The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.
At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.
The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?
Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, BRIDGE OF CLAY is signature Zusak.
Leningrad, Russia, 1968. Alexander Karpenko is no ordinary child, and from an early age, it is clear he is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, he and his mother will have to escape from Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they are confronted with an irreversible choice: should they board a container ship bound for America, or Great Britain? Alexander leaves that choice to the toss of a coin . . .
In a single moment, a double twist decides Alexander’s future. During an epic tale of fate and fortune, spanning two continents and thirty years, we follow his triumphs and defeats as he struggles as an immigrant to conquer his new world. As this unique story unfolds, Alexander comes to realize where his destiny lies, and accepts that he must face the past he left behind in Russia.
With a final twist that will shock even his most ardent fans, this is #1 New York Times bestseller Jeffrey Archer’s most ambitious and creative work since Kane and Abel.
Met meer as 7 000 verhoogoptredes op sy kapstok is Pieter-Dirk Uys volksbesit. In hierdie boek, sy skreeusnaakse, roerende memoires, tree die mens agter die ikoon te voorskyn. Ons leer ken sy moeilike, musikaal-gedrewe pa, sy briljante, geheimsinnige ma, sy suster, die pianis-wonderkind, en Sannie Abader, "Pietertjie" se Kaapse Vlakte-ma. Dan is daar sy Paarlse ouma wat hom neem om by die Verwoerds te gaan kuier, sy ander Oma en haar onverbeterlike strudel, sy vriendskap met Sophia Loren, die geboorte van Evita Bezuidenhout, en die vreugdes en hartseer van ’n merkwaardige lewe.
After ten years together, Sylvie and Dan have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, and beautiful twin girls, and they communicate so seamlessly they finish each other’s sentences. They have a happy marriage and believe they know everything there is to know about each other. Until it’s casually mentioned to them that they could be together for another sixty-eight years . . . and panic sets in.
They decide to bring surprises into their marriage to keep it fresh and fun. But in their pursuit of Project Surprise Me—from unexpected gifts to restaurant dates to sexy photo shoots—mishaps arise, with disastrous and comical results. Gradually, surprises turn to shocking truths. And when a scandal from the past is uncovered, they begin to wonder if they ever really knew each other at all.
With a colorful cast of eccentric characters, razor-sharp observations, and her signature wit and charm, Sophie Kinsella presents a humorous yet moving portrait of a marriage—its intricacies, comforts, and complications. Surprise Me reveals that hidden layers in a close relationship are often yet to be discovered.
Mark and Giulia fell for each other in their teens, married in their 20s, and didn't realize what their love would demand of them until Giulia suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break at the age of twenty-seven. Hospitalized for almost a month, she was tormented by delusions and paranoia. Upon release, she sunk into an extended suicidal depression during which Mark, struggling to support Giulia, was torn between the demands of keeping her safe and following doctor's orders, and honouring her independence and making her feel loved.
Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. Soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. In My Lovely Wife, Mark Lukach takes us through these harrowing years with compassion and candour, as he and Giulia renegotiate their relationship, anchored by an abiding devotion to each other and their family.
A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we best care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its honesty, radiant with compassion, written with dazzling lyricism, this intensely personal odyssey offers much-needed insight into the caregiving side of mental illness, and affirms the power of love.
A father and a son are seeing each other for the first time in years. The father has a story to share before it’s too late. He tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away. She’s a smart kid—smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.
As he talks about this plucky little girl, the father also reveals more about himself: his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future.
Now, on a cold winter’s night, the father has been given an unexpected chance to do something remarkable that could change the destiny of a little girl he hardly knows. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he must find out what his own life has actually been worth, and only his son can reveal that answer.
With humor and compassion, Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime reminds us that life is a fleeting gift, and our legacy rests in how we share that gift with others
A whimsical, moving novel about a retirement home for literary legends who spar, conjure up new stories, and almost magically change the lives of the people around them.
Alfonse Carducci was a literary giant who lived his life to excess—lovers, alcohol, parties, and literary rivalries. But now he's come to the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly to spend the remainder of his days among kindred spirits: the publishing industry's nearly gone but never forgotten greats. Only now, at the end of his life, does he comprehend the price of appeasing every desire, and the consequences of forsaking love to pursue greatness. For Alfonse has an unshakeable case of writer's block that distresses him much more than his precarious health.
Set on the water in one of New England's most beautiful locales, the Bar Harbor Home was established specifically for elderly writers needing a place to live out their golden years—or final days—in understated luxury and surrounded by congenial literary company. A faithful staff of nurses and orderlies surround the writers, and are drawn into their orbit, as they are forced to reckon with their own life stories. Among them are Cecibel Bringer, a young woman who knows first-hand the cost of chasing excess. A terrible accident destroyed her face and her sister in a split-second decision that Cecibel can never forgive, though she has tried to forget. Living quietly as an orderly, refusing to risk again the cost of love, Cecibel never anticipated the impact of meeting her favorite writer, Alfonse Carducci—or the effect he would have on her existence. In Cecibel, Alfonse finds a muse who returns him to the passion he thought he lost. As the words flow from him, weaving a tale taken up by the other residents of the Pen, Cecibel is reawakened to the idea of love and forgiveness.
As the edges between story and reality blur, a world within a world is created. It’s a place where the old are made young, the damaged are made whole, and anything is possible….
Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who nearly a thousand years earlier was entrusted as the first watchman of the synagogue and became enchanted by its legendary—perhaps magical—Ezra Scroll. The story of Joseph’s family is entwined with that of the British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 depart their hallowed Cambridge halls on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue.
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces—potent magic, forbidden love—that boldly attempt to bridge that divide.
A contemporary Berlin fairy tale that bristles with urban truths - the first novel of Germany's best-known contemporary playwright.
One clear, ice-cold January morning shortly after dawn, a wolf crosses the border between Poland and Germany. His trail leads all the way to Berlin, connecting the lives of disparate individuals whose paths intersect and diverge.
On an icy motorway eighty kilometres outside the city, a fuel tanker jack-knifes and explodes. The lone wolf is glimpsed on the hard shoulder and photographed by Tomasz, a Polish construction worker who cannot survive in Germany without his girlfriend. Elisabeth and Micha run away through the snow from their home village, crossing the wolf's tracks on their way to the city. A woman burns her mother's diaries on a Berlin balcony. And Elisabeth's father, a famous sculptor, observes the vast skeleton of a whale in his studio and asks: What am I doing here? And why.
Experiences and encounters flicker past with a raw, visual power, like frames in a black and white film. Those who catch sight of the wolf see their own lives reflected, and find themselves searching for a different path in a cold time. This first novel of Germany's most celebrated contemporary playwright is written in prose of tremendous power and precision.
Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.
American postdoctoral researcher Hannah and runaway Moroccan teenager Tariq have little in common, yet both are susceptible to the daylight ghosts of Paris. Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women who were present under the German Occupation; in her desire to understand their lives, and through them her own, she finds a city bursting with clues and connections. Out in the migrant suburbs, Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. For him in his innocence, each boulevard, Métro station and street corner is a source of surprise.
In this urgent and deeply moving novel, Faulks deals with questions of empire, grievance and identity. With great originality and a dark humour, Paris Echo asks how much we really need to know if we are to live a valuable life.
It's the summer of 1968, the year of love and hate, of Prague Spring and Cold War winter. Two English students, Ellie and James, set off to hitch-hike across Europe with no particular aim in mind but a continent, and themselves, to discover. Somewhere in southern Germany they decide, on a whim, to visit Czechoslovakia where Alexander Dubcek's 'socialism with a human face' is smiling on the world.
Meanwhile Sam Wareham, a first secretary at the British embassy in Prague, is observing developments in the country with a mixture of diplomatic cynicism and a young man's passion. In the company of Czech student Lenka Konecková, he finds a way into the world of Czechoslovak youth, its hopes and its ideas. It seems that, for the first time, nothing is off limits behind the Iron Curtain.
Yet the wheels of politics are grinding in the background. The Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev is making demands of Dubcek and the Red Army is massed on the borders. How will the looming disaster affect those fragile lives caught up in the invasion?
Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved adoptive father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died.
Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . . .
Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Époque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. But Izabela longs for adventure, and convinces him to allow her to accompany the family of a renowned architect on a trip to Paris. In the heady, vibrant streets of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.
The Seven Sisters is a sweeping epic tale of love and loss - the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven books, based on the legends of the Seven Sisters star constellation - Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before.
Review: Brian Joss - The Gremlin
The deaths of Robert Smit and his wife Jeanne-Cora 40 years ago sent shock waves throughout the country and to this day the killers are still at large The only clue was the word RAUTEM spray-painted on the wall of their rented home in Springs in the then Gauteng.
Liza Smit, their adopted daughter, although she regards them as her real parents, has spent years fruitlessly searching for the truth. The Smits’ deaths not only robbed her of a normal family life but it also cruelly took away her childhood and it has affected every decision she has made in life since she was a 13-year-old teenager. It also left her and her brother Robert in dire circumstances. At the time of his death Smit was the National Party’s candidate for Springs in the upcoming election and great things were predicted for him, possibly as the country’s next finance minister. Smit was an ambassador and representative for South Africa at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and at the Reconstruction and Development Bank in Washington. Smit was also deputy secretary of finance in the treasury. He later became managing director of Santam International which was a front company, apparently for the apartheid government. Her mother, Smit says, “was the paragon of truth and love, strength, empathy and loyalty” and she supported her husband in whatever he did. The time they spent in Washington was happy, Smit recalls, and they returned to South Africa with great expectations. But how rudely are dreams shattered. Smit will never forget Wednesday November 23 1977: she was as school when her father’s brother, Eben and his wife Renate, broke the news: “Your father and mother have been murdered.” Just like that, Smit recalls. And so her whole life was turned upside down.
Determined to get to the truth of the matter, she enlists the help of freelance investigative journalist, Alet van Zyl, who was attached to the SABC, and then together with Smit’s lawyers they compile a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which found that the death of the Smit couple was a gross violation of human rights and politically motivated. But nobody has been brought to book. Other journalists who provided information included Hennie Serfontein; Allister Sparks; JJ van Wyk and former Sunday Times reporter and BOSS spy Gordon Winter who referred tp the Z-Squads and Nico Diederichs, former finance minister dubbed “Mr Gold”, in his book, Inside Boss.
There are many rumours and much speculation surrounding the Smit murders: chief among them is the sinking of the oil tanker in 1977, the Salem, involving millions of rand of insurance claims. Papers relating to the incident were stolen from a cabinet minister’s home in Pretoria in 1980. It is also claimed that Robert Smit had evidence that millions of rand and gold had been taken out of South Africa illegally. Was that why Smit was silenced? The murders occurred around the time of the Information Scandal which cost the then secretary of information, Eschel Rhoodie, his job and that of Connie Mulder. It also led to the downfall of the John Vorster government, leaving the way open for PW Botha to take over. All the details and allegations are contained in Liza Smit and her legal team’s submission to the TRC. It makes for some interesting reading. Some of it is new but most of it is just speculation and allegation. Liza’s search for the truth took her to Vlakplaas head, Eugene de Kock, although he pointed her in one direction it didn’t get her any closer to closure.
There also appears to be a lot of cover-up by the police and politicians of the day. Like most of the deeply buried skeletons in the National Party government’s closet they will probably stay there until some enterprising journalist decides to investigate again. Members of the apartheid regime who are named by Francois Oosthuizen, a former task force member investigating the killings, include Connie Mulder, PW Botha, Owen Horwood, Chris Heunis and Pik Botha, who Liza paints as a dirty old man after a visit to his home where she wanted to question him about the murders. Liza Smit mentions a book that Rhoodie wrote but his wife refused to allow it to be published. As she pointed out to reporter Mark Stansfield who was also one of Liza’s sources, “Enough lives have been destroyed already”.
Some years ago I used to sub-edit and proofread manuscripts for a boutique publisher in Johannesburg and one day he gave me an apple box packed with a dog-eared, type-written bundle of papers. It turned out to be a book written by Rhoodie: it was fiction but the key figures were clearly recognisable and there were references to the Smit murders, money laundering, Dr Gold, and much more. Sadly the book never saw the light of day. Now and again news reports of its existence surface in the newspapers.
The Smit murders had unintended consequences, especially for Liza and her brother. She had two failed marriages; one that just fell apart and the other to an abusive partner. She met her biological parents and a sister that she didn’t know existed. Her son Gerhard lost the use of his legs after a motorbike crash and her daughter, Trudie, was the mainstay as Liza’s abusive husband refused to give her any support. Later Liza checked herself into a private psychiatric hospital which marked a turning point in her life and where she learned to stand up for herself. Writing the book was a cathartic experience. Liza Smit believes that although they have come close to the truth through their investigations, they are no closer to the truth than they had been before the TRC findings. She doesn’t regret it although it dominated two years of her life. She does not think the killers will be brought to book but she is still searching for the motive. There are eight pages of images.
Some day the truth will out.
I Am Liza Smit is a welcome addition to South Africa’s “Struggle” literature, told from an insider’s point of view and who was directly affected by events beyond her control.
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time.
Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life, but everything she knows is changing. Only the local lido, where she swims every day, remains a constant reminder of the past and her beloved husband George.
Kate has just moved and feels adrift in a city that is too big for her. She's on the bottom rung of her career as a local journalist, and is determined to make something of it.
So when the lido is threatened with closure, Kate knows this story could be her chance to shine. But for Rosemary, it could be the end of everything. Together they are determined to make a stand, and to prove that the pool is more than just a place to swim - it is the heart of the community.
The Lido is an uplifting novel about the importance of friendship, the value of community, and how
ordinary people can protect the things they love.
Maybe that had been the problem all along: Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down.
She's been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for all of my adult life, although I've been good at keeping her out, just a blurred shadow in the corner of my eye, almost but not quite out of sight.
Maria Weston wants to be friends.
But Maria Weston has been dead for more than twenty-five years.
Her first violin was tiny, harsh, factory-made; her first piece was “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.” But from the very beginning, Min Kym knew that music was the element in which she could swim and dive and soar. At seven years old, she was a prodigy, the youngest ever student at the famed Purcell School. At eleven, she won her first international prize; at eighteen, violinist great Ruggiero Ricci called her “the most talented violinist I’ve ever taught.” And at twenty-one, she found “the one,” the violin she would play as a soloist: a rare 1696 Stradivarius. Her career took off. She recorded the Brahms concerto and a world tour was planned.
Then, in a London café, her violin was stolen. She felt as though she had lost her soulmate, and with it her sense of who she was. Overnight she became unable to play or function, stunned into silence.
In this lucid and transfixing memoir, Kym reckons with the space left by her violin’s absence. She sees with new eyes her past as a child prodigy, with its isolation and crushing expectations; her combustible relationships with teachers and with a domineering boyfriend; and her navigation of two very different worlds, her traditional Korean family and her music. And in the stark yet clarifying light of her loss, she rediscovers her voice and herself.
Things are looking up for seven-year-old Bertie Pollock. The arrival of his spirited grandmother and the absence of his meddlesome mother—who is currently running a book club in a Bedouin harem (don’t ask)—bring unforeseen blessings: no psychotherapy, no Italian lessons, and no yoga classes. Meanwhile, surprises await Scotland Street’s grown-ups. Matthew makes a discovery that could be a major windfall for his family, but also presents a worrisome dilemma. Pat learns a secret about her father’s fiancée that may shake up her family, unless she can convince the perpetually narcissistic Bruce to help her out. And the Duke of Johannesburg finds himself in sudden need of an explanation—and an escape route—when accosted by a determined guest at a soirée. From the cunning schemes of the Association of Scottish Nudists to the myriad expressive possibilities of the word “aye,” Alexander McCall Smith guides us through the risks and rewards of friendship, love, and family with his usual inimitable wit and irresistible charm.
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.
That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest reader.
An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.
An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.
As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
Why do we consume 35 percent more food when eating with one more person and 75 percent more when with three? Why are 27 percent of drinks bought on aeroplanes tomato juice? How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home?
These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways and reveals the importance of all the off-the-plate elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more. Whether dining alone or at a dinner party, on a plane or in front of the TV, he reveals how to understand what we're tasting and influence what others experience. Mealtimes will genuinely never be the same again.
Treasure is a naïve dreamer tossed into this unforgiving reality. Intent on supporting herself, she walks out of her dysfunctional family home in Westonaria and straight into the greedy heart of Jo’burg, disguised as the city of gold and black diamonds, to chase the illusion of fame and a happy ending.
Living a life of luxury in a society of artificial human beings comes at a hefty price.
She is wooed by a wealthy man who grooms her into a power-hungry machine... but is the pleasure worth the pain and endless sacrifices? What can she offer a man who has everything but a soul?
As her life crumbles around her, can Treasure alter her fate before it’s too late?
This inspirational novel is for all those who see one side to life; it's time to open your eyes to both sides of the coin.
It started as nothing, just a scary story passed around between schoolchildren. But for Sadie and her friends, the rumours soon became an unhealthy obsession - and the darkness all too real.
Years later, Sadie's teenage daughter Amber has been charged with murder, and her trial shocks the world. How could such a young girl commit such a terrible crime?
It seems the secrets of Sadie's past have come back to haunt her daughter. And the terrifying truth of what happened all those years ago is finally about to come out . .
In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn’t remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over.
Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina’s letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?
Die opvolg op Dis ek, Anna. Wat hét met Anna gebeur die oomblik ná sy die sneller getrek het? Ná sy haar stiefpa wat haar soveel jare lank fisies en emosioneel verrinneweer het, vroeg een oggend in Bloemfontein in die oë gekyk, en toe geskiet het? Agt jaar ná die verskyning van Dis ek, Anna neem Anchien Troskie aldus Elbie Lötter weer haar pen op, en skryf die opvolg. Hoe vra ’n mens vergifnis, en wanneer mag jy wraak neem? Dit is die vrae waarmee Anna – en ook die skrywer – worstel . . . ’n Skreiend eerlike roman oor Anna Bruwer se lewe ná die moord op haar stiefpa – ’n boek gevul met deernis, en eindelik ook hoop. (The English translation of this book is in our book club.)
If you are politically aware, socially mindful and grappling with increasingly shaky race relations in this country, Sorry, Not Sorry by journalist Haji Mohamed Dawjee is a must-read.
Not in the clichéd way most people refer to the latest book on the market, but in a way that will truly empower you to know and claim your place in the current conversations being had about race, privilege and power relations in South Africa.
Whether you're black or brown, but especially if you're white, this book will open your eyes to the realities of the skewed world we live in and stick a finger right in the sore that you manage to ignore most of the time, but always know is there: that we live in a world where white equals privilege, power and opportunity while black equals discrimination, racism and disregard.
Dawjee's book is a collection of essays about her experiences as a brown woman in South Africa, but its message is much more universal, focusing on the many challenges women of colour face; in relationships, the workplace and in the interpretation of history and practice of religion.
If you're white, it will probably upset or anger you. Dawjee holds no prisoners.
She writes: "I believe in confidently crossing the imaginary line of what is okay to say to white people and what is not. I believe that it is our turn to talk and their turn to listen. If they won't, it is often going to be my responsibility to tell them to shut up."
If you're black, you will relate to the many details and examples she gives to illustrate her point that people of colour have, until now, been deprived of a voice and narrative that tells their story from their own point of view.
Whether you are cringing or relating, one thing is certain: you will know that her words hold true. You will know it in your bones while you laugh at her witty humour which, even though she's scathing in her criticism of white people, partially saves them. And you'll know it while you cry over her pain, either because you've experienced it too, or because you know you are exempted from it by virtue of the colour of your skin. News 24
Discover the true stories of some of the world's incredible working dogs, and the extraordinary jobs they undertake.
Meet Molly, the diabetes alert dog whose round-the-clock job is to keep her two young owners healthy; Bailey, the Assistant Director of Seagulls whose job is to keep the pesky birds away from the heritage vessels at the Australian National Maritime Museum and Daisy, the Collie mix who is a full-time guide dog to another blind dog.
From inspirational moments of bravery in service, to tales of dogs doing the jobs that no one else can, these are the life-affirming stories of the hardest-working dogs in the world.
Wanted by Interpol, the Thunder has for years evaded justice: accumulating millions in profits, hunting endangered species and ruthlessly destroying ocean habitats. The authors follow this incredible expedition from the beginning. But even as seasoned journalists, they cannot anticipate what the chase will uncover, as the wake of the Thunder leads them to trail of criminal kingpins, rampant corruption, modern slavery, and an international community content to turn a blind eye. Very soon, apprehending Thunder becomes more than a chase but a pursuit of the truth itself and a symbolic race to preserve the well-being of our planet. A Scandinavian best-seller, Catching Thunder is a remarkable true story of courage and perseverance, and a wake-up call to act against the destruction of our environments.
For readers of Schindler's List, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas comes a heart-breaking story of the very best of humanity in the very worst of circumstances. I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart. In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too. So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz. ----- 'Extraordinary - moving, confronting and uplifting . . . I recommend it unreservedly' Greame Simsion 'A moving and ultimately uplifting story of love, loyalties and friendship amidst the horrors of war . . . It's a triumph.' Jill Mansell
Back in print in an all-new edition, is the engaging and illuminating chronicle of the life of the “Queen of Mystery.” Fans of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and readers of John Curran’s fascinating biographies Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making will be spellbound by the compelling, authoritative account of one of the world’s most influential and fascinating novelists, told in her own words and inimitable style. The New York Times Book Review calls Christie’s autobiography a “joyful adventure,” saying, “she brings the sense of wonder...to her extraordinary career.”
The first thing to note is that the title is fake news. The president isn’t missing; he has to lie low for a bit, but spends almost all the novel surrounded by his Secret Service security detail, as well as other aides and officials. Indeed, the president himself narrates most of the book, which wouldn’t really work if he had no clue where he was or what he was up to.
Bill Clinton is not the first modern president to make a foray into fiction: in 2003, Jimmy Carter wrote The Hornet’s Nest, a well-regarded historical novel set during the revolutionary war. But for his novel, Clinton has teamed up with James Patterson, a thriller industry unto himself, whom Stephen King has not unjustly called “a terrible writer”. One character is a female assassin codenamed Bach, who, when we first meet her, is described strolling seductively through an airport with a décolleté “allowing just enough bounce in her girls to make it memorable”. Girls?
Like Clinton, Duncan met his wife at law school and has one daughter; unlike Clinton, his wife is tragically deceased
Anyway, the president of the title – president Jonathan Lincoln Duncan – is facing an enormous cyberattack, codenamed “Dark Ages”, which will bring the US to its knees. Thanks to a helpful slab of exposition by a geek halfway through, we know that this is really, really serious. It’s not just that Tinder and Alexa will stop working; all bank records will be wiped, the electricity grid will go down, water will stop running, air defences will fall silent, that sort of thing. Also, the Russians might be behind it, and Duncan might have a mole in his own ranks. So out of the White House the president sneaks: he disguises himself using makeup with the help of a famous actress friend (as you do), before meeting someone who might be able to help at a baseball game. Luckily, he is being followed by the pros.
The president is a super-decent bipartisan hero, an ideal mash-up between John McCain and, um, Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, Duncan met his wife at law school and has one adult daughter; unlike Clinton, his wife is tragically deceased and he spent time as a prisoner of war in Iraq. (His vice-president is resentful at being upstaged by her boss, a “war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor”.) His training as an army ranger enables him to wield a Glock with confidence during one early kinetic set-piece, rather like Tom Clancy’s fictional president, ex-Marine Jack Ryan.
Forever and a Day is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking readers into the very beginning of James Bond’s illustrious career and the formation of his identity.
***
M laid down his pipe and stared at it tetchily. “We have no choice. We’re just going to bring forward this other chap you’ve been preparing. But you didn’t tell me his name.”
“‘It’s Bond, sir,'” the Chief of Staff replied. “James Bond.”
The sea keeps its secrets. But not this time.
One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand.
It’s time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organized crime.
It’s time for James Bond to earn his license to kill.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey--through facts, recollection, and imagination--that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
Set in the 1970s in a run-down, rainy industrial town, Jo Nesbo's Macbethcenters around a police force struggling to shed an incessant drug problem. Duncan, chief of police, is idealistic and visionary, a dream to the townspeople but a nightmare for criminals. The drug trade is ruled by two drug lords, one of whom—a master of manipulation named Hecate—has connections with the highest in power, and plans to use them to get his way.
Hecate’s plot hinges on steadily, insidiously manipulating Inspector Macbeth: the head of SWAT and a man already susceptible to violent and paranoid tendencies. What follows is an unputdownable story of love and guilt, political ambition, and greed for more, exploring the darkest corners of human nature, and the aspirations of the criminal mind.
Hierdie is Koos Kombuis se eerste gedrukte digbundel in meer as twintig jaar.
Hy is van plan om enkele van die gedigte in hierdie bundel te toonset en dit dan, as promosie vir die bundel, te sing by die talle eenmanskonserte wat hy gedurig in Suid-Afrika doen. Die bundel is lig en humoristies, met ‘n subtiele geestelike element.
Toeganklike poësie vir lesers in alle belangstellingsvelde.
When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik police is forced into early retirement, she is told she can investigate one last cold case of her choice - and she knows which one.
What she discovers is far darker than suicide . . . And no one is telling Hulda the whole story.
When her own colleagues try to put the brakes on her investigation, Hulda has just days to discover the truth. A truth she will risk her own life to find.
An accomplished concert pianist, Richard received standing ovations from audiences all over the world in awe of his rare combination of emotional resonance and flawless technique. Every finger of his hands was a finely calibrated instrument, dancing across the keys and striking each note with exacting precision. That was eight months ago.
Richard now has ALS, and his entire right arm is paralyzed. His fingers are impotent, still, devoid of possibility. The loss of his hand feels like a death, a loss of true love, a divorce—his divorce.
He knows his left arm will go next.
Three years ago, Karina removed their framed wedding picture from the living room wall and hung a mirror there instead. But she still hasn’t moved on. Karina is paralyzed by excuses and fear, stuck in an unfulfilling life as a piano teacher, afraid to pursue the path she abandoned as a young woman, blaming Richard and their failed marriage for all of it.
When Richard becomes increasingly paralyzed and is no longer able to live on his own, Karina becomes his reluctant caretaker. As Richard’s muscles, voice, and breath fade, both he and Karina try to reconcile their past before it’s too late.
Poignant and powerful, Every Note Played is a masterful exploration of redemption and what it means to find peace inside of forgiveness.
A Guide to Mystical France takes you deep under the psychic skin of France into the invisible dimensions that our materialistic world does its best to ignore. Science stops at the most interesting questions. To describe, say a painted prehistoric cave as a sacred space used for ritual is to beg more questions than it answers. It is impossible to fully appreciate the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Mont St Michel, or the alignments of Carnac if you do not understand the reasons these structures were built and they way they have been used over the centuries. The book makes no assumptions. The reader is not required to believe anything. He is merely pointed in the direction of the invisible and the hidden and left to judge for himself. You get much more out of a visit if you look for what isn’t there as well as what is. Only by engaging with such enigmas in an open-minded, non-logical way can we begin to unravel them. This approach also makes sightseeing more satisfying and more meaningful. Covered here are a multitude of fascinating themes: the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, Black Virgins, prehistoric cave paintings, labyrinths, ley-lines, symbolism and sacred geometry, the tarot, etc. The backdrops for the drama includes such legendary places as Chartres, Rennes-le-Chateau, churches carved out of the rock and mountain sanctuaries. The cast list, meanwhile, includes Templars, Cathars, mystics, Gurdjieff, King Arthur, Nostradamus and alchemists such as the enigmatic Fulcanelli (who is rumoured to be immortal).
Napoleon has won the Battle of Waterloo and England is under French occupation...
A half-drowned girl washes up on a Cornish beach, escaping French soldiers after the murder of her black sea captain father.
An aristocratic soldier-spy, haunted by his part in the defeat at Waterloo, plans to spring the Duke of Wellington from captivity.
Together, they become enmeshed in a web of treachery and espionage stretching from London to the Scilly Isles.
'A marvellously dark and compelling anti-hero and a truly gutsy (and sexy) heroine ... A terrific read' Caro Fraser.
In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people, including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.
In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.
The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.
It is the early 1960s, in a staid suburb fifteen miles south of London. Paul, home from university for the holidays, is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. At the mixed doubles tournament he is partnered with Mrs. Susan Macleod: she's more than twice his age, and the married mother of two nearly grown-up daughters. Soon Paul and Susan embark on an unconventional affair, despite the disapproval of Paul's parents and the seething resentment of Susan's husband.
First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn't know anything about that at nineteen. But as he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.
Wryly observant and devastatingly tender, The Only Story is a profound, contemplative novel by one of fiction's greatest mappers of the human heart.
A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.
But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her―feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.
When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
Leavened by the same infectious intelligence that made Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore such a sensation, while taking on even more satisfying challenges, Sourdough marks the triumphant return of a unique and beloved young writer.
Books bring them together - but friendship will transform all of their lives. An epic saga of five very different women who come together in the Northern Territory of the 1970s.
In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cyclone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle stations dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect.
Sybil, the matriarch of Fairvale Station, run by her husband, Joe, misses her eldest son, Lachlan. It is up to their second son, Ben, to take his brother's place, while Kate, Sybil's English daughter-in-law, is thousands of miles away from home and finding it difficult to adjust to life at Fairvale.
Rita, Sybil's oldest friend, is now living in Alice Springs and working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Sallyanne, mother of three, dreams of a life far removed from the dusty town of Katherine where she lives with her difficult husband.
And Della, who left Texas for Australia looking for adventure and work on the land, needs some purpose in her life.
Sybil comes up with a way to give them all companionship: they all love to read, and she starts a book club.
If you loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and The Little Paris Bookshop, you will devour this story of five different women united by one need: to overcome the vast distances of Australia's Top End with friendship, tears, laughter, books and love.
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.
Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.
Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.
An astonishingly incisive and suspenseful novel about a scandal amongst Britain’s privileged elite and the women caught up in its wake.
Sophie’s husband James is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he stands accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced he is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to rip them apart.
Kate is the lawyer hired to prosecute the case: an experienced professional who knows that the law is all about winning the argument. And yet Kate seeks the truth at all times. She is certain James is guilty and is determined he will pay for his crimes.
Who is right about James? Sophie or Kate? And is either of them informed by anything more than instinct and personal experience? Despite her privileged upbringing, Sophie is well aware that her beautiful life is not inviolable. She has known it since she and James were first lovers, at Oxford, and she witnessed how easily pleasure could tip into tragedy.
Most people would prefer not to try to understand what passes between a man and a woman when they are alone: alone in bed, alone in an embrace, alone in an elevator… Or alone in the moonlit courtyard of an Oxford college, where a girl once stood before a boy, heart pounding with excitement, then fear. Sophie never understood why her tutorial partner Holly left Oxford so abruptly. What would she think, if she knew the truth?
Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.
