Life was good in early 1976. White South Africans’ favourite song was ABBA’s 'Dancing Queen'. Then came the Soweto student uprising of 16 June. It was the end of normal.

As a young reporter, Max du Preez witnessed the first stones thrown and the first shots fired on the morning of 16 June. Raised in a conservative Afrikaner Christian Nationalist family in Kroonstad, it was also the end of his normal. He rebelled against his upbringing and, for the past half century, he’s had a front-row seat witnessing South Africa’s darkest and brightest moments.

In The End of Normal he explores how otherwise decent people – his own people – came to implement and support apartheid. He examines the long-term impact of 16 June and takes a hard look at attitudes today.

Through exclusive interviews with zama zamas, syndicate insiders, intelligence operatives, and law enforcement officials, Zama Zama sheds light on the hidden mechanics of this shadow economy.

The book delves into the violent and treacherous underworld where gang wars, brutal enforcement tactics, and corruption are rampant. It reveals how illicit gold is smuggled and laundered through a labyrinth of private refineries and fraudulent mining permits, leveraging loopholes in South Africa's regulatory framework to facilitate an intricate VAT scam that reintroduces 'dirty gold' into the legitimate global market.

Beyond the borders of South Africa, the book explores how the illicit gold trade fuels international money laundering operations, linking underground mining to organized crime syndicates, terrorism financing, and global corruption networks.

On 16 June 1976, thousands of Black South African school children took to the streets of Soweto in protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction under apartheid education. Met with brutal police force, many never returned home. This pivotal day, now remembered as the start of the Soweto Uprising, also reverberated through the walls of 6001, Lebo Diseko’s family home in Orlando East.

In The House at 6001, Diseko traces the intertwined lives of her parents and her aunts and uncles who gathered, organised and resisted within their four-room Soweto house. From banning orders and exile to late-night parties filled with music and defiance, their story captures both the intimacy and the enormity of South Africa’s struggle.

Drawing on unsealed government documents, interviews and her own personal journey to revisit her family history and home, Diseko offers a moving memoir of resistance, secrets and the lasting cost of freedom.

Tara Roos cuts through the political noise with this analysis of South African politics that argues that we have entered the age of uncertainty as populism is on the rise.

She delves into the structural weaknesses, strategic miscalculations and politicalparty identity crises that have ushered South Africa into a new and unstable coalition era. Parties are categorised into three groups – Winners, Losers and Survivors – as Roos lays out what parties are getting right, where they are failing and why some have found growth while others have collapsed.

In a democracy still grappling with the promises of 1994, Where to from Here? is an account of how politicians have failed the people and how the electorate, in turn, must now demand better.

Forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal works in a world few people are ever exposed to . . . the mortuary. He spends his days among the dead, uncovering how they died and whether a crime was committed.

To date, he has performed over 13 000 autopsies.

In Trace, Ryan takes readers behind the scenes of some of the strange death scenes he has attended, such as a shallow grave beside a river where a body was found with an amputated finger. He also shares rare and unusual cases, including a man who may have died from autoerotic asphyxia and a suspected poisoning that turned out to be a shooting. His work has brought him face to face with many kinds of unnatural deaths, including those caused by lightning strikes, wild animals, muti killings, and even a solitary wasp sting.

Through it all, Ryan sees himself as a voice for the voiceless, striving to bring justice to the dead and truth to their loved ones.

It wasn’t long ago when someone in Silicon Valley coined the term ‘The Three Comma Club’ to describe that small group of individuals whose net worth is one billion dollars or more. According to Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List for 2025, there are around 3 000 dollar billionaires in the world.

The wealth, power and influence wielded by these moneymakers and money spenders is gargantuan. For instance, the top ten richest individuals have a combined net worth exceeding $2 trillion. Billionaires make up approximately 0.000034% of the world’s population. That’s about one in every 3 million people.

This book takes a deep dive into the world of billionaires, blending humour, insight, and a touch of ‘eat the rich’ irreverence to examine the rise and occasional downfall of the mega-mega-rich.

Two lifelong peace activists and guides to Israel/Palestine, both of whom have lost family in the conflict, take readers on a revealing life-changing journey across this holy, bloodstained land and discover the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples.

“We do not see ourselves as Palestinians and Israelis, or as Jews and Arabs, but as human beings who believe in fostering a culture of dialogue, a culture of forgiveness, and a culture of peace. To those who see only division lines, we say: If you must divide us, let it be as those who believe in peace and equality and those who don’t ... yet.”

Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli Maoz Inon forged a bond of brotherhood when the world expected them to be enemies. Both have lost family to the conflict. Both have known the bitterness of righteous anger. Yet, they chose a different path.

In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been constantly asked: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.

This book is a rebuttal to a broken world and a bold challenge to the belief that more violence can ever bring security. Told with unflinching honesty, their story is proof that peace is not a naive dream, but a courageous choice—for reconciliation to heal the wounds of revenge, for partnerships to change a destiny of war, and for empathy to save us from drowning in sorrow.

Pairing unapologetic candor and inspirational prose, Sarah and Inon are sending an urgent message that the people have the power to make change. Peace is inevitable. For Palestinians, for Israelis, and for the world that awaits their example, it is not just possible—it is the future.

In My Boss, Mrs Winnie Mandela, Zodwa Zwane – Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s personal assistant, confidante, and spiritual anchor – breaks her long held silence to share the story only she can tell.

For more than a decade, Zodwa walked beside one of South Africa’s most formidable and controversial icons – through scandals, heartbreaks, the traumas of banishment, and Winnie’s eventual spiritual redemption – holding her boss’s hand right up until Winnie Mandela’s death in April 2018. From the private rooms of Soweto to the corridors of power, Zodwa was there as witness and gatekeeper, becoming part of Winnie’s trusted inner circle. This intimate memoir offers a rare, behind-the-scenes portrait of Mrs Mandela as a strong, complex, wounded, and fiercely loving woman, navigating power, politics and pain. Zodwa’s humour and no-nonsense voice cuts through myth to reveal the loyalty, conflict, and deep affection that defined their bond.

As Winnie’s right hand, Zodwa also stood at the crossroads of the ANC’s inner workings and the Mandela family’s private tensions. She managed not only her boss’s diary, but deeply held secrets – her loyalty tested daily.

Part political history, part personal reflection, My Boss, Mrs Winnie Mandela is both a revelation and a tribute to sisterhood, faith, resilience, and the quiet strength of a woman who stood in the shadow of greatness and found her own meaning and light there.

Part-travelogue, part-manifesto and part-workbook, SEEKING SEXUAL FREEDOM is a powerful and bold call to sexual liberation.

While working on her first 'groundbreaking' (Ms. Magazine) book, The Sex Lives of African Women, acclaimed African feminist and activist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah had access to the wildest dreams and spiciest realities of women from around the world. But so often, she noticed that something was holding these women back from achieving full liberation and unfettered joy. So, she set out to apply sankofa-which means learning from the past to inform the future-to sex and pleasure, reclaiming African traditions in a quest to achieve sexual freedom.

Organised in three parts, Sekyiamah first takes readers across the African continent, from Senegal to Tanzania and beyond, where she meets and trains with gurus, 'witches', and aunties whose job it is to guide girls through puberty rites and later through 'marital training.' She discusses practices like beading and pulling, while highlighting the spiritual and gender-fluid nature of African traditional religions. The second part of the book asks us how we've lost our way, looking at the incursion of colonialism and western patriarchal norms into sexuality which has led to our warped ideals of beauty and shame, internalized racism, as well as state and interpersonal violence that stand in the way of sexual liberation. Finally, Sekyiamah shows that we can overcome these hurdles by returning to a more joyful and free sexual practice, using practical advice and prompts to chart our own journey.

Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising, little is known about its most iconic youth leader, the elusive Tsietsi Mashinini, who instigated the schools protest which changed South Africa forever, only to flee the country, shun the ANC, hang out with Miriam Makeba, marry Miss Liberia – and be mysteriously murdered.

Now, in time for the anniversary, Sowetan author and social historian Sam Mathe tells Tsietsi’s full story for the first time.

Lidia Rauch was born at the crossroads of South Africa’s past and present – the granddaughter of one of apartheid’s longest-serving ministers, raised in a world constructed for her comfort, yet called to reckon with its cost. Her story moves between privilege and pain: from a childhood marked by fracture, to a career within the machinery of government, to the long, uneasy road of reckoning with what it means to be white, Afrikaans, and free in a country still carrying the weight of its past.

In this fearless and tender memoir, Lidia turns toward the truth – dismantling the myths she was raised on, confronting the discomfort she once avoided, and choosing responsibility over denial. Along the way she encounters the people and moments that changed her – from the townships of Cape Town to the rooms where power is brokered – and discovers that freedom is not a gift bestowed by the system, but a commitment we make to one another.

Apartheid’s Granddaughter is not a story of guilt or absolution, but of courage and repair. It’s an invitation to white South Africans to face their inheritance with honesty and courage.

Both intimate and universal, this book reminds us that transformation is possible – and that healing begins when we choose to see ourselves and one another.

The British Crown is in crisis, with constitutional threats at home and abroad. Since their infamous 'Megxit' split from the Royal Family, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have dominated global headlines. Ferociously controversial, not least for demanding privacy while seeking the spotlight, the Sussexes have remained a subject of gripping fascination for both supporters and cynics alike. Both camps are united on one platform: what is the endgame?

Fighting to preserve their royal titles and privileges, in their attempts to create a Sussex brand the couple have fuelled bitter hostility. Accusations of disloyalty have been trumped by recriminations about dishonesty. Amid High Court battles with the government and the media, and the infamous publication of Spare, the Sussexes have reeled after successive Netflix flops and their doomed collaboration with Spotify - only to be ridiculed for Meghan's self-invention as a domestic goddess.

At a landmark moment in royal history, the Sussexes' challenge to the British monarchy echoes worldwide. The fallout always threatens to be catastrophic. Just five years on from 'Megxit', can King Charles overcome the scandals that blight the family and limit the Sussexes' threat to the monarchy? Can the broken bonds between the Houses of Sussex and Windsor ever be repaired or will the King choose to strip them of their titles and banish them forever? The Sussexes are in a race against time to solve their predicament.

With inimitable research and exclusive interviews from insiders, Britain's leading investigative biographer Tom Bower exposes the latest contortions in the explosive Royal saga of power and betrayal.

Some thirty-five years after its original publication, Year of Fire, Year of Ash still stands as one of the leading accounts of the 1976-77 Soweto Revolt, one of the most significant acts of resistance in the history of the anti-apartheid movement.

Authored by a South African activist and scholar who was intimately involved in the movement, the book provides an unparalleled insight into the origins and events of the uprising, from its antecedents in the early 1970s to its role in galvanizing the global struggle against apartheid. Crucially, the book overturned much of the conventional logic around the uprising, by showing that it was not simply a student protest, but a revolt by the wider black working class.

As South Africa experiences a new wave of popular revolt, and as new forms of black consciousness come to the fore in movements around the world, Hirson's book provides a timely reminder of the continued significance of the Soweto revolt to struggles against oppression today.

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s life of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.

Twilight in Paradise tells the tale of a ‘disappearing people’, ex-Rhodesians, Zimbos, who remained in Zimbabwe after 1980, and the ethnocide inflicted on an almost lost culture that was once dominant in ‘the land between the rivers.’

Their world has been long diminished, deliberately excised, and eroded by the trials and tribulations inflicted by four decades-plus of ethnocide and history. Most left home, viewed as paradise, for vistas elsewhere, across six continents. One day this residual mini society may erode further, encounter final eclipse, and perhaps disappear into the mists of time, or at least modern memory.

The ‘Left Behind’ Rhodesians in Zimbabwe are fewer each year. Their history in the past four decades-plus has been tumultuous.

Twilight in Paradise tells their tale, the adaptations made, the culture’s survival amid trauma and tribulation.

The Next World War takes readers behind the scenes of the most dangerous era of international tensions since the end of the Cold War, as countries and military forces prepare for potential large-scale combat on a scale unseen since 1945.

From the corridors of power in Washington, Whitehall, Moscow and Beijing to the new frontlines of conflict in Ukraine, Taiwan, cyberspace and even the far side of the moon, Peter Apps unflinchingly explores the fault lines where global peace is already starting to unravel.

Featuring the voices of the commanders, diplomats and technologists already shaping history, as well as the nervous conscripts and ordinary people directly caught up in events, The Next World War examines the real-world effects of this new era of global confrontation. For some - including millions of citizens told to stockpile food and water and prepare for potential mass disruption - it still may not feel entirely real. But for Russia, China and their growing 'axis of upheaval', today's conflicts represent a growing opportunity to reshape the world as they would like it - leading to potential disaster for the West if it cannot heed the warnings in time.

From the return of Cold War-style atomic threats to new forms of sabotage and 'hybrid warfare', the battle for global dominance is already firmly underway. The Next World War is the book you need to understand the growing precariousness of our current situation - and the unending battle to stop it escalating past the point of no return.

"I’ve always been told that if I was good, I’d attract good things. So then, why am I unhappy?"

From a young age, women are taught to put everyone else first. The result? A society full of ‘Good Girls’, pushing themselves to meet expectations while ignoring their own needs. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this whip-smart and empowering book, psychotherapist Marta Martínez Novoa explains that people pleasing is not a personality failing, but a common response to trauma – an instinct to become more appealing to a threat, and a way to feel safe. Taking you on a journey into your past, this book will help you understand why you feel the way you do in the present, and gives you practical tools to build a future where you feel bolder, safer and more confident in everything you do.

If you’re done being a people pleaser and ready to start living for you, this is your toolkit to wake up and finally take charge.

How do states actually exercise power in an age of chaos?

From top defense analyst Dr. Jack Watling, Statecraft reveals the hidden mechanics of global influence. While we watch the headlines, Watling takes us inside the bunkers and wood-paneled offices where the real decisions are made.

In this urgent analysis, you will discover:

• The Iran Paradox: How a sanctioned nation controls global energy prices despite US military might.
• The Russia-Ukraine Lesson: Why a superpower struggled against a smaller neighbor in the opening months of the invasion.
• The Aircraft Carrier Dilemma: Why the UK spends billions on hardware it can barely support at sea.
• The Future of Taiwan: What the shifting ‘rules of power’ mean for the next great flashpoint.
• Middle Powers: How do smaller countries build leverage and stay off the menu?

Whether it’s economic alliances, sea power, or the latest military technology, Watling provides a powerful new lens to understand a world that feels increasingly out of control.

Humans – who are we?

Physically, Homo sapiens is unremarkable in the animal world – a hairless ape. But somehow, in combination, our characteristics make us remarkable. With our dexterity and brain power, we discovered ways of finding food and beating the elements not only in our home on the African savanna, but in every habitat from jungle to Arctic waste. Humans tells the story of our evolution with beautiful illustrations of our seemingly ordinary anatomy alongside colourful, mind-expanding graphics of what we have achieved with it.

This book is:

• shaped and guided by broadcaster and expert in anatomy and archaeology, Professor Alice Roberts
• written by an international team of experts in many fields of human evolution, including archaeology, palaeontology, anthropology, and cognitive science
• built from chapters about the evolution of different parts of the body, giving an instant, familiar way in to the topic

This thought-provoking book presents the latest advances in understanding human evolution, challenging old myths and baked-in misconceptions – all through the lens of the human body. Each chapter tackles a different body part, showing how it has evolved and the role it has played. The story of hands, for instance, begins with the first animals with limbs, which clambered onto land 375 million years ago, but goes on to show how humans use the unique precision and power in their grasping digits – and their ability to teach one another skills – to create ever-more sophisticated technology.

Visually vibrant and rich, this book features not only beautiful illustrations, but also photos of prehistoric art, tools, jewellery, and recreations of all of these made by experimental archaeologists.

Humans asks intriguing universal questions about our origins and nature. When did we invent clothes? Did we always form pair bonds? How did prehistoric people cross the ocean? Are we the only animals to become self-aware?

Find out who we are, where we come from, and perhaps – where we’re going.

NUREMBERG, 1945. The eyes of a world desperate for truth, hope and justice turn to a courtroom where the leaders of the defeated Nazi regime sit in the dock. In this revelatory history, Natalie Livingstone sheds new light on the trial of the century, through the stories of extraordinary women whose importance has long been ignored.

Anti-fascist journalist Erika Mann - daughter of Germany's most famous writer - came to Nuremberg seeking a reckoning with a Germany she had fled more than a decade before, while Hungarian countess Ingeborg Kálnoky found herself presiding over a guest house in which perpetrators and survivors of the Nazi's worst crimes lived side by side. Russian interpreter Tatiana Stupnikova would be forced to confront terrifying revelations about her country's recent history, and German writer Ursula von Kardorff, reporting on the trials for domestic audiences, found herself torn between the evidence of the courtroom and a selective memory of her work for the Third Reich. Although she was barred from speaking in court on account of her gender, American lawyer Harriet Zetterberg assembled some of the most important prosecution cases, while British painter Laura Knight produced the most famous image of the courtroom. Rebecca West, the celebrated writer, arrived feeling lost and depleted and hoped the proceedings at Nuremberg might somehow shock her back to life. And Auschwitz survivor and French Resistance fighter Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier's defiant, devastating testimony laid the foundations for the world's awareness of the Holocaust.

Seen through the eyes of these astonishing women, the story of Nuremberg is a monumental human drama full of hope and romance, terror and conflict. It is the story of a search for truth among misinformation, love among ruins and light in overwhelming darkness. Eighty years after the trials, The Nuremberg Women offers a gripping new account of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

South Africa has faced a series of natural disasters, including a pandemic, floods and fires. Globally, we seem to be living in an age of natural disasters, often occurring concurrently. This book surveys some of these recent disasters and also looks back at epoch-making natural disasters in human history to identify lessons for South Africa.

What does history, including recent history, teach us about disaster management, and how can we best implement those lessons? How does South Africa best address the age of polycrisis?

Vir agt jaar het die sogenaamde Stasiemoordenaar die Kaapse Vlakte in sy greep gehou – van 1986 tot 1994 verdwyn 22 jong seuns spoorloos en die gemeenskap leef in vrees. Sommige van die seuns se liggame word later gevind, begrawe in vlak grafte in bosse en
sandduine, met hulle hande agter hul rûe gebind. Meeste van die misdade is egter nooit opgelos nie en talle ouers soek steeds na die waarheid.

Norman Simons, ’n laerskoolonderwyser, is in hegtenis geneem, maar is in 1995 slegs skuldig bevind aan een van die moorde. Ná 28 jaar van gevangenisstraf is Simons op parool vrygelaat in 2023, met talle onbeantwoorde vrae. Waarom het ooggetuies destyds ’n ander
man beskryf? Aan wie behoort die DNA wat op tonele gevind is?

Die gesoute joernalis en skrywer, Julian Jansen, volg die spoor van die Stasiemoordenaar en ondersoek hierdie donker raaisel wat steeds by die families en gemeenskap spook.

The book behind the headlines. The story the powerful hoped would disappear.

Written by the world's bestselling storyteller James Patterson, this is the original and definitive account of how Epstein built his fortune, abused his power, and evaded justice for years - hiding in plain sight among the global elite.

Drawing on original police interviews, court documents and victims' testimonies, the book traces the earliest investigations, Epstein's guilty plea and the shockingly lenient sentence that allowed his crimes to continue. Filthy Rich is also a chilling examination of how power protects itself - and how institutions failed those most vulnerable.

An instant New York Times bestseller and the basis of the hit Netflix documentary series, this updated edition includes a new introduction covering Epstein's final arrest and death in custody.

A powerful, eye-opening account of how social welfare, distributed in the form of cash transfers, shapes inequality in contemporary South Africa.

In a narrative style, following individual stories, Erin Torkelson challenges the widely held belief that simply giving money to the poor can solve poverty. Cash transfers are often presented as a straightforward, humane solution embraced across the political spectrum, from global development agencies to progressive academics, to alleviate poverty. But this deeply researched and compelling book reveals a far more complicated and troubling reality.

Drawing on seven years of immersive fieldwork in South Africa — from grant payment queues and grocery stores to Parliament and the Constitutional Court — Torkelson shows how a flagship antipoverty programme became entangled with predatory finance. Instead of offering relief, cash transfers are often leveraged bylenders as collateral, pulling recipients, especially Black women, into cycles of debt. The very survival strategies people are pushed into are later framed as personal failings rather than the result of long-standing structural inequality. In the process, individuals are racialised as inadequate managers of money and marked as risky financial subjects.

The book also traces how civil society campaigns forced the state in 2018 to reclaim control of the payment system from private companies. Yet even this victory revealed new challenges: austerity, weak infrastructure and ongoing financial pressures continued to expose recipients to hardship in new forms.

Blending sharp analysis with vivid storytelling, Predatory Welfare offers a bold rethinking of welfare, development and racial inequality. It argues that social grants cannot be understood as neutral or purely benevolent and that economic justice requires far more than cash alone. A timely and urgent intervention, Predatory Welfare asks readers to reconsider what real economic justice looks like — and what it will take to achieve it.

Growing up with a parent’s addiction leaves ripple effects that can be felt well into adulthood. The trauma of familial dysfunction can weave into the fabric of your life, affecting relationships, parenting and work, and even leading to you questioning your own worth, mistrusting intimacy and feeling disconnected from yourself.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. In this nurturing book, clinical psychologist Dr Tian Dayton draws on expertise from decades working with adult children of alcoholics, as well as her own personal experience, to empower you to embrace recovery and break the chain of intergenerational dysfunction. She will guide you as you examine how addiction shaped your family, understand the imprint it left on your childhood and discover tools to heal and thrive. You will learn to process attachment wounds, reconnect with your body, regulate emotions and move towards post-traumatic growth.

Grounded in research, enriched by client narratives and filled with practical exercises based on Dr Dayton's own Relational Trauma Repair (RTR) model, this book will allow you to recover from buried hurt and give your inner child a voice, illuminating the path towards a better future for yourself and your loved ones.