A SIN OF OMISSION de Marguerite Poland

In the Eastern Cape, Stephen (Malusi) Mzamane, a young Anglican priest, must journey to his mother’s rural home to inform her of his elder brother’s death. In this raw and compelling story, Marguerite Poland employs her considerable experience as a writer and specialist in South African languages to recreate the polarised, duplicitous world of Victorian colonialism and its betrayal of the very people it claimed to be enlightening.

A SIN OF OMISSION
by Marguerite Poland
Penguin South Africa, October 2019 | Envelope Books UK, May 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Torn from his parents as a small child in the 1870s, Stephen Mzamane is picked by the Anglican church to train at the Missionary College in Canterbury and then returned to southern Africa’s Cape Colony to be a preacher. He is a brilliant success, but troubles stalk him: his unresolved relationship with his family and people, the condescension of church leaders towards their own native pastors, and That Woman-seen once in a photograph and never forgotten. And now he has to find his mother and take her a message that will break her heart. Stephen’s journey to his mother’s home proves decisive in resolving the contradictions that tear at his heart.

Marguerite Poland is an award-winning South African writer of books for adults and children. Brought up in the Eastern Cape, she studied Social Anthropology and Xhosa, took a master’s in Zulu literature and folktales, and was awarded a doctorate for her study of the cattle of the Zulus. Two of her books – The Mantis and the Moon and Woodash Stars – won South Africa’s Percy FitzPatrick Award. The Train to Doringbult was short listed for the CNA Awards. Shades has been a matriculation set text for over a decade. And The Keeper received the Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award in 2015 as the title South African book-sellers most enjoyed reading, selling and promoting the previous year. Translated into several languages, the author won South Africa’s highest civic award in 2016 for her contribution to the field of indigenous languages, literature and anthropology. In 2021 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cecil Rhodes University.

SERPENT’S CRESCENT de Vivian de Klerk

Vivian de Klerk’s sharp observations and brilliantly acerbic satirical wit make this multi-layered novel at once horrifying, shocking and poignant – and very, very funny.

SERPENT’S CRESCENT
by Vivian de Klerk
‎Picador Africa, APril 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

In the small rural town of Qonda, South Africa, the power and water supplies are unreliable, property prices are down, and citizens are slowly suffocating in the acrid smoke from the municipal dump. Recently retired English teacher Megan Merton has lived here all her life, most of it at No. 8 Serpent Crescent. So who better than this self-styled pillar of society to shine a spotlight on the decline and dysfunction, not to mention the dubious activities, past and present, of many of her neighbours. Nefarious deeds and bad behaviour deserve harsh treatment and appropriate retribution, if not consignment to one of Dante’s fiendish nine circles of hell. At least that’s what Megan believes – in fact she’s been taking matters into her own hands, unnoticed, for years. And now she has decided to write it all down, to shake all of the skeletons loose, and rejoice in the inventive punishments she devised and personally delivered to the wicked.
Then her neighbour Elizabeth Cardew, a lecturer in Classical Studies, suffers a stroke and Megan is entrusted with the keys to No. 9. While Elizabeth begins a long recovery at the local care facility, Megan relishes the chance to snoop. Curious as to ‘what a stroke victim looks like’, she decides to visit and see for herself. A bond develops between the two women – one a cold and calculating sociopath, the other a courageous and lonely academic – something that takes both of them by surprise.

Vivian de Klerk was born in 1954 in Grahamstown, South Africa. She served as Professor of Linguistics at Rhodes University, where she spent 24 years as an academic, devoted to teaching and research, and then 7 years as Dean of Students. She has published numerous scholarly articles and 2 academic books during that time, but now she is having fun, enjoying herself, indulging in writing pure fiction. Her debut novel, Not to Mention was awarded the Gerald Kraak writing grant.

ANONYMOUS d’Elizabeth Breck

The note was threatening enough—but its link to two cold cases and a sinister unseen presence sends P.I. Madison Kelly on a frantic search for the truth. Set against a backdrop of surfer culture and coffee houses of San Diego, ANONYMOUS follows a private investigator as she confronts the reality of several girls’ disappearance in a terrifying climax where the hunter becomes the hunted—and Madison is running for her life.

ANONYMOUS
A Madison Kelly Mystery
by Elizabeth Breck
Crooked Lane, November 2020
(via The Lark Group)

Madison Kelly, a San Diego private investigator, arrives home to a note stabbed to her front door: “Stop investigating me, or I will hunt you down and kill you”. The only problem? Madison hasn’t been investigating anyone—she’s been taking time off to figure out what to do with her life. But how does she prove a negative? The only way to remove the threat is to do exactly what « Anonymous », the note writer, is telling her not to do: investigate to see who left it. Could this have something to do with the true crime podcast she’s been tweeting about, and the missing girls?
The girls went missing, two years apart, after a night at the clubs in San Diego’s famed Gaslamp Quarter, and Madison had been probing the internet for clues. She discovers that someone has been one step ahead of her, monitoring her tweets to prevent her from getting too close. Soon Madison’s investigation brings up more questions than answers: are the disappearances connected? Are the girls dead or did they just walk away from their lives? And who is Anonymous, the person who will stop at nothing to keep Madison from learning the truth? As she closes in, so does Anonymous.

Also available:
DOUBLE TAKE (Crooked Lane, October 2021)
A 2022 SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD Nominee
When a young journalist goes missing in sunny San Diego , P.I. Madison Kelly learns the true price of knowing too much

Elizabeth Breck is a state of California licensed private investigator. A native Californian, she had read Harriet the Spy twenty times by the time she was nine, so it was no surprise when she grew up to become a PI. She has worked mainly in the field of insurance investigations, making her the real-life version of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. In 2013 she went back to school, earning a bachelor’s degree in Writing, summa cum laude, from the University of California San Diego. She writes the Madison Kelly Mystery Series, thrilling mysteries set against the coffee houses and surfer culture of San Diego. The first book in the series, ANONYMOUS, came out to critical acclaim in 2020, and Double Take is being released on October 12, 2021. She lives with a black Labrador named Hubert who is her best friend.

BEA WOLF de Zach Weinersmith, illustré par Boulet

A modern middle-grade graphic novel retelling of Beowulf, featuring a gang of troublemaking kids who must defend their tree house from a fun-hating adult who can instantly turn children into grown-ups.

BEA WOLF
by Zach Weinersmith
illustrated by Boulet
First Second/Roaring Brook, February 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Listen! Hear a tale of mallow-munchers and warriors who answer candy’s clarion call! Somewhere in a generic suburb stands Treeheart, a kid-forged sanctuary where generations of tireless tykes have spent their youths making merry, spilling soda, and staving off the shadow of adulthood.
One day, these brave warriors find their fun cut short by their nefarious neighbor Grindle, who can no longer tolerate the sounds of mirth seeping into his joyless adult life. As the guardian of gloom lays siege to Treeheart, scores of kids suddenly find themselves transformed into teenagers, beset by the plagues of hormones and pimples! The survivors of the onslaught cry out for a savior—a warrior whose will is unbreakable and whose appetite for mischief is unbounded. They call for Bea Wolf!

Zach Weinersmith is acclaimed creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (smbccomics.com) an online comic with over 250,000 daily readers and over 300 million annual views. He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller Soonish.
Boulet is the critically-acclaimed French artist and cartoonist, most noted for his self published work Bouletcorp which receives over 200,000 visitors a month on the English side alone! His work has been featured on Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many more. He lives in France.

DEVIL’S CHIMNEY d’Adam Lyndon

A crime thriller for readers of Charlie Gallagher, James Patterson, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, and Robert Bryndza.

DEVIL’S CHIMNEY
by Adam Lyndon
Joffe Books, June 2022
(via Lorella Belli)

Nobody at Sussex Police wants to be PC Harriet ‘HRH’ Holden’s partner. She’s a bit stuck up, a stickler for the rules; she rubs people up the wrong way. It’s only PC Rutherford Barnes who’s happy to work with her. Although they’re not friends exactly, he shares Harriet’s ambition and idealism. He respects her. So, when Harriet’s battered body is found in a shabby bedroom at the down-at-hell Atlantic Hotel on Eastbourne seafront, Barnes determines to seek justice for his colleague. He sets out to discover who killed Harriet, and why. As the newly-promoted DC Barnes investigates, he discovers that Harriet had a secret – and she knew the secrets of others. As Barnes uncovers a layer of corruption that leads right to the very top, he faces a terrible decision: justice for Harriet – or his police career.

Adam Lyndon was born and raised in Sussex. He has been a police officer for twenty years both in the UK and in New Zealand, working across a range of disciplines including uninformed ops, firearms command and as a detective in CID and specialist investigations. Adam has been married for twenty years and has four children. His ambition, as his children keep reminding him, is to own a dog. DEVIL’S CHIMNEY is his first novel.