Catalyst Press

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, the complete collection of her multiple award-winning City of Kings trilogy, including The Theory of Flight, The History of Man, and The Quality of Mercy

“Perhaps the most monumental trilogy to come out of Southern Africa” (Afrocritik)
In The Theory of Flight, Ndlovu sketches decades of history in an unnamed Southern African nation through the story of Imogen “Genie” Zula Nyoni, who lies in a coma after battling a long illness. As loved ones struggle to come to terms with their impending loss, Ndlovu recounts the lives of Genie’s forebears from colonial occupation through the freedom struggle.

In The History of Man, Ndlovu takes an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer. Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is left unmoored by the end of his country’s civil war. His journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war, will leave a path of bloodshed in his wake.

In The Quality of Mercy, Spokes Moloi, the first black chief inspector in the City of Kings, investigates the possible murder of Emil Coetzee, the notorious head of the Organization of Domestic Affairs. In examining Emil’s disappearance, Spokes has one last opportunity to solve the decades-old murder case that determined both the path of his life and destiny of his country.

In this intense drama of family life, old wounds and the search for redemption in the cracks of past experiences leads to the coming apart and the piecing together of self and the group of people we call family. 

When 16 year old Leo's mother vanishes, he is left with more responsibilities at home taking care of his younger siblings. Interrogation of his father over his missing mother leads nowhere. As the days pass, his unease grows and when he finds a mysterious untitled file on the family shared drive, his curiosity gets the better of him and he discovers it is his mother’s secret memoir. Needing to understand his mother’s disappearance, Leo begins to read the book, searching for clues.

Meanwhile, Leo’s life is complicated when Aaron, a handsome boy, shows up in the middle of the school year and is assigned as his study partner. Old stresses in his friend group begin to tear apart his long standing relationships while he wonders if Aaron reciprocates his growing attraction. As he reads his mother’s book, he begins to see her in a new light, propelling him to look for the lost side of his family that still lives in Spain potentially setting off a chain reaction of unintended consequences of old grudges and shady pasts.

When your best friend is moving a continent away, the last hurrah has to be epic. Rufus and Xandr are sneaking away during the holidays but as crazy as their plan is, it won’t ever approach the reality that is about to hit them.

“What does the end look like? Like that black and orange cloud on the horizon coming closer each day? What I do know, however, without a shadow of doubt, is that this whole thing was a bad idea. Stuck in the middle of freaking nowhere without any means of transport, enough food, or the faintest idea of what’s going on.”

Rufus and Xandr have known each other forever. To call them best friends is an understatement. However, Rufus’s dad decided that his family must emigrate. As these two best friends prepare to wave each other farewell, they plan one last adventure together . . .

From the sunlit courtyard of her family home in Mogadishu to the icy streets of Minneapolis, Life, Interrupted is a deeply personal memoir about migration, motherhood, and the enduring influence of a father’s love.

Raised in a close-knit, multigenerational Somali household, Sahra was shaped early by tradition and by the towering presence of her father, Noor. His voice, his choices, and his values became the compass by which she learned to navigate the world. But when she arrived in the United States as a teenager, everything shifted. As she built a life in America on her own terms, she examined how her father’s hopes and expectations both shaped and confined her and how the love between them, though complex, endured through every chapter of her life. 

Told with fierce honesty, emotional clarity, and quiet resilience, Life, Interrupted is a memoir for anyone who has ever straddled two cultures, two generations, or two selves and searched for belonging in the in-between.

A narrative of enslavement, a satire on colonialism, and a court battle for justice by those tortured and detained during the fight for independence from colonial rule: three comics depict key moments in African history. 

Three unique narratives depicted in comic-book form introduce readers to African historical narratives. In one, readers are offered a translation of a short story, turned into a comic, that satirizes the colonization of Africa by depicting Europeans as cats and Africans as mice. The cats wish to feast on the mice and so create an elaborate ruse by proclaiming that they can turn the inferior mice into cats via education and medication, a ruse that is finally discovered by the mice, who rise up against the cats. In a second, readers are offered a deconstruction of a slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Several historians weigh in to evaluate the memoirs of Olaudah Equiana and decipher whether his claims are true or false; nevertheless, despite some problematic aspects of his narrative and questions that remain as to its veracity, the effect it had on the abolitionist movement is without question. And finally, the third comic details how ordinary Kenyans who had been tortured and abused by the British government during the Kenyan fight for independent from colonial rule were able to obtain justice, decades later, from a British court of law. 

An apparition of his deceased mother appears to law professor, Salim Bardien, in New York on the same day that a massive student protest movement erupts in Cape Town. She comes to foretell a revelation, an invisible stain for him to clean. The news itself—that Salim’s birth was the product of his mother’s illicit affair with a white politician in 1960s South Africa—comes from a newly found half-sister, Bertha. Yet more disorder follows when Bertha reveals that their brother is dying of cancer, and that Salim’s bone marrow may be the only hope of saving him.

How can one secret alter—or even redeem—a life? How strong are familial bonds across distances and generations? And how do the struggles of another era echo those of today? As Salim, now a husband and father, wrestles with these questions in the present, his mother Sawligha’s forbidden love story unfolds in the past.

Set between New York and Cape Town—across eras spanning apartheid’s forced removals and the rise of Black Lives Matter—and moving through lives, deaths, and the liminal spaces between, Mother/Land is the story of family, and of the world we inherit from those that came before us.

In 1995, after hearing Madeleine Albright say on national television that she felt sacrificing 500,000 children to punish Saddam Hussein was “worth it,” Quaker pacifist Joseph Olejak became a political activist. As a form of civil disobedience, he refused to pay income tax, since his tax dollars would go to fund a war he opposed. This was the beginning of a twenty-year journey towards peace–initially by non-compliance with the military industrial complex. Sentenced to 26 weekends in the country jail for failure to pay income taxes, Olejak kept a journal and wrote about his experiences, as well as his growing awareness of peace, justice, and the U.S. prison system. 

As children growing up at Marchbanks, an imposing mansion built high on a hill above a Cape seaside town, Bird and her five siblings love to hear the story of how their father wooed their mother, but they don’t know much about the past of their reclusive grandmother, Ma Bess, who rules Marchbanks from its shadows and keeps her stories firmly locked in her cold heart. 

When Bird’s ten-year-old twin brothers Oliver and Oscar go missing after a day of fishing, Bird appoints herself the family scribe and begins writing to the brothers she refuses to believe are gone for good. The elderly Ma Bess may be the voice in command at Marchbanks, but Bird, the youngest in the family, becomes its all-seeing eye. If Bird learns the truth, though, can life at Marchbanks ever be the same? 

Against the backdrop of complicated, beautiful South Africa in the 1960s, an epic family saga unfolds.

Eve Hunter has grown up on her family's dairy farm in the Lowveld, but she's inherited more than just a love of the land—she's inherited their sorrow. When her father is electrocuted while building a barn, the tragedy exposes the dark secret that has run beneath her family's sadness for years. Eve turns to Jack, her closest friend and neighbor, for comfort.

But Jack belongs to Kate, her older sister, at least that's what their families have always assumed. As Eve and Jack's bond deepens into something more charged, Eve faces an impossible choice to either honor her family’s expectations or to follow her heart and risk everything.

Then Kate comes to her with a devastating request that could change everything between them.

The Light Remains is a story about the weight of family loyalty, the price of independence, and the choices that define us when duty and desire collide.

In the heart of Zululand, the mystery of a missing young woman is lost in the shadow of iSandlwana, the lion shaped mountain that looms over the residence of the valley captured in the vortex of past legends rising from the piled rock monuments guarding the bones of Zulu and British Soldiers killed in the colonial war. 

When the body of a young woman, presumed to be the beautiful Sam Webster, appears briefly on the banks of the flooded Buffalo River, the writer Daniel Hawthorne decides to visit the Websters’ luxury lodge perched at the edge of an old battlefield. Under the guise of researching a new novel about his disgraced ancestor, the lepidopterist Lieutenant Charles Hawthorne, who fought in the Battle of iSandlwana, Daniel starts to investigate the reasons for Sam’s disappearance. The lines between loyalty and betrayal, love and hate, cowardice and courage, redemption and shame, soon become blurred as Daniel gets closer to the truth. 

Written in Craig Higginson’s masterful prose, Shadow Country is at once a war novel, a murder mystery, a multi-layered love story and a robust reassertion of what it is to remain human during the most challenging times.

Chasing Ghost concludes the Knysna Murder Duology as a killing spawns a hunt through a tangled web of drug gangs, political intrigue, and old apartheid mysteries that criss-crosses southern Africa.

As clues smolder on the freeway of Cape Town, Captain Josh Holland and Colonel Gavin Whitall of the SAPS Serious Crimes Unit in George, South Africa are sucked into a dangerous world of corruption overseen by politically appointed leadership as they search for the killer who left a prominent lawyer mutilated and floating in a small row boat on the tranquil waters of the Knysna estuary on South Africa’s southern tip. As Josh and Gavin dig into the victim's past, the body count rises while tantalizing clues from the war in apartheid South Africa point to old hatreds and past murders as potential instigators of the whirlwind of violence the detectives find themselves in. The sprint is on to prevent more killings even while careers and lives are threatened by powerful people and bureaucratic deceit in this twisting and relentless conclusion to Phantom Pass.

The Knysna Murder Duology explores the intricate thought process of solving a murder while navigating the modern reality of politicized policing.

A realistic novel of female spies and coming of age in the Cold War era of British Intelligence.

A Nicollette Beverley Spy Novel

From the jungles of Thailand to the sheep-covered hills of the Falkland Islands, Nicollette Beverley's skills as a special operative in the service of her home country England are put to the test. After a dangerous mission in southeast Asia, Nicollette is accused of betraying her country. Defending herself successfully under the intense scrutiny of her male superiors, Nicollette goes undercover once again--completely alone in a remote Atlantic archipelago off the coast of South America. Her mission has serious international repercussions and puts her life in jeopardy. Will she have the strength and determination to succeed?

The stable atmosphere of Peter Lindenfeld’s childhood in Vienna is destroyed by the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, and the young boy and his mother flee to North America. This forced exodus leads him to Vancouver, then New York, and finally, the academic world in New Jersey. Molded by his original Austrian-Jewish culture and carved by his new environment as an immigrant, Peter, a physicist, crosses paths with Jewish social societies and scientists shaping the new atomic world. Through the microcosm of one man’s life, Peter unfolds the story of immigration, assimilation, destruction and rebirth of home and relationships in post war North America.

Peter Lindenfeld turned 100 years old in March 2025, editing and revising this book right up to his hundredth birthday. Retired from a storied academic career at Rutgers University, Peter lives with his partner in a retirement home only a few blocks from the house that was his home for many decades.

A realistic novel of female spies and coming of age in the Cold War era of British Intelligence.

A Nicollette Beverley Spy Novel

It’s 1976 and on the prompting of her coach and former teacher, Nicolette, a star field hockey defensive back with a typical factory job in rural England, applies for a governmental job. What she doesn’t realize is that the man in the well cut suit at the back of the spectators at her matches, in consultation with her application, is evaluating her, and not just for her prowess on the field, but for her attention to detail, her conduct at school, and her academic record.

When an invitation for a 4 week training at a nearby Royal Air Force Base arrives, Nicolette must decide whether she wants to continue her safe village life or whether to pursue a shadowy world of espionage and secrets in a first for the British government — an all female unit of code breakers and communication specialists.

Nicollette’s journey will change her and her new compatriots as they enter a male dominated world of Cold War deception, sexism, and danger. They will be tested to the limits of their resources as they are given directives leading them into difficult moral choices. Some of them will not not make it through training and those who do will face the constant pressure of secrecy and bodily harm while constantly pushing against glass ceilings. 

From murders and kidnappings in South America to audacious bank robberies in California to extracting sensitive files from the Middle East, a privately owned secret intelligence unit in the heart of downtown San Francisco works covertly to assist various global banking corporations in their fight to maintain security for their clients and assets. 

Dan Holmes, security expert at 2nd National Bank, runs a private covert securities operation unit adjacent to his bank. Unit 33, often working with connections cultivated in government intelligence and foreign spy agencies such as Mossad, works to expose financial crimes and malfeasance. In this collection of nine stories, written in the sparse style of classic short crime narratives, Unit 33 and its agents interrogate criminals, skirt the edges of the law, and find their personal lives invaded by the violence of their professional lives.

In the chaos of disaster, finding other people may bring salvation or a new set of dangers where menace, death, friendship, and love are found in the surprising fissures of a drowning world. 

18-year-old Jack wakes from a blackout to find an apocalyptic landscape, the earth split open and a violent flood engulfing the farming valley where he lives. Orphaned and homeless, Jack begins searching for signs of life. But someone, or something, is stalking him. Through flooded farmlands and mountain terrain, survival rests on a razor-thin edge, the loss or discovery of food and tools the difference between life and death. Jack struggles through a transformed world and into a new life, haunted by the demons and scars of the old.

Set in the near future, Ship in the Sky is a coming-of-age literary work of fiction. Cormac McCarthy's The Road for young adults.

Ganador del Premio Honorífico Skipping Stones 2024

"¡Hola! Soy Epi Dermis, pero mis amigos me llaman ¡Piel!

¡Levanten la mano si sudan, se broncean, tienen comezón, tienen pelo o tienen pecas!

Últimamente me he sentido un poco sensible porque todos tienen algo que decir sobre mí. Pero la gente no siempre dice la verdad.

Mi color no me hace rápido, fuerte, inteligente ni aterrador. Solo quiero gritar: "¡Es solo piel, oye!"

"[Un] libro irresistible, brillante y perfectamente bien escrito que debe ser lectura obligatoria en todos los jardines infantiles y escuelas primarias de nuestro país." — Henry Louis Gates Jr

Un libro infantil ilustrado sobre la evolución del color de la piel, basado en más de 40 años de investigación por la experta antropóloga Dra. Nina Jablonski y la historiadora Dra. Holly Y. McGee, con un prólogo especial del celebrado crítico literario e historiador Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Conoce a Epi Dermis, ¡la guía peculiar e inteligente de tu hijo sobre el origen del color de la piel! Usando ciencia simple y actividades interactivas, Epi lleva a los lectores en una aventura a través de la historia humana para descubrir por qué la piel es el órgano que más trabaja en el cuerpo. Ya sea cómo la migración y el clima cambiaron la necesidad de melanina en nuestra piel, o por qué el sudor es el súper poder secreto de tu cuerpo, ¡Epi tiene toda la información! Y la usa para desafiar falsas narrativas sobre raza y dar a los niños los datos que necesitan para hacer lo mismo.

An aspiring teen journalist (whose curiosity is outshone only by her bravery and dedication) and an adventurer with one last wish on his bucket list team up to uncover the mystery behind “The Boy in the Shadows”– a long-forgotten prodigy of the successful authors Mr. and Mrs. Paradise. 

The unusual pair becomes an even stranger triad when the teen’s explorer uncle joins the quest, hoping to bring wisdom and experience into the wild exuberance of youthful adventure.

Mr. and Mrs. Paradise grew up in hard knock lives, each wounded by their past while also overcoming the odds to mold themselves into successful authors, lauded in the literary world and toasted by the elite. Finding enduring love in each other, the couple built a life around their child. “A genius” in the vein of their own lauded success, they proclaimed, shielding the boy from a childhood of pain and struggle, providing him every advantage they themselves had lacked. Years later, what had become of this child, the offspring of giants in their field, given every opportunity for success?

Young and Hungry is a modern parable of the triumphs and follies of parenthood, the motivations of becoming and being, and the wisdom of living a full spectrum life, each character an archetype found among our own peers and within ourselves.

Nestled in the shadow of the majestic Drakensberg Mountains lies Woodwright Manor, a magnificent family estate. Yet beneath Woodwright’s faded grandeur, mystery—and danger—lurks.

When sixteen-year-old Peter Brewer’s unconventional great-aunt Patricia—one of the last heirs to the once-wealthy Woodwright family—passes away at the age of 105, Peter’s family travels to Patricia’s mansion for her funeral. Thrown into the hothouse of old feuds and eccentric characters, Peter finds himself drawn into the web of family secrets surrounding Patricia’s inheritance. Rumors swirl of a hidden fortune, and Peter’s curiosity grows with each obscure conversation he overhears. When Peter and his new friend Larissa find Patricia’s cryptic love letters to a young man, written decades before, they set out to uncover the hidden truths about Patricia's legacy—and how her secrets may still haunt the Woodwright family. 

Falling for Larissa, Peter can't help wondering if he is doomed to torpedo this relationship because of his own foibles. As Peter is pulled deeper into Patricia’s long-buried past, he starts to realize that others at the funeral might have their own hidden agendas ... and seeking to uncover the truth may put him and Larissa in danger of getting in their way.

Mason O’Connor’s suspenseful Manor of Buried Secrets is a gripping journey of mystery, friendship, passion, and the search for buried treasure.

Quantum Nightmares, a collection of dystopian sci-fi stories, contains the nuggets of bizarre psychological truth that help explain today’s divisive United States, where myth collides with belief and fact is hard to find.

The first short story details how Betty Hill (the infamous first woman to report she was abducted by aliens) offers up her eggs to save a future infertile human species, connecting her mind to the whole stream of human consciousness–past, present and future–in the process. Betty Hill’s dreams frame each of the fifteen stories in the collection. From “The Gender Revealing Party,” set in a not-too-distant future, where scientists have eliminated sexual dimorphism; to “The Five Hives,” in which teens are commanded to belong to a particular hive, each faction is led by one teen who manipulates their hive through social media to be compliant; to “Vicarious Intruders,” which explores how the infamous Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele experimented on his son, this dystopian account warns of a possible future America if it doesn’t return to some semblance of the natural world in both society, politics, and technology.

This collection of short stories can be compared to Clifford Simak’s Dusty Zebraand Other Stories or Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others.

Nothing is as wicked (or mean) as massive small town malfeasance.

EMS Captain turned sleuth Brighid Doran suspects that all is not what it appears on the surface at The Branston Club — a swanky ski lodge being built in her rural Vermont town. While dodging danger and digging up dirt, Brighid faces the ire of small town politics, crooked cops, and an ever deepening hole of deceptions, all the while struggling to cope with the constant deployment of her wife Major Sarah (Sam) Ann Musgrave. With help from attorney Morgan Chadwick and a hovering FBI, Brighid must determine the truth of a scheme with the potential of defrauding her friends and neighbors of millions… but at what cost to her own relationships and where she calls home?

Stolen Mountain is part of The Trowbridge Vermont Series, which includes The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County (2024) and The Trowbridge Dispatch (2025), a collection of short stories.

Laura Richards was a shy American nurse who moved to a remote North China village in 1929 to take in castaway babies. Through 22 years of famines, bandit invasions and wars, she lived in the same poor conditions as the Chinese peasants, while managing to save the lives of nearly 200 destitute children. So why did she refuse the Chinese Communist Party’s offer to make her a national heroine? Laura Richards’ story was too dangerous to tell when she returned to the U.S. in 1951. But when she died thirty years later, the old letters, photographs, and scattered bits of memoir that she left behind were so intriguing to her second cousin Becky Cerling Powers, that Becky began a 25-year quest to discover her quiet relative’s amazing story. Eventually that quest led Becky to China and the orphans themselves. Today, over half a century after Laura left China, her story and her children’s story can finally be told.

An epic story of espionage, love and sacrifice. 

In 1970s Ethiopia, 13-year-old Elen, determined to escape her arranged marriage, secretly abandons her tiny village hoping to find her aunt living in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Meanwhile, Girmai escapes his abusive stepmother after the death of his beloved father, only to end up homeless and starving on the streets of the city. Overcoming the odds, Elen and Girmai both grow up to be successful business owners, each with their own lives and families

When the Derg regime overthrows the government, they turn Asmara into a nightmare of roaming bands of soldiers, who torture and kill civilians with impunity. Refusing to accept the injustice and mass killings of the Red Terror campaign, Elen and Girmai join the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front's (EPLF) underground network to fight for freedom.

The stakes rise as the horror of Derg-sanctioned torture leaks out of dissident detention centers. Elen and Girmai struggle to maintain their precarious fight for justice and a growing passion for each other. As they fall in love, they are faced with impossible choices, tragedy, and heroism in a cause much bigger than their own lives.

Based on a true story, Born at the End of the World is a powerful narrative of patriotism, love, camaraderie, and courage, no less uplifting or appalling than Schindler's List.

A mutilated body is found floating in a small row boat on tranquil waters of the scenic Knysna estuary on South Africa’s southern tip. A high profile victim. Captain Josh Holland, a trainee detective with a background in law, is thrown into the deep end of a major murder investigation, under the wing of the experienced and respected Colonel Gavin Whitall of the SAPS Serious Crimes Unit in George. The pair pursue this elusive murderer, across the country and beyond the borders of South Africa, realizing that to find their quarry, they need to solve a 35-year-old mystery. The chase leads them into the seedy gangland of drug lords and violent criminals that span the rocky tip of Africa, the corrupting tendrils and tantalizing clues reaching back into the African National Congress’s armed struggle in the turbulent 1980s. As they track down a ruthless killer, the body count stacks up in this relentless tale of greed, violence and revenge.

An “R” rated absurdist comic strip for the 12 year old boy hidden in all of us, Dickie critiques western cultural pillars in an age of political and social tribalism.

Imagine Charlie Brown dropping out of highschool, moving to Belgium, and developing a bit of a drinking problem. Meet Dickie, a Belgian yokel with good intentions but dubious critical thinking skills, navigating a modern world with inadequate emotional intelligence. Like the football yanked out from under Charlie, he always ends up on the wrong side of every situation.

This satirical cartoon skewers modern society, shining an uncomfortable light into the dark recesses of our civilization, where our individual, well-meaning choices conflict with our culture’s values and morals. It’s the dark humor of The Far Side and the social/political satire of The Simpsons, a sophisticated humor wrapped in disarmingly simple illustrations with unending tragic consequences for our favorite antihero. Dickie will cause you to laugh out loud while simultaneously blushing – hoping no one will ask you to explain what is so funny.

Dr. Green's prized research bonobo is kidnapped and now the hunt for this unusually intelligent primate has exploded into violence.

...Rory's in a tight spot. Technically, she's in a lab refrigerator, hiding for her life. Who just stormed the primate facility with a gun, leaving the lab tech Andy shot through the neck, dead in a pool of his own blood? For Rory, survival consists of folding herself into the only hiding place available to live another day, affording her the opportunity to search for answers to the violence raging around her. And of course, the mystery of her missing research primate.

A quiet life in Columbus, Ohio is upended as scientist Rory Green finds herself playing the part of sleuth, searching for one of her company’s kidnapped primates as the authorities’ disinterest and dragging feet make life unbearable. Absent colleagues and antagonistic bosses aren’t helping either.

Rory’s research involves animal/human communication. At one time a hot field in military research, it is now in the hands of a small group of scientists dedicated to the behavior and techniques of interspecies understanding. This core of scientists, at one time, included her late father and one of his associates Dr. Porter, a professor at Butler University and Rory’s “adopted” intellectual mother. As she struggles to find clues, Rory recruits old and new friends to help, and in the process digs up shocking secrets that threaten to blow up more in her life than her scientific endeavors, endangering the primates around her–both human and primate.

Bokang’s life is falling apart as his family spirals into poverty and conflict over his father's gambling and alcohol addiction.  

Bokang Damane is a talented outsider, a dreamer, at his prestigious school. His problems mount after writing an essay – not even a controversial essay – on racial or political issues. Just a short paper on suicide. Really? Talk about drama. Now life is just a slog of unsolvable problems. Problem #1: Not black enough for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Yep, that’s what happens when you attend a pompous all boys’ school and live in the suburbs. Problem #2: Family finances are a joke – they can’t even afford Bokang’s initiation as a Xhosa. How can he function without respect, respect that only a Xhosa man commands after the weeks-long initiation ordeal in the countryside? Problem #3: An alcoholic, gambling attorney for a father who expects the world to bend to his will or fist.

Bokang just wants to rap, sketch, and be left alone. Everyone keeps talking about Bokang reaching his true potential, but everyone also keeps getting in the way. So what happens? Boy meets girl – a beautiful girl, Nokwanda. It wouldn’t be a story otherwise. But she comes with her own set of issues. Most of all, Napoleon, her hulking on again, off again boyfriend who has been known to assuage his jealousies with a good old-fashioned beat-down.

It’s a fight to find the flow – a spark to rise above the raging seas of family strife and school pressure and discover a path, though fraught with danger, into the future.

A trans pastor’s fascination with the Scripture inherited from his closeted, fundamentalist father.

When his dad died, Malcolm Himschoot inherited his father’s Bibles. He chose to re-read them, examining his dad’s notes in the margins, teasing out the details of his upbringing and gender identity amid the structures and forms of biblical narratives. For Malcolm, coming out meant exile and verbal excommunication; he embodied all his gay father tried to hide. In Reading Secrets, Malcolm travels alongside the ghost of his father, exploring their inherited homophobia and the American culture that shaped their triumphs and tragedies. With these poetic and evocative meditations, Malcolm transforms the Scripture he inherited, and finds a place in it for himself.

Across countries and decades, The Wanderers weaves a captivating tapestry of human lives, exploring the enduring—and sometimes contradictory—duties of blood and country.

Ruru’s father, a South African freedom fighter, was exiled to Tanzania before she was born, leaving Ruru and her mother to fend for themselves in the township they called home. So when a fatal bus accident claims her mother’s life, Ruru is adrift.

Haunted by her mother’s absence, another loss sits heavy on Ruru’s heart: that of her father, who never returned to the family, or country, he claimed to love. When she learns of his passing, Ruru grieves for the man she never knew, and the answers she would never find.

She seeks solace in Tanzania, where she strikes up an unlikely friendship with her father’s widow, a Rwandan refugee named Efuoa. Efuoa gifts Ruru her father’s journals, and as she reads, she begins to piece together the fragments of a complicated life of deep love, shifting identity, small triumphs and haunting disappointments.

From Author Jane Kurtz, winner of the School Library Journal Best Of The Year and numerous other awards. 

In verse, Oh Give Me a Home relates the story of a girl’s inside-out view of America as she journeys from Ethiopia, searches for friends and belonging.

Kirkus Starred Review 

Booklist Starred Review

Selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Book. 

In elementary school, Jane knows that Maji, Ethiopia, cool and green, perched on a mountainside of waterfalls and monkeys, is the perfect place to live. Or it would be perfect if she had a pet or a best friend.

Jane is full of ideas that include schemes for an animal to play with. A real pet, not the dik dik that dies, the monkey that tries to bite her fingers, nor the elusive cat that lives in the shed and has just absconded with her litter of kittens. But her plans are derailed as Jane learns she is to move back to America with her family.

America and Africa collide as Jane tries to answer the simple question, “Where am I from?” Entering grade school in suburban America for the first time, will she find a best friend a continent away from her real life in Africa? Or is America–where she meets her relatives for laughter and frolicking and big holiday meals–her real home? 

A Booklist Starred Review 

A big-hearted coming-of-age debut about a tiger, a Russian, a model airplane, unexplainable disaster, and a bewildered twelve-year-old boy just trying to find his place in the world.

It’s 1981 in Texarkana, Texas, and Noah Ellis is trying hard to remember. Still reeling from the loss of his father in a suspicious tragedy, Noah is in a tragedy of his own—one that results in another inexplicable death, this time leaving Noah to suffer from severe amnesia. 

After that day, everything changes. Noah becomes an unwitting star in a highly publicized trial. Girls start to notice him, and kids who once bullied him now allow him to run with their pack—at a cost. Standing as always in his big brother’s shadow, Noah also has a little sister he must look out for. But Noah’s still stuck on that day and the accident he can’t remember. As town secrets come to light and summer draws to a close, Noah must find a way to salvage all that he’s lost, and to learn what is truly precious.

"Vermeulen vibrantly, gloriously, unabashedly shares her “imperfect life.”—Starred Review Booklist  

In this graphic memoir, Cape Town artist Karen Vermeulen reflects on the absurdities of contemporary womanhood—from romance and friendship to the ever-elusive “self-care”.

Trust her—Karen is trying really hard to be an adult. Harder than she should probably have to, as a thirty-something with a cat, a flat, and a job. She would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling influencers, always raising the bar of what it means to be a proper woman.

Accompanied by her trademark quirky artwork and signature wit, Karen pokes fun at her attempts to “grow up”: whether that’s becoming a meditation girlie, getting Botox, faking self-confidence, using dating apps, going to therapy, or living the childfree life (unless you count her feline companion Sir Henry, which, of course, she does.)

From emotional support pigs to ectopic pregnancies, cuticle care to under-boob chakras, the laugh-out-loud and deeply perceptive illustrated essays in Good Luck To Us All are a testament to these wild and crazy times.

Long after they’re gone, childhood friendships can define and destroy us—or be the one thing that saves us.

In a small Swedish coastal town in 1986, 12-year-old Elliot dreams of being a video game designer. When he meets Calvin, a stuttering outcast with a knack for drawing, the two make a pact to create the greatest game ever made. Together with neighborhood friends Lisa and Skye, they gather their ideas in a folder, but external influences pull at the strings of their tight knit group.

More than twenty years later, Elliot is a pariah, his status as a highly sought-after designer in the games industry squandered after he sabotages his own studio. But his biggest regret is his estrangement from Calvin—whose tragic passing means that any chance of repair is now gone. But when Elliot receives Calvin’s old folder with their unfinished project, the past unravels before him. He sets out to honor his late friend’s dying wish, gathering the studio back together to build the game of their dreams—while slowly picking up the pieces of his life.

Celebrated Swedish novelist Andreas Roman’s English language debut is a deeply affecting redemption story that explores why we hurt the people we love, and how to come back from it.

A fascinating and darkly funny novel giving readers front-row access to the world of EMS and other first responders — and the stink, sweat, and sex that accompanies long days caring for others at their most vulnerable.

Following in the footsteps of their beloved Boston cop father, Alex Flynn trains as an EMT, and spends years chasing emergencies in an ambulance. But the person Alex becomes is a far cry from the hero they signed up to be.

Over four decades in public safety, Alex encounters a changing America, where veterans are left to rot on streets, women are welcome in dangerous fields but abusers still walk free, and service providers are subjected to intense public scrutiny while being denied the resources they need. After moving from bustling Boston to small town Vermont, Alex discovers an escalating feud between emergency operators and must decide which to protect: their community, or their legacy.

Big-hearted, kaleidoscopic, and honest, The Enumerations explores the far-reaching legacies of mental illness and trauma, and the children left to pick up the pieces of their parents’ emotional lives.

Noah Groome counts to five. At seventeen, he can do more than that, but counting everything in fives—from the steps he takes to the minutes in the day—keeps his raging anxiety at bay. The voice in his head, which he calls The Dark, controls everything he does. And it’s getting worse.

His increasingly severe OCD impacts every member of Noah’s family: his mother Kate, desperate for comfort as her home life falls apart; his father Dominic, who retreats emotionally as old demons rise to the surface; his protective little sister Maddie, forced to be the happy child; and most of all Noah, a troubled teenager trying to protect his loved ones from himself.

Following a violent incident at school, Noah is sent to rehab in Cape Town, where he meets Juliet, a rebellious girl with a sex addiction who isn't afraid of the voice in Noah’s head. As bonds are made and long-held secrets are revealed, Noah is not the only one who will find healing.

Finalist in the Best Thriller Book Awards.

When a missing person’s case becomes a hunt for an active serial killer, Detective Kaitlyn Kruse must use her greatest asset: a supernatural ability to remember her past lives. But the killer may be closer to home than she’s willing to believe.

When a local woman’s body is found in a shallow grave on one of Seattle’s pristine hiking trails, Detective Kaitlyn Kruse and her partner Joe Riley are under pressure to find her killer as swiftly as possible. But more than one body is recovered at the site, and—alarmingly—they all look a bit like Kaitlyn.

Fortunately, Kaitlyn has a secret weapon. She dreams of her past lives, and their memories are always eager to help her solve the crime at hand. But Kaitlyn’s dreams are getting more desperate every night, like one of her past selves is trying to tell her something… and a shady black sedan is tracking her every move. It may be too late to stop the inevitable—but Kaitlyn is determined to get justice for the dead before she becomes one of them. In this rousing crime debut with a touch of the supernatural, the first in her Detective Kaitlyn Kruse series, Karoline Anderson proves she’s got a knack for the thrill.

In A ROAD CALLED DOWN ON BOTH SIDES, Caroline explores her childhood in the remote mountains of Maji, Ethiopia in the 1950s, raised by missionary parents. After struggling to find “home” in the United States, Caroline returns to her beloved Maji as an adult to teach, only to realize it may have been better just to treasure the memories. 

In TODAY IS TOMORROW, Caroline and her husband begin working with civil war refugees in South Sudan and Kenya. Plagued by the ghosts of her past, a failing marriage, and a deep sense of self-inefficacy, Caroline battles with the impact of her work, and finds extraordinary grace within a war-torn people.

Jou velkleur maak jou nie vinnig, sterk, slim of gevaarlik nie. Ek wil sommer skree: “Dis net vel, my pel!”

’n Geïllustreerde kinderboek oor die evolusie van velkleur, gebaseer op navorsing deur die antropoloog dr. Nina Jablonski en die historikus dr. Holly Y. McGee. Saam beskik hulle oor meer as 40 jaar se kennis wat spruit uit hul akademiese werk wat deur ewekniebeoordelaars nagegaan is.

Ontmoet vir Epi Dermis! Epi se ander naam is “Vel”. Epi sal jou mooi vertel hoekom ons velle verskillende kleure het.

Epi sal die wetenskap van velkleur op ’n eenvoudige manier verduidelik. Epi is die orgaan in die liggaam wat die hardste werk! Laat Epi toe om aan jou te verduidelik hoekom sweet jou liggaam se geheime superkrag is! Saam met Epi sal ons die geskiedenis van velkleur ondersoek en uitvind waarom velkleur nie jou gedrag beïnvloed nie.

In Afrikaans vertaal deur Izak de Vries, met ’n voorwoord deur Michael Jonas, direkteur van die Afrikaanse Taalmonument en -museum.

In KARIBA, a young girl’s strange abilities to manipulate water grow out of control. When Siku’s father goes to the Kariba Dam in search of a cure and never returns, she set off on a dangerous journey to find him, through Zimbabwe’s rugged jungles, elephant graveyards, and ancient ruins. On the run from pirates, bootleggers, and shape-shifting prophets ready to use her power to their own advantage, Siku soon discovers a terrible secret that will change her life—and her people—forever. 

In Pearl by the Sea, a young freediver named Pearl struggles to fit into her life on land in her impoverished South African town, where her father can’t pay the bills, and every encounter with her crush Naomi seems to go horribly wrong. But when Pearl meets a giant sea monster in need of a friend, she’ll need help from the people she loves—and her one-eyed pup sidekick—to save him from evil poachers.

Hannah always finds a way to get what she wants.

Daughter to Chloe Cartwright, an eccentric prize-winning writer more interested in politics than parenthood, and sister to a rugby-star brother, Hannah has never excelled at much besides shoplifting. Discovering a talent for petty crime, she steals what she needs to fit in with her wealthier school friends, while at home, her mother's sporadic paychecks often mean an empty fridge.

As an adult, Hannah falls, almost by chance, into a successful career as partner to one of South Africa’s leading chefs. But the universe has a dark sense of humor. When her mother's increasingly erratic behavior forces Hannah home again, she finds herself in a bizarre role reversal, caring for the mother who never had time to care for her. As she searches for ways— both conventional and radical— to ease Chloe’s suffering, past and present blur.

A Skipping Stones Winner, 2024

Hi!! I'm Epi Dermis, but my friends just call me Skin!

Raise your hands if you sweat, tan, itch, have hair, or have freckles!  

I've been feeling pretty sensitive lately because everybody has something to say about me. But people don't always tell the truth.

My color doesn't make me fast, strong, smart, or scary. I just want to shout, "It's just skin, silly!" 

"[A]n irresistibly brilliant, pitch-perfect page-turner that should be a must-read in every Pre-K and Elementary School in our country." — Henry Louis Gates Jr

An illustrated children's book on the evolution of skin color, based on a collective 40+ years of peer-reviewed research from expert anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonski and historian Dr. Holly Y. McGee, with a special foreword from celebrated literary critic and historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Meet Epi Dermis, your kid's quirky, clever guide to the origin of skin color! Using simple science and interactive activities, Epi takes readers on an adventure through human history to find out why skin is the hardest working organ in the body business. Whether it’s how migration and climate changed our skin's need for melanin, to why sweat is your body’s secret superpower, Epi’s got all the facts—and uses them to challenge false narratives about race and give kids the information they need to do the same.

The complete Dark Web trilogy from Peter Church, the master of South African crime fiction. Strap in for the adrenaline-laced Dark Web trilogy, exploring the darkest depths of Cape Town’s criminal underworld. 

In Crackerjack, a sexy engineer hires a reformed hacker in Cape Town to help solve her boss's disappearance—but the hunt quickly becomes deadly.

In Dark Video, two college boys with a camcorder discover the price high bidders in the darkest corners of the internet will pay for sinister videos.

In Bitter Pill, the intoxicating haunts of Cape Town’s nightlife deliver drugged college women to paying patrons, eager for sexual deviation and even murder.

Winner, Outstanding Fiction Book Prize, Zimbabwe National Arts Merit Awards 

Shortlist, 2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards

Best African Books of 2023, African Arguments

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, the breathtaking conclusion to her multiple award-winning City of Kings trilogy, including The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, “Perhaps the most monumental trilogy to come out of Southern Africa.”—Afrocritik

Everyone saw Emil Coetzee drive into the bush the day the ceasefire was announced. Beatrice, busy consoling her friend Kuki over the loss of her son and marriage. Dikeledi, the postwoman who refuses to lean. Tom, the drunk who makes his living impersonating Emil in backroads bars. Vida de Villiers, stuck in a coin-toss choice. Saskia, the feisty reporter determined to ruin Emil’s name. Marion, the enigmatic lover he left behind. Mrs. Louisa Alcott, the lonely farm wife reading Mills & Boon romances in her best dress, waiting for her life to begin. But nobody saw him drive out of it. 

So begins the investigation of Spokes Moloi, the first black chief inspector in the City of Kings, who on the eve of his retirement is handed one final crime: the possible murder of Mr. Coetzee, the notorious head of the Organization of Domestic Affairs, who disappeared on the same day the country's independence beckoned. In investigating Emil’s disappearance, Spokes' path collides with an assortment of witnesses with the best and worst of intentions—including a pair of corrupt investigators with an eye towards framing the guerrilla icon Golide Gumede for Emil’s murder, and the insatiable public, infatuated with Emil and unable to come to terms with the fact that the future they had so long anticipated had, at last, arrived.

With a nation in flux and his beloved wife Loveness forever present in his mind, Spokes’ investigation leads him back to the very beginning— and gives him one last chance to solve the twenty-year-old murder case that determined both the path of his life and destiny of his country.

From beloved Congolese comics creator Barly Baruti and Belgian comics critic Thierry Bellefroid, translated from the original French by Batchelder Award-winning translator Ivanka Hahnenberger

A Harlem gangster’s trip to Central Africa to attend the legendary 1974 Ali-Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match becomes a one-way ticket to the seedy underground of Zaire—complete with espionage, murder, and a communist plot to overthrow Zaire's infamous President Mobutu.

When Ernest, a low-level gangster from Harlem, wins tickets to travel to Zaire to attend the "Rumble in the Jungle," the now-legendary bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, he’s eager to reconnect with his African roots and escape the ruthless gang leaders he's indebted to back home. But in Zaire, Ernest becomes entangled in an Angolan coup against the country's embattled president Mobutu Sese Seko—inspired by Che Guevara himself—and soon realizes that Zaire may hold even more dangers for him than Harlem ever could.

A Cold-War-era thriller set against the backdrop of a landmark moment in sports history, Chaos in Kinshasa features Barly Baruti’s characteristic art and Thierry Bellefroid's punchy dialogue woven in with the elements of a great gangster story—sex, spies, bribes, and murder. A thrill ride through a pivotal moment in Cold War, African, and sports history.

Brittle Paper's "Anticipated African Books of 2024"

From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart.

Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception—the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans.

Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones . . . flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us . . . visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul.

By 1996, millions of South Sudanese have been killed, died of starvation, or fled the decades-long civil war ravaging their country. So when the Presbyterian Church in the United States begins recruiting a development team to work with war refugees in the region, Caroline and her husband Mark are eager to help. But it’s only months before ghosts from their individual pasts whistle in to disrupt their marriage and their new postings.

Caroline finds relief in teaching and peace work in South Sudan, but the heavy responsibility she now carries for dozens of vulnerable families—coupled with the prevailing ideas of Biblical womanhood that put pressure on her personal life—makes it increasingly clear that Caroline is under-prepared for the high-stakes crisis in which she is now embedded.

Through a number of consequential mistakes and increasingly debilitating self-doubt, Caroline clings to hope that her willingness to stand with the South Sudanese will count for something in the end. A deeply personal examination of South Sudan at war—and a woman at war with herself—Today is Tomorrow shines a warm light on the darkest of places.

 This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. These evocative, often prescient, stories showcase new and emerging writers from across Africa to investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more. 

 In Disruption, authors from across Africa use their stories to explore the concept of change—environmental, political, and physical—and the power or impotence of the human race to innovate our way through it. From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s “Before We Die Unwritten,” to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s “Static,” to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter,” Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster. Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present.

 Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.

"This transcendent and powerful testament to the indomitable human spirit is not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

Book 1 in the City of Kings trilogy

With the lightest of touches, and with an overlay of magical-realist beauty, this novel sketches, through the lives of a few families and the fate of a single patch of ground, decades of national history (a country in Southern Africa that is never named) - from colonial occupation through the freedom struggle, to the devastation wrought by the sojas, the HIV virus, and The Man Himself. At turns mysterious and magical, but always honest, The Theory of Flight explores the many ways we lose those we love before they die.

From Commonwealth Book Prize Shortlisted Author Bridget Pitt

Finalist for the Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction and the Sunday Times Literary Fiction Long List 

A Zulu foundling and a white missionary’s child raised as brothers in a world intent on making them enemies. A sweeping tale of identity, kinship, and atonement, set in 1870s South Africa, a decade of ruthless colonial aggression against the nation's indigenous people.

Moses, a Zulu baby discovered on a riverbank, and Daniel, the son of white missionaries, are raised as brothers on the Umzinyathi mission in 19^th century Zululand, South Africa. As an infant, Daniel narrowly escapes an attack by a rhino and develops an intense corporeal connection to animals which challenges the religious dogma on which he is raised. Despite efforts by his adoptive mother to raise the boys as equals, Moses feels like an outsider to both white and Zulu society, and seeks certainty in astronomy and science. Only through each other do the brothers find a sense of belonging.

At Umzinyathi, Moses and Daniel are cushioned from the harsh realities of the expanding colony in neighboring Natal—where ancient spiritualism is being demonized, vast natural beauty faces rampant destruction, and the wealth of the colonizer depends on the engineered impoverishment of the indigenous. But when they leave the mission to work on a relative’s sugar estate and accompany him on a hunting safari, the boys are thrown into a world that sees their bond as a threat to the colonial order, and must confront an impossible choice: adapting to what society expects of them or staying true to each other.

With elements of magic realism, Eye Brother Horn is the heart-wrenching story of how two children born of vastly different worlds strive to forge a true brotherhood with each other and with other species, and to find ways to heal the deep wounds inflicted by the colonial expansion project.

2023 ALA Best Graphic Novels for Children

The daughter of a river god, raised by a human father and bound to a tragic destiny. An African fantasy-adventure graphic novel inspired by the mythology of the Zambezi River and the history of the Kariba Dam, one of the largest dams ever constructed.

When Tongai ventures to the Kariba Dam to find a cure for Siku and never returns, she sets off to find him with the help of Amedeo, the young son of Kariba’s chief engineer. Together, they traverse elephant graveyards, rugged jungles, and ancient ruins, outrunning pirates, bootleggers, and shape-shifting prophets ready to use Siku to their own advantage. But Siku soon discovers that her father has been shielding a terrible secret: Siku is actually the daughter of the Great River Spirit, Nyaminyami, and the only way to bring about the necessary rumuko - a ritual which has brought balance to the Zambezi for centuries - is for Siku to give up the only life she's ever known.

With the future of the Shonga resting on her shoulders, Siku must journey to the source of the river to understand the ancient power hidden within her. 

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING ANIMATION TEAM BEHIND THE FILMS KHUMBA, ZAMBEZIA, AND SEAL TEAM

2024 YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens

2023 ALA Best Graphic Novels for Children

Pearl has always felt more comfortable in the sea than surrounded by the people in her sleepy South African town who always seem to let her down. But when a new friend from below the surface is taken by poachers, Pearl may need a little help after all.

Since her mother left, Pearl has spent more and more time in the ocean, fishing to help her father pay the bills. But when she gets mixed up with a group of illegal abalone poachers and starts diving near a restricted wreck, Pearl meets an ancient sea monster named Otto—who isn’t quite as monstrous as she thought. And when Otto’s enemies come back to finish what they started, Pearl is the only one who can save him, but only if she has the courage to let go of her past and open up to others—including the girl from class she’s got a crush on. 

With her one-eyed pup sidekick and a whole lot of nerve, Pearl may just be able to save Otto and finally tell the truth to her father… and, more importantly, to herself. With vibrant full-color illustrations, Pearl of the Sea is a South African adventure story exploring how we are both bound to and freed by nature, seen through the eyes of a tough teen-aged heroine determined to live life by her own rules. 

A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2022 

A USBBY 2023 Outstanding International Book

A 2022 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner (Graphic Novels & Comics Category)

Honorable mention, 2023 Children's Africana Book Awards

2022 VLA Graphic Novel Diversity Award Overfloweth honoree

Nominated for the TLA Maverick List

 All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa revives six true stories of resistance by marginalized South Africans against the country’s colonial government in the years leading up to Apartheid. In six parts—each of which is illustrated by a different South African artist—All Rise shares the long-forgotten struggles of ordinary, working-class women and men who defended the disempowered during a tumultuous period in South African history. From immigrants and miners to tram workers and washerwomen, the everyday people in these stories bore the brunt of oppression and in some cases risked their lives to bring about positive change for future generations.

This graphic anthology breathes new life into a history dominated by icons, and promises to inspire all readers to become everyday activists and allies. The diverse creative team behind All Rise, from an array of races, genders, and backgrounds, is a testament to the multicultural South Africa dreamed of by the heroes in these stories—true stories of grit, compassion, and hope, now being told for the first time in print.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

A 2023 Skipping Stones Honoree

A School Library Journal Best Book of 2022

Part of Niki Daly's Lolo series

More fun is on the way for Lolo in Fly High, Lolo, the fourth book in Niki Daly's Lolo series for beginning readers. Lolo is kind-hearted, creative, full of joy, and— whether it’s making homemade Christmas decorations from recycled plastics, or stepping in when the school play goes awry—she always knows just what to do to save the day!

In this collection of easy-to-read stories, we meet Lolo, a girl who lives in South Africa with her mother and grandmother, Gogo. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Fly High, Lolo follows Lolo as she explores her world, and the new adventures each day brings.

In Fly High, Lolo, Lolo gets an unexpected role in the school play, meets Miss Teen the Beauty Queen, goes on a beach clean-up with Mama’s new friend, and makes beautiful recycled Christmas decorations.

• 2022 Shortlist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
• Winner, Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa
• Winner, 2011 Herman Charles Bosman Award
• Winner, Sunday Times Fiction Prize
• Winner, The Sunday Times Literary Award

Sipho, a 17-year-old from the Umlazi township, drops out of high school and joins a car hijacking syndicate to make a name for himself and escape his family’s low-income life. Along with hijacking partners Musa and Vusi, Sipho learns the tricks of the dangerous trade and pushes deeper into the underbelly of Umlazi under the guidance of gang leader Sibani, while partying heavily and juggling different women nightly alongside his longtime girlfriend Nana.

Candid and unapologetic, Young Blood is the story of the intricate balance of circumstance and choice, swift gain and incredible loss, as Sipho finds out how far he can push his luck before the damage is irrevocable – and the consequences deadly. Both a red-hot crime novel of car heists, sex, and rival gangs and a coming of age story of a teenager navigating the costs of the fast life, Young Blood reveals the devastating violence and raw beauty of life in South Africa’s townships.

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

Book 2 in the City of Kings trilogy, including  her multiple award-winning debut novel The Theory of Flight

Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But why has Emil's life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it?

Continuing the interconnected stories she began in her award-winning novel The Theory of Flight, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu explores decades of history through the eyes of one man on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war. With sympathy, complexity, and penetrating insight, The History of Man explores what makes a man, a father, and a nation.

Employed to find a set of missing uncut diamonds, ex-addict Rae Valentine, a feisty, sexy, intrepid, newly-minted Private Investigator, falls prey to the gang of men intent to use her and destroy her for sport. Rae can’t outrun the storm of righteous fury as the vicious gang escalate their violence. As a victim of a kidnapping, she does what she can to protect herself from these depraved and barbarous men, and to save her PI partner, Vincent Saldana, from certain death.

From Cape Town to the banks of the Orange River in Namibia, the tension rises as Rae fights for her life and discovers that the missing diamonds are linked to the illicit dealings of the brutal gang without conscience.

A CBC Spring 2024 Showcase Selection

In the final years of South Africa’s Apartheid era, an unlikely trio—a sheltered white rugby player, a black farmworker’s son, and an Indian shopkeeper’s daughter—discover the consequences of knowing the truth and having the courage to speak it. Halley’s Comet is the coming-of-age story of Pete de Lange, a white 16-year-old schoolboy, set in small-town South Africa in 1986. Pete lives a relatively sheltered life, primarily concerned with girls and rugby— until one January night changes everything. Thrust together with two complete strangers—Petrus, a black farmworker’s son and Sarita, an Indian shopkeeper’s daughter—the trio find themselves running for their lives from the vicious Rudie, whose actions will ripple far beyond that fateful night. This era-defying friendship—sparked by a shared secret— challenges everything Pete thought he knew and believed. And when anti-Apartheid revolutionaries set their sights on the town, it will change the course of the three young people’s lives forever. Halley’s Comet is a story of friendship, love, change, taking chances, hope, a comet, and some pretty cool 80s music.

Somewhere in South Africa, a farm comes under heavy attack. No shooters in sight. Only one thing is certain: The attackers are savagely resolute. A diverse group of people barricade themselves inside the farmhouse: black and white; women, men, and children; bosses and workers; a police officer; random visitors. Who is the target of the attack? What has motivated it? Politics? Revenge? Greed? Drugs? Weapons? But do the people outside know more than those indoors? The snipers who are trying to operate in the dark of night? Who will die, who will survive? Who is pulling the strings? Who will be the winners, who will be the losers? And how long can eight hours actually be?

Eight hours, minute by minute. Constant changes in perspective, piercing precision. An explosive mixture of psychological thriller and Neo-western with a political subtext.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Part of Niki Daly's Lolo series

Lolo's back for a whole new set of adventures in You're a Star, Lolo, the third book in Niki Daly's Lolo series for beginning readers. Whether it's turning her garden into a snail farm when snails eat up her precious tomato plant, or using her hair ribbons to save the day when a friend's car breaks down – there's a unique solution to every problem, and Lolo is going to find it!

These stories invite young readers into the life and adventures of fun-loving, clever, and curious Lolo, a young girl living in South Africa. Along with her mother and grandmother, Gogo, she can always find a way to make the best out of any situation— even when things don't go as planned.

In You're a Star, Lolo, join Lolo as she makes her mom an extra-special soup, goes on vacation with her Gogo, and even tracks down the scary Ghorra-Ghorra-Hoooaaah-Bwoooooo-Monster sound she keeps hearing at night!

“A fast-paced and gripping thriller—expect several twists along the way.” —Cosmopolitan

Bitter Pill, part of Church’s dark web trilogy, is a gripping thriller that sweeps through the intoxicating haunts of Cape Town’s nightlife to explode in an adrenaline-laced sprint through the violent landscape of stalking, sexual deviation, and murder.

• One of "10 Novels You Should Read in June" —CrimeReads
• Starred review, Publishers Weekly
• Listed on CrimeReads' "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020: Summer Reading Edition"
• Listed in the New York Times "Globetrotting" 2020 preview

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Part of Niki Daly's Lolo series

Hooray! Hurrah! Hurray! for Lolo, the energetic, curious, and fun-loving girl at the center of Niki Daly's series of books for beginning readers. She's thoughtful, funny, and always ready for anything. Whether it's helping to babysit baby Bongi or learning all about the library, she's sure to do it with kindness and humor.

In this collection of easy-to-read stories, we meet Lolo, a girl who lives in South Africa with her mother and grandmother, Gogo. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Hooray for Lolo follows Lolo as she explores her world, and the new adventures each day brings.

In Hooray for Lolo, Lolo gets angry with her best friend, finds a favorite library book, goes to the hospital, and helps to look after Baby Bongi.

Cape Town is a place between. Between two oceans, between first and third worlds, between east and west. So too the majority of its citizens, a people between black and white, native and settler, African and European. The Cape coloureds. This tween-ness complicates and perplexes. It threatens key conceptions we have about the histories, identities, and cultures of those who live on the continent. It makes us wonder how we can understand a city that is most assuredly in Africa, though not—seemingly—of it?

By exploring these liminal spaces of tween-ness—between the Cape’s breath-taking beauty and its shattering violence, between its creative cosmopolitanism and its crude racial divisions, between its glitzy wealth and its grinding poverty—we can begin to understand the soul of this town. Haunted by its past, unsure of its future. Always emerging, never arriving. A sun-drenched peninsula best viewed through a prism noir.

Compact and concise, this book allows readers to quickly identify the unique pulse of the city, its throbbing historical, social, cultural and political beat that underlies the transactions between all Capetonians. It is not a guidebook, but a perfect companion to one, filling in the intimate details that other books leave out.

Written in accessible, punchy prose, Cape Town: A Place Between offers a portrait rendered with humor, wit and passion, based on the author’s twenty-year relationship with the Cape.

Family secrets run deep for Grace, a young girl growing up in Cape Town during the 1980s. Her family secrets spill over into adulthood, and threaten to ruin the respectable life she has built for herself.

When an old childhood friend emerges after disappearing a decade earlier during a clash with apartheid riot police in the Cape Flats, where South Africa’s coloured community makes its home, Grace’s memories of her childhood come rushing back, and she is confronted, once again, with the loss that has shaped her. She has to face up to the truth or continue to live a lie—but the choice is not straightforward. Unmaking Grace is an intimate portrayal of violence, both personal and political, and its legacy on one person’s life. It meditates on the long shadow cast by personal trauma, showing the inter-generational imprint of violence and loss on people’s lives.

The second installment in Peter Church's Dark Web Trilogy

Alistair Morgan is the key. A gifted law student with a glittering career in the offing, Alistair seems to have it all: looks, charm and money. But his privileged lifestyle is about to be turned upside down as he is lured deeper and deeper into the sinister online world of Dark Video, where reality blurs and morals unravel.

Toggling between the urban landscape of Africa’s southern tip and Seattle, Washington in the mid- to late-2000s, just as YouTube and other video sharing sites were getting started, Dark Video explores the most disturbing and darkest corners of the digital world, where some people will pay for unimaginable videos and others make money in the most depraved way possible.

Cat Among the Pigeons allows us to laugh our way to a reconnection with the creatures we co-evolved with, highlighting their importance to our collective past and precarious futures. A reminder in our increasingly urban world that the strange and fantastical still roam, crawl, wiggle, swim and soar through the terrestrial and aquatic world, ready to delight and surprise us.

Caroline Kurtz grew up in the remote mountains of Maji, Ethiopia in the 1950s. Inside her mud adobe home with her missionary parents and three sisters, she enjoyed American family life. Outside, her world was shaped by drums and the joy cry; Jeep and mule treks into the countryside; ostriches on the air strip; and the crackle of several Ethiopian languages she barely understood but longed to learn.

She felt she’d been exiled to a foreign country when she went to Illinois for college. She returned to Ethiopia to teach, only to discover how complex working in another culture and language really is. Life under a Communist dictatorship meant constant outages—water, electricity, sugar, even toilet paper. But she was willing to do anything, no matter how hard, to live in Ethiopia again. Yet the chaos only increased—guerillas marched down from the north, their t-shirts crisscrossed by Kalashnikov bandoliers. When peace returned, Caroline got the chance she’d longed for, to revisit that beloved childhood home in Maji. But maybe it would have been better just to treasure the memories.

Caroline Kurtz speaks Amharic fluently and spearheads development in Ethiopia’s Maji District, introducing apples, solar energy, and women’s cottage industries.

Religious and ethnic conflict may be the Horn of Africa's most enduring recent legacy. But beneath its recent history of war and displacement lies human stories—families, clans, lovers, neighbors, and friends, all bound together through common cultural, religious, and historical ties.

The Lion's Binding Oath, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf's collection of short stories, introduces readers to the people of Somalia and their struggles: their humanity, faith, identity, friendship, and family bonds, as whispers of war grow louder around them. Through stories that span the years before and during Somali's civil war, Yusuf weaves together Somalia's political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country's love of poetry, music, and soccer.

Yusuf's collection is a powerful examination of love and resilience in a country torn apart by war, and written with deep compassion for the lives of its characters.

• From the Dublin Literary Award and Women's Prize for Fiction longlisted author of The Woman Next Door and An Unusual Grief
  
• Winner of the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize
• Shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature
• Featured in the New York Times' "Globetrotting" sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world
• One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa" The Globe and Mail

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bom Boy was published in South Africa by Modjaji Books in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical acclaim. She lives in Johannesburg.

Winner of the 2017 German Crime Fiction Prize

Mistaken identities, racial profiling, and class politics form the backdrop of this intense thriller. The Wall tackles the issues of gun violence, racism, and exclusion in contemporary South Africa—problems that are equally relevant in the United States.

"Annas works like a film director, bombarding us with shot and counter-shot. The reader races to the explosion… an actual shootout. THE WALL is a fantastic, yet very funny, novel... Fast, hard and dangerous. A cheetah in book form." Die Welt (Germany)

"Fear and distrust of anyone who counts as 'the other.' [...]…jam-packed with action, thrills and suspense. A brilliant success!" Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany)

"Ducking, hiding, running - these are what drive the novel's dynamics, its minute-by-minute choreography. Instincts dictate behaviors. In this case: prejudice, aversions, and racism." Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)

Before writing novels, Max Annas worked as a journalist. A renowned film critic, his first novel, The Farm, is currently under film production in South Africa.

The first book in Peter Church's Dark Web Trilogy

Young, bright and sexy, Carla Vitale has been handpicked to run Supertech, Africa’s leading independent Engineering firm. Then one Friday afternoon in Cape Town, her dream is shattered. Her boss and mentor, Nial Townley, disappears, his luxury vehicle is found in a crevice at the bottom of Chapman’s Peak and $USD 20m is missing from the Supertech’s overseas accounts. Three months later and the police are no closer to solving the riddle.

No job, no car, no phone, Carla turns to the one person she believes can help: software hacker turned day-trader, Daniel Le Fleur. But Le Fleur’s maintaining a low profile in Bantry Bay and he’s in no mood to ruin the serendipity.

After a successful career in Information Technology, Peter Church’s first crime novel, Dark Video, was published in South Africa and Australia in 2008. He has since published Bitter Pill, a crime thriller, and Blue Cow Sky, “a novella of sexual proportions,” both in South Africa. Church is a member of SA PEN. He lives in Cape Town with his wife, the artist Paula Church, and three children. Crackerjack is his debut in North America.

In her debut collection of short fiction, Reneilwe Malatji invites us into the intimate lives of South African women—their whispered conversations, their love lives, their triumphs and heartbreaks. This diverse chorus of female voices recounts misadventures with love, family, and community in powerful stories woven together with anger, politics, and wit. Malatji crafts an engaging collection full of rich, memorable characters who navigate work, love, patriarchy, and racism with thoughtfulness, strength, and humor.

Selected as a 2019 Outstanding International Book by the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY)

Ntshingila's lyrically wrought North American debut is a slim yet satisfying novel sure to trigger a wide range of emotions."Kirkus, starred review

"It is a story about joy and hope and courage, and what it means to lift up others and be lifted oneself, and how one young girl found her voice in a world seemingly determined to take it away."Shelf Awareness, starred review

The terrible thing that steals 14-year-old Mvelo’s song leads to startling revelations and unexpected opportunities.

Life wasn’t always this hard for 14-year-old Mvelo. There were good times living with her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Now her mother is dying of AIDS and what happened to Mvelo is the elephant in the room, despite its growing presence in their small shack. In this Shakespeare-style comedy, the things that seem to be are only a façade and the things that are revealed hand Mvelo a golden opportunity to change her fate. We Kiss Them With Rain explores both humor and tragedy in this modern-day fairy tale set in a squatter camp outside of Durban, South Africa.

A time of bloody conflict and great turmoil. The slave trade expands from the east African coast. Europeans spread inland from the south. And one young boy is destined to change the future of southern Africa. This retelling of the Shaka legend explores the rise to power of a shrewd young prince who must consolidate a new kingdom through warfare, mediation, and political alliances to defend his people against the expanding slave trade.

"A worthy introduction that offers a young Anglophone audience entry into a legend of Africa without the annoyance of overtranslation and with refreshingly three-dimensional characters." --Kirkus

"Deftly written and superbly illustrated by Luke Molver, "Shaka Rising: A Legend of the Warrior Prince" is a truly extraordinary and entertaining graphic novel that will decidedly prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library graphic novel collections for readers ages 16 to 86." Midwest Book Review

Luke Molver is a graphic novelist whose world is fueled by the art of storytelling. He lives in Cape Town, where reality continues to interfere with his daily life.

A dark, intriguing, and satisfying tale with strong characters.

They find her body in the veld near Cape Town, South Africa. A teenager. She's not the first. Recently widowed Detective Jan Magson has to look mothers and fathers in the eye. Has to answer their questions. He can't. He can't even answer his estranged son's questions about how his wife died. Alone with his pistol at night, a good man faces his inner darkness.

A tense and grisly debut novel of suspense from South Africa.--Kirkus, starred review

After obtaining degrees in Psychology and Criminology, Martin Steyn studied serial killers and profiling. Dark Traces is his first novel in English.

Rejected by everyone except her extraordinary daughter, Caz lives a secluded life in rural South Africa. But a single phone call from her estranged sister shatters this refuge. This phone call is the first step down an ever-widening tunnel into Caz's painful past. From the Congo's sparkling diamond mines to Belgium's finest art galleries, from Africa's civil unrest to its deeply spiritual roots, Sacrificed seamlessly crosses borders and decades with a fiercely captivating story.

Chanette Paul has published forty-one bestselling romance, thriller, and crime novels in her native Afrikaans in South Africa. This is her first book to be translated into English.