Archives par étiquette : The Lennon-Ritchie Agency

CHAIN OF CAUSE de Kurt Ellis

A fast-paced blackly-comic thriller about a group of four friends who attempt to commit insurance fraud worth millions. This dark caper is for fans of In Bruges, Get Shorty and A Serious Man.

CHAIN OF CAUSE
by Kurt Ellis
Penguin Random House South Africa, April 2024
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Fast paced blackly-comic thriller about a group of four friends who attempt to commit insurance fraud worth millions. Unfortunately, the friends make one mistake and poor decision after another putting them on a collision course with a relentless Ukrainian fraud investigator, a psychopathic American hitman, a ruthless local drug lord, and an Eastern European mobster.
Gabriel, passed over for promotion, decides to set up his own business. The business is a spectacular failure and he loses everything. Desperate and furious, he enlists his best friend Skellie, a conman, drug addict and drug dealer, to help him strike back at the institution that he feels has wronged him. Forced to enlist help on the inside, the mistakes come thick and fast and as the bodies pile up, Gabriel and Skellie do their best to make it out of their scheme alive.
A novel about injustices—historical, racial, gender, economic, and social—and an indictment of the practices in the financial industry in which Ellis has almost two decades of experience.

WGSA Muse Award winner Kurt Ellis is a screenwriter and novelist. Ellis is the author of the Johannesburg-set thrillers By Any Means (NB Publishing) and In the Midst of Wolves (Penguin Books). Winner of the Harry Oppen-heimer Creative Writing Award, Ellis has an MFA from the University of the Witwatersrand. Nominated for four 2021 WGSA Muse Awards, Ellis – a master at building tension through pacy plotting and nuanced characterization – won with his original pilot script Rainbow’s End.

HELL OF A COUNTRY de David Cornwell

In 1970s South Africa, desire and desperation have bloody consequences.

HELL OF A COUNTRY
by David Cornwell
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Seventeen-year-old Lorraine van Niekerk despises the fact that her boss and lover, middle-aged André Bekker, won’t leave his hateful wife for her.
Driver Alfie Geemooi is horrified when he wakes up in Groote Schuur’s Non-White wing after a car crash with one leg missing.
Alfie and Lorraine’s lives intersect fatefully in André’s consultation rooms. André is an orthopaedic technician, and Lorraine can grant access to the prothesis Alfie so desperately needs.
But at a price.
HELL OF A COUNTRY is a fictionalised retelling of the Scissors Murder—a famous true-crime story from early 1970s South Africa. A pacy and poetic work told in the third person from multiple points of view, it focuses on the meeting-point between political machinery and personal desire, and uses the true-crime genre to tell a fresh and original story about South Africa’s turbulent past in a deeply human and engaging way.

David Cornwell’s debut novel, LIKE IT MATTERS, was published by Penguin Random House in South Africa to critical acclaim. The book was longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the 9mobile Award for Best African Fiction Debut. David’s short film, Die Onderspit, was developed as part of KykNET’s Silwerskermfees festival program. He also co-wrote a screenplay with Damon Galgut. David’s feature film Pou (Peacock) was shown at Idyllwild, the Buffalo International Festival, the Winter Film Awards, Razor Reel and at SA Horror Fest. Born in Grahamstown, he currently lives in Johannesburg.

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER de Craig Higginson

At once a murder mystery, a war novel and a moving investigation into what it is to be human.

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER
by Craig Higginson
Picador Africa, 2023
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Daniel Hawthorne is drawn to Zululand by the ghost of Sam Webster, a seventeen-year-old girl who went missing from her family’s luxury lodge and whose body was seen a week later on the Buffalo River.
As Daniel tries to get to the truth of what might have happened to Sam, he also starts to write the story of his disgraced ancestor, Lieutenant Charles Hawthorne, the notorious coward who was accused of three times abandoning his fellow men at the height of the conflict during the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.
Nothing is as it seems, however. As Daniel gains access to the carefully concealed secrets of his ancestor and of the whole Webster family, the lines between betrayal and loyalty, love and hate, cowardice and moral courage become blurred. Written in Craig Higginson’s stark and indelible prose, THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER is a novel that plunges into the darkest recesses of human endeavour and emerges with an irrepressible humanity and hard-won hope.

Craig Higginson is an internationally acclaimed playwright and novelist. His plays have been performed and produced in many theatres and festivals around the world. His novels include Last Summer, The Landscape Painter, The Dream House and The White Room. Craig has won several national awards in South Africa and Britain for his writing.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY de Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

“In her most magnificent novel yet, award-winning author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu showcases the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state with a deft touch and a compassionate eye for poignant detail … Dickensian in its scope, with the proverbial bustling cast of colleagues both good and bad, villagers, guerrillas, neighbours, ex-soldiers, suburban madams, shopkeepers, would-be politicians and more, THE QUALITY OF MERCY proposes that ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken – and that love can heal even the most grievous of wounds.” –Litnet

THE QUALITY OF MERCY
by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Penguin Random House South Africa, September 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

On the eve of his country’s independence, Spokes Moloi investigates his first ‘white case’ and finds a very confusing crime scene. Having recently been promoted to Chief Inspector, it is up to Spokes – a man of impeccable rectitude and moral spotlessness who is supported in all things by his paragon spouse, Loveness – to solve long-standing mysteries. His task now is to unravel the alleged murder of a man, Emil Coetzee, but also the tangled web that his life created.
Following on her award-winning novels The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Quality of Mercy is a novel of comfort and, indeed, mercy. Ndlovu weaves together elements of social comedy and cosy crime while examining the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state. From the City of Kings and surrounding villages steps a cast of engaging characters who will criss-cross each other’s lives in delightful and poignant ways. Here, where everyone knows everyone else, the ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken.
The final book in the City of Kings trilogy of three overlapping but standalone novels, preceded by The Theory of Flight and The History of Man. Ndlovu is the winner of the Windham Campbell Prize and the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of the bestselling novel The Theory of Flight, winner of the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and currently a school set work, and its follow-up, The History of Man. A Winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell Prize, she is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film from Ohio University. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

SOPHIE THE GIANT SLAYER de Kay Carmichael

A delightful black and white comic that defends the stance that heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Set in a dystopian universe where giant monsters invade the Earth – life seems set for destruction when a sword-wielding hero comes to the rescue.

SOPHIE THE GIANT SLAYER
by Kay Carmichael
Publication TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Sophie, an eleven-year-old girl in a post-giant world inherits her grandfather Jack’s magical sword and is launched out beyond their island city into a world of treacherous adults and ambitious gods. Driven by the voice inside the sword, she and her companions hunt down the secret of where the giants came from and her own terrible destiny. Sophie finds herself adopted into a group of tree-dwelling refugees, led by a mysterious woman called Rosemara. They capture her and ask her to kill a giant called Ashkeloth, who they claim is a threat. But is everything as it seems? Who exactly is Rosemara? Soon, Sophie finds she also has to stand up for her pursuers and decide whom she can and can’t trust when the giant comes knocking.

Kay Carmichael is a story artist specialising in storyboard work. She’s worked for five years in the animation and live action industries, and done storyboards for a variety of commercial and advertising clients. She also worked on a number of television series and feature films.