In the wake of her beloved grandfather’s death, Lou and her family gather at their coastal family home for a long-awaited family reunion.

The windswept and wild surroundings remind Lou of who she was before being a mother, a wife, and a professional failure. They bring back memories of Michael, her toxic first love and, according to the family, her ‘bad luck penny’. Then a shocking crisis in the country disrupts the funeral arrangements and forces the family together for longer than planned.

As secrets rise to the surface, the threads of Lou’s life unravel and she faces a difficult choice – after all, it’s only a bad luck penny if you pick it up.

“Hillbrow, 1967. The New York of Africa. Someone wrote that the place would soon have more people per square kilometre than Tokyo. Everyone quoted that article to everyone. Some even cut it out and kept it folded in their wallets.”

While other boys daydream about racing cars and football, eleven-year-old stutterer Phen sits reading to his father. In number four Duchess Court, Phen’s dad looks like a Spitfire pilot behind his oxygen mask. But real life is different from the daring adventures in the books Phen reads and he is forced to grow up faster than other boys his age. This is until Heb Thirteen Two shows up: in his pinstriped suit pants and tie-dyed psychedelic top, the stranger could be any old bum, or a boy’s special angel come to live among men.

Poignant, witty and wise, John Hunt's "The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head" is a meditation on being alive and shows us the power of books when we need them the most.

This is not a love story. This is IMPOSSIBLE.

"Sometimes love doesn’t come in the form you think it will."

Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner.

Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast.

When fate brings them together over a misdirected email, the connection is instant. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives...

It should have been the perfect love story. Instead it was IMPOSSIBLE.

From the author of The Longest Ride and The Return comes a novel about the enduring legacy of first love, and the decisions that haunt us forever.

1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she met Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce showed her how much there was to love about the wind-swept beach town—and introduced her to photography, a passion that would define the rest of her life.

By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him.

As they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier—and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.

The hugely anticipated new Penn Cage novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy and Cemetery Road, about a man—and a town—rocked by anarchy and tragedy, but unbowed in the fight to save those they love.

When a brawl at a rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting in Mississippi, Penn Cage finds himself in a country on the brink of eruption. As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes are being torched and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic quickly sweeps through the communities, driving the prosperous Southern towns inexorably toward a race war.

But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White on social media, a Southern war hero funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate.

As his hometown devolves into chaos, Penn Cage tears into Bobby White’s pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss.

From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster.

We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn.
And do you know what it’s capable of?
I do. Grace and fury.

1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

These two unlikely people find kindred spirits in each other and Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful, richly-peopled novel about beauty, love, family and fate.

Durban North, 1997. Following two shocking and insidious incidents of violence, nineteen-year-old Mary Da Costa is flying to Auckland ahead of her parents to make a new start. She is riddled with reservations – New Zealand is where her late brother was supposed to move – and all she really wants to do is keep to herself and work on her art.

On arrival, Mary comes under the wings of the South African ex-pat community, struggling with its own tensions between homesickness and belonging. Finding work at a local dairy, she meets self-appointed Māori leader Nepukaneha Cooper – Buck, as he’s better known. He and his family have some history with these rugby-mad lovers of apartheid, even more now that they’re encroaching on his turf. If only he had the means to fight them off and realise his life-long dream of establishing a marae on the beautiful strip of coast he has always called home.

Meanwhile, adrift between past and present, Mary is forced to dig deep in order to find her own truths and place in the world.

Nick Mulgrew’s long-awaited debut novel – of grand metaphors, silences, absences, and two cities and countries in flux – is a delightfully innovative, surprising, and warm-hearted meditation on family, loss, and home, as well as a deft examination of dislocation, dispossession, and the cultural blind spots of two very different (and in some ways similar) communities.

Burnt out after years as a professional dancer, Ella Burchell moves to a small town on the KwaZulu Natal north coast hoping to rebuild her life. Things look up when she gets a job teaching dance to children at a for-profit private school.

But Ella hasn't reckoned with the cabal of private-school mums who run the Pines Academy as their own personal fiefdom. Circling into cliques at the school gates every morning, the mums are a force to be reckoned with.

Soon Ella is too busy fielding their demands to concentrate on her own troubles. Distraction arrives in the form of an attractive cricket coach, but Ella hardly has time to pay attention.

Fun, fast-paced and hilarious, this novel by an award-winning author skewers the world of private-school privilege.

The heartwarming and hilarious new novel by the author of cherished bestsellers, The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village and The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home

The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria has been serving refreshments and raising money at the hospital for over fifty years, long after anybody can remember who Marjorie Marshall actually was. Staffed by successive generations of dedicated volunteers, the beloved cafeteria is known as much for offering a kind word and sympathetic ear (and often unsolicited life advice) as for its tea and buns.

Stalwart Hilary has worked her way up through the ranks to Manageress; Joy has been late every day since she started as the cafeteria's newest recruit. She doesn't take her role as 'the intern' quite as seriously as Hilary would like but there's no doubt she brings a welcome pop of personality. Seventeen-year-old Chloe, the daughter of two successful surgeons, is volunteering during the school holidays because her mother thinks it will look good on her CV.

Chloe is at first bewildered by the two older women but soon realises they have a lot in common, not least that each bears a secret pain. When they discover the cafeteria is under threat of closure, this unlikely trio must band together to save it.

20 South African Short Stories brought to you by Short.Sharp.Stories.

A fraudster cashes out of a life of crime, a mother has a splendid affair, a brave woman never gives up, a graffiti artist spray-paints the city; a poignant friendship comes to a climax in a retirement home, a storyteller understands his true power, a friend delivers a heart-rending eulogy; a young South African searches for belonging in Hong Kong, while another takes a risk assisting a local artist; a photographer explores eroticism through the lens and the body, a group of reggae fans cross borders to seek freedom with Bob Marley, a drummer is haunted by the jazz of Sophiatown; a book on slavery offers a troubled woman a way out, a student faces an impossible choice, the blood moon shines on a forbidden passion … and so much more, as each short story captures the unique moment and meaning of ONE LIFE.

The anthology’s contributors are largely established South African authors who have a track record in the publishing industry, as well as exciting emerging writers. The writers include Stella Douglas, Carmen Gee, Karen Jennings, Joel Kelly, Werner Labuschagne, David Mann, Lerato Mahlangu, Don Makatile, Juliette Mnqeta, Tshidiso Moletsane, Nontobeko Mtshali, Vuyokazi Ngemntu, Jana van Niekerk, Thango Ntwasa, Andrew Prior, Sihle Qwabe, Srila Roy, Khensani Sayiya, Megan Tennant and Jarred Thompson.

She was a girl, caught in an ocean riptide in the Caribbean Sea. He was an East Coast teenager on vacation with his family. Without a moment's hesitation, he swam out and saved her. With hardly a word of thanks, her family hustled her off while she looked back.

Ten years later, they meet again when Jack Ryder is a daring secret agent with the FBI, and Lizzie James is on a pristine island trapped in the unthinkable. Once again, the stakes are deadly high, with both their lives on the line. When the mission is over and Lizzie is free of the drug and sex trafficking ring that would have held her forever, she agrees to help Shane and the FBI free more victims. She will work for them until she is 21, and they will erase any record of what she did while working for the ring.

Shane and Lizzie are sent on separate missions as she nears 21. Neither of them thought they’d see each other again, but now they are reunited in a new mission that is complicated and dangerous. Could a breathtaking love catch them off-guard?

Sometimes miracles happen not once, but twice … on a distant shore.

Set over one sizzling August, BOOK LOVERS is the new chemistry-filled 'rivals to lovers' romcom from New York Times #1 bestseller Emily Henry.

Nora is a cut-throat literary agent at the top of her game. Her whole life is books. Charlie is an editor with a gift for creating bestsellers. And he's Nora's work nemesis.

Nora has been through enough break-ups to know she's the woman men date before they find their happy-ever-after. That's why Nora's sister has persuaded her to swap her desk in the city for a month's holiday in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. It's a small town straight out of a romance novel, but instead of meeting sexy lumberjacks, handsome doctors or cute bartenders, Nora keeps bumping into... Charlie.

She's no heroine. He's no hero. So can they take a page out of an entirely different book?

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.

Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home.

Kieran's parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge in the murder investigation that follows.

A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away...

Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, working at a nearby library. She feels safe if she keeps to her routines and doesn't let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher are all it takes for her ordinary, careful armour to become overwhelmed and the trauma of what happened when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse to return.

The Schoolhouse was different - one of the 1970s experimental schools that were a reaction to the formal methods of the past. The usual rules did not apply, and life there was a dark interplay of freedom and violence, adventure and fear. Only her teenage diary recorded what happened, but the truth is coming for her and everything she has tried to protect is put at risk.

Set between the past and the present, The Schoolhouse is a masterful and gripping novel about childhood, secrets and trust.

When we all know we're going to die, how do we make sure we truly live?

Clover Brooks has forgotten how to live. It might be because she spends her time caring for people in their final days, working as a death doula in New York City. Or it might be because she has a regret of her own - one she can't bring herself to let go of.

But then she meets Claudia: a feisty old woman who has one last wish . . .

As Clover begins a new adventure, will she remember how to live her own big, beautiful life?

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of What Will People Say?, Rehana Rossouw takes us into a world seemingly filled with promise yet bedevilled by shadows from the past. In this astonishing tour de force Rossouw illuminates the tensions inherent in these new times.

Ali Adams is a political reporter in Parliament. As Nelson Mandela begins his second year as president, she discovers that his party is veering off the path to freedom and drafting a new economic policy that makes no provision for the poor. She follows the scent of corruption wafting into the new democracy’s politics and uncovers a major scandal. She compiles stories that should be heard when the Truth Commission gets underway, reliving the recent brutal past. Her friend Lizo works in the Presidency, controls access to Madiba’s ear. Another friend, Munier, is beating at the gates of Parliament, demanding attention for the plague stalking the land.

Aaliyah Adams lives with her devout Muslim family in Bo-Kaap. Her mother is buried in religion after losing her husband. Her best friend is getting married, piling up the pressure to get settled and pregnant. There is little tolerance for alternative lifestyles in the close-knit community. The Rugby World Cup starts and tourists pour up the slopes above the city, discovering a hidden gem their dollars can afford.

Ali/Aaliya is trapped with her family and friends in a tangle of razor-wire politics and culture, can she break free?

Told with Rehana’s trademark verve and exquisite attention to language you will weep with Aaliya, triumph with Ali, and fall in love with the assemblage that makes up this ravishing new novel.

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God. Look for Stella Maris, the second volume in The Passenger series, on sale December 2022.

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.

Best friends and sisters, the four Padvano girls are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood.

Julia, the eldest, is a planner. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother. Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other. But when Julia falls in love with William Walters, their lives change. As William falls into darkness, it is Sylvie, not Julie, who steps in to help.

Spanning decades and generations, Hello Beautiful captures what it means to be a family -- the joy and tragedy, the deep trust and devastating betrayals. Split apart by stubbornness and heartbreak, the Padavano family scatters across the country. Will the love and loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together?

From the Booker-shortlisted, million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family. Charmers, liars, drinkers and dreamers, they will change history forever.

Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise - but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.

A charming, heart-warming story about three nuns who play the lottery to save their failing convent. It's a story of friendship, community, faith and love.

The 1990s are proving tough for the convent. The order of the Sisters of Saint Philomena is down to its three last nuns. The place that Sisters Margaret, Bridget and Cecilia call home is in dire need of repairs and, with no savings and no new recruits, they are facing the prospect of having to sell up and leave behind the friends and neighbours in the parish community that they love.

That is, until ninety-year-old Cecilia decides to play the newly launched National Lottery and a series of small miracles begins to unfold.

Small Miracles takes the reader on a joyful and uplifting journey as these three unforgettable nuns learn more about life, love and friendship than they could ever have imagined.

It is summer on Magnolia Road when Juliet moves into her late mother's house with her husband Liam and their young son, Charlie.

Preoccupied by guilt, grief and the juggle of working motherhood, she can't imagine finding time to get to know the neighbouring families, let alone fitting in with them. But for Liam, a writer, the morning coffees and after-school gatherings soon reveal the secret struggles, fears and rivalries playing out behind closed doors - all of which are going straight into his new novel.

Juliet tries to bury her unease and leave Liam to forge these new friendships. But when the rupture of a marriage sends ripples through the group, painful home truths are brought to light. And then, one sun-drenched afternoon at a party, a single moment changes everything.

The fiction debut from Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink, Everyone Is Still Alive is funny and moving, intimate and wise; a novel that explores the deeper realities of marriage and parenthood and the way life thwarts our expectations at every turn.

The thrilling Richard & Judy Book Club Pick for 2018, The Party is a gripping story of betrayal, privilege and hypocrisy, set in the unassailable heart of the British establishment.

Martin Gilmour and Ben Fitzmaurice have been best friends for 25 years, since their days together at Burtonbury School. They are an unlikely pair: the scholarship boy with the wrong accent and clothes, and the dazzlingly popular, wealthy young aristocrat. But Martin knows no one else can understand the bond they share – and no one else could have kept Ben’s secret for over two decades.

At Ben’s 40th birthday party, the cream of the British establishment gathers in a haze of champagne, drugs and glamour. Amid the politicians, the celebrities, the old money and the newly rich, Martin once again feels that pang of not quite belonging. His wife Lucy has her reservations, too. There is something unnerving in the air. But Ben wouldn’t do anything to damage their friendship. Would he?

In life, nothing is certain. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something can happen to change the course of everything . . .

Liv Brooks is still in shock. Newly-divorced and facing an uncertain future, she impulsively swaps her London Life for the sweeping hills of the Yorkshire Dales, determined to make a fresh start. But fresh starts are harder than they look and feeling lost and lonely she decides to adopt Harry, an old dog from the local shelter, to keep her company.

But Liv soon discovers she isn’t the only one in need of a new beginning. On their daily walks around the village, they meet Valentine, an old man who suffers from loneliness who sits by the window and Stanley, a little boy who is scared of everyone, hides behind the garden gate and Maya, a teenager who is angry at everyone and everything. But slowly things start to change…

Utterly relatable, hilarious and heart-breakingly honest, this is a novel about friendship, finding happiness and living the life unexpected. And how when everything falls apart, all you need is one good thing to turn your life around and make it worth living again.

The Cape Peninsula carries secrets known only to the wind, the fynbos, and the creatures that live there. One day, six teenage boys are found raped, murdered, and dumped down the side of its mountains.

It is two years since the discovery of the first body and Detective Junaid Japtha is no closer to cracking the case. With pressure mounting, and without any tangible evidence, he can only rely on his experience and instinct to track down the killer.

Fifteen-year-old Tyrone May from Macassar spends his days in limbo. He has no one to talk to. No one listens. He is curious and confused about his feelings. Like most boys, he has yet to develop a sense of his own mortality. It allows for a daring that will dissipate as he grows older, but, for now, Tyrone will accept the friend request a handsome stranger sends him.

Elton Baatjies is the newly appointed teacher at a local high school. These are his people, and he is soon embraced by the close-knit community. But he is tied to the six dead boys in ways no one could have predicted, and the secrets among them threaten to tear the sleepy mountain town apart.