tissue-the-next novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it's our daughters who will save us all.

'Not Alone kept me breathless with tension.' - Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room 'Intensely moving, genuinely gripping, plausible and absorbing' - Charlotte Mendelson, author of The Exhibitionist In a world very close to our own, a mother and her young son desperately fend for themselves in the confinement of their one bedroom flat. Five years ago, a toxic microplastics storm killed most of the population. Now Katie must forage and hunt the few surviving animals for meat as she attempts to feed her little boy, to care for him as best she can. At a time when stepping outside could kill you, Harry is kept indoors at all costs, never venturing beyond the entrance to their building, never knowing the truth of how he came to call this place home. Bodies continue to build up around them, inescapable layers of toxic dust hang heavily in the air and Katie is only getting sicker. Then, after years without human contact, Katie and Harry are terrified by the arrival of another survivor and Katie knows she must finally undertake a previously unthinkable journey in search of the man she was supposed to marry. In search of a new life for her son. Outside their safe haven, Katie and Harry encounter a world that is forever changed. There are new threats to their safety here, fellow survivors who are determined to start a new population, to save the world they so desperately misunderstood. Katie is pushed to unimaginable lengths as she pushes ahead in search of a better life and as Harry's safety wavers in the balance. As they travel further north, leaving their once safe haven so far behind them, Katie knows how much harder it will be to return if things go wrong. In Not Alone, Sarah K. Jackson combines heart-stopping adventure, with a deeply felt and vividly imagined central bond between mother and child which transcends the world around them. This stunning debut is about love, trust, hope and the looming threat facing us all.

Timothy Mo's first novel in a decade is set within the battle for secession in the Muslim regions of southern Thailand. Pure covers epic expanses of time and is told through narrators who range from fanatical zealots to decorated Oxbridge dons. Everything that Mo's readers expect abound in this long-awaited novel: versatile style, memorable characters, insight into those tormented by dual loyalties and the ability to handle the weightiest of themes with a light touch. By examining the cultural wars of the past and present, Pure's themes are among the most important of the day.

'You like it darker? Fine, so do I' writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of stories that delve into the darker part of life - both metaphorical and literal.

Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys and mysteries; each feels iconic. In 'Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream', a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny's most catastrophically. 'Rattlesnakes', a sequel to Cujo, sees a grieving widower travel to Florida for respite and instead receive an unexpected inheritance - with major strings attached. 'The Answer Man' asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King writes to feel 'the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind' and his ability to surprise, amaze and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed.

You like it darker? You got it.

* * WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 * *

Life on our planet as you've never seen it before

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

A lonely woman invites danger between tedious dates; a station guard plays a bloody game of heads-or-tails; an office cleaner sneaks into a forbidden room hiding grim secrets. Compelling and provocative, Annabel Banks's debut short fiction collection draws deeply upon the human need to be in control - no matter how devastating the cost.

Freshly out of Obáfémi Awólówò University, twenty-year-old Témì has a clear plan for her future: she is going to surgically enlarge her backside like all the other Nigerian women, move from Ilé-Ifè to Lagos, and meet a man who will love her senseless.

But when she finally finds the courage to tell her mother, older sister, and aunties, her announcement causes an uproar. As each of the other women try to cure Témì of what seems like temporary insanity, they begin to spill longburied secrets, including the truth of the mysterious disappearance of Témì’s older sister five years earlier.

In the end, it seems like Témì might be the sanest of them all …

In Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow, Damilare Kuku brings her signature humour, boldness and compassion to each member of this loveable but exasperating family, whose lives show just how sharp the double-edged sword of beauty can be.

A stunning debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down

Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they're nobodies.

First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She is kept company by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter. In America, Elizabeth’s two daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family's future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in Los Angeles. And then there's the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings.

When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family's brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open and gossip about them spreads like wildfire. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered to anyone? And, will reputation be enough to make them a family again?

Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s The Persians is an irresistible portrait of a unique family in crisis that explores timeless questions of love, money, art and fulfilment. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury. The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions. Our edition is based on the most popular and enduring translation first published by Chapman and Hall in 1846. The name of the translator was never revealed.

Min weet die staatsamptenare Pixley en Joubert wat op hulle wag toe Minister hulle na ’n vergadering genaamd “Removal of Monuments” ontbied. Dié twee amptenare se agtergrond is so uiteenlopend soos kan kom: Pixley is afkomstig van die Zoeloe-adelstand, terwyl Joubert glo van sy betoorgrootmoeder se kant afstam van generaal Piet Joubert. Minister se opdrag: Al die apartheid- en koloniale standbeelde, simbole en monumente moet verskuif word.

Pixley en Joubert moet deur die land reis en die ongewenste monumente besoek, die situasie evalueer, en dan met ’n plan vorendag kom oor hoe dit gedoen sal word. Die tydsberekening vir die toer is nie goed vir Joubert nie: Sy siek pa (Pompies, wat op sy dag ’n waterwyser was) trek by hom en sy vrou, Alet, in. Alet is ’n medium en nou met Pompies in die huis, maak Joubert se ma se gees ook haar verskyning. Ook vir Pixley is die tyd nie eintlik geleë nie: Hy is nie seker waar hy staan met sy droomvrou, Memory, nie. Die Rwandese kunstenaar uit Nederland wat hy, toe hy haar vir die eerste keer ’n snoekerstok sien vashou, geweet het kán naai.

Soos wat Pixley en Joubert vorder met hulle toer op soek na ’n geskiedenis waarvan sommiges eerder wil vergeet, kom besoek hulle persoonlike geskiedenisse hulle ook. Geheime word onthul, maar nog meer vrae en raaisels ontstaan.

"This vengeful tale that pits artistic genius against mental health and happiness will captivate fans of dark suspense."-Library Journal, STARRED review A debut thriller for fans of Lucy Foley and Liz Moore, Dark Things I Adore is a stunning Gone Girl-esque tale of atonement that proves that in the grasp of manipulative men, women may momentarily fall. But in the hands of fierce women, men will be brought to their knees. Three campfire secrets. Two witnesses. One dead in the trees. And the woman, thirty years later, bent on making the guilty finally pay. 1988. A group of outcasts gather at a small, prestigious arts camp nestled in the Maine woods. They're the painters: bright, hopeful, teeming with potential. But secrets and dark ambitions rise like smoke from a campfire, and the truths they tell will come back to haunt them in ways more deadly than they dreamed. 2018. Esteemed art professor Max Durant arrives at his protege's remote home to view her graduate thesis collection. He knows Audra is beautiful and brilliant. He knows being invited into her private world is a rare gift. But he doesn't know that Audra has engineered every aspect of their weekend together. Every detail, every conversation. Audra has woven the perfect web. Only Audra knows what happened that summer in 1988. Max's secret, and the dark things that followed. And even though it won't be easy, Audra knows someone must pay. A searing psychological thriller of trauma, dark academia, complicity, and revenge, Dark Things I Adore unravels the realities behind campfire legends-the horrors that happen in the dark, the girls who become cautionary tales, and the guilty who go unpunished. Until now. "A smart, nuanced exploration of victims and villains, inspiration and theft, and the intersection of these things, in every artist. Pay attention to Katie Lattari. She's the real deal."-Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors

'A major talent' Hilary Mantel Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize Whether seeking knowledge, riches, or a better life, the characters in these stories are united by a quest for lasting value, as they ask how we should treat our world, our work, our selves, and each other. A vainglorious mine owner dreams of harnessing all of nature to the machinery of commerce. Two ladies of a certain age hunt rare butterflies in a pre-First World War Europe already experiencing the first bites of biodiversity loss. A climate campaigner must choose between personal happiness and political action. A rural Welsh community is fascinated and angered by glimpses of its invisible, wealthy neighbours. Exact and lyrical, compassionate, and full of wit and truth, this debut collection from Jo Lloyd, winner of the BBC National Short Story Award, announces a fresh new voice with a sensibility all her own.

To the dismay of her ambitious mother, Bolanle marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore considered a great prize in Nigeria, but even graduates must produce children and her husband's persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. She only wants to escape to a quiet life, but the others disapprove of the newest, youngest, cleverest addition to the family. Treated with respect by her husband, she is viewed with suspicion by her seniors - who fear she may unlock their well-guarded secret.

Through the voices of Baba Segi and his four wives, Lola Shoneyin weaves a vibrant story of love, secrets and a family like every other - happy and unhappy, truthful and not, sometimes kind, sometimes competitive, always bound by blood, and the past.

"This Side of Paradise" was published in 1920. The novel explores the lives and morality of post-World War I youth and the theme of love corrupted by greed. "The Beautiful and the Damned" is about a 1920s socialite and his relationship with his wife, his service in the army and his alcoholism. It explores the themes of love, money and decadence. "The Great Gatsby" was first published in 1925 and quickly became a classic novel. The Modern Library named it the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century. Set in 1922 America is enjoying the roaring twenties, however Prohibition has made alcohol an illegal substance and hence the bootleggers are making a killing. "Tender Is the Night" is the final complete novel that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, it was published in 1934. It explores complex relationships and mental health issues, it is quite dark at times.

Journey to the dusty plains of Central Australia in The Pearl Sister, the fourth book in the number one bestselling Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley. A spellbinding story of love and loss, inspired by the mythology of the famous star constellation. CeCe D'Apliese has never felt she fitted in anywhere. Following the death of her father, the elusive billionaire Pa Salt - so-called by the six daughters he adopted from around the globe and named after the Seven Sisters star cluster - she finds herself at breaking point. Dropping out of art college, CeCe watches as Star, her beloved sister, distances herself to follow her new love, leaving her completely alone. In desperation, she decides to flee England and discover her past; the only clues she has are a black-and-white photograph and the name of a woman pioneer who lived in Australia over one hundred years ago. En-route to Sydney, CeCe heads to the one place she has ever felt close to being herself: the stunning beaches of Krabi, Thailand. There amongst the backpackers, she meets the mysterious Ace, a man as lonely as she is and whom she subsequently realizes has a secret to hide . . . A hundred years earlier, Kitty McBride, daughter of an Edinburgh clergyman, is given the opportunity to travel to Australia as the companion of the wealthy Mrs McCrombie. In Adelaide, her fate becomes entwined with Mrs McCrombie's family, including the identical, yet very different, twin brothers: impetuous Drummond, and ambitious Andrew, the heir to a pearling fortune. When CeCe finally reaches the searing heat of the Red Centre of Australia, she begins the search for her past. As something deep within her responds to the energy of the area and the ancient culture of the Aboriginal people, her creativity reawakens once more. With help from those she meets on her journey, CeCe begins to believe that this wild, vast continent could offer her something she never thought possible: a sense of belonging, and a home . . . The epic multi-million selling series continues with The Moon Sister. 'Delicious reading' - Daily Mail

The perfect novel for anyone who's ever waited for a phone call that didn't come.

Imagine you meet a man, spend seven glorious days together and fall in love. It’s mutual, too: you’ve never been so certain of anything. So, when he leaves for a long-booked holiday and promises to call from the airport, you have no cause to doubt him.

But he doesn’t call.

Your friends tell you to forget him, but you know they're wrong: something must have happened; there must be a reason for his silence.

What do you do when you finally discover you're right? That there is a reason – and that reason is the one thing you didn't share with each other . . . The truth.