This book reads like a war-time thriller.

We hear for the first time from internationalists who secretly worked for the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in the neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tonnes of weapons into the country in the most creative of ways. Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face danger which dogged them at every turn. At least three were captured and served long terms of imprisonment, while others were arrested and, following international pressure, deported. They reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries, who gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause.

Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key role players in the international Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and its public mobilisation to isolate the apartheid regime. These include worldwide campaigns like Stop the Sports Tours, boycotting South African products, and black American solidarity.

The Cuban, East German and Russian contributions outline those countries’ support for the ANC and MK. The public, global AAM campaigns provide the dimension from which internationalists who secretly served MK emerged.

This is an invaluable historic resource, explaining in highly readable style the significance of international solidarity for today’s youth in challenging times.

An Allied-Nazi showdown in the icy South Atlantic

Jack Pembroke is thrust from a London desk job into the jaws of World War ii. As a young naval officer, he sees his ship sunk under him at Dunkirk, an event that leaves him defeated. After recovering in London, Jack sails for South Africa to join his admiral father at the Cape where a fledgling naval force is preparing to fight the coming onslaught of German raiders and u-boats in the South Atlantic. Jack is appointed commander of a small minesweeping flotilla – an inept bunch of South African sailors who distrust this foreign captain forced upon them – and must quickly mould them into a fighting unit.

Meanwhile a Nazi commerce raider, a powerful warship disguised as a neutral merchant ship, has left Germany for the Cape, intending to wreak havoc on Allied shipping. Jack and his flotilla will be pushed to the limit – and beyond.

A sweeping historical adventure, The Cape Raider is the tale of a broken hero who has to find himself despite the trauma of war, a domineering father and the death of his mother during the Blitz. He must adapt to a new country, a new navy and new love, and finally he must come face to face with the Nazi raider in a fight to the death in the icy seas off the southernmost tip of Africa.

From the author of A Witch in Time comes a magical story spanning from Jazz Age Paris to modern-day America of family secrets, sacrifice, and lost love set against the backdrop of a mysterious circus.

Paris, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder - a world where women weave illusions of magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. Bound to her family's circus, it's the only world Cecile Cabot knows until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a passionate affair that could cost her everything.

Virginia, 2004: Lara Barnes is on top of the world, but when her fiance disappears on their wedding day every plan she has for the future comes crashing down. Desperate, Lara's search for answers unexpectedly lead to her great-grandmother's journals.

Swept into a story of a dark circus and ill-fated love, secrets about Lara's family history come to light and reveal a curse that has been claiming payment from the women in her family for generations. A curse that might be tied to her fiance's mysterious fate...

Alfred Qabula was a central figure in the cultural movement that emerged among working people in and around Durban in the 1980s. The movement was an innovative attempt to draw on the oral poetry developed among the Nguni people over many centuries. Qabula was a forklift driver in the Dunlop tyre factory in Durban at the time this book was developed. He used the art of telling stories to critique the exploitation of black workers and their oppression under apartheid.

A Working Life, Cruel Beyond Belief is the first book in the Hidden Voices series and is Qabula’s testament, telling the powerful story of his life and work. It also contains a generous selection of his poetry. The Hidden Voices Project emerged out of an interest in intellectual left contributions towards discussions on race, class, ethnicity and nationalism in South Africa. Specifically, the project seeks to examine and make available writings on left thought under apartheid. The aim is to look at hidden voices – voices outside of the university system or academic voices suppressed by apartheid pressures. Before and during the apartheid years, many universities were closed to existing local ideas and debates, and critical intellectual debates, ideas, texts, poetry and songs often originated outside academia during the period of the struggle for liberation.

An album that revisits Ed’s singer/songwriter roots, and one that was written against a backdrop of personal grief and hope, ‘-’ (Subtract) presents one of the biggest stars on the planet at his most vulnerable and honest.

Bestselling writing duo, Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, return with a new unputdownable thriller.

When a wealthy man is found murdered in his hilltop home, Deputy Coroner Clay Edison is shocked to discover a link to his own brother Luke on the scene. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. But surely he's not a killer?

When Luke goes missing, the case becomes even more fraught for Clay. He knows that the conflict between family and the truth could take him down the wrong path. Is his brother capable of murder? Or could he be a victim too?

As wildfires and blackouts sweep through the state of California, the truth will only get harder to find.

The twenty-seventh book in the number one bestselling Alan Banks crime series - by the master of the police procedural.

The gruesome double murder at an Eastvale property developer's luxury home should be an open and shut case for Superintendent Banks and his team of detectives. There's a clear link to the notoriously vicious Albanian mafia, men who left the country suspiciously soon after the death. Then they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house - and Annie and Gerry's investigation pivots to the rape of a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.

Banks's friend Zelda, increasingly uncertain of her future in Britain's hostile environment, thinks she will be safer in Moldova hunting the men who abducted, raped and enslaved her than she is Yorkshire or London. Her search takes her back to the orphanage where it all began - but by stirring up the murky waters of the past, Zelda is putting herself in greater danger than any she's seen before.

And as the threat to Zelda escalates, so does the danger for Banks and those who love her . . .

1866. In a coastal village in southern England, Nell picks violets for a living. Set apart by her community because of the birthmarks that speckle her skin, Nell’s world is her beloved brother and devotion to the sea.

But when Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders arrives in the village, Nell is kidnapped. Her father has sold her, promising Jasper Jupiter his very own leopard girl. It is the greatest betrayal of Nell's life, but as her fame grows, and she finds friendship with the other performers and Jasper’s gentle brother Toby, she begins to wonder if joining the show is the best thing that has ever happened to her.

In London, newspapers describe Nell as the eighth wonder of the world. Figurines are cast in her image, and crowds rush to watch her soar through the air. But who gets to tell Nell’s story? What happens when her fame threatens to eclipse that of the showman who bought her? And as she falls in love with Toby, can he detach himself from his past and the terrible secret that binds him to his brother?

Moving from the pleasure gardens of Victorian London to the battle-scarred plains of the Crimea, Circus of Wonders is an astonishing story about power and ownership, fame and the threat of invisibility.

The darkly compelling new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Chalk Man, The Taking of Annie Thorne and The Other People.

500 years ago: eight martyrs were burnt to death.

30 years ago: two teenagers vanished without trace.

Two months ago: the vicar committed suicide.

Welcome to Chapel Croft. For Rev Jack Brooks and teenage daughter Flo it's supposed to be a fresh start. New job, new home. But, as Jack knows, the past isn't easily forgotten. And in a close-knit community where the residents seem as proud as they are haunted by Chapel Croft's history, Jack must tread carefully. Ancient superstitions as well as a mistrust of outsiders will be hard to overcome. Yet right away Jack has more frightening concerns.

Why is Flo plagued by visions of burning girls? Who's sending them sinister, threatening messages? And why did no one mention that the last vicar killed himself?

Chapel Croft's secrets lie deep and dark as the tomb. Jack wouldn't touch them if not for Flo - anything to protect Flo. But the past is catching up with Chapel Croft - and with Jack. For old ghosts with scores to settle will never rest . . .

An Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low.

Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.

Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name—Aryana Shepherd—and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured.

New York, 2008: Forty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room—a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers—and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul—a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban—and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost.

Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home—of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.

In 2012, retired South African major general Johan Jooste was parachuted into the seemingly unwinnable war against rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park.

With poaching spiralling out of control, Jooste was given the mandate to ‘go military’, to convert Kruger’s ranger corps into a paramilitary force capable of taking the fight to the poachers. Aged 60, white, and a veteran of his country’s apartheid-era wars, Jooste’s controversial appointment was immediately met with resentment and outright hostility by elements of South African National Parks, the police, and even the military with which he had served. With the media, government, conservationists, human-rights activists and the people of South Africa looking over his shoulder, Jooste had to battle opponents within and without to carry out his strategy for turning the tide of rhino poaching.

Rhino War tells how Jooste, facing an unprecedented assault on a national park and a single species, turned a force of demoralised men and women into arguably the finest anti-poaching unit on the African continent. Told through his eyes, these stories of the courage and grit of rangers who risked their lives to protect wildlife in the face of a wily and determined foe are an account of heroism, sacrifice and determination.

Humbly, honestly and decisively, Jooste tells of the successes and failures of his bold strategy, and shares his vision for the future.

In this entertaining and insightful biography, award-winning writer Andrew Morton, author of Diana, Her True Story and Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, takes you behind the scenes to uncover the woman and her world.

For years she prayed for her mother to give birth to a son. She longed to be spared her destiny as Britain's future Queen. Her dream was to live in the country surrounded by children, dogs and horses.

But Elizabeth did her duty, the young princess pledging before her people that she would dedicate her whole life to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth. She hoped that that day would be a long way off. It was not to be. Only twenty-five when she became Queen after the premature death of her father, King George Vl, Elizabeth has become the stuff of superlatives: the longest reigning, most travelled and, for a shy woman, the Queen who has shaken more hands and made more small talk than any other monarch in history. She has been seen and believed by millions, either in person, on television or film.

Elizabeth was set firmly on the road to becoming sovereign because of the D word - divorce. In 1936, her uncle David, King Edward VIII, wanted to marry a twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. When he couldn't, he abdicated. Since that national trauma, divorce and the fall-out from divorce has shaped her reign. She has witnessed her sister Margaret, three of her children and several grandchildren divorce. And she has lived long enough to see the wheel turn full circle, watching as another American divorcee, Meghan Markle, walked down the aisle with her grandson Prince Harry.

While her reign has been defined by divorce, her private life has been moulded by an irascible husband, an extravagant mother and a querulous eldest son. In the winter of her reign she refereed a war between two of her grandsons, brothers William and Harry who were once inseparable friends. As she celebrates her platinum anniversary, the first monarch to reign for seventy years, she has, during a once in a lifetime pandemic, become the reassuring face of hope and optimism, the grandmother to the nation.

The Queen of Romantic Comedy and the No. 1 bestseller explores love, loss and second chances.

From the outside, anyone would think that Lucy Palmer has it all. But when her marriage comes to an unexpected end, everything turns upside down in a flash.

As the truth of her marriage threatens to surface, Lucy seizes the opportunity to retreat to her parents' farmhouse. But Lucy gets more than she bargained for when she moves home - especially when she crosses paths with an old flame.

Revisiting her mistakes forces Lucy to confront the secrets she's been keeping from herself and those she loves. Is she able to leave the door to her past firmly closed?

After single-handedly intervening in a deadly terrorist attack in Mali, SAS Warrant Officer Jamie 'Geordie' Carter is denounced as a lone wolf by jealous superiors. Now a Regiment outcast, Carter is given a second chance with a deniable mission: locate SAS hero-gone-rogue, David Vann. Vann had been sent into Afghanistan to train local rebels to fight the Taliban. But he's since gone silent and expected attacks on key targets have not happened. Tracking Vann through Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Carter not only discovers the rogue soldier's involvement in a conspiracy that stretches far beyond the Middle East - but an imminent attack that will have deadly consequences the world over . . .

Anna has just lost her taste for the Big Apple…

Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that? Anna – it turns out.

Turning a minor mid-life crisis into a major life event she bins the lot, heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat. Newsflash: the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats – and violence.

Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over.

Until she discovers that leaving New York doesn’t mean escaping her mistakes.

Once upon a time she'd had a best friend. Once upon a time she'd loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them.

We all make mistakes. But when do we stop making the same one over and over again?

Sparks fly when a competitive figure skater and hockey team captain are forced to share a rink.

Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. It looks like everything is going according to plan when she gets a full scholarship to the University of California, Maple Hills and lands a place on their competitive figure skating team. Nothing will stand in her way, not even the captain of the hockey team, Nate Hawkins.

Nate's focus as team captain is on keeping his team on the ice. Which is tricky when a facilities mishap means they are forced to share a rink with the figure skating team-including Anastasia, who clearly can't stand him. But when Anastasia's skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot.

Sparks fly, but Anastasia isn't worried... because she could never like a hockey player, right?

Imagine a world in which witchcraft is real. In which mothers hand down power to their daughters, power that is used harmlessly and peacefully.

Then imagine that the US President is a populist demagogue who decides that all witches must be imprisoned for their own safety, as well as the safety of those around them - creating a world in which to be female is one step away from being criminal...

As witches across the world are rounded up, one young woman discovers a power she did not know she had. It's a dangerous force and it puts her top of the list in a global witch hunt. But she - and the women around her - won't give in easily. Not while all of women's power is under threat.

The Coven is a dazzling global thriller that pays homage to the power and potential of women everywhere.

From the magazine synonymous with looking sharp and living smart comes the definitive handbook of skills for the modern man.

Based on interviews with the world's foremost authorities - including Richard Branson, Jamie Oliver, Tracey Emin, Andy McNab, Tom Daley, Alastair Campbell, Dynamo and many others - step-by-step illustrated guides show you how to win at fashion, sport, food and drink, work, romance, travel and the unexpected.

You will learn:

• How to master sushi etiquette
• How to neutralize a crisis
• How to fold a suit for crease-free travel
• How to give a killer foot massage
• How to win big at the casino
• How to dance without looking like your dad
• How to get quality sleep on a night flight
• How to ace the job interview
• How to survive a kidnapping ... plus dozens of other insider techniques

Five killers find themselves on a bullet train from Tokyo competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a Japanese bestseller.

Satoshi looks like an innocent schoolboy but he is really a viciously cunning psychopath. Kimura's young son is in a coma thanks to him, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard.

Nanao, the self-proclaimed 'unluckiest assassin in the world', and the deadly partnership of Tangerine and Lemon are also travelling to Morioka. A suitcase full of money leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will get off alive at the last station?

A bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

In A Coat of Many Colours, award-winning author Fred Khumalo presents a patchwork of various vibrant stories befitting the collection’s title.

A boy plays detective, investigating the case of a goat and a coat; a woman takes revenge; an inhlabi bites off more than he can chew; teenage enmity rears its head in a prestigious school for girls; a man is cursed with an ever-growing sexual appetite; and more thoughtful stories with an entertaining zing!

From the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Judging You, a hilarious and powerful book that talks about how to tackle fear--that everlasting hater--and live boldly and audaciously in spite of all the reasons we have to cower.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones is known for her trademark wit, warm voice, and exceptional integrity. But even she's been challenged by the enemy of progress known as fear. She was once afraid to call herself a writer because she was afraid of the title. She nearly skipped out on doing a TED talk that changed her life because of imposter syndrome. Also, she's deathly afraid of bugs. And, as she shares in Professional Troublemaker, she's not alone.

We're all afraid of asking for what we want because we're afraid of hearing "no." We're afraid of being different, of being too much or not enough. We're afraid of leaving behind the known for the unknown. But in order to do the things that will truly, meaningfully change our lives, we have to become professional troublemakers: people who are committed to not letting fear talk them out of the things they need to do or say. With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her inspiring and professional troublemaking grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing--because truth-telling is a muscle.

The point is not to be fearless. It is to know we are afraid and to charge forward regardless, to recognize the things we must do are more significant than the things we are afraid to do. This book shows you how she's done it, and how you can, too.

Although conceived and birthed well before the ANC’s December 2017 elective conference and the changes of the political and governance guards that ensued, The List imagines a ‘New Dawn’ for South Africa in the closing years of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Rumours have abounded since the early days of South African democracy of a list or lists given to Nelson Mandela and the TRC by old apartheid securocrats of their agents infiltrated into the upper echelons of the ANC during the struggle years. These rumours gained new currency with the death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in April 2018 and the revelations of the machinations of apartheid’s Stratcom securocrats.

The List tells the story of a group of veterans of MK, of ANC intelligence and of the post-apartheid intelligence service, who are formed into a highly secret task team by the newly elected president to investigate the possibility of such remnants of apartheid security threatening to obstruct the radical changes the new president and his team are planning.

The List follows these veterans and their nemeses through the struggle years, exile, the MK camps and into the years of democracy and hope, disillusion and hope again. It observes while the struggle veterans painstakingly attempt to pick through the detritus of the old regime in the new, but just as the moment of optimism begins to blossom, the task team uncovers a ghastly betrayal. Is it too late to save the president and the country?

The novel is narrated from the future by one of the veterans of the task team from his second exile in a bedsit in London.

After rescuing a young boy from ruthless child traffickers, a federal agent learns the boy’s sister is still captive and decides to embark on a dangerous mission to save her.

With time running out, he quits his job and journeys deep into the Colombian jungle, putting his life on the line to free her and other vulnerable children from a fate worse than death.

Based on a true story.

In a moment of madness, Costa Ayiotis, a former United Nations diplomat, quits the Joburg rat race and opens a Greek taverna in Hout Bay.

The local barflies and village idiots predict his demise in a notoriously fickle seasonal town. He is determined to prove them wrong.

In this refreshingly hilarious rollercoaster of a ride, Costa's fiery Greek temperament is tested by a constant stream of customers from all corners of the planet.

A book for anyone who ever yearned to escape from it all.

African leadership is in crisis. The legacy of colonialism has prevailed, while novel challenges such as the pandemic and its aftermath, substantial developmental setbacks, the scourge of corruption and troughs in growth have challenged the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative that once dominated. In a deeply fragmented and uncertain world, one might ask, what is the source of inspiration for leadership?

As leaders are faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of rebuilding Africa’s economies, structures and systems, there is an argument to be made that leadership approaches should be uniquely and distinctly African.

Letlhokwa George Mpedi draws inspiration from African culture and African approaches to challenge the prevailing systems. By exploring selected proverbs and sayings, Letlhokwa identifies the tenets of successful and effective leadership. Traversing the ages, sourcing from indigenous practices, drawing from different regions and exploring diverse cultures on the continent, he finds common threads to rethink the practice of leadership.

From the Baobab to the Mosquito emphasises the value of collaboration and collective decision-making, reflecting the communal values that are at the heart of many African cultures. It offers a powerful reminder that leadership is not just about individual achievement, but about building strong relationships, fostering a sense of community, and making a positive difference in the lives of others.

Through this collection of African concepts in a contemporary context, Letlhokwa George Mpedi sounds the call for authentic African leaders.