Die moord-en-roofspeurder Adriaan Kruger verhuis saam met sy nuwe vrou na Overberg, ’n dorpie in die Suid-Kaap. Daar ontdek hy gou onheil is nie beperk tot die grootstad nie. Die egpaar is nog besig om hul voete te vind toe hy skielik gekonfronteer word met ’n
raaiselagtige verdwyning, ’n dorpenaar wat sterf weens vergifting, en ’n ou, onopgeloste saak wat lyk asof dit met die twee onlangse sake verband hou.

Drie misdade, wat oënskynlik geen raakpunte het nie – maar los jy één op, so vermoed Adriaan, word die ander los drade ook vasgeknoop . . .

'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.

From the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author comes the latest instalment in the epic multimillion-selling series, The Seven Sisters. This is the book that fans around the world have been waiting for.

The six D’Aplièse sisters have each been on their own incredible journey to discover their heritage, but they still have one question left unanswered: who and where is the seventh sister? They only have one clue – an image of a star-shaped emerald ring. The search to find the missing sister will take them across the globe – from New Zealand to Canada, England, France and Ireland – uniting them all in their mission to complete their family at last.

In doing so, they will slowly unearth a story of love, strength and sacrifice that began almost one hundred years ago, as other brave young women risk everything to change the world around them.

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.

It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…

In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István’s life spirals out of control.

Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.

From the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author comes the latest instalment in the epic multimillion-selling series, The Seven Sisters. This is the book that fans around the world have been waiting for.

The six D’Aplièse sisters have each been on their own incredible journey to discover their heritage, but they still have one question left unanswered: who and where is the seventh sister? They only have one clue – an image of a star-shaped emerald ring. The search to find the missing sister will take them across the globe – from New Zealand to Canada, England, France and Ireland – uniting them all in their mission to complete their family at last.

In doing so, they will slowly unearth a story of love, strength and sacrifice that began almost one hundred years ago, as other brave young women risk everything to change the world around them.

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.

In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon she and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.

In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops.

From Booker Prize finalist David Szalay, a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.

What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,” brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation.

Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.

May 1998: Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day’s travelling left before they would land back home on Vietnamese soil. While they prepare to board, the unimaginable happens.

Seventeen years later, two best friends are discussing their summer plans before college over a piece of mooncake. Both have trips ahead in search of their roots: Sabrina is preparing to travel to China to meet her mother’s family. Kit leaves for Tokyo, convinced that her biological mother is Japanese. Their parents watch on from the quiet suburbs of Chestnut Hill, nervous of what their daughters might find.

Meanwhile, Mimi returns to Philadelphia in search of her lost child, tracing memories from that fateful day waiting at the gates. Each of these women are looking to find their place in the world. Eventually Mimi, Kit and Sabrina come face to face, and have to confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.

So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .

Soms lê ek in my bed, my lyf opgekrul om herinneringe aan hom, totdat dit voel asof die woonstel se dak oplig en die mure wegval en ek omhels word deur die nag se fluweelsagte duisternis. Dan dryf ek uit my lyf, tot in die buitenste ruim waar my ouers glo al vir dekades lank saam met ruimterommel en stukkies meteoriet, al om en om ’n hemelliggaam sweef.

Op my boekrak staan ’n geraamde foto van hulle, geneem net voor hul laaste ruimtesending. Hul gesigte is stroef, asof hulle geweet het dit is hul laaste missie.

Of dalk het hulle net in die son gekyk.

Mila Kozlowa is ’n Moskouse psigoterapeut wat tydens beradingsessies sit en fantaseer oor geroosterde salm en seks.

Sy dink ook aan haar kinderjare – sprokiesagtige besoeke aan ’n afgeleë hut in ’n berkewoud saam met haar ouma Babusja. Nou is Babusja oud en verswak en Mila is verantwoordelik vir haar. Wat steek haar ouma vir haar weg? Waar is Mila se ouers? Het hulle regtig tydens ’n ruimtereis verdwyn?

Intussen ontmoet Mila ’n Suid-Afrikaner wat sy oorlogtrauma met haar deel en kort voor lank begin die skeidslyn tussen werklikheid en fantasie vervaag. Waar eindig die droom en begin die realiteit? En vir hoe lank kan ’n mens jou eie leuens glo?

The love story of the century
Long Island by Colm Tóibín, the author of Brooklyn, is his masterpiece: an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever.

The Sunday Times bestseller & Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island. In that moment, everything changes. This stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created.

For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind.

Did she make the wrong choice all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

* * 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?

From the worldwide bestselling author of The Four Winds, The Nightingale and Firefly Lane (a Number One series on Netflix),The Women is a story of devastating loss and epic love.

It would be the journey of a lifetime . . .

'Women can be heroes, too'. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances "Frankie" McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California's idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.

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.

Showcasing African Gothic at its finest, this hypnotic novel tangles together classic texts of madness and female rebellion alongside elements of the jingoistic novels of Victorian adventurer H. Rider Haggard. The result is an extraordinary reinvention of colonial and patriarchal perspectives.

The unnamed narrator spins a web back through a century of colonial possession – political, spiritual and mental – to imagine the stories of conquest and captivity, control and disruption, from the perspective of the women and men ‘half-broken’ by the stigmas attached to race and mental illness. Equally ‘half-broken’ are those dehumanised by their insane greed for dominion and treasure.

With trademark compassion and complexity, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu balances the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire, making for a spellbinding and literally haunting account of love and magic.

Drawing on the true history of ‘Farini’s Friendly Zulus’, a group of men who were taken to Britain and then to America as performing curiosities, the novel opens in 1885 in wintry New York City.

The protagonist, Mpiyezintombi, simply called Em-Pee by the English-speakers, loses more than his name in this far-off foreign country; he is seen as little more than a freak-show act – though he is not kept in a cage like the beautiful Dinka Princess, with her gold-painted papier-mâché crown and fur cape. For EmPee, it is love at first sight, but the caged woman is not free to love anyone back: she is the property of Monsieur Duval, proprietor of Duval Ethnological Expositions.

And so begins one of Zakes Mda’s most striking stories, one that depicts terrible historical injustices and indignities, while at the same time celebrating the vigour and ingenuity of the creative spirit, and the transformative power of love.

In an already-great pantheon of Mda love stories and classic gems, this may be his most powerful work yet.

Kolisile, ’n jong Xhosa uit die Transkei, kyk na die sukkelende mielies op sy pa se lappie grond en besef dat die bestaansboerdery van sy bawu en dié se bawu voor hom nie langer volhoubaar is nie. Hy besluit om stad toe te gaan waar hy geld kan verdien wat hy weer in hulle boerderytjie sal kan inploeg. Met die belofte dat hy sal terugkom én sy verlore broer Mfazwe, wat jare gelede in die stad weggeraak het, sal saambring, vertrek Kolisile vol moed en geesdrif – net om deur die harde werklikheid van die stad ontgogel, getemper en uiteindelik geknak te word.

Op die Johannesburgse myne beleef Kolisile die armoede en uitsigloosheid van plakkersdorpe, ervaar hy die rassisme en uitbuiting van die apartheidsbestel aan eie lyf, word hy vir die eerste keer met werklike haat vir die ander gekonfronteer en sien hy die aantrekkingskrag van misdaad, leuns en drankmisbruik as ontsnaproete uit die byna ondraaglike werklikheid vanuit sy broer Mfazwe se perspektief. Wanneer hy uiteindelik weer sy weg na die Transkei toe vind, is dit – soos wat sy pa gevrees en voorspel het – as ’n liggaamlik én geestelik gewonde mens.

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?

Jacki de Wet is verslaaf aan die internet en sosiale media. Van Facebook, Instagram, X en TikTok weet sy genoeg om gevaarlik te wees. Sy en Pulani vorm ’n formidabele span en hou Die Boekhoek aan die gang. Miskien moes iemand vir Gary, Jacki se baas en verloofde, gewaarsku het toe hy ’n affair met Sally Smith wou begin. “Ebony and Ivory” laat nie met hulle mors nie.

Om van Gary se skelmpie ontslae te raak, is maklik genoeg, maar wat doen sy met die verraad en die woede? Nou sit Jacki sonder iemand om haar ’n bietjie vas te hou, sonder werk en sonder ’n huis. In Tamatiestraat.

Toe die musikant Giovanni Ignacio Mancini sy verskyning maak, verwar hy haar verder. Hy is soos die mooie Vivaldi-musiek wat hy op sy Stradivarius-viool speel – soms guitig of baldadig, soms strelend, smeulend, altyd sensueel. En dan is daar Sebastian, die wonderkind, wat eintlik maar net ’n seuntjie is met ’n groot hartseer.

Jacki sing falsetto, sy weet nie waar sy inpas nie. Sy wil ’n sushi-en-sjampanje-lewe hê, maar die wasabi brand en gee haar sooibrand … en eintlik is sy net ’n vis-en-tjips-meisie.