Eggs to Lay, Chickens to Hatch: A Memoir


Chris van Wyk - 2010
    As the years passed, the two grew closer, swapping stories about coloureds and zulus, life in Riverlea and Soweto, pass laws, politics and falling in love.

White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris


Brian Herne - 1999
    It re-creates the legary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories, and brings to life such romantic figures as Cape-to-Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman, and Dinesen's dashing lover, Denys Finch. Witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle on the earth, these hunters were the first conservationists. Hard-drinking, infatuated with risk, and careless in love, they inspired Hemingway's stories and movies with Clark Gable and Gregory Peck.

My Cleaner


Maggie Gee - 2005
    She does my dirty work. She knows more about me than anyone else in the world. But does she, in fact, like me? Does her presence fill me with shame?"Ugandan Mary Tendo worked for many years in the white middle-class Henman household in London, cleaning for Vanessa and looking after her only child, Justin. More than ten years after Mary has left, Justin — now twenty-two, handsome and gifted — is too depressed to get out of bed. To his mother's surprise, he asks for Mary. When Mary responds to Vanessa's cry for help and returns from Uganda to look after Justin, the balance of power in the house shifts dramatically. Both women's lives change irrevocably as tensions build towards a startling climax on a snowbound motorway.Maggie Gee confronts racism and class conflict with humour and tenderness in this engrossing read.Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original 'Best Young British Novelists'. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2004; and The Flood, which was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize. She has also published My Cleaner, My Driver, The Ice People and My Animal Life with Telegram. Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is her latest novel.Maggie was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, 2004-2008, and is now one of its Vice-Presidents. She lives in London.

Playing Hard Ball


E.T. Smith - 2003
    Ed Smith - the young Cambridge University and Kent batsman - has spent the winters since 1998 in Spring Training with the New York Mets baseball team. It has enabled Ed to contrast and compare arguably the two most iconic of sports from the inside. In fact, baseball had a thriving following in Britain until the Great War: Derby County's former stadium was called the Baseball Ground; Tottenham Hotspur was at first a baseball club. Apart from learning two very different techniques, Ed learned that the sports' ultimate heroes, the Babe and the Don - Babe Ruth and Don Bradman - might as well have come from different planets, whilst baseball's pristine Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is a far cry from the ramshackle cricket museum at Lord's. Ed Smith's PLAYING HARD BALL draws on these intriguing comparisons to paint a two-sided portrait of sports most illustrous 'hitting games'.

Friends with Explicit Benefits Boxed Set


Luke Young - 2013
    Plus bonus scenes from the Ian Dalton - Victoria Wilde versions along with the erotic series prequel, Desperate Thoughts. Plus a sneak peek bonus chapter of the upcoming fifth book in the series, Friends With Way Too Many Benefits, releasing on 12/17/2013. Book 1 - Friends With Partial Benefits Jillian Grayson is a disillusioned divorcée and best-selling romance novelist who suddenly can't write a chapter without her hunky male heartthrob suffering ED, an STD, or even worse. Brian Nash is a tennis-obsessed college senior who's unlucky in love and the roommate and best friend of Jillian's son, Rob. When Rob brings Brian home for Spring Break, and Brian meets the surprisingly young and tennis passionate Jillian, their shared interest quickly develops into an intense mutual attraction. After nearly giving in to their feelings, they hatch a plan, while under the influence (of something more than just the perfect Miami night), to be Friends With Partial Benefits, complete with rules to define the boundaries. Will the lonely pair continue with this distinctive relationship, actually explore their desires, or discover all of it is a really bad idea? Book 2 - Friends With Full Benefits For best-selling romance novelist Jillian Grayson, writer's block is a thing of the past now that her clandestine relationship with her son's best friend, Brian Nash, has lifted her out of a post-divorce funk. The prospect of breaking the news to her son seems daunting, but it's nothing compared to the nightmare of meeting Brian's superstrict, off-the-wall, disapproving parents. After Jillian, Brian and his younger brother Jim, learn an eye-opening secret about the Nash parents they all go scurrying back to Miami where Jillian's best friend Victoria finds Brian's sexy, but innocent college senior brother to be just what the doctor ordered. But when Jim comes on a little too seriously, will Victoria lose interest and return to her life of casual fun or will things get even more complicated? Book 3 - Friends With More Benefits As Jillian and Brian's destination wedding date nears, Jillian's just released novel's complicated success threatens to destroy their big day. While Rob's new job grows extraordinarily more mysterious Brian's becomes infinitely more unfulfilling and both struggle to find the answers. Victoria finds it more and more difficult to hide her secrets and when they are finally exposed there is no shortage of collateral damage. When thoughts are revealed will the wedding be ruined, will Jillian's career survive and will everyone forgive Victoria? Book 4 - Friends With Extra Benefits Victoria, Jillian, Brian, Jim, Caroline, and Rob are back in book four, the 400-page epic next chapter in the series. Who will prevail in the Brookhart v. Grayson trial? Will Victoria have a boy or a girl, and will she finally find happiness? Will Rob figure out what the hell is going on with his mysterious and unstable boss, and will Brian find a career? Will you be able to get through the steamy chapters without tossing your e-reader to the floor and chasing your partner around the room? Prequel - Desperate Thoughts While struggling to move on with her life, a young widow tumbles into a clandestine sexual encounter with a shy college freshman who reminds her all too much of her late husband. Afterward, she's re-awakened sexually and motivated to pursue her desperately unfulfilled desires.

Song of the Wind


Madge Swindells - 1985
     When her mother is shot at the close of World War II, Marika Magos is orphaned into a new life in the diamond canyons of South Africa. As a worn-torn Europe is on the mend, Marika climbs to the glittering heights of the London fashion industry. From Paris to New York, her name is known and her admirers many. Not even Tony Palma, the international tycoon who thought he possessed her entirely knows of the secret passion she harbours for Swiss immigrant Gunter Grieff. Yet the sweet promise of their affair turns to ashes when Marika learns that his name and papers are false, changed in the final days of the war to protect his German identity. Song of the Wind tells a powerful tale of romance, adventure and intrigue. Praise for Song of the Wind ‘Irresistible . . . keeps your emotions trembling over hundreds of pages’ - MAIL ON SUNDAY Praise for Madge Swindells Praise for Madge Swindells 'Superlative' - Publishers Weekly 'I was gripped from start to finish’ - Kate Alexander, author ‘Terrific. A book that’s big in every sense. . . rich in detail and written with passion it lives on in the memory. I loved it’ - Sarah Harrison, author Madge Swindells was born and educated in England. As a teenager, she emigrated to South Africa where she studied archaeology at Cape Town University. Later, in England, she was a Fleet Street journalist and the manager of her own publishing company. Her earlier novels, Summer Harvest, Shadows on the Snow, The Corsican Woman, Edelweiss, The Sentinel and Harvesting the Past were international bestsellers and have been translated into eight languages. She lives in South Africa.

Midlands


Jonny Steinberg - 2002
    It is in the heart of the southern midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, Alan Paton country, and it is true that “… from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest scenes of Africa.” Later I will tell you more about that landscape, and of how it changed during the course of my investigations; a spectacular backdrop of giant shapes and colours when I first saw it, a myriad dramas of human anger and violence when I left …’In the spring of 1999, in the beautiful hills of the Kwa-Zulu-Natal midlands, a young white farmer is shot dead on the dirt road running from his father’s farmhouse to his irrigation fields. The murder is the work of assassins rather than robbers; a single shot behind the ear, nothing but his gun stolen, no forensic evidence like spent cartridges or fingerprints left at the scene.Journalist Jonny Steinberg travels to the midlands to investigate. Local black workers say the young white man had it coming. The dead man’s father says that the machinery of a political conspiracy has been set into motion, that he and his neighbours are being pushed off their land.Initially thinking that he is to write about an event in the recent past, Steinberg finds that much of the story lies in the immediate future. He has stumbled upon a festering frontier battle, the combatants groping hungrily for the whispers and lies that drift in from the other side. Right from the beginning, it is clear that the young white man is not the only one who will die on that frontier, and that the story of his and other deaths will illuminate a great deal about the early days of post-apartheid South Africa.Sifting through the betrayals and the poisoned memories of a century-long relationship between black and white, Steinberg takes us to a part of post-apartheid South Africa we fear to contemplate.Midlands is about the midlands of the heart and mind, the midlands between possession and dispossession, the midlands between the past and present, myth and reality. Midlands is a tour de force of investigative journalism.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. An anthology of Poems and Conversations (From Outside).


Tim Key - 2021
    This new book takes place in Lockdown Three. This time Key can make Government-sanctioned expeditions out onto the streets of London (remember?). And it is there that the inaction takes place. Phone calls to his mother, promenades with his loyal friend, bubble-negotiations, sitting his fat arse down on benches, drinking mocha. Another three months of mind-freezing inertia. This time on the move. Conversations interspersed with poetry.

Anger Management for Beginners: A Self-Help Course in 70 Lessons


Giles Coren - 2010
    Star of BBC's Supersizers and hugely popular Times columnist's works through his anger about everything from dogs to cycle helmets.

The Amazing World of Gumball #1


Frank Gibson - 2014
    Gumball thinks he’s the coolest kid on the block, but his little sister Anais begs to differ, and Darwin just wants to keep them all out of trouble.

Americanah: by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Top 50 Facts Coutndown: Reach the #1 Fact


Top 50 Facts - 2015
     • Rules are simple: no peeking, no skipping. • Do you agree? • Don't miss out! About Us Top 50 Facts is an unofficial collection of facts for fans and readers alike, looking to conveniently discover more about the books they love.

Winter Whimsy: Escape this Christmas to the Boardwalk by the Sea


Georgina Troy - 2020
    

Bill Bryson's African Diary


Bill Bryson - 2002
    He arrived with a set of mental images of Africa gleaned from television broadcasts of low-budget Jungle Jim movies in his Iowa childhood and a single viewing of the film version of Out of Africa. (Also with some worries about tropical diseases, insects and large predators.) But the vibrant reality of Kenya and its people took over the second he deplaned in Nairobi, and this diary records Bill Bryson's impresssions of his trip with his inimitable trademark style of wry observation and curious insight. From the wrenching poverty of the Kibera slum in Nairobi to the meticulously manicured grounds of the Karen Blixen house and the human fossil riches of the National Museum, Bryson registers the striking contrasts of a postcolonial society in transition. He visits the astoundingly vast Great Rift Valley; undergoes the rigors of a teeth-rattling train journey to Mombasa and a hair-whitening flight through a vicious storm; and visits the refugee camps and the agricultural and economic projects where dedicated CARE professionals wage noble and dogged war against poverty, dislocation and corruption.

What We Lose


Zinzi Clemmons - 2017
    She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

Revolt


J.A. Ironside - 2019
    The King's Knight skilfully blends action with real historical events and personages... Medieval England is a time of both blood and humanity." Richard Foreman, author Band of Brothers. 1381. England seethes with discontent over unfair and arbitrary taxation. The country is on the cusp of an uprising - a peasant's revolt. All it will take is a spark. Gregory Maudesley, second son of a minor noble and disillusioned knight for hire, returns home after nearly a decade abroad. Maudesley intends to claim his deceased father's lands but the knight is plagued by misfortune. Gregory journeys to London to secure an audience with the boy king, Richard II. But the England he travels through is very different from that of his youth. The road is treacherous and the greatest dangers of all await him in the capital. London is ablaze. Even the Tower of London has fallen to Wat Tyler's forces. But Richard, enlisting the help of Gregory, will ride out to meet the rebellion head on. A king and kingdom must stand, or fall. Revolt is the first book is The King's Knight series of novellas, chronicling the life of Gregory Maudesley and the dramatic reign of Richard II. Recommended for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Robyn Young and Michael Jecks. Praise for J. A. Ironside “Entertaining, well-researched and compelling.” Michael Jecks on An Argument of Blood. “Ælfgifa…steals every scene and is a character who would fit in any George R. R. Martin novel.” Tony Riches author of The Tudor Trilogy (An Argument of Blood). “Intense drama, creative working of the sparse historical record, and a detailed look into what made William and Harold tick… A rousing, page turning tale awaits you…” Paul Bennett, author of Clash of Empires (on 'A Black Matter for the King'). J. A. Ironside grew up in rural Dorset in a house full of books. She was exposed to history at an early age and happily never recovered – the presence of so many Roman ruins in the area inspired a lifelong interest in historical warfare. She has taught and studied martial arts and weaponry for 25 years. Her published works include An Argument of Blood and A Black Matter for the King, both co-written with Matthew Willis.