South African Fiction

Nola is a city full of wonders. A place of sky trolleys and dead cabs, where haints dance the night away and Wise Women help keep the order. To those from Away, Nola might seem strange. To Perilous Graves, it’s simply home. Perry knows Nola’s rhythm as intimately as his own heartbeat. So when the city’s Great Magician starts appearing in odd places and essential songs are forgotten, Perry knows trouble is afoot.

From the author of The Power of One comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English. The world is also on the brink of war, and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany.

A mystery/adventure book set in New York and South Africa during the early 20th century. Experience a captivating blend of suspense, deception, and thrilling adventure with an undertone of a heartfelt love story, crafted against a backdrop of international intrigue. A riveting journey with Michael Smith, a successful financier from New York's upscale Gramercy Park, and Sarah, his loving wife. Their luxurious life takes a turbulent turn when news of a colossal diamond discovery in South Africa reaches them. This discovery prompts a cross-continental adventure filled with danger and ...

When young Armstrong Todd's mother sends him to spend the summer in her native rural Mississippi, the Chicago-bred 15-year-old is unused to the segregated ways of the Deep South. So when the black youth utters a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, he has no idea of the impending firestorm he has ignited. Armstrong ends up paying the ultimate price when the offended woman's husband and his friends decide to teach the youth a lesson.

***Full Standalone*** Never hesitate to entertain strangers… Sometimes, being too close to a situation can cause you to miss out on what’s important. For Talia Cochran, all that mattered to her was providing for her family: her wife, Jasmine, and her daughters Nayomi and Persephone. She made sure that they had everything they needed, and everything they wanted. At least, she thought she did. She would soon find out just how wrong she was. Jasmine Cochran was a housewife and a recluse, since her family turned against her for coming out to the world. Raised in a strict Southern religious ...

Georgia, 1962. Rose Perkins Bourdon returns home to Parsons, GA, without her husband and pregnant with another man’s baby. After tragedy strikes her husband in the war overseas, a numb Rose is left with pieces of who she used to be and is forced to figure out what she is going to do with the rest of her life. Her sister introduces her to members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—young people are taking risks and fighting battles Rose has only seen on television.

“A trim yet potent tale…” – Kirkus Reviews Advance praise for Carra Roe’s debut Ain’t No Sunshine: “Roe’s moving, character-driven book is compelling, well written, and decorated throughout with authentic Southern Creole vernacular, which creates a distinctively unique tone and atmosphere…spirited, captivating characters to behold…charming anecdotes and humorous country-folk foibles…an impressive work…” – Kirkus Reviews "I absolutely adore your writing style and your expert use of dialogue...You left me wanting more but in a good way. Great job." -Cortney ...

Tina Jenson belongs to the same social stratum as Harris Chapman, but he’s out of her league - at least that’s what she thinks before they jump in bed together. It’s the perfect night, but when she overhears crude, hurtful comments the next morning, she can’t get away fast enough. Ten years later, Tina’s life is a mess. That night with Harris didn’t just hurt her feelings; it started a cascade of disappointment and heartbreak. Every time she bumps into Harris, her heart twists inside out. And she’s harboring a painful secret from their night together.

Lorielle Starting over wasn’t supposed to be easy. After losing Daddy and escaping a home that felt more like a prison, I landed in Shreveport, Louisiana, with nothing but my bags and a prayer. Love? That wasn’t on my agenda—not with my heart so guarded. Then I met Mike Preston. A soldier back in Louisiana, trying to figure out who he is without the Army. With hazel eyes that see through my walls and a smile that feels like a promise, he’s everything I didn’t think I could have. But letting him in feels like a risk—what if he leaves? Mike isn’t the kind to run. He’s patient,...

Every legacy begins with a choice, and every sacrifice shapes the future. New Orleans, 1935. Marguerite Beauregard lives a quiet life on Bayou Road until the arrival of a mysterious woman disrupts everything she thought she knew. Claiming to be her great-great-granddaughter, Amelia comes with a warning: an occult society known as Les Ombres is on the rise, threatening the city’s sacred ties to the paranormal and spiritual realm. Endowed with the legendary pendant once worn by Marie Laveau, Marguerite is plunged into a realm of ghosts, ritual magic, and spiritual awakening. As she uncovers...

Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't. It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. He is as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a Jew While gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon ...

When Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa’s hand in marriage, he presents her with a wedding gift: the young slave she grew up with, Sarah. Sarah is also Allen’s daughter and Clarissa’s sister, a product of his longtime relationship with his house slave, Emmeline. When Clarissa’s husband suspects that their newborn son is illegitimate, Clarissa and Sarah are sent back to her parents, Cornelius and Theodora, in shame, setting in motion a series of events that will destroy this once-powerful family.

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 farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life.

Afice is the last of nine generations of women who have survived enslavement, sickness, and hunger. Alone at age seventeen, she sets out through the Louisiana swamps to follow the trail of her ancestors and hear their songs anew. On this journey, Afice must decide how to honor her ancestors while embracing her own future.

Botswana, 1976: Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.

A historical adventure book set in southern Africa during the late 19th century (1880s). Dive into the enthralling expedition of Allan Quatermain, a seasoned hunter and trader, who with diverse companions, transverses the uncharted African interior. The narrative springs to life with Quatermain explaining his initial reluctance and eventual decision to embark on this dangerous journey. The Adventure Filled with twists and turns, the story takes off with Quatermain meeting Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good on a ship bound for Natal. They confide in Quatermain about their mission to find Sir ...

Let the people of West Mills say what they will about Azalea 'Knot' Centre; they won't keep her from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, 19th-century literature, and the company of men. And yet, when motherhood looms, Knot begins to learn that her freedom has come at a high price. Low on money, ostracized from her parents and cut off from her hometown, Knot turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home.

The year is 1994, and South Africa is in political turmoil as its first democratic election looms. Against a backdrop of apartheid and racial violence, traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen returns from the Appalachian foothills to the land of her youth at the behest of her mother. While there Yolanda longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Ingrid, the product of an illegal mixed-race affair with a white man. But Ingrid is missing, and as Yolanda quickly discovers, she isn’t the only woman in Cape Town desperate to protect her own.

A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning.