What’s your cat up to when you’re not around? Do dragons exist? Are clouds alive? Why did three men risk their lives for a single penguin egg?

These are just a few of the questions and stories puzzled over by award-winning travel writer and naturalist Don Pinnock. Assembled from years of wandering around Africa, this is a funny, entertaining and thought-provoking book.

Cape Town is two cities.

One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre handguns, dispensing heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and fear. This is a story of the second city...

In Gang Town, investigative journalist and criminologist Don Pinnock draws on more than thirty years of research to provide a nuanced and definitive portrait of youngsters caught up in violent crime.

One of South Africa’s most accomplished travel writers takes you on a series of journeys through Africa – following the footsteps of David Livingstone, wandering the back streets of old Stone Town in Zanzibar, crossing the central Sahara, puzzling over the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia.

He hikes over lost mountains, motorcycles along the 29th parallel, canoes clear across the Okavango Delta and explores the secrets of Knysna Forest.

His descriptions show a sharp eye for detail, a fascinating knowledge of the continent’s history and, above all, a deep love of the warm people and strange creatures of Africa.

Lions are the stuff of legends. Revered and feared in equal measure, both majestic and terrifying, they once reigned supreme over an extensive domain. But this once-dominant beast’s original range has contracted by some 85%, and the world population is thought to have dropped to just over 20,000 individuals. The IUCN Red Data List now classifies lions as Vulnerable, and the West African subpopulation as Critically Endangered.

Not only are lion numbers crashing, but the remaining populations cling to their existence on ever smaller, more fragmented pockets of land. Feared and despised by farmers trying to eke out a living on marginal land, lions are increasingly being exterminated or repurposed for commercial gain. Trophy hunters pay extortionate sums to bag specimens in their prime, and lion bones are being sold for the roaring Eastern trade in ‘tiger wine’.

This landmark book aims to halt the downward spiral. It takes you on a journey across the continent and into the lives of rangers, scientists and communities, and the majestic creatures they work to conserve. Along with the bad news about today’s lions, it offers a message of hope, showing how innovative conservationists are rethinking our approach to human-lion coexistence.

This book, with its searing, inspiring images and vivid accounts from the experts and foot-soldiers of conservation, brings the plight of lions to the attention of the world and is an urgent plea for the actions that need to be taken before it’s too late.

In 1982 Ruth First was killed in Mozambique when she opened a parcel bomb sent to her by a South African hit squad. This was the tragic end to a life spent fighting racism.

Ruth was a powerful public speaker and one of the best journalists South Africa has ever had: always probing, questioning and exposing the brutality of apartheid for the world to see.

In this book we get to know the surprisingly shy Ruth - as a student and a teacher, a writer and an underground fighter, a socialist and an activist, a feminist and a mother. Ruth helped change the course of South African history and inspired many to join the struggle against apartheid.

Are clouds alive? Where is Africa’s most dangerous river? Are there really elephants in the Knysna Forest? Why do female hyenas sometimes grow a penis? Why did Zulu warriors never ride into battle mounted on zebras?

These are some of the quirky questions which award-winning journalist and naturalist Don Pinnock seeks to answer as he wanders around Africa.

Love Letters To Africa is a blend of geography, history, natural science and travel writing, of personal meditation and general philosophy. For exploring Africa at ground level, you couldn’t find a better guide.

Using gang rituals to tackle gang problems may not be as crazy as it sounds - it could be the only way to head off disaster.

When gangs control the drug trade, corner the pimp market, corrupt the police and even run the city's tough housing manager out of town it's fair to say that Cape Town has a major problem. But in the thousands of words being written about gangs in the near-hysterical daily press an important dynamic is being completely overlooked: as social institutions gangs work extremely well.

They serve a purpose way beyond the strong-arm needs of gang and syndicate bosses. If they didn't the kids on the corners wouldn't join them, let alone fight - sometimes to the death - for the territory they claim.

It soon became clear that Africa was far more than political skulduggery, starving refugees and mind-numbingly overcrowded cities. It was also full of the most astounding creatures on earth that did the damnest things. Did you know that albatrosses use howling jet streams to criss-cross the planet? Or that dams cause earthquakes? Or maybe that most seahorses dance at dawn?" the author writes in the preface of this extraordinary title. This title, which is drawn from the author's monthly columns for "Getaway" on natural history, is full of humour, detail and speculation. It moves between disciplines as "nature's many quirks" are revealed and "startlingly large questions are dredged from little things ordinary folk pass over with hardly a glance.

This is a collection of writings by the radical South African journalist Ruth First, compiled by Don Pinnock. First was an activist, scholar and one of the foremost journalists of her time.

As a member of the SA Communist Party, she had an insider’s view into the extraordinary social, political and labour struggles that took place from the end of the Second World War until her exile in 1963. She was assassinated by the apartheid regime in Maputo in 1983.

Her books are academic landmarks in political analysis and her account of detention and interrogation by the Security Police is a powerful indictment of the prisons system.