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From edge-of-the-seat thrillers to riveting non-fiction, and a cookbook to get your tastebuds tingling, these are the books causing a stir this year. |
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Norman and Jax are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a five-year plan to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe by the time they're fifteen. But when Jax dies before they turn twelve, Norman decides paying tribute to his best friend just can't wait... so he rewrites their plan. Look after mum, find Dad, get to the Edinburgh Fringe. An inspiring feel-good novel about a small boy with a big heart – and even bigger dreams.
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Life is short – no one knows that better than seventeen-year-old Lenni Petterssen. On the Terminal Ward, the nurses are offering their condolences already, but Lenni still has plenty of living to do. Then she meets 83-year-old Margot Macrae, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic skills, and Lenni's life begins to soar in ways she'd never imagined. Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny, and brimming with tenderness.
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Infamous Cape Town artist Sophie Tugiers has been missing for several years. Her mysterious disappearance caused a brief ripple before dissolving into a distant media memory. Sophie’s controversial art alienated many people: those who didn’t consider her a sell-out thought her last exhibition was sadistic – after all, one of her experimental participants committed suicide. The Artist Vanishes explores ambition and success, guilt and responsibility, the ethics around animal research, and art’s lasting impact on those it touches.
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This joyful homage to one of the world’s most beloved and versatile dishes – the curry – is Inspired by the author’s memories of the slow-cooked Cape Malay curries of her childhood, as well as the fast-paced landscape of the Middle East. Curried embodies a culinary curiosity and global consciousness for the times. Mindful of both environmental responsibility and affordability, Cariema celebrates the nourishing comfort of pulses and legumes in a multitude of wholesome and delicious vegetarian curries for everyday cooking.
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It started with a question about the blues: what makes the music of the downtrodden black man so alluring to white middle-class ears? And that’s where it gets interesting. Because blues is more than a musical genre: it’s a cultural phenomenon that spans several centuries on both sides of the Atlantic, from slavery to Black Lives Matter, from Jan van Riebeeck to Fees Must Fall, from Robert Johnson to Abdullah Ibrahim. A fascinating, insightful journey through time and space.
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In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past? In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what is the price of progress?
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In times of instability and suffering, acclaimed public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson reminds us that there are sources of strength on which we can all draw: insights borrowed from psychology, philosophy, and humanity's greatest myths and stories. Drawing on the hard-won truths of ancient wisdom, as well as deeply personal lessons from his own life and clinical practice, Peterson offers twelve new principles to guide readers towards a more courageous, truthful and meaningful life.
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In this gripping – and sometimes terrifying – account, former South African Police Service (SAPS) head profiler Dr Gérard Labuschagne, successor to the legendary Micki Pistorius, recalls some of the 110 murder series and countless other bizarre crimes he analysed during his career. An expert on serial murder and rape cases, Labuschagne saw it all in his fourteen and a half years in the SAPS. A fascinating – and often hair-raising – glimpse into what it was like to be a profiler in the world’s busiest profiling unit.
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Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. One day, she sees a slip containing the word 'bondmaid' flutter to the floor unclaimed. Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
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Priceless items are suddenly recovered after being missing for over 20 years and a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead – with the suitcase and painting both pointing them towards one man. Windsor Horne Lockwood III – or Win as his few friends call him.
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When a distraught mother pleads with reporter Cindy Thomas to investigate the disappearance of her daughter, Linda, and baby granddaughter, Lorrie, Cindy immediately loops in SFPD. But Linda's schoolteacher husband, Lucas Burke, tells a conflicting story that paints Linda as a wayward wife, not a missing person. If what Lucas tells law enforcement has even a grain of truth, there isn't a woman in the state of California who's safe from the reach of such an unspeakable threat.
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Going back in history, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi shows how Africans’ communal land ownership was used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effect of the Land Acts, Bantustans and forced removals. And he considers the ANC’s policies on land throughout the twentieth century, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government. Thoughtful and provocative, Land Matters sheds light on one of the most complex questions in South Africa today.
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When Mosilo Mothepu was appointed CEO of Trillian Financial Advisory, a subsidiary of Gupta-linked Trillian Capital Partners, in March 2016, the prospect of being at the helm of a black-owned financial consultancy was electrifying for a black woman whose twin passions were transformation and empowering women. Three months later, suffering from depression and insomnia, she resigned with no other job lined up. Now, in Uncaptured, she recounts this troubling yet seminal chapter in her life with honesty, humility and wry humour.
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If you reckon corruption in South Africa began with Zuma, or even with apartheid, it’s time to catch a wake-up call. Rogues’ Gallery tells the story of some of the biggest skelms to grace our (un)fair shores, showing that dodgy dealings have been a national pastime for as long as South African history has been written down. Irreverent, entertaining and impeccably researched, Rogues’ Gallery shows that corruption has always been around – and that the tricks politicians play haven’t changed a jot.
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Matthew Keating, a one-time Navy SEAL and a former US President, has always defended his family as fiercely as he has his country. Now these defences are under attack. And it's personal. Keating's teenage daughter, Melanie, has been abducted, turning every parent's deepest fear into a matter of national security. As the world watches, Keating embarks on a one-man special-ops mission that tests his strengths: as a leader, a warrior, and a father.
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The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria.
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Through a series of superb photo-essays, the majestic Karoo is revealed as a land where conservation and neglect are seldom far apart, where one town boasts splendidly restored buildings, while along a dusty road lie forgotten villages waiting for... something. Could it be a renewal, or a slow death? There’s nothing novel about the movement of people from country to city, and the Karoo mimics other parts of the world where rural areas become derelict as they are depopulated.
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Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
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Malibu: August, 1983. It's the day of Nina Riva's annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over-especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.
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There are secrets in the wild country they call midlife. You can do one night, Jo reminds herself as she follows five women into the Australian bush. Where are they going to sleep? And pee? Jo probably should have let her husband Frank know. Just in case. Because you never know what can happen in the wild. Unbecoming is a funny, heart-breaking and provocative homage to the midlife unravelling.
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The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.
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