Everybody’s favourite agony aunt and crime fighter Tannie Maria needs some counselling advice of her own. Lingering troubles from a previous marriage still sit heavy on her, while fresh worries about Slimkat, a local man whose fighting for his people’s land threatens his life, keep her up at night.
Tannie Maria seeks out a counsellor, jokily known to all as “the satanic mechanic”. Straight out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and from hot-as-hell Hotazel, Ricus fixes both cars and people.
But Maria’s counselling tune-up switches gears when a murder flings her straight into Detective Henk Kannemeyer’s investigation. Not only is she dating the dashing Henk, she now has to work beside him: a potential recipe for disaster.
Blending an intriguing mystery with characters as lovable as the setting of the rural Klein Karoo, this book is Sally Andrew’s delightful, warm-hearted sequel to Recipes for Love and Murder.
Paris in 1117. Heloise, a brilliant young scholar, is astonished when the famous, radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, consents to be her tutor. But what starts out as a meeting of minds turns into a passionate, dangerous love affair, which incurs terrible retribution.
Nine centuries later, Arthur is in Paris to recreate the extraordinary story of Heloise and Abelard in a novel. To his surprise, his daughter visits and agrees to help, challenging his portraits of a couple who seem often inscrutable, sometimes breathtakingly modern. It soon emerges she is on her own mission to discover more about her parents' fractured relationship - and that Arthur's connection to his subject is more emotional than he cares to admit.
This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”
This isn’t one of those times.
Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right.
An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs.
Reacher has to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she’s letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. It’s a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in a certain kind of justice . . . the kind that comes along once in a blue moon.
Controversial in its approach, monumental in its scope – this book is the crowning achievement of a distinguished academic career by one of South Africa’s most respected senior economists. Sampie Terreblanche takes a critical look at how social and economic inequality became entrenched in the current world order dominated by Western powers since the 1500s.
The book details how five centuries of Western empire-building shaped our society into the deeply unequal and gratuitously unjust place that it is today. It also teaches us that every empire is unsustainable and the remaining industrial countries in the West are weaker than most people think. Because unrestrained capitalism lies at the root of their weakness, these empires will not last.
The author shows how growing income inequality, environmental damage and increasingly higher financial market risks have impaired our ability to establish a society built on a long-term and sustainable developmental model. In order to remedy the brokenness of our current system, we have to understand the economic, social and political drivers that brought us here.
On the sixth day of Ramadan, in a land without bananas, Qisma leaves for Baghdad with her husband-to-be to find the body of her father. But in the bloodiest year of a bloody war, how will she find one body among thousands?
For Tariq, this is more than just a marriage of convenience: the beautiful, urbane Qisma must be his, body and soul. But can a sheikh steeped in genteel tradition share a tranquil bed with a modern Iraqi woman?
The President has been deposed, and the garden of Iraq is full of presidents who will stop at nothing to take his place. Qisma is afraid - afraid for her son, afraid that it is only a matter of time before her father's murderers come for her.
The only way to survive is to take a slice of Iraq for herself. But ambition is the most dangerous drug of all, and it could just seal Qisma's fate.
Al-Ramli, whose brother was executed by Saddam Hussein, chronicles the recent history of his country in this noisy sequel to his celebrated 2017 saga The President’s Gardens.
Centred on Qisma, a politically ambitious woman out to avenge the death of her father, it’s a scabrous comedy set against the agonising horror triggered by Iraq’s chaotic post-Saddam carve-up. Al-Ramli offers laughter, sorrow, and a breathtakingly grim climax.
Anthony Cummins
After captivating readers in The Child Finder, Naomi—the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children—returns, trading snow-covered woods for dark, gritty streets on the search for her missing sister in a city where young, homeless girls have been going missing and turning up dead.
From the highly praised author of The Child Finder and The Enchanted comes The Butterfly Girl, a riveting novel that ripples with truth, exploring the depths of love and sacrifice in the face of a past that cannot be left dead and buried. A year ago, Naomi, the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children, made a promise that she would not take another case until she finds the younger sister who has been missing for years. Naomi has no picture, not even a name. All she has is a vague memory of a strawberry field at night, black dirt under her bare feet as she ran for her life.
The search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets like ghosts, searching for money, food, and companionship. The sharp-eyed investigator soon discovers that young girls have been going missing for months, many later found in the dirty waters of the river. Though she does not want to get involved, Naomi is unable to resist the pull of children in need—and the fear she sees in the eyes of a twelve-year old girl named Celia. Running from an abusive stepfather and an addict mother, Celia has nothing but hope in the butterflies—her guides and guardians on the dangerous streets. She sees them all around her, tiny iridescent wisps of hope that soften the edges of this hard world and illuminate a cherished memory from her childhood—the Butterfly Museum, a place where everything is safe and nothing can hurt her.
As danger creeps closer, Naomi and Celia find echoes of themselves in one another, forcing them each to consider the question: Can you still be lost even when you’ve been found? But will they find the answer too late?
It always starts with a small lie. That's how you stop noticing the bigger ones.
After his friend suspects something strange going on at the launch facility where they both work - and then goes missing - Martin Hepton doesn't believe the official line of "long-term sick leave"...
Refusing to stop asking questions, he leaves his old life behind, aware that someone is shadowing his every move.
The only hope he has is his ex-girlfriend Jill Watson - the only journalist who will believe his story.
But neither of them can believe the puzzle they're piecing together - or just how shocking the secret is that everybody wants to stay hidden...
It is July 1974 and on a bright, sunny morning, the Turkish army has invaded the town of Kyrenia in Cyprus. For many people, this means an end to life as they know it. But for some, it is a chance to begin living again. Everyone has always talked about Koki. They never believed she was her father's daughter and her mother died too soon to quiet their wagging tongues. And when she became pregnant and there was no sign of a husband, her fate was sealed. So she lives outside the town and hides from her neighbours' eyes. But, held captive with the very women who have made her life so lonely, Koki is finally able to tell them the truth. To talk of the Turkish shoe-maker who came to the town and took her heart away with him when he left. And how she has longed for him all these years. Meanwhile, Adem Berker finds himself back in Kyrenia, his former home, now as a member of the invading force. Here he left everything he ever wanted and, by cover of darkness, risking his life, he is searching every house, every cafe, every old pathway, for just a glimpse of the only woman he has ever loved.
