Archives par étiquette : The Lennon-Ritchie Agency

THE IMMORTALITES de Claire Robertson

In frontier country, travelling in a van containing a mysterious diva, a young woman must find her feet.

THE IMMORTALITES
by Claire Robertson
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

By the winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Ellen Kent has been called several things in her short life: orphan, governess, harlot. None is accurate, but here she is, a problem to be solved by her party of English settlers on an African shore in the year 1834. She is placed in the care of a retired cavalryman, and together they become the custodians of a van, a white horse and a silent, abundant woman – a grubby goddess and a thorough mystery. They travel through the war-struck frontier lands; Ellen is protector and handmaiden as the questions grow in her: how to find accommodation with this uncanny place of enchantment and death. How to find a way to stay.

For 30 years, award-winning journalist Claire Robertson has reported from South Africa, the US and the USSR. She has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Her debut novel, The Spiral House, won South Africa’s most important literary award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, as well as a South African Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. She is the author of three more novels: The Magistrate of Gower, Under Glass, both shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and ISLE. She lives in Sydney.

FALLS THE SHADOW de Mike Nicol

An edgy new detective series from master of noir Mike Nicol.

FALLS THE SHADOW
by Mike Nicol
Pan Macmillan (South Africa), late 2025
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A cop in a quiet rural town kills his family and then turns the gun on himself. In his shed is a cache of weapons: Russian automatics, handguns, 9mils, .38s. You don’t need forensics to work out what’s going on. This is a cop with a side racket. Which gets the attention of Captain Zara Dewane of the Internal Crime Unit. A single mom, known among cops as the Jackal, what she uncovers about the family murder puts her in the firing line. There are cops running guns stolen from the police armoury. There are cops selling guns to gangsters. Thing is, the money chain goes deep into the police hierarchy. Even fingers the political bosses. Close her down, comes the order from on high. Kill her, in other words. Making Zara and her family targets. With only one way out.

Mike Nicol is the author of twenty-four books. He has written novels, works of non-fiction and poetry. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA, and have been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French and German. His long list of accolades starts in 1979, with his debut poetry collection receiving the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His Revenge Trilogy featured in the KrimiZeit Top 10 list in Germany, as did Of Coprs and Robberts and Power Play, while Payback was shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SCNF Du Polar 2016 in France. He lives in Cape Town.

DEAD MEAT de Maya Fowler

When meat’s the only thing left to eat.

DEAD MEAT
by Maya Fowler
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Fifteen year old Natalie has had a horror of blood and meat since the day her bother, Flynn now 17, raped her at age 9. Yet sheand her family (mother, Viv, former trophy wife, now hapless housewife; father, Ray, former accountant, now handyman; andgrandmother, Eleanor) are trapped on an enormous factory farm in a world where climate change has left plant cropsdevastatingly rare, and the Corporation ensures meat is virtually all there is to eat. With grains grown exclusively for raisingcattle, pigs and chicken for slaughter, and greens a black-market luxury, Natalie is emaciated, bitter and angry. She is desperateto escape, but electric fences and the draconian punishments of the Corporation stand in her way.

In contrast to his sister, Flynn is passive, complacent to the horrors of the farm, and hobbled by guilt and shame over the abuse.With a pet rat his only friend, he goes about the daily grind, wishing for a way to make amends to Natalie, who bristles at hisevery advance.

One night Flynn helps Natalie steal apples from the farmer’s private orchard; the farmer’s devious, arrogant 11-year-old son,Brett, sees them and threatens to tell, which would get them killed. In a scuffle on a wall overlooking the free-range pig pen,Natalie pushes Brett to his death, where he is eaten alive by the pigs. Afterwards, the entire farm is in fear, wondering who mightbe blamed and put to death.

Quietly nightmarish and utterly gripping, the psychological horror DEAD MEAT has all the makings of a cult classic. It may besome time before you’re able to eat a bacon sandwich again.

Maya Fowler is a South African novelist, editor and translator, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of the novels Patagonia, The Elephant in the Room and Tebatso Gaan See Toe. Her current focus is literary and general fiction, although she’s produced award-winning workfor young adults and children.

A SHORT LIFE de Nicky Greenwall

Two seemingly unrelated car accidents. The same night. The same stretch of twistng valley road.

A SHORT LIFE
by Nicky Greenwall
Penguin Random House South Africa, 2024
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Nick’s best friend Adam has had an accident while drunk driving. Nick wants to protect him from prosecution and must convincehis wife Franky to keep the car crash a secret. But when Franky learns that her best friend was killed on the same night in aseparate accident, she is torn between supporting her husband or her best friend’s widower. Set in Cape Town, the pacy, twistythriller is told from multiple perspectives. For fans of Liane Moriarty’s; Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies; HarrietLane’s Her; and Liz Feldman’s hit Netlix series Dead to Me.

Nicky Greenwall is a former broadcaster, entertainment journalist and television producer. Her multi-award-nominated documentary series The Beautiful People – which tracks the lives of a group of foreign fashion models working in Cape Town – has now sold in the UK, Australia, Asia, Europe, Canada, The Middle East and Africa. As a print journalist Nicky has contributed to Elle, Marie Claire, Men’s Health, Glamour, Good Taste and The Sunday Times. A SHORT LIFE is her debut novel. She lives in Cape Town with her husband Robin Fryer, and their two children – Georgie and Riley.

MIRAGE de David Ralph Viviers

A literary mystery that stretches back to Victorian times and set on the arid plains of South Africa’s Karoo by David Ralph Viviers.

MIRAGE
by David Ralph Viviers
Penguin Random House South Africa, February 2023
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A century-old trunk has been dug up near the railway village of Sterfontein. Inside is the lost journal of Victorian author ElizabethTenant – and what appear to be the remains of a child. Michael, a university student recovering from a broken heart, is intriguedby what the journal describes: a scarlet curtain billowing above the desert, covering the entrance to another world. But thingsbecome even stranger when a line in the journal seems to be connected to Michael and his cosmologist mother, written ahundred years before their time. Without much to go on, Michael travels to the old Karoo hotel where Elizabeth wrote her novelMIRAGE. Amid talk of omens in the sky, ancient prophecies and the end of the world, he tries to decipher the journal’s secrets. Asone mystery leads to the next, constellation-like patterns between his own life and Elizabeth’s appear, helped along by Renata, aself-proclaimed medium, and Oom Sarel, the local museum curator. But as time starts to dissolve in the mirages of the Karoo, itbecomes more and more difficult to know what is real and what is not. And why can’t he shake the feeling that he’s been to thevillage before?

David Ralph Viviers is a Cape Town-based writer and film and theatre actor. He holds a BA in Theatre and Performance, as well as a master’s degree in Creative Writing, both with distinction, from the University of Cape Town. In 2016, he was the recipient of the Brett Goldin Bursary award, which allowed him to study with the Royal Shakespeare Company for a month in Stratford-upon-Avon. For his work in both English and Afrikaans theatre, he won a Fleur du Cap Award in 2020 and has received several Kanna and Fiësta nominations. His film/TV work includes BINNELANDERS, TALI’S BABYDIARY, KANARIE, NO HIDING HERE, HOME AFFAIRS 1 & 2, RAGE and BLACK SAILS. MIRAGE is his debut novel.