South African Fiction

An Essence best-selling author, Rochelle Alers also boasts a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and Zora Neale Hurston Award. Sweet Southern Nights continues the Eaton family saga, which finds Dr. Levi Eaton far from his Northern roots, volunteering at a Kentucky clinic. There he meets Angela Chase, whose sultry Southern hospitality is just what the doctor ordered. But as their relationship deepens, Angela worries Levi may discover the secrets she’s been hiding.

In the heart of South Sudan, Panyim and Nyakor prepare for adulthood within their tightly woven clan. As they navigate coming-of-age rituals, a neighboring clan's hostility disrupts their peaceful life. Panyim, eager to prove himself, joins the fight, while Nyakor uses her sharp mind to uncover the truth behind the conflict. Witnessing war's devastation, Panyim seeks a different path. Nyakor's discovery of a misunderstanding offers a chance for peace. With the guidance of the clan leader and his wise wife, Panyim, Nyakor, and their friends bridge the divide between the young generations. ...

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father’s death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man’s will.

South Africa, 1871. Jack Lark no longer walks alone. With the worldly Anna Baker by his side, he travels to the Cape Colony diamond fields determined to seek their fortune—and an adventurous new life together. The journey north soon turns violent as tensions erupt between other hopeful diggers and a gang of Boer men. Everyone has their eye on the same elusive prize—and some will stop at nothing to get it. For Jack and Anna, unearthing a diamond is only half the battle. Getting out of the mines alive will prove far more difficult—and dangerous.

Amanda “Mandy” Kirkpatrick was once a rising star in the art world. But when she fell in love with pastor Owen Douglas, she put her dreams on hold and her paints to one side. Mandy focused all her energies on supporting her husband and creating for their children the loving, stable home-life she herself had lacked. She planned to return to her career when the kids started school, but as the years passed her brushes remained dry. Then came a move that changed everything. Owen’s new congregation has rigid ideas of how their pastor and wife should behave. He throws himself into the work ...

Set in Soweto, the urban heartbeat of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday Black folks processing the savagery of apartheid with grit, wit, and their own distinctive bewildering humor. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness, and beauty.

Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city, she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pangs of conscience she feels for her fealty to a South African regime that, by the 21st century, has betrayed its early promises.

In cosmopolitan Johannesburg, three high-flying couples form the core of the elite Khula Society: part investment group, part social club, with meetings where the champagne flows, the dresses are designer and the one-upmanship is off the scale. Noma, Moshidi, Lerato and their husbands are living the dream—or so it appears from the outside. In reality, the cut and thrust of ‘keeping up with the Khulas’ is taking its toll on all three couples.

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

The year is 1902, and the world is changing with the new century. Twenty-one-year-old Ava Stanley, the daughter of two celebrated Arcane Taxonomists, has much to live up to—however scarce her magical abilities may be. While her parents draw power from spectacular birds and megafauna, Ava’s connection to the natural world is much smaller, stemming from the microscopic. This is useful in her quest to become a doctor, as she studies the burgeoning links between bacteria and disease, but it means Ava’s power itself is also smaller.

Pete de Lange must survive as a teenager in a small Natal town during the 1980s, together with his new-found friends, Sarita and Petrus. In a country marked by turmoil and racial conflict, this is not as easy as it seems. Pete and his friends witnessed a horrendous crime, and the perpetrator is on their case. Will justice prevail? In between all of this, Pete must try to make the first rugby team and win the heart of his high-school crush, Renate.

A poacher vanishes into thin air, defying logic and baffling ace tracker Mia Greenaway. Meanwhile Captain Sannie van Rensburg, still reeling from a personal tragedy, is investigating the disappearance of two young girls who locals fear have been abducted for use in sinister traditional medicine practices. But poachers are also employing witchcraft, paying healers for potions they believe will make them invisible and bulletproof.

When the Smoke Cleared chronicles how resilience and conviction took hold in one woman to overcome the circumstances of her turbulent childhood and adolescence. A novel that paints a vivid and intimate portrait of an African American Southern family in a small rural town filled with segregation and cultural racism.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of An African Love Story, Daphne Sheldrick's touching memoir about romance, life and elephants from Africa's greatest living conservationist. Read by Virginia McKenna, the star of Born Free and the Founder Trustee of the Born Free Foundation. An African Love Story is the incredible memoir of the life of Africa's greatest living conservationist. It tells two stories.

Prince Myers came from Nawlins to ATL to take over the game. His rise was fast and he enjoyed all the luxuries of his hustle, including the fly chick on his arm. But his reign is short lived. Now he is in prison on a bogus murder conviction and everything he had is gone, including his woman. Beautiful and ambitious Lieutenant Nicole Wright is the fantasy of every convict at Georgia State Prison where she works.

Evil is stalking South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve. Viewers around the world are shocked when a live lockdown webcast of a safari game drive exposes them to the brutal reality of rhino poaching. A wily poacher disappears into thin air, confounding logic and baffling ace trackers Mia Greenaway and Bongani Ngobeni. Detective Colonel Sannie van Rensburg, still reeling from a personal tragedy, is dealing with an angry community on the border of the Kruger National Park - two young girls have been abducted.

In the Early settler days, the British did more than go to war. Many found the local folklore and beliefs fascinating, and collected them together. This is one of the first explorations of South African folk tales.

David shares a close bond with his eight-year-old son, Chris, but their family is destroyed when David dies. In the afterlife, he is given an opportunity. He is told that he may be granted three viewings by which to look in on his son. The terms are strict: he cannot help his boy. He cannot reach him, or teach him, or in any way change the course of his life. David agrees and on three separate occasions observes his son’s unfolding story.

Linda, Dikeledi, Nolwazi and Sade spent their twenties pursuing fast-paced careers and love lives in vibrant Johannesburg. Now, with their thirties just around the corner, they know the one thing they can count on is each other, but it turns out even the firmest friendships have secrets… On the cusp of their thirtieth birthdays, just when everything should be going to plan, their lives start to derail.

Tales from the Eastern Cape, gathered in 1886.