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.
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?
At the spry young age of twenty-five, Sai has led a quiet life, keeping the family teahouse up and running —even if that means ignoring the past-due notices—and taking care of his ailing mother. But he has a not-so-secret gift that he’s parlayed into a side career: he was born with the ability see the red threads of fate between soulmates, which lends itself nicely to matchmaking. Sai has thus far been content not to follow his own thread, the only one he’s ever seen that’s gray and fraying.
Nikki Serafino is enjoying the sunset from her boat in her beloved port city of Naples, Italy when she discovers the body of a strangled man in the warm waters of the bay. As an investigator with a security unit, Nikki is certainly no stranger to violence, but this case grows complicated when the autopsy reveals that the victim has been boiled. And the next day, Nikki comes across another dead body in an abandoned car – surely two bodies in as many days is no coincidence. While local police suspect a lowlevel crime syndicate is responsible, Nikki isn’t so sure. But when she delves into the case, her search for answers brings her face to face with the possibility that those closest to her are living darker lives than she wants to admit. To catch a killer, Nikki must untangle the cords of past and present that keep her and her family vulnerable to Naples’ dangerous sides.
The Angies were a musical force in the eighties; a band, comprised fully of women, that were as respected amongst music journalists as they were adored by their far-reaching fans. With a steady stream of hits that married pop, folk, punk, and new wave, The Angies appeared to be unstoppable.