Improving the quality of your writing starts with rethinking your assumptions and developing healthier writing habits. This book will help you do both.

Become a Better Writer: How to Write with Clarity and Simplicity is a practical guide for those who wish to write more clearly and concisely. Drawing on their extensive experience as writers and editors, the authors discuss tools and tips for making your writing accessible and meaningful to your target audience.

The book is readable and engaging, covering different kinds of writing (including reports, essays, emails, novels and speeches) across a wide range of subjects. The examples discussed are derived from real-world material and are particularly relevant to the African context. The book will be especially useful to writers of non-fiction.

After an exceptionally wild Mother’s Day where she danced like there was no tomorrow, picked a fight with a stranger and collided with the floor, Johannesburg scriptwriter and author Pamela Power is forced to take a hard look at her drinking habits. She realises that although she does not need to find an AA group immediately, she might be a serial binge drinker and needs to take back control.

In this honest yet humorous account of her year of not getting sh*tfaced, Pamela examines her long, complicated relationship with alcohol. She is shocked to realise just how much of a crutch alcohol has been for her. There is always a bottle of wine or Prosecco around to her to help her manage the many demands of life as a freelancer and as a parent.

Pamela starts her journey to sobriety at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic as her family faces financial troubles, and life in the suburban Parks of Johannesburg isn’t so blissful anymore. Through her, we experience all the frustration, irritation and surprising benefits of going dry. In dealing with her dependence on alcohol, Pamela also confronts her troubled relationship with her parents.

While many other sober curious books portray sobriety as the only answer, Pamela has found a sweet spot between total sobriety and binge drinking: moderation.

Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.

All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

Four strangers, two cities, one chance online meeting.

Jess is a yummy mummy of two whose life is slowly unravelling and who has recently separated from her husband. Ginger is a happily widowed granny with a salty tongue and a wicked sense of humour. The gorgeous and sensitive Matt is an almost-qualified psychologist, who still lives with his parents. And Queenie, a librarian from Cape Town, has an absent boyfriend and a secret writing habit.

What could these four strangers possibly have in common?

They are all die-hard Marian Keyes fans. And when they hear that Marian is due to visit South Africa to attend a literary festival, they are all desperate to meet her. Together they come up with a mad-cap plan.

Will they succeed – or will life intervene?

She wants a future - is that too much? This Thing Called the Future, the multiple-award-winning young-adult novel from J.L. Powers, is finally coming to South Africa, its country of origin. The book is set in Imbali, the sprawling township outside Pietermaritzburg. Khosi is fourteen years old. She lives with her grandmother and her little sister, Zi. Both her parents tell her of the past, about a time when hundreds of Imbali residents were killed in political violence. Khosi wants a future; she wants to help make South Africa a better place. Is that too much in an environment where some men believe that raping virgins, like Khosi, will cure them of AIDS? Meanwhile, Khosi has fallen in love and really, really just wants to experience that warm, fuzzy feeling that happens when Little Man, the handsome boy in her class, touches her hand. In a world where HIV and AIDS are treatable for those with money and access to good state-sponsored care, Khosi has to negotiate hours in clinic lines, vengeful men, her mother's disdain for traditional healers, her grandmother's faith in their sangoma, and the terrible curse her next-door neighbour has cast on their household. This beautifully crafted young-adult novel never preaches and never falls into the trap of “warning” teenagers against anything. It simply deals with the realities of township life and the hardships a young virgin faces. This Thing Called the Future has won several prizes in the USA. LAPA and Catalyst Press are proud to bring it back to its country of origin.

Hierdie kartonboek is die jongste toevoeging tot die Loer binne-reeks. Die tien lig-en-loerflappies is sterk genoeg vir die gryperigste klein handjies en sal keer op keer pret verskaf. Die lewendige illustrasies sal kinders se aandag behou en dit nog lekkerder maak om die wilde diere te ontdek. Kom kuier saam in die woestyn en in die woud!