The contents of each traveller's heart is a mystery known only to themselves

Trundling through the scenic countryside of Kyoto and Osaka is the Hankyu line, a burgundy-coloured electric train that has been carrying its commuters to their destinations for decades.

Over the course of a single journey in springtime, and the return journey six months later just as the leaves begin to fall:

- a young man meets the woman who happens to take out the last copy of the library book he was about to borrow;
- an angry wedding guest dresses in a white gown to upstage the bride;
- a university student leaves home for the first time;
- a twenty-something finally grows the courage to walk away from an abusive partner
- a widow learns independence, as she and her granddaughter discuss their new dog.

As the seasons and the landscapes change, passengers jostle and connect, as this timeless train carries each one forward towards the person they intend to become.

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.

Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while hunting on Lake Seminole.

After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when, within five years of Mike’s disappearance, Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise. Their surprising romance set tongues talking. People began wondering how long they had been a couple, and whether they had anything to do with Mike’s death. It took another twelve years for the truth to come out—and when it did, it was unimaginable.

Now, the full, “richly atmospheric, deeply researched, and terrifying true crime” (Betsy Bonner, author of Round Lake) tale is revealed as never before. Through tenacious research and clear-eyed prose, Guilty Creatures probes the psychology of a couple who killed and explores how it feels to live for eighteen years with murder on the soul.

Fans of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series will devour this hauntingly beautiful tale of love and time travel by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Susanna Kearsley.

In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.

Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.

But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth—the ultimate betrayal—that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her...

Human life is governed by the elements – water, earth, fire and air. They are fundamental to our existence. They sustain us, but they also challenge us.

In The Elements, John Boyne has created a vivid kaleidoscope to reflect that contradiction: a quartet of intertwined narratives, each providing a different perspective on cause and effect from the points of view of the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator and the victim.

From a mother on the run from her past, to a young football star on trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and finally a father on a transformative journey with his son, the four strands weave together to form a tapestry of intersecting lives.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving examination of the fault lines inherent to human experience. In crisp, spellbinding prose, he navigates a complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty, at every step challenging us to confront our own perceptions of who we are and what made us that way.

What are we given, and what do we have to take for ourselves?

It is the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very different young people - Karim, Fauzia and Badar - are coming of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation. But for Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents, it seems as if all doors are closed.

Brought into a lowly position in a great house in Dar es Salaam, Badar finds the first true home of his life - and the friendship of Karim, the young man of the house. Even when a shattering false accusation sees Badar sent away, Karim and Fauzia refuse to turn away from their friend.

But as the three of them take their first steps in love, infatuation, work and parenthood, their bond is tested - and Karim is tempted into a betrayal that will change all of their lives forever.

The life story of Winnie Mandela remains one of the great dramas of our times, an ongoing tale of triumphs and tragedies that is still unfolding. In the Cry of Winnie Mandela, a highly acclaimed novel first released in 2003, Njabulo S. Ndebele focuses on four women at a specific period in the history of southern Africa who have spent time waiting for their men to return. Their ordinary, 'private' stories are anchored to the more powerful public stories of Penelope, of ancient Greek mythology, who waited eighteen years while her husband Odysseus was away, and Winnie Mandela, who waited for twenty-seven years. The women question themselves and each other about why they waited and what this waiting did to them, leading to a series of extraordinary and haunting 'conversations' with one another as well as with Penelope and Winnie.

Sweet Medicine takes place in Harare at the height of Zimbabwe’s economic woes in 2008.

Tsitsi, a young woman, raised by her strict, devout Catholic mother, believes that hard work, prayer and an education will ensure a prosperous and happy future. She does well at her mission boarding school, and goes on to obtain a scholarship to attend university, but the change in the economic situation in Zimbabwe destroys the old system where hard work and a degree guaranteed a good life. Out of university, Tsitsi finds herself in a position much lower than she had set her sights on, working as a clerk in the office of the local politician, Zvobgo. With a salary that barely provides her a means to survive, she finds herself increasingly compromising her Christian values to negotiate ways to get ahead.

Sweet Medicine is a thorough and evocative attempt at grappling with a variety of important issues in the postcolonial context: Tradition and modernity; feminism and patriarchy; spiritual and political freedoms and responsibilities; poverty and desperation; and wealth and abundance.

Bored with the routine of normal labour & fed up with its wages, tough-yet-decent Jim turns his back on work & embraces the life of a wide boy. From the pubs & clubs of a lost West End to the gang warfare of the race-course & dog-track, Jim ducks & dives & lives his life on the edge, until he is finally forced to make a life-changing decision.

Ou geraamtes en nuwe gevare. Mevrou Smit moet haar eie reëls neerlê om te oorleef ...

’n Vloed spoel ’n dekades oue geraamte op die oewer van die rivier oop en Aronspoort is weer vasgevang in ’n blyspel van intriges. Mevrou Smit wil die raaisel oplos voor sy weer paaie kruis met daardie lastige Kaapse speurder.

Intussen kry Hester die ystervark ’n maat en mevrou Smit se smeulende verhouding met dokter Tomas vat vlam. Maar dit is moeilik om op hartsake te konsentreer terwyl ’n moordenaar koelbloedig die verlede probeer toesmeer.

Skuil daar meer agter oom Apie se dood? Wat weet tannie Annatjie en haar heldersiende niggie Hanna? Was die vars sterfte op die dorp werklik ’n ongeluk? En kan die verhouding tussen mevrou Smit en dokter Tomas tot iets lei wat haar uiteindelik op Aronspoort sal anker?

A young woman drifts through a series of one night stands and truncated love affairs. Finding herself in a series of increasingly bizarre situations, she turns her curious and savage eye out on the foibles of the world around her. The men of this world evade and simper, they prey, and preen, and fall hopelessly in love. Through these snapshots we get a biting psychopathology, not just of masculinity in its various masks, but of sex and desire in the early 1970s.

"Dick is the American writer who in recent years has most influenced non-American poets, novelists, and essayists."--Roberto Bolano
In "Counter-Clock World," time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with "goodbye," blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first--but their motives are not exactly benevolent because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.
What would you do if your long-dead relatives started coming back? Who would take care of them? And what if they preferred being dead? In "Counter-Clock World," one of Dick's most theological and philosophical novels, these troubling questions are addressed; though, as always, you may have to figure out the answers yourself.

Lien, Katryn en Charlotte was jare lank beste vriendinne. Die vriendskap was van die begin af onwaarskynlik. Lien is heeltemal together, Katryn is temperamenteel en onvoorspelbaar. En Charlotte is die een wat stil-stil foto’s neem en skilder, en nooit ophou waarneem nie.

’n Vlymskerp en eerlike roman oor die verbintenis tussen drie jong vroue. ’n Aangrypende verhaal wat strek oor jare en skuif tussen kuns en seks, joga, vriendskap, lojaliteit en geheime. Deur die skrywer van In my vel.

MAJOR NETFLIX TV SERIES COMING MARCH 5, 2026 STARRING RACHEL WEISZ, LEO WOODALL, AND JOHN SLATTERY, WITH SHARON HORGAN AS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own...

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our narrator who’s “a work of art in herself” (The Washington Post): a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir—a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus—their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.

Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since become a famous radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humour.

When the tabloids unearth a scandalous secret from Nora’s past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic. Nora is injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Under false pretences, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she hasn’t spoken to for almost a decade.

Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone’s hearts had been broken . . . .

Jacob Hochstetler is a peace-loving Amish settler on the Pennsylvania frontier when Native American warriors, goaded on by the hostilities of the French and Indian War, attack his family one September night in 1757. Taken captive by the warriors and grieving for the family members just killed, Jacob finds his beliefs about love and nonresistance severely tested. Jacob endures a hard winter as a prisoner in an Indian longhouse. Meanwhile, some members of his congregation the first Amish settlement in America move away for fear of further attacks. Based on actual events, Jacob's Choice describes how one man's commitment to pacifism leads to a season of captivity, a complicated romance, an unrelenting search for missing family members, and an astounding act of forgiveness and reconciliation. This expanded edition of Jacob's Choice includes maps, photographs, family tree charts, and other historical documents to help readers enter the story and era of the Hochstetler family.

Now in its nineteenth year the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa's leading literary prize, and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere. Kenyan writer Makena Onjerika is the 2018 winner for her short story entitled "Fanta Blackcurrant". This collection brings together the five 2018 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the Caine Prize Writers' Workshop, taking place April 2018.; The prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition.; Judges are drawn from different literary fields including eminent journalists, broadcasters and academics with expertise and a connection to literature in Africa. Five stories are selected for the shortlist by the judges.;The 2018 judging panel comprises: Dinaw Mengestu, journalist, author and graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University's M.F.A programme in fiction; Alain Mabanckou, prolific Francophone Congolese poet and novelist and Man Booker International Prize finalist (2015); reporter, columnist and poet Ahmed Rajab; Henrietta Rose-Innes, a South African author who won the Caine Prize in 2008; Lola Shoneyin, a Nigerian writer who has won the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prose Prize, among others.