His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story. Panenka has spent 25 years living with the disastrous mistakes of his past, which have made him an exile in his home town and cost him his dearest relationships. Now aged 50, Panenka begins to rebuild an improvised family life with his estranged daughter and her seven year old son. But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other's experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.

WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES / PFD YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR

A SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex ménage-à-quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

The protagonist of Ti Amo is a woman who is in a deep and real, but relatively new relationship with a man from Milan. She has moved there, they have married, and they are close in every way. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. It's serious, but they try to go about their lives as best they can. But when the doctor tells the woman that her husband has less than a year to live - without telling the husband - death comes between them. She knows it's coming, but he doesn't - and he doesn't seem to want to know. Ti Amo is an incredibly beautiful and harrowing novel, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness. It delves into the complex emotions of bereavement, and in less than 100 pages manages to encapsulate an extraordinary scope and depth, asking how and for whom we can live, when the one we love best is about to die.

An enthralling and surprising testament to new beginnings from billion-copy bestselling author Danielle Steel.

Oona Kelly Webster is an editor at a New York publishing house. Married with two children, her twenty-five-year relationship falls apart when she books a silver wedding anniversary getaway at a luxurious château in France and her husband Charles suddenly refuses to attend. What he tells her next will shatter her carefully built world into smithereens.

As her two children, Meghan and Will, rally around her in New York, one disaster heralds another: Oona can’t back out of her French holiday booking and must travel to a new country with a heavy heart.

It is February 2020 when she arrives and when France locks down due to the pandemic, Oona must stay put in rural, wooded Milly-la-Forêt just outside Paris.

And when a chance encounter with a famous Hollywood actor, who is renting a neighbouring château, blossoms into something deeper than friendship, Oona learns that life can change in an instant . . .

One summer before World War I, a young couple escapes on a romantic weekend getaway to the small German town of Rheinsberg, north of Berlin, in the midst of a rural landscape filled with country houses and castles, cobble-stone streets, lush forests, and dreamy lakes. The story of Wolfie and Claire, told with a fresh, new style of ironic humor, became Kurt Tucholsky s first literary success and the blueprint for love for an entire generation. Kurt Tucholsky was a was a brilliant satirist, poet, storyteller, lyricist, pacifist, and Democrat; a fighter, lady s man, one of the most famous journalists in Weimar Germany, and an early warner against the Nazis. Erich Kaestner called him a "small, fat Berliner," who "wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter." When Tucholsky began to write, he had five voices in the end, he had none. His books were burned and banned by the Nazis, who drove him out of his country. But he is not forgotten. Rheinsberg is at once a delightful and a deeply disquieting story. The lovers, Claire and Wolfie a silly but harmless pair escape the confines of Berlin for a romantic romp in the countryside. As their brief interlude nears its end, already consigned to memory, there comes with it an end to innocence, to frivolity. It was 1912; Kurt Tucholsky s prescience was uncanny: the holiday is over and soon we will go to war. --Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Hester Among the Ruins and The Scenic Route Once known as Weimar Germany s greatest political satirist and one of that fabled era s most celebrated literary figures, Kurt Tucholsky is today virtually unknown in America. Now, readers have the chance to discover one of his early pieces of fiction that exhibits the intense wit, charm, and rhetorical verve for which he earned his reputation. Noah Isenberg, author of Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism In Rheinsberg, Tucholsky delivers the newness and intensity of young love, sweet, sometimes strident, with repartee juxtaposed against the sylvan landscape of rural Germany. Poignant, biting, tender: a reminder of what love promises and can be. Victoria Zackheim, playwright, novelist, and anthologist A wonderful and charming love story, finally rediscovered and brought to America Claudia Dreifus, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York Teachers and students of history and literature will welcome this collection of texts by Kurt Tucholsky, an early 20th century master of literary and political criticism, whose incisive and elegant voice will now be more widely available in English. Atina Grossmann, Professor of History at Cooper Union and author of Jews, Germans and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany Rheinsberg a short story of two unconventional lovers in the last carefree days of Germany before 1914. The first major work by the anti-Nazi journalist and poet Kurt Tucholsky finally appears in a new translation for English speakers. Ian King, Professor of German, Chair of the Kurt Tucholsky Society

Prokureur Ian Brand stuur ’n ondeurdagte twiet die kuberruim in en sy lewe word oornag pure hel. Thuli Khumalo, studenteaktivis op 'n kampus wat stink na petrol en traangas, moet kies tussen vaderverraad of haar beginsels versaak. Snaar Windvogel, vroeër van Matjiesfontein, is nou in transisie onder die lem van ’n enigmatiese plastiese chirurg. En al hoe gereelder slaan ’n kruisboogmoordenaar in die Moederstad toe . . .

Hierdie en vele ander fassinerende karakters bevolk ’n landskap waarin die enigste sekerheid ónsekerheid is. Want Etienne van Heerden se tergend aktuele nuwe roman sê veel oor die tyd waarin ons lewe, waar privaatheid en identiteit abstrakte begrippe geword het, fopnuus ononderskeibaar van die werklikheid, en “die waarheid” klaarblyklik ’n onhaalbare ideaal.

To the dismay of her ambitious mother, Bolanle marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore considered a great prize in Nigeria, but even graduates must produce children and her husband's persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. She only wants to escape to a quiet life, but the others disapprove of the newest, youngest, cleverest addition to the family. Treated with respect by her husband, she is viewed with suspicion by her seniors - who fear she may unlock their well-guarded secret.

Through the voices of Baba Segi and his four wives, Lola Shoneyin weaves a vibrant story of love, secrets and a family like every other - happy and unhappy, truthful and not, sometimes kind, sometimes competitive, always bound by blood, and the past.

Asta is invited to a memorial. It's been ten years since her university friend August died. The invitation disrupts everything - the novel she is working on and friendship with Mai and her two-year-old son - reanimating longings, doubts, and the ghosts of parties past. Soon a new story begins to take shape. Not of the obscure Polish sculptor Asta wanted to write about, but of what really happened the night of August's death, and in the stolen, exuberant days leading up to it. The story she has never dared reveal to Mai. Moving between Asta's past and present, Memorial, 29 June is a novel about who we really are, and who we thought we would become. It's a novel about the intensity with which we experience the world in our twenties, and how our ambitions, anxieties, and memories from that time never relinquish their grasp on how we encounter our future. In prose that shimmers like poetry, masterfully translated by Misha Hoekstra, Memorial, 29 June is an urgent yet tender reminder that sometimes pain is where the love is, and that grief, however thorny, should never go unspoken.

'Secrets and stones have settled in Hawden where everything stays as it is; the past is hidden, or rewritten. Lauren lives with her dad and Mr Lion after her mother left her when she was three months old. Her boyfriend Peter is struggling with his identity. When Meg and her son Richard arrive, both dangerously attractive, and Ali too, angry and on the run from drug dealers, old stories resurface, creating new tensions. After seventeen years Lauren's mother comes back into her life and nothing is quite what it seems any more, but love, however tainted, can sometimes heal.' TAINTED LOVE is a modern gothic tale of how old stories can unravel people's lives.

Vern, a hunted woman alone in the woods, gives birth to twins and raises them away from the influence of the outside world. But something is wrong - not with them, but with her own body. It's changing, it's itching, it's stronger, it's... not normal.

To understand her body's metamorphosis, Vern must investigate not just the secluded religious compound she fled but the violent history of dehumanization, medical experimentation, and genocide that produced it. In the course of reclaiming her own darkness, Vern learns that monsters aren't just individuals, but entire histories, systems, and nations.

Sorrowland is a memorable work of Gothic fiction that wrestles with the tangled history of racism in America and the marginalisation of society's undesirables. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

With Twitter and Elon Musk grabbing the headlines lately, and with all the rage about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Chatgpt chatbot, the time for a virtual reality novel has finally arrived.

About ten years ago, then still writing as Koos Kombuis, the author started writing a short story on Twitter, tweet by tweet. It soon turned into a novel... a short novel, but a novel nonetheless! It was a challenge because tweets were limited to 140 digits in those days. It took Joe a few years to complete his story, and it attracted a lot of attention at the time.

This ‘micro-novel’ describes an imaginary future society and the role of social media where people are literally living inside virtual reality to the extent that they are unable to distinguish virtual reality from real life. The story unfolds in the now somewhat archaic terminology of 2013, at a time before Mark Zuckerberg announced his plans to create Meta!

‘Twitter Dawn’ is an evocative, humorous and thought-provoking story which fits right into the present-day debate about all things IT and AI!

Talk of the Town by award-winning writer Fred Khumalo comprises short stories he wrote over many years. In this vibrant collection Khumalo explores identity and belonging through tales about African foreign nationals in South Africa, xenophobia, South Africans abroad, exiled comrades during apartheid, and past and current township life. At times hilarious and at times gut-wrenching, this is a collection that will move you.

Shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize 2018 A Hungarian interpreter obsessed with waterfalls, at the edge of the abyss in his own mind, wanders the chaotic streets of Shanghai. A traveller, reeling from the sights and sounds of Varanasi, encounters a giant of a man on the banks of the Ganges ranting on the nature of a single drop of water. A child labourer in a Portuguese marble quarry wanders off from work one day into a surreal realm utterly alien from his daily toils. In The World Goes On, a narrator first speaks directly, tells twenty-one unforgettable stories, then bids farewell ('for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me'). As Laszlo Krasznahorkai himself explains: 'Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or a narrative...' The World Goes On is another masterpiece by the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. 'The excitement of his writing,' Adam Thirlwell proclaimed in the New York Review of Books, 'is that he has come up with his own original forms-there is nothing else like it in contemporary literature.'

A seat at the anchor desk of the most-watched morning show. Recognized by millions across the country, thanks in part to her flawless blond highlights and Botox-smoothed skin. An adoring husband and a Princeton-bound daughter. Peyton is that woman. She has it all. Until . . . Skye, her sister, is a stay-at-home mom living in a glitzy suburb of New York. She has degrees from all the right schools and can helicopter-parent with the best of them. But Skye is different from the rest. She's looking for something real and dreams of a life beyond the PTA and pickup. Until . . . Max, Peyton's bright and quirky seventeen-year-old daughter, is poised to kiss her fancy private school goodbye and head off to pursue her dreams in film. She's waited her entire life for this opportunity. Until . . . One little lie. That's all it takes. For the illusions to crack. For resentments to surface. Suddenly the grass doesn't look so green. And they're left wondering: will they have what it takes to survive the truth?

In The Last Wolf, a philosophy professor is mistakenly hired to write the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. His miserable experience is narrated in a single, rolling sentence to a patently bored bartender in a dreary Berlin bar.

In Herman, a master trapper is asked to clear a forest's last 'noxious beasts.' Herman begins with great zeal, although in time he switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game... In Herman II, the same events are related from the perspective of strange visitors to the region, a group of hyper-sexualised aristocrats who interrupt their orgies to pitch in with the manhunt of poor Herman...

These intense, perfect novellas, full of Krasznhorkai's signature sense of foreboding and dark irony, are perfect examples of his craft.

When Ebby Freeman travels to France to take a three-month hiatus from her complicated home life, the last person she expects to find is her ex-fiancé Henry, with his new girlfriend in tow.

Nearly twenty years earlier, the Freemans were the only African American family living in a wealthy coastal enclave in Connecticut when armed robbers invaded their home and tragedy changed their lives forever.

Then, just as Ebby thought she had a new chance at happiness, her storybook romance with Henry fell apart.

Now, this unexpected encounter with Henry will force Ebby to reckon with her past and to think on the other loss her family suffered that day – the destruction of a beloved stoneware jar crafted by an enslaved ancestor and passed down through the generations. A piece that might hold not only her family history, but also the key to reclaiming her future.

Bykans dertig jaar was die verteller veldwagter in Namibie. Hy het ’n obsessie gehad met die wilde, ongetemde Afrika waar ’n mens ongebonde kan lewe. Maar intussen het die wildernisse waarin hy geswerf het, begin verander. As safarigids was hy deel van hierdie verandering. Hy het wilde plekke help toeganklik maak vir mense. Saam met daardie mense het stropers gekom. In Plunderwoestyn word vertel oor die stryd teen stropers in Namibie en is gebaseer op Christiaan Bakkes se lewe.

I know my son. I know what he is and what he's not capable of.

Revelling in the triumph of a high school football win, MJ, Vikram and Diego find themselves at an ill-fated party, on a night that ends with the school bully in hospital. When no one comes forward with the truth of what actually happened, all three teenage “all stars” are suspended for the rest of the season, their futures suddenly uncertain.

In the aftermath, the families gather to assess the damage to their children's prospects, their reputations and their own relationships. As other secrets begin to bubble to the surface, each parent attempts to navigate the crisis at hand, confronted with their own inner turmoil and the question none of them want to face: how well can you ever truly know your own child?

Our Beautiful Boys is a page-turning and incisive novel about masculinity, race, education and privilege, and the conflict that arises when all these collide.