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Being Kari – Qarnita Loxton
R240.00When the love of her life reveals he’s been unfaithful to her, life, romance, and everything in-between come crashing down. Suddenly it seems as if Kari du Toit’s previous life – one far removed from Bloubergstrand’s sandy beaches – is slowly catching up with her.
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Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
R200.00For those already loyal readers, sold on Moxyland, Zoo City and Shining Girls, you’re in for a treat! And even if this is your first Beukes book, I can guarantee it won’t be your last. Broken Monsters is a multi-layered story that keeps you compulsively reading as the level of suspense rises steadily, your knuckles steadily whitening. Briefly, Detective Gabi Versado discovers a body: half-boy and half-deer have been fused together, and so the hunt for a very different type of killer begins. Her daughter Layla is a feisty and boundary-pushing teen, who, together with her best-friend, try to ‘out’ an online predator. But this is far more than a mere foray into the cheap thrills of the paranormal. The characters are complex, and the relationships sensitively portrayed, and she writes so superbly that it’s almost immaterial when you lose all circulation in your knuckles!
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Cion – Zakes Mda
R195.00Readers of Zakes Mda’s first novel, Ways of Dying, will remember the main character, Toloki, the homeless man who decided to create his own profession, that of professional mourning. This strange entrepreneurial trait in Mda’s characters resurfaces in The Whale Caller, where yet another vagrant sets himself up in opposition to the traditional ‘Whale Crier’ of Hermanus. In any event, Toloki is back in Cion, although it is not really necessary to read Ways of Dying first.
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Hunger Eats a Man – Nkosinathi Sithole
R230.00When Father Gumede, known as Priest, loses his job as a farmhand, he realises he can’t afford to love his neighbour as he does himself. Despondent and enraged, Priest cuts off all ties to the church and politics, determined to make a living – at whatever cost.
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Icarus by Deon Meyer
R335.00He’s back and better than ever! Finally translated from the Afrikaans Ikarus is Deon Meyer’s latest Benny Grissel mystery. The dead body of the tech wiz behind an internet service that provides alibis for unfaithful partners, is found wrapped in plastic in some sand dunes in Cape Town. But Grissel is further challenged when he relapses after four years of sobriety after a former colleague is involved in a multiple homicide. As usual, Meyer’s characters are convincing and likable. The plot is clever and well constructed and the pace is kept at a constant, attention-gripping joy ride!
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Spud: Learning to Fly – John van de Ruit
R150.00As Spud Milton continues his diabolical stagger through adolescence, he learns one of life’s most important lessons: when dealing with women and cretins, nothing is ever quite as it seems. ‘I’m practically a man in most areas’, writes Spud confidently on his sixteenth birthday.
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Summertime – J. M. Coetzee
R155.00A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on a period in the seventies when, the biographer senses, Coetzee was ‘finding his feet as a writer’. He embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to Coetzee – a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues.
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The Childhood of Jesus – J. M. Coetzee
R205.00After crossing oceans, a man and a boy – both strangers to each other – arrive in a new land. David, the boy, has lost his mother and Simon vows to look after him. In this strange new country they are assigned a new name, a new birthday, a new life. Knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor the language or customs, they are determined to find David’s mother.