Southern Africa

John Laband examines the reigns of the eight Zulu kings from 1816 to the present. Starting with King Shaka, the renowned founder of the Zulu kingdom, he charts the lives of the kings Dingane, Mpande, Cetshwayo, Dinuzulu, Solomon and Cyprian, to today’s King Goodwill Zwelithini. In the course of this investigation, Laband places the Zulu monarchy in the context of African kingship and tracks and analyses the trajectory of the Zulu kings from independent and powerful precolonial African rulers to largely powerless traditionalist figures in post-apartheid South Africa.

Kindle Book Awards Semi-Finalist. Leah's Story tells of an African-American girl born on a rice plantation, who grows up serving her rich owners in Georgia. Her life, like so many others, could have ended there were it not for a bit of education and Emancipation, which gave her, and later her children, opportunities to fulfill their dreams. Told in journal form, taken down by the mysterious “Miss Elliott,” Leah’s personal history comes to life like the tiny birds she carves, revealing a lifetime of love and opportunity amidst a culture filled with hardship, pain, and loss.

After taking power, the ANC implemented its policy of cadre deployment. It sought command of all levers of power, from the Cabinet, through the civil service, down to municipal level. Despite the party recently lasing its majority, cadre deployment will ensure that the ANC maintains its iron grip on power and patronage, and it remains fused with the state.

Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.

Sing me a song of love… Naeco “Nay” Starrfish is the ruler of the Lower Crest of Whispering Waves. He is proud of his heritage and can’t wait to step up and fill the huge shoes of his father. But when he finds out that everything, and everyone, isn’t who and what they seem to be, he may lose himself in the process. Typhoon Hydra is the heir to the Upper Crests of Whispering Waves. He has big ideas for change in his kingdom and wants to be completely different from his father. He has never known love and hopes that he will find it, so that he didn’t suffer the same fate as his ...

Inspired by actual events, this story is set—in a small town on the Gulf Coast of South Alabama, where football runs deep, and tradition colors everything in Purple and Gold. One boy’s journey rises above the field. Alvin has lived a life shaped by pain—family trauma, loss, and the kind of hardship that would break most people. But beneath it all, there’s fight in him. When the world tells him he won’t make it, Alvin finds strength in unexpected places: a dedicated coach, a handful of teachers who never gave up on him, and a younger brother who still sees him as a hero. Wearing ...

Welcome to South Africa! Hear the sounds of 11 official languages. Learn about lions and elephants on safari. Try new sports like cricket and rugby. Learn about the people, places, and traditions of this diverse African country.

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,...

Compiled from his original lecture notes, Julian Bond’s Time to Teach brings his teachings to a new generation of listeners and provides a necessary toolkit for today’s activists in the era of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. Julian Bond sought to dismantle the perception of the civil rights movement as a peaceful and respectable protest that quickly garnered widespread support. Through his lectures, Bond detailed the ground-shaking disruption the movement caused, its immense unpopularity at the time, and the bravery of activists who chose to disturb order to pursue justice.

In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a Black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a White businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge.

Police Investigation: In the atlas of world history, it would occupy a small space of time. Without warning a bomb goes off in a shopping complex. Two housewives and three children are left dead. An act of anger and retaliation in a holiday resort, which triggered a violent chain of events.

I loved you… until… A disastrous wedding left two families in turmoil. When the bride and groom-to-be both go missing after the catastrophe that was their nuptials, the families have to come together to find them. Lafyette “Fee” Wallace fled her wedding after her sister’s jealousy caused her to come crashing down from Cloud 9. Comatose and unaware of the trouble brewing back home, she may end up losing her life before she even truly gets to live. Jévon McCoy made one mistake on a drunken night that cost him the love of his life and future wife. He was now being forced to pay for ...

King of Diamonds - The Life of Barney Barnato is based on true facts and characters. King of Diamonds transports the reader to South Africa’s tumultuous diamond and gold-mining days in the late 1800’s, when thousands of fortune-seekers rushed there for riches. Many died of disease, violence or mine disasters. Most returned home as the paupers they arrived. Major figures of that era are portrayed, including ruthless empire builder Cecil Rhodes, Paul Kruger, the ill-tempered, British-hating president of the Dutch-controlled Transvaal, and an assortment of British and French speculators, ...

Hodgskiss interviewed several of the most notorious serial killers and his recordings sat gathering dust until recently, when top true-crime podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht found his research online. The two connected and now they bring their love of storytelling to this highly listenable book. In Killer Stories, Hodgskiss combines his interviews with the tenets of narrative psychology to take the listener into the minds of the killers and shares with us the ways in which his own journey as a psychologist and human being contributed to his deeper understanding of them.

New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.

A wedding and a murder...Star football player and NFL hopeful, Michael “Bumper” Hackett is getting married. Word’s going around that it’s a shotgun wedding, and there just might be some truth to it, seeing that the bride-to-be is showing a baby bump. But before the ceremony can even get started, the poor groom collapses from what appears to be an asthma attack. Unfortunately, things aren’t always what they seem. Romaine knew it was a bad idea to have a wedding at the funeral home, but newly elected justice of the peace and sole proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home & Crematorium, ...

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 ...

Toni is a high-ranking demon who has the world twirling around her ring finger. She has captured the heart of Lucifer – although she keeps him at arm’s length. She reigns over one of the most notorious clans in Louisville, Kentucky, and has everything a woman could want – respect, power, and loads of money. But what happens when an accidental meeting with an unknown force rearranges her whole life? It makes her want to do right instead of wrong, persuades her heart to beat to a different rhythm, and influences her to sway away from the entity that placed her on the throne she ...

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.

This book, dedicated to our great-grandson, and launched on "Rhodesia Day" (11 November - the date UDI was declared - in 1965) which is also called Armistice day or Remembrance day elsewhere. I am a guest in his Oamaru home, kindly made available while my good wife, Rina, is resident in the Oamaru Observatory Lifecare facility. Rina trasferred from the Kerikeri Retirement Village in April (28th) - having elected to die there after an unsuccessful operation to clear an intestinal obstruction. That was more than a year ago since her admission to the Waikato Hospital in Hamilton. We are slowly...