Book picks similar to
Star of the Morning by Pamela Jooste
africa
fiction
south-africa
not-reviewed
The Karma Suture
Rosamund Kendal - 2008
Finding imaginative ways of saving patients is her life's work, though finding a man who wants more than a one-night stand would be nice as well. Both harrowing and hilarious, her journey of self-discovery leads to the bedsides of the patients who make her weep and the men who make her weak. Based on the author's own experiences as a doctor in South Africa, this medical drama packs a quirky, feminine punch as it reveals powerful lessons on pain, sex, love, and ultimately, hope.
Clara Andrews Starter Pack: The first two novels in the hilarious smash hit series.
Lacey London - 2016
your new best friend! With a love of cocktails and wine, a fantastic job in the fashion industry and the world’s greatest best friends, Clara Andrews thought she had it all. That is until a chance meeting introduces her to Oliver, a devastatingly handsome American designer. Trying to keep the focus on her work, Clara finds her heart stolen by Michelin starred restaurants and luxury hotels. As things get flirty, Clara reminds herself that inter-office relationships are against the rules, so when a sudden recollection of a work’s night out leads her to a cheeky, charming and downright gorgeous barman, she decides to see where it goes. Clara soon finds out that dating two men isn't as easy as it seems... Will she be able to play the field without getting played herself? Join Clara as she finds herself landing in and out of trouble, re-affirming friendships, discovering truths and uncovering secrets. Book Two - Clara Meets the Parents Almost a year has passed since Clara found love in the arms of delectable American Oliver Morgan and things are starting to heat up. The nights of tequila shots and bodycon dresses are now a distant memory, but a content Clara couldn't be happier about it. It’s not just Clara things have changed for. Marc is settling in to his new role as Baby Daddy and Lianna is lost in the arms of the hunky Dan once again. When Oliver declares it time to meet the Texan in-laws, Clara is ecstatic and even more so when she discovers that the introduction will take place on the sandy beaches of Mexico! Will Clara be able to win over Oliver’s audacious mother? What secrets will unfold when she finds an ally in the beautiful and captivating Erica? Clara is going to need a little more than sun, sand and margaritas to get through this one...
Girl 43
Maree Giles - 2014
The graffiti on the holding room wall says it all: 'Gunyah is hell on earth'. And Ellen's about to find out why. Ellen was never the daughter her mother wanted. Patent leather shoes and frilly dresses just weren't her thing and, at age fourteen, she's ready to leave school and find her own way. No one is going to stop her from going where she wants, doing what she wants, and hanging out with Robbie. Or so she thinks. But when the police turn up, Ellen is deemed to be in 'moral danger' and is sentenced to the Gunyah Training School for Girls. Suddenly, she's no longer Ellen, she's Girl 43, and she has to follow the rules, work hard and - most importantly - stay quiet. When it's discovered that she's pregnant, there's no respite from the staff. Told she isn't capable of bringing up a child, they twist the truth to make her cooperate. But however hard they try, they can't destroy the connection between a mother and her child . . . or can they? Drawn from experiences in Parramatta Girls' Home in the seventies, "Girl 43" is a story that could have come straight from today's headlines about the shocking treatment of innocent children and teens by people in the very institutions that were supposed to protect them.
Rosie
Bill Whiting - 2018
His two children work abroad and he is alone after the funeral and grows deliberately recluse. A few weeks later he’s puzzled and annoyed when a lady arrives at his home delivering a schnauzer puppy. Called Rosie, it was ordered by his wife to be delivered to him after her death, together with a note from her. His wife had always wanted a dog but Will didn’t like them and had never agreed. But after a very difficult initial spell, he gradually grows to love Rosie and appreciate the companionship his little new friend brings to his life. Rosie also helps him overcome his grief and appreciate more than ever the wise and loving foresight of his wife. Two travel adventures follow in Switzerland and Austria where doggie-centred dramas ensue - including the injury and loss of Rosie. All dogs have a small monetary market value and many are worth nothing at all. But to their loving owners they are priceless.
Heat for Three
Nicole Stewart - 2017
Kess Houston Kess is a Savannah, Georgia real estate agent who finds herself right at home in a menage a trois with two avant-garde artists. After giving Jack and Selwyn the house of their dreams, Kess is ready to be a part of their world. There’s just one problem: Jack and Selwyn are big names in Hollywood. Kess is a simple country girl. They go together like bright lights and fireflies. Jack Cheney Jack wants to spend more time with the people he loves, spending the days nurturing their love and the nights in pure sexual bliss. But Selwyn’s schedule as a celebrity fashion designer keeps him busy. Now Kess wants to break into celebrity real estate to meet more of their VIP friends. Is it wrong to want to keep his lovers to himself? Selwyn Briggs Selwyn is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He simply wants to make Kess and Jack happy. But with Kess expanding her business and Jack vying for more attention, it seems impossible for all three to get their needs met. And sometimes three times the pleasure can mean three times the complications.
Heat for Three (and Home for Three) is an extremely steamy, ultra high heat Bisexual / Menage MMF romance with explicit scenes, first time straight to gay experiences, and a highly satisfying HEA ending!
The Profiler Diaries: From the case files of a police psychologist
Gérard Labuschagne - 2020
The Boy from the Wild
Peter Meyer - 2017
Peter Meyer grew up on an African game reserve. His idyllic childhood was spent running wild in the bush with Zulu friends and other free spirits. His adventures in the wilderness honed his character, nurtured by an inspirational father who taught him to believe that everything is possible. Before he had turned eight he had survived Rhino attacks, close encounters with Buffalo and Wildebeest — and the terror of twice being bitten by snakes. His pets were a baby Elephant, Warthogs and an Ostrich that frequented his backyard. He lived in a world where beauty was tempered by daily struggles for survival. He discovered that the reality of the bush is often heart-breaking, such as when an Nyala doe that he had hand-reared was taken by predators. He learned through first-hand experience that the cycle of life on Africa’s feral outbacks can be as unforgiving as it is magnificent. These were the key lessons from the wilds of Africa that he took with him when his family left the continent; from school days in England where his tough upbringing resulted in being a top sportsman, to studying at an exclusive Swiss hotel school and becoming one of the youngest directors in the Hilton group, managing exotic resorts in Jamaica and the Middle East. He was on top of the world when everything came crashing down due to tragedy. Drawing on resilience learned in the African bush, he started to rebuild his life, becoming an actor and model, clawing his way up in one of the most critically demanding industries in the world. This is an inspiring true story of living the dream — a dream nurtured by the freedom and self-reliance of growing up wild in Africa.
Frontline
Hilary Jones - 2021
From wars to a pandemic, the discovery of penicillin to the birth of the NHS, successive generations of the Burnett family are at the vanguard of life-saving developments in medicine.Frontline is the story of an aristocrat's daughter who joins the war effort as a nurse. In a field hospital in rural France she meets Will, a dockworker's son serving as a stretcher-bearer. As rumours of an armistice begin to circulate, so too does a mysterious respiratory illness that soldiers are referring to as the 'Spanish flu'.
We Are Not Such Things: The Murder of a Young American, a South African Township, and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation
Justine van der Leun - 2016
Inspired by the story, Justine van der Leun, an American writer living in South Africa, decided to introduce it to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then van der Leun stumbled on another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The story of Amy Biehl’s death, it turned out, was not the story hailed in the press as a powerful symbol of forgiveness, but was in fact more reflective of the complicated history of a troubled country. We Are Not Such Things is the result of van der Leun’s four years investigating this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, forgiveness, and redemption. It is a gripping journey through the bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath—and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and the decades that followed provides an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Like Katherine Boo and Tracy Kidder, van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects. With her stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents, she provides a lens through which we come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation—truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class—are universal in scope and powerful in resonance. We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson just as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history.
What Will People Say?
Rehana Rossouw - 2015
Hanover Park. The heart of the Cape Flats. It is 1986. Michael Jackson and Brenda Fassie rule every hi-fi. Princess Di and George Michael hairstyles are all the rage. There are plans to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1976 student uprising.Neville and Magda Fourie live in Magnolia Court with their three children. They are trying to ‘raise them decent’ in a township festering with gang wars and barricaded with burning tyres. Suzette, the eldest, is beautiful and determined to escape her family’s poverty. Nicky, the sensitive middle child, has ambitions to use her intellect as a way out. Anthony, the only son, attracted by power and wealth, is lured away from his family by a gangster. In What Will People Say? a rich variety of township characters – the preachers, the teachers, the gangsters and the defeated – come to life in vivid language as they eke out their lives in the shadows of grey concrete blocks of flats.Which members of the Fourie family will thrive, which ones will not survive?Generously spiced with Cape Flats slang; lots of vivid and gritty description that give an authentic feel to the story; plenty of plot – the writer draws us in and makes us curious about what will happen next; and very human characters we come to care about.
The Yearning
Mohale Mashigo - 2016
Marubini is a young woman who has an enviable life in Cape Town, working at a wine farm and spending idyllic days with her friends ... until her past starts spilling into her present. Something dark has been lurking in the shadows of Marubini’s life from as far back as she can remember. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches out and grabs at her. The Yearning is a memorable exploration of the ripple effects of the past, of personal strength and courage, and of the shadowy intersections of traditional and modern worlds.‘A bewitching addition to the current South African literary boom. MohaleMashigo tells her story with charming lucidity, disarmingcharacterisation, subversive wisdom and subtle humour.’ – ZAKES MDA
Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr
Phil Truman - 2012
A good read.” -- Dusty Richards, Spur and Wrangler Award winning author “Author Phil Truman captured a slice of Indian Territory history and has woven it into an interesting period novel. Anyone who loves the history of the West will enjoy Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr.” -- Tammy Hinton, author and winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Unbridled "Truman’s storytelling shines throughout..." -- Kathleen Rice Adams, Western Fictioneers In the last years of the tough and woolly land called Indian Territory, and the first of the new state of Oklahoma, the outlaw Henry Starr rides roughshod through its midst. A native son of “The Nations” he’s more Scotch-Irish than Cherokee, but scorned by both. Never really wanted to journey west of the law, yet fate seems to insist. He’s falsely accused of horse-thieving at sixteen, sentenced to hang for murder at nineteen by Judge Isaac Parker, but escapes the gallows on a technicality. Given that opportunity, the charming, handsome, mild-mannered Henry Starr spends the rest of his life becoming the most prolific bank robber the West has ever known.
Every Breath
Nicholas Sparks - 2018
At thirty-six, she's been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family's cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future.Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father. A safari guide, born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tru hopes to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his mother's early life and recapture memories lost with her death. When the two strangers cross paths, their connection is as electric as it is unfathomable . . . but in the immersive days that follow, their feelings for each other will give way to choices that pit family duty against personal happiness in devastating ways.Illuminating life's heartbreaking regrets and enduring hope, Every Breath explores the many facets of love that lay claim to our deepest loyalties -- and asks the question, How long can a dream survive?
Alarm Girl
Hannah Vincent - 2014
But Indigo is uneasy in the foreign landscape and confused by the family’s silence surrounding her mother’s recent death. Unable to find solace in either new or old faces, she begins to harbour violent suspicions in place of the truth.Steeped in the dry heat of a South African summer, this keen and touching debut seamlessly interweaves the voices of Indigo and her mother, and beautifully captures the human desire to belong: in a family, in a country, in your own skin.
Shut Up and Deal: A Novel
Jesse May - 1998
Author Jesse May was seventeen years old and already hooked. By 1996, poker could be legally played in casinos in over twenty states of the union and five countries in Europe. Legalization changed the face of poker, and as the game came of age, so did May, who by 1989 had dropped out of the University of Chicago after one year due to irreconcilable differences between Tuesday- and Thursday-morning classes and Monday- and Wednesday-night poker games.Based on his experiences in the strange world of poker, May's debut novel Shut Up and Deal is the story of a nontraditional '90s slacker, a dropout with an incurable obsession and incredible stamina, who makes a career in a profession where the only goals are to stay in action and to not go broke. In Shut Up and Deal, a professional poker player takes readers along on his adventures over several years in and out of casinos and card rooms in locales such as Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Amsterdam. Told in a catching, likeable voice, this story offers up one rip-roaring poker-table drama after another, with narrator Mickey ultimately finding himself in a spot that jeopardizes his entire bankroll and calls into question his morals, such as they are. In rhythmic, high-octane prose that is as addictive as the game it describes, Shut Up and Deal zooms in on the swirling, feverish microcosm of the contemporary poker world from its very first line and never cuts away.