The world is getting ready for the biggest football event in history—and this book is your all-access pass to everything you need to know.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup isn’t just another tournament. It's a revolution in football. For the first time ever, 48 teams will battle across three host countries—the United States, Canada, and Mexico. With over 104 matches spread across 16 iconic cities, this is the most ambitious and culturally rich World Cup the world has ever seen. Now you can go beyond the headlines and experience the drama, planning, history, and dreams behind the tournament. From the fierce qualification battles across continents to the political, economic, and weather-related challenges, this book captures the full scope of the global football movement.

Whether you're a die-hard fan, a casual viewer, a journalist, or a football student, this book is packed with facts, insights, and predictions that will keep you informed and entertained through every stage of the tournament buildup.

What You’ll Discover Inside:

• The First Expanded World Cup: Learn how the tournament’s jump from 32 to 48 teams changes everything—from the group stage to the final whistle.
• North America’s Historic Hosting: Explore the logistics, legacy, and power dynamics behind the first tri-nation World Cup.
• Qualification Progress Across Continents: Get updated on which teams have qualified, which are still fighting, and how each continent is navigating the path to glory.
• The Race Among Global Giants: Track how countries like Argentina, Brazil, France, and England are preparing to dominate the world stage again.
• Impact of Climate and Geography: Discover how extreme heat, altitude, and long travel distances may affect players, fans, and match outcomes.
• The Rising Stars and Aging Legends: From breakout teens to final appearances for legends—this World Cup will be full of emotional exits and new beginnings.
• Symbols, Music, and Match Ball: Meet Adidas Trionda, the official ball, and explore the theme song and remixes that give this World Cup its unique cultural sound.
• The Road to the Final: Follow the new match structure—12 groups, knockout chaos, and the brand-new Round of 32.
• The Promise and Peril of Technology: From VAR to AI analytics, this World Cup will be as digital as it is dramatic.
• Protests Against Trump and the 2026 World Cup: A Clash of Politics and Sport: Read about how protest was made against Trump on issues like immigration, travel bans, and civil rights.

This book is not only a guide—it’s a tribute to the beautiful game, its ability to unite the world, and its power to inspire every generation. Written in a clear, engaging style, The 2026 World Cup Guide delivers deep analysis without being complicated, making it the perfect companion leading up to the biggest sporting event of the decade.

If you're searching for a World Cup book that combines facts, foresight, culture, and creativity—this is it.

Performance management is, by its very nature, a contentious and emotionally charged topic. Because the lines between management and appraisal are often blurred, performance management tends to get cast in a harsh and negative light, creating anxiety and distrust that defeats the object. Performance management: A contemporary South African perspective examines the practice of performance management in the modern South African workplace and how to balance the positive with its more challenging negative facets.

Performance management: A contemporary South African perspective explores various aspects of performance management systems and processes. It highlights best practice and innovative ideas for implementation that will enable managers, employees and teams to achieve success and improve results. Examples and real-life scenarios provide practical guidelines and applications.

Contents include the following:

• Understanding performance management
• Business strategy and performance
• Creating a high-performance culture
• Performance management process
• Development and implementation of performance management systems
• An overview of performance measurement
• Performance measurement in practice
• Team performance management
• Performance management skills
• Dealing with underperformance
• Performance development
• Rewarding good performance
• Monitoring and evaluation
• The future of performance management in the new world of work

Performance management: A contemporary South African perspective is aimed at senior undergraduate as well as postgraduate students at further and higher education institutions within South Africa. It will also serve as a valuable resource to human resource practitioners and managers.

Fearless (Taylor's Version) is the first of six albums Taylor Swift plans to re-record in order to regain copyright control of her music, which was repeatedly sold without her knowledge or consent.

Fearless (Taylor's Version) is the first album of her reclamation project: a newly recorded version of the entire “platinum edition” of her second album, which was released in 2008.

This is the most urgent book ever to appear from the pen of cultural icon Koos Kombuis.

Sometimes, when he is in an irreverent mood, Koos writes under the fun-filled pseudonym ‘Joe Kitchen’.

This time around, though, he is deadly serious.

“The Death of History” is a climate change diary. When Koos started writing it more than two years ago, he did not intend for it to be published as a book, but the longer he continued writing, the more he became aware of the urgency of sharing his message with the world.

In short, “The Death of History” is a warning to all of humanity that must be heeded NOW.

With prose like jazz – thrilling, mysterious, playful – Oyama Mabandla excavates the values that created a steady flow of pioneering South Africans under impossible conditions.

Can these values, maligned in 1994, be recaptured and set South Africa on its best trajectory?

Huis Madeliefie word deur die staat se vlak 5-inperking in die gesig gestaar. Hans besef teen dié virus groei geen kruid nie, maar die drakoniese reëls van die tehuis se interne bevelsraad kry nie vatplek by Hans en kie nie.

Voorts is Hans oor die hoof gesien as leier van dié raad. Altoon Ahlers, befaamde akteur van weleer, neem die leisels.

Hans se plan om die inwoners met die verbode vrug se sap aan sy kant te kry, boemerang sleg. Hy sal Ahlers op ’n ander manier moet onttroon . . .

In November 1905 beskryf ’n Windhoekse koerant Siegfried Bock as ’n nuwe soort held. Maar die moordenaar wat hy voor die hof gebring het se advokaat stel Siegfried in ’n heel ander lig. Boonop is oberleutnant Berghammer en die Namakryger Jager Orlam albei daarop uit om Siegfried te laat boet. En dan is daar die burokraat Stauffacher met sy ondraaglike planne. Siegfried sien nie uitkomkans nie. Maar daar móét een wees, veral noudat liefde vir hom wink . . .

Shadow Kingdom presents Dylan performing revelatory 21st century versions of songs from his storied back catalogue – including fan favourites like "Forever Young" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and deep catalogue gems like "Queen Jane Approximately" and "The Wicked Messenger."

Originally reinterpreted for an exclusive streaming film event, which aired in July 2021, Shadow Kingdom is now available on CD for the first time.

The Hawks, South Africa’s elite crime-fighting force, have put scores of our worst criminals behind bars. In this book, investigative journalist Graham Coetzer offers us a rare glimpse into the secretive world of this top police unit.

While exposing the deviousness of South Africa’s dangerous criminals, Hunting with the Hawks is also an ode to the hard work and dedication of the best of our police service.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.

We live in a world that's obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn't knock, there are ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess-it's about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you've reached, but how far you've climbed to get there.

It takes one to break one in a final season like no other.

Bobby Axelrod and Chuck Rhoades have been both adversaries and allies, but when Axe returns with a score to settle, the stakes escalate beyond Wall Street and their game of one-upmanship threatens to topple empires.

It’ll be a triumph for some, and a tumble for others.

Cape Town, South Africa. Retired police chief Piet Pieterse has been murdered, necklaced in fact. A tyre placed round his neck, doused with petrol, set alight. An execution from the apartheid era and one generally confined to collaborators. Who would target Pieterse this way, and why now?

Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is trying to forget the past. But Pieterse was his old boss and when Schalk is put on the case, he finds the past has a way of infecting the present.

Meanwhile, it's an election year. People are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe but there's opposition and in this volatile country, unrest is never far from the surface.

Schalk must tread a difficult path between the new regime and the old, between the personal and the professional, between justice and revenge.

This investigation will change his life, and could alter his country's future.

This beautifully illustrated book will share the infinite wisdom of flowers,providing inspiration from nature to gain perspective,resilience and live a beautiful life.

Taking sixty of the world’s most amazing flowers and flowering plants, including the corpse flower from Indonesia, the bat-face cuphea and the chocolate cosmos flower from Mexico, the Pohutukawa tree from New Zealand, the lipstick tree and the giant water lily from South America, the voodoo lily from the Mediterranean, the lesser-known plum blossom and the skeleton flower from Japan, and not forgetting the beautiful jade vine from the Philippines, this book will share their unique symbolism and the characteristics and strengths that allow them to thrive, inspiring us to follow their example and make the most of every moment.

Family is power – more dramatic than any work of fiction, the world of growing families, power struggles and feuding rivals, is back.

A cheetah must prepare her daughters to survive alone. An inexperienced elephant unites her herd facing their greatest challenge – twins. High in the mountains a puma and her cubs face a battle for survival. Family rivalries cause chaos with a clan of hyenas. New alliances must form to care for the young of a troupe of macaques. Will a gang of meerkats survive the drought and rebuild their shattered dynasty?

This series immerses the audience in every gentle moment, poignant event and heart-wrenching betrayal as animals strive to create dynasties fit to rule for generations.

In the near future, climate change has caused the seas to rise and flood Miami. Extreme daytime temperatures have forced most of the population to live at night. Nick Bannister, a private investigator of the mind, navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories.

Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae. A simple matter of lost and found soon becomes a dangerous obsession.

As Bannister fights to find the truth about Mae's disappearance, he uncovers a violent conspiracy, and must ultimately answer the question: how far would you go to hold on to the ones you love?

What do you want when no one is watching?
Who do you fantasise about when the lights are off?
When you think about sex, what do you really want?

When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet so many of us don't talk about it at all.

In this groundbreaking book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous submission). They are all extraordinary: full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation. From dreaming about someone off-limits to conjuring a scene with multiple partners, from sex that is gentle and tender to passionate and playful, from women who have never had sex to women who have had more sex than they can remember, these fantasies provide a window into the most secret part of our minds.

Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally themselves.

Tissue salts are minerals that our bodies need to ensure optimal health. They are found in the Earth’s rocks and soil, and in food that is grown organically in mineralrich soil. Considered to be the basic constituents of our bones, blood, organs and muscles, they are easily absorbed by the human body, with no side-effects. In this book, Margaret Roberts draws on decades of experience to advise readers on using the 12 key tissue salts to slow the ageing process, promote vitality and enhance health. Each tissue salt is presented in its own chapter, with tips on treating specific ailments; and advice on increasing the intake of the salts through the diet. An ailment chart is included for quick reference. An indispensable guide for anyone interested in health, wellness, and using natural remedies to ease the effects of ageing.

LET'S RETURN TO CARAVAL, WHERE NOTHING IS QUITE WHAT IT SEEMS . . .

Scarlett has never left the tiny isle of Trisda, pining from afar for the wonder of Caraval, a once-a-year week-long performance where the audience participates in the show.

Caraval is Magic. Mystery. Adventure. And for Scarlett and her beloved sister Tella it represents freedom and an escape from their ruthless, abusive father.

When the sisters' long-awaited invitations to Caraval finally arrive, it seems their dreams have come true. But no sooner have they arrived than Tella vanishes, kidnapped by the show's mastermind organiser, Legend.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But nonetheless she quickly becomes enmeshed in a dangerous game of love, magic and heartbreak. And real or not, she must find Tella before the game is over, and her sister disappears forever . . .

**All four books in the boxset will have red sprayed edges, as well as hidden covers and ribbon markers. The Return to Caraval Complete Collection boxset is limited edition and will only be available while stocks last**

1920, a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from the Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits.

While Mrs Hattingh eagerly awaits her son’s visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf.

So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes – a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.

The gripping and inspiring story of acclaimed actor Jeremy Renner’s near-fatal accident, and what he learned about inner strength, endurance and hope as he overcame insurmountable odds to recover, one breath at a time.

Two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner was the second most googled person in 2023… and not for his impressive filmography. His searing portrayals on film ranged from an Iraq-based army bomb technician in The Hurt Locker and a Boston bank robber in The Town to a crooked Camden mayor in American Hustle before he became heir to the Jason Bourne franchise (The Bourne Legacy). Amongst other iconic roles, he also captured hearts as fan-favorite comic book marksman Hawkeye in seven Marvel films.

Yet, his otherworldly success on-screen faded to the periphery when a fourteen-thousand-pound snowplow crushed him on New Year’s Day 2023. Somehow able to keep breathing for more than half an hour, he was subsequently rushed to the ICU, after which he would face multiple surgeries and months of painful rehabilitation.
 
In this debut memoir, Jeremy writes in blistering detail about his accident and the aftermath. This retelling is not merely a gruesome account of what happened to him; it’s a call to action and a forged companionship between reader and author as Jeremy recounts his recovery journey and reflects on the impact of his suffering. Ultimately, Jeremy’s memoir is a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to endure, evolve, and find purpose in the face of unimaginable adversity. His writing captures the essence of profound transformation, exploring the delicate interplay between vulnerability and strength, despair and hope, redemption and renewal.

The riveting new book on the momentous year, campaign, and election that shaped American history.

It’s January 2, 1960: the day that Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy declared his candidacy; and with this opening scene, Chris Wallace offers readers a front-row seat to history. From the challenge of primary battles in a nation that had never elected a Catholic president, to the intense machinations of the national conventions—where JFK chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate over the impassioned objections of his brother Bobby—this is a nonfiction political thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting. Like with many popular histories, readers may be familiar with the story, but few will know the behind-the-scenes details, told here with gripping effect.

Featuring some of history’s most remarkable characters, page-turning action, and vivid details, Countdown 1960 follows a group of extraordinary politicians, civil rights leaders, Hollywood stars, labor bosses, and mobsters during a pivotal year in American history. The election of 1960 ushered in the modern era of presidential politics, with televised debates, private planes, and slick advertising. In fact, television played a massive role. More than 70 million Americans watched one or all four debates. The public turned to television to watch campaign rallies. And on the night of the election, the contest between Kennedy and Nixon was so close that Americans were glued to their televisions long after dawn to see who won.

The election of 1960 holds stunning parallels to our current political climate. There were—potentially valid—claims of voter fraud and a stolen election. There was also a presidential candidate faced with the decision of whether to contest the result or honor the peaceful transfer of power.

Dive into uncharted waters with Jason Statham and global action icon Wu Jing as they lead a daring research team on an exploratory dive into the deepest depths of the ocean.

Their voyage spirals into chaos when a malevolent mining operation threatens their mission and forces them into a high-stakes battle for survival.

Pitted against colossal Megs and relentless environmental plunderers, our heroes must outrun, outsmart, and outswim their merciless predators in a pulse-pounding race against time.

Four of the Hunger Games paperbacks in a stunning deluxe box set that features sprayed edges with stenciled artwork, as well as all-new must-have covers. A breathtaking collectible perfect for the long-time fan or new Hunger Games reader, this must-have box set includes all three books in Suzanne Collins's internationally bestselling Hunger Games trilogy together with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV...And the odds are against all who play.

With four of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games novels in one box set, you can step into the world of Panem with the 10th annual Hunger Games, and continue all the way to the electrifying conclusion.

Claire Lidman died fourteen years ago.

So why does she appear in the background of a recent holiday snap taken in Venice?

Her husband brings the anomaly to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas. Initial scepticism gives way to cautious belief, but Rekke is falling apart again and Vargas has her own problems. Her gangster brother is threatening to silence her if she doesn't get off his case.

Meanwhile, Rekke's daughter Julia has a new boyfriend she's determined to keep secret. He sees something in her she can't see herself, but there are hints of a darker side.

Most troubling of all, Rekke is hearing whispers of a name he hasn't heard for years. A rival from his youth whose restless evil links all the threads in this incipient case. The pieces are laid and he's already one move ahead. The name of the game is revenge.