Jacana

4 years, 300 witnesses, 400 days of hearings and 19 volumes of findings… no wonder we struggle to make sense of the Zondo Commission!  Enter Paul Holden, historian, author and Director of Investigations at Shadow World Investigations (co-founded with Andrew Feinstein).  Paul presented hard evidence of state capture – the when, where and how money flowed – to the Commission so is really well placed to unpack the damning findings for us of how the Gupta family found willing acolytes in the state, and set about systematically looting the country and destroying institutions of democracy.

The Zondo Commission’s reports and findings are fundamental to understanding South Africa’s past and future — but their length and intensity may leave them largely unread. Paul Holden unpacks the commission’s findings, condensing its narratives and demystifying legal language to make the commission’s work accessible to all. – Daily Maverick

Penguin Viking

Best friends and sisters, the four Padvano girls are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood. Julia, the eldest, is a planner. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother. Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other. But when Julia falls in love with William Walters, their lives change. As William falls into darkness, it is Sylvie, not Julie, who steps in to help.

Spanning decades and generations,  Hello Beautiful captures what it means to be a family – the joy and tragedy, the deep trust and devastating betrayals. Split apart by stubbornness and heartbreak, the Padavano family scatters across the country. Will the love and loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together?

Oprah and Obama are both raving about it.  I enjoyed it but not my book of the month!

‘Hello Beautiful will make you weep buckets because you come to care so deeply about the characters and their fates’ Washington Post

‘This sumptuous family saga is one of those rare novels whose singular characters are so beautifully rendered, it’s as if they’re your best friends, and you’re grateful to be in their orbit. Napolitano’s homage to Little Women, set in late-20th century Chicago, will prompt you to slow down as you read, never wanting the book to end’ Oprah Quarterly

‘Beautiful, perceptive, wistful. A story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it’ Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

Pan MacMillan

The latest delicious domestic noir from Gail Schimmel is set in Joburg in the homes of people you’ll think you know.

Monique and Ben Klein have been married for twenty years. They both know that they didn’t get married for all the right reasons but they have a good life in a beautiful house, with three children who they adore.

Monique is obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother – from her appearance to her home to her children, nobody is allowed to see the cracks. Ben knows that he gave up on a part of himself and his dreams when he married Monique. He’s an actuary, working for a corporate, and not the artist that he longed to be. If anyone asks, he is happy. Their daughter Rosie is struggling with her friendships and the daunting world of teenage parties. But with a strict mother like Monique, she knows that even if she gets frustrated, Monique’s rules will keep her safe.

Until Ben meets Daisy. And Rosie meets Margie. And everything starts to fall apart….

The Borough Press

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript, reworks it and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.  But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

This book has had so much hype internationally and it certainly achieves what it sets out to do –  it questions who has the right to write who’s stories, what is theft of authorial content, what role the publishing industry plays in deciding whose voice should be heard, however there are no likeable characters, the protagonist is annoying, the shrieking and fury of social media will send you scurrying under the nearest stone and there’s even a ghost… I didn’t enjoy it but I think that’s the whole point!

Please read what the author RF Kuang, has to say in this excellent article  Reese’s Book Club (reesesbookclub.com).  It’s a Reece Book of the month:  We find it entirely addictive—an un-put-down-able thriller that has us thinking so much about creativity, the line between inspiration and theft, the gleeful takedowns and pile-ons on social media, and the expectations the publishing industry has for writers of colour.

I’d love to hear what you think because the reviews have all been raving about the book!

This is a great read. Crime, satire, horror, paranoia, questions of cultural appropriation. Plenty of nasty social media pile-ons, too. But, basically, just a great story. Hard to put down, harder to forget.” — Stephen King

“Viciously satisfying” and “Addictive.” — New York Times Book Review

“Yellowface is one of the most transfixing novels I’ve read in ages… Kuang boldly interrogates literary hot-button issues like privilege, appropriation, and authenticity, leaving it open for readers themselves to decide where to draw the line.”   — Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl

“Reading Yellowface felt like being inside a wild, brutal, psychological knife fight with a deranged clown. A merciless satire that left me screaming inside… from both its horror and humor.”  — Constance Wu, star of Crazy Rich Asians and author of Making a Scene

“It’s addictive, shocking, compelling, ridiculous, and extremely fun to read by turns.” — Paste Magazine

“At once a brilliant satire that mixes horror and humour; a nuanced exploration of race, heritage, identity, and diversity in publishing; and an honest look at the hell that is social media, this might just be Kuang’s best.” — Boston Globe

4th Estate

There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies – everything in between is speculation.

Long-listed for the Womens Prize for Fiction, Wandering Souls tells the story of siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh, not long after the last American troops leave Vietnam, who flee their village and embark on a perilous boat journey to Hong Kong. Their parents and four younger siblings make the crossing in another vessel but as weeks go by it becomes clear that only one party has survived the voyage.
Anh, Thanh and Minh suddenly find themselves alone in the world, without family or home. They travel on, navigating refugee camps and resettlement centres until, by a twist of fate, they arrive in Thatcher’s Britain to start their new lives.

In this piercing debut, the siblings’ faltering journey is deftly interwoven with the voice of their lost younger brother, Dao, following them from a place between the living and the dead, and the records of an unknown researcher intent on gathering the strands of their story. Wandering Souls paints a heart-wrenching portrait of a family in crisis while exploring the healing power of stories.

Wandering Souls is a poignant saga with its grieving, beating heart firmly in the right place, and heralds the arrival of an ambitious and promising new talent. – Guardian

A deeply humane and genre-defying work of love and uncompromising hope’ – Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous

Doubleday

“What I’ve learned most about becoming is that it takes time”

Set in the breath-taking hills of Colorado in the late 1940’s, Go As A River is a beautiful, tender coming-of-age novel about 17 year old Victoria who lost her mother in an accident when she was young and as a result has grown up in a tough household of men with no concept of what it means to love and be loved.  Until one cool autumn day in the little town of Iola, a grubby stranger asks her for directions.. “He wasn’t much to look at” she notes, “Not at first, anyway.”   And so begins the mesmerizing story of the split-second decisions and courageous acts which propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Beautiful . . . A striking first novel of love and strength and growth, set against the forests and rivers of Colorado’s high country. Read is a gifted writer, and the book is a literary triumph.- Denver Post 

Gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist – Real Simple

Hutchinson Heinemann

Do you stay up all night watching the Oscars? Are you mad about anything to do with Hollywood? This one’s definitely for you!  Tom Hanks’s debut novel is absolutely fabulous! Its gripping, compelling and very funny.  It’s a great big epic of a book about the making of a great big, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film, and the humble comic book that inspired it all.

Spanning 80 years of a changing America and culminating in the opening of the film, the book is filled with loads of colourful characters including a troubled soldier returning from war, a young boy with an artistic gift, an inspired and eccentric director, a pompous film star on the rise, a tireless production assistant and countless film crew members that together create Hollywood magic.  Hanks takes us behind the scenes as we get to know everyone from the lowly coffee-maker to the gorgeous movie star with whom EVERYONE has fallen in love!  Don’t miss the quirky and very funny footnotes throughout the book.  Its such fun!

Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece offers an insider’s take on the momentous efforts it takes to make a film. At once a reflection on America’s past and present, on the world of show business and the real world we all live in.

” This was a joy to read in that certain kind of way that only happens when it was a joy to write. Tom Hanks is such a natural storyteller that everything feels like he’s telling this story just for you, at a dinner table, and you don’t want the night to end.” —Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove

“With a unique insight and a rare eye for detail, Tom Hanks delivers a stunning, emotionally satisfying tale about the art of storytelling. I never wanted the lights to come up. I could not put it down.” —Graham Norton

“Vibrant, jazzy, witty, snazzily written, with a great sense of time and place, this novel-cum-comic book is one of those rare, unique, pieces of fiction. Loved it.” —Kate Mosse; author of Labyrinth

“A thoroughly engaging tale….This is a story about what happens behind the cameras. Hanks is at pains to impress upon us that moviemaking is a circuitous process involving a vast network of people — some famous, most not — showing up and doing their best. This is most definitely not a novel about the magic of filmmaking; it’s a novel about the hard work of filmmaking…. a love letter to the industry….The longer you watch Hanks create that glittery surface, the harder it is to look away.” — The Washington Post