South African Fiction

In the Early settler days, the British did more than go to war. Many found the local folklore and beliefs fascinating, and collected them together. This is one of the first explorations of South African folk tales.

In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side.

A car has collided with a Coca-Cola truck in Alexandra. The overturned trailer is spilling its contents, which residents are carrying off in their plastic ‘Shangaan Gucci’ bags. With two other bystanders, Lerato Morolong, age 14, helps the injured truck driver. The woman who drives them to hospital is Professor Ngobese, matriarch of the family at Number 80, the only house in the neighbourhood with a street address, aka Those White People.

Pete de Lange must survive as a teenager in a small Natal town during the 1980s, together with his new-found friends, Sarita and Petrus. In a country marked by turmoil and racial conflict, this is not as easy as it seems. Pete and his friends witnessed a horrendous crime, and the perpetrator is on their case. Will justice prevail? In between all of this, Pete must try to make the first rugby team and win the heart of his high-school crush, Renate.

Ramsay Wick, the legendary warrior, has spent much of his life fighting to keep Aegemald safe. His latest mission - as leader of Team Leopadillo - is more dangerous than any before it; to find and vanquish the Alpha Dragon who seeks to cause destruction. Fortunately, he has a secret weapon in his arsenal. Join the team of warriors and wizards on their nail-biting journey to the dragon’s lair where, confronted with an impossible choice, Ramsay will have to make a life-changing decision.

Ex-mercenary Sonja Kurtz is out for revenge after her daughter Emma is assaulted by an abalone poacher while on a beachside holiday near Cape Town. When the poacher is murdered, Sonja is targeted by a violent local gangster and must flee the country. As Sonja leaves a trail of destruction in her wake—from the threatened wilderness of Zimbabwe to the treacherous beaches of northern Mozambique—a concerned Emma must find the courage to rescue her mother. But is Sonja a cold-blooded killer? Or is there a darker conspiracy taking place in southern Africa's underworld?

Linda, Dikeledi, Nolwazi and Sade spent their twenties pursuing fast-paced careers and love lives in vibrant Johannesburg. Now, with their thirties just around the corner, they know the one thing they can count on is each other, but it turns out even the firmest friendships have secrets… On the cusp of their thirtieth birthdays, just when everything should be going to plan, their lives start to derail.

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father’s death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man’s will.

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of An African Love Story, Daphne Sheldrick's touching memoir about romance, life and elephants from Africa's greatest living conservationist. Read by Virginia McKenna, the star of Born Free and the Founder Trustee of the Born Free Foundation. An African Love Story is the incredible memoir of the life of Africa's greatest living conservationist. It tells two stories.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, Jr., shepherd of the Seven Seals Missionary Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. He owns the barbershop and the radio station, and generally keeps an iron hand on every aspect of society in Dominion, Mississippi. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy—no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. But Wonderboy, his father, and all the structures in place that keep them on top are not as righteous as they seem to be.

South Africa, 1871. Jack Lark no longer walks alone. With the worldly Anna Baker by his side, he travels to the Cape Colony diamond fields determined to seek their fortune—and an adventurous new life together. The journey north soon turns violent as tensions erupt between other hopeful diggers and a gang of Boer men. Everyone has their eye on the same elusive prize—and some will stop at nothing to get it. For Jack and Anna, unearthing a diamond is only half the battle. Getting out of the mines alive will prove far more difficult—and dangerous.

In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy, Joe, becomes obsessed with Muhammad Ali. He begins collecting daily newspaper clippings about him, a passion that grows into an archive of scrapbooks. Forty years later, when Joe has become a writer, these scrapbooks become the foundation for a memoir of his childhood. When he calls upon his brother, Branko, for help uncovering their shared past, meaning comes into view in the spaces between then and now, growing up and growing old, speaking out and keeping silent.

Journey into the heart of South Sudan’s Nuer tribe with The Individual: The First Societal Unit, a captivating tale that weaves the rich fabric of African culture with the universal quest for identity and belonging. In this evocative narrative, follow Panyim, a young Nuer man standing at the threshold of adulthood, as he navigates the sacred rites and communal responsibilities that will define his place within his tribe. With each line etched on his forehead during the Gär ceremony, Panyim’s personal journey becomes deeply entwined with the collective destiny of his people. Guided by ...

The year is 1902, and the world is changing with the new century. Twenty-one-year-old Ava Stanley, the daughter of two celebrated Arcane Taxonomists, has much to live up to—however scarce her magical abilities may be. While her parents draw power from spectacular birds and megafauna, Ava’s connection to the natural world is much smaller, stemming from the microscopic. This is useful in her quest to become a doctor, as she studies the burgeoning links between bacteria and disease, but it means Ava’s power itself is also smaller.

There’s no place in politics for love… and no place for love in war… Kai, the Water Prince, found himself having to give up his hopes of choosing the woman that his heart desired and marrying for the sake of peace. As the day drew near when he would be forced to choose a queen to rule the entire Realm by his side, the tension weighed heavily on him. He had three choices, all queens and with amazing potential in their own right, but that didn’t put Kai’s mind at ease that his right to his heart’s desires were being compromised for the greater good. Shanira, the Fire Princess, was...

Captain Sannie van Rensburg and safari guide Mia Greenaway are caught in the crossfires of a decades-old feud between five veterans of South Africa's apartheid-era Border War. Haunted by the deadly mission that shaped their lives forever, the ex-paratroopers must finally confront their demons, and each other, at the funeral of a comrade in the red dunes of the Kalahari Desert. But their scars run deep, and as the truth emerges, each man must ask himself: When serving your country, what makes you a hero and what secrets are worth dying for?

Since the night Atlanta mayor, self-made millionaire, and womanizer Jamison Jackson plummeted from the top floor of a downtown hotel, everyone seems to have profited, from vicious criminals to corrupt politicians. Everyone except his jilted first wife Kerry. Once a socialite, she's now the prime suspect in Jamison's alleged murder. But she swears she's no killer - and surprisingly, Jamison's widow Val agrees. For all they know, it was Coreen, the mother of Jamison's secret love child.

In cosmopolitan Johannesburg, three high-flying couples form the core of the elite Khula Society: part investment group, part social club, with meetings where the champagne flows, the dresses are designer and the one-upmanship is off the scale. Noma, Moshidi, Lerato and their husbands are living the dream—or so it appears from the outside. In reality, the cut and thrust of ‘keeping up with the Khulas’ is taking its toll on all three couples.

As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further.