Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
by Thando on May 10th, 2013
New from Pan Macmillan, Flaming June by Amanda Coetzee:
“As harrowing as it is compelling, Coetzee has created a world I’d never normally have ventured into, once started however, I consumed all 235 unpredictable pages in one fell swoop.” — Rahla Xenopoulos, author of A Memoir of Love and Madness and Bubbles.
Harry O’Connor, better known as Badger, is back working fulltime with the London Metropolitan Police Force. When a young woman is found drowned with a footprint bruise on her back, Badger is assigned to head up the team to catch the killer(s).
The Woodmore twins run the mysterious Connect Healing and Wellness Retreat, a place that styles itself as a haven for the rehabilitation of troubled young women. As Badger uncovers that the murdered young woman was a resident at Connect Healing and Wellness Retreat, the Woodmore twins come under fire as their past is unearthed and as more bodies start to pile up. Badger is forced to send Sofia Puccini, a feisty young policewoman, undercover into Connect to investigate further, with the potential for disaster looming large as the case balances on a knife edge.
When Emily Meadows is kidnapped, Badger has to draw on all his resources, from his Irish traveller connections to Emily’s father, to try to save her before the killer strikes her first.
About the author
When she isn’t writing crime thrillers, Amanda Coetzee works as a deputy headmistress. She grew up in Bedford, England, and now lives in Rustenburg with her husband and son. Redemption Song is Amanda’s second novel after her acclaimed debut crime thriller Bad Blood.
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by Thando on Apr 9th, 2013
The hint of a wettish Cape autumn greeted two Johannesburg-based authors who teamed up last week, traveling to Cape Town in order to toast the launch of their novels in the Mother City. The duo of Steven Boykey Sidley, launching his second novel, Stepping Out, and Jo-Anne Richards, who launched her fifth novel, The Imagined Child, first appeared at the Book Lounge, where they were quizzed by Mervin Sloman, and the following evening at Kalk Bay Books.
Each author read an excerpt from their book before joining in a conversation that kept all in high spirits. They quizzed each other, traversing the pull toward narrative, the prompts that started their respective journeys, the writers that had influenced them and the things we blame on our country.
Richards started the conversation, observing that South Africa is just about the only country in the world where non-fiction sells more than fiction. “Why,” she asked Sidley, “do you bother with fiction?”
Sidley, who was raised on modern American classics (Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, John Updike and Saul Bellows), made this astute observation: “Non-fiction is the literature that has taught me about the stuff of the world, the facts of our life. Fiction was the literature that taught me how to lead my life. Good fiction gives you an open door into the characters who live between the better angels of their nature and the worst gargoyles of their baser instincts, suffering the non-nonchalance of happenstance. Every time I’ve read one of these books, there’s a film of stunned incomprehension that is lifted from my eyes and for a while the world is a clearer place.”
The question, sent back via Sidley, evoked an equally fascinating response from Richards. Fact is very important to Richards, who started her life as a journalist. “For me, fiction is the logical extension of fact, but only better. I can explore stuff with fiction that goes deeper. It can do more than non-fiction. You’re very constrained with non-fiction by the number of sources and by what can be validated, and admitted to. What people admit to late at night after six glasses of wine, that is the stuff you can explore in fiction. Hemingway said that fiction is truer than if it really happened!”
All present were roundly rewarded by a sparkling dialogue by two splendid writers who were savvy, candid and funny. Those who bought their books, left the shop with their autographed copies and the alluring promise of two most excellent reads ahead.
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Liesl Jobson (@LieslJobson) tweeted from the launch using #livebooks:
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by Thando on Apr 2nd, 2013
Picador Africa and The Book Lounge invite you to join Mervyn Sloman in conversation with Jo-Anne Richards and Steven Boykey Sidley around each of their new novels The Imagined Child and Stepping Out.
The event takes place tonight and starts at 6 PM at The Book Lounge in Cape Town.
See you there!
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by Thando on Mar 25th, 2013
Jo-Anne Richards’ fifth novel, The Imagined Child, was launched on Friday at the 16th annual Time of the Writer International Writers Festival, following a moment of silence for world-renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who had passed away earlier in the day.
Andrea Nattrass, publisher for Pan Macmillan SA, thanked everyone for attending and quoted Anton Harber who said of Richards’ latest book: “She jumbles together the best and the worst of humanity, so that in the end one is not certain which is which. It is all firmly located in a South Africa that is both unnervingly familiar and yet full of surprises. This is her fifth novel, and maybe her best yet.” Nattrass explained that as a publisher, “hundreds of manuscripts” cross her desk. But she said that after half an hour of reading The Imagined Child, she realised it was “a gem”.
Taking the microphone from Nattrass, Richards explained that her book is about “our most basic, most formative relationships, the ones we have with our parents”. She said it focuses on the “unattractive urges we do not like to admit to”.
She said the book makes the point that the extent to which we are able to forgive our parents for what they did/did not do, determines what kind of adults we are, and what kind of parents we ourselves become. “How far back do we blame?” she asked.
She said she intends the story to resonate with a national South African narrative too. She noted that her protagonist, Odette, tries to escape the vicissitudes of urban life by moving to a small town, only to discover that it is not simpler there, as she had hoped. Instead Odette finds herself enmeshed in a mass of conflicting loyalties. She has to confront the uncomfortable fact that one has “to take responsibility for one’s own past, present and future”.
Richards dedicated her book to both of her parents, whom she said she has lost in the last two months. She thanked them for giving her “a happy childhood”, saying she was forced to “use her imagination” when it came to visualising unhappy ones for her characters. She thanked Andrea Nattrass for being “the best publisher ever”.
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by Thando on Mar 19th, 2013
Two new books and their authors will be at Kalk Bay Books for a launch with a difference, Steven ‘Boykey’ Sidley and Jo-Anne Richards will be in conversation with each other about their respective books.
Richards’ latest novel, The Imagined Child, is a carefully plotted ‘whodunit’ that combines her trademark lyrical style with tight suspense and will keep you guessing until the last page.
Sidley’s second novel in as many years, Stepping Out, is a gripping tale of a man moving out of his comfort zone and beating the mundane into submission as he journeys to the underbelly of life.
The event will be held on Wednesday 3 April at 6:30 PM for 7:00 PM.
See you there!
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by Thando on Mar 18th, 2013
Journalists Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman have signed a book deal with Pan Macmillan to write Behind The Door: The Oscar and Reeva Story, which will be published once Oscar Pistorius’ trial for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, is over.
Pan Macmillan South Africa has acquired world rights to the book that, according to Joshua Farrington of The Bookseller, “have been sublicensed by Pan Macmillan UK (which will cover world English rights excluding the USA, Canada and South Africa) and Macmillan USA. The UK rights department will handle foreign language rights sales.”
Wiener, the author of Killing Kebble, an exposé of the Brett Kebble murder, will be writing the book along with her Eyewitness News colleague Bateman, who was one of the first journalists on the scene of Steenkamp’s shooting and who has been one of the stand-out journalists writing about the case on social media.
The book “will follow the background to the case, the events of the trial itself, and a broader look at violence and criminal justice in South Africa”.
Pan Macmillan South Africa has acquired world rights to a book which investigates the trial of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, with Pan Macmillan UK sublicensing rights.
Behind The Door: The Oscar and Reeva Story will be written by South African journalist and author Mandy Wiener alongside reporter Barry Batemam, one of the first journalists on the scene following the shooting which left model Steenkamp dead.
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by Thando on Mar 5th, 2013
Jo-Anne Richards has been writing a series of blog posts on the All About Writing website, a company she co-founded that runs online and offline writing courses.
In the series titled “The Writing Process” Richards has written about everything from the first rewrite after completing the first draft, to the process of choosing the cover for The Imagined Child.
In one of her recent posts she reveals that no matter how many times she’s done it before, sending a manuscript to the publishers is always nerve-wracking:
No matter how many times you’ve gone through the publishing process, it never becomes less fraught. You send in your manuscript … and then you wait. And wait.
One day, you open your inbox and find an email. It would be nice if they put it in the subject line, wouldn’t it? Something obvious like: WE LIKE IT. But it usually says something completely neutral like: Your manuscript.
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by Thando on Mar 4th, 2013
Odette is a script writer for a popular TV soap opera. When she moves to the small Free State town of Nagelaten she hopes to leave her problems – of family, fraught relationships and experiences of crime – behind in Joburg. To the dwellers of Nagelaten, Odette appears to be escaping a painful break-up in a place she knows no-one – and won’t have to share her secrets.
When Odette begins seeing the local engineer, Adriaan, also an outcast in this small town, secrets begin to surface around the murder of Adriaan’s wife. Odette’s world begins to unravel, when her ‘troubled’ daughter, Mandy, is suspected of killing the baby she was au pairing in the UK and soon comes to live with Odette, who has a secret of her own. It isn’t until Mandy befriends a strange man named Wolfie that Odette finally begins to question the mysteries of the small town.
Odette is forced to face her mistakes of the past and the truth of a murder long since buried with the dead. The Imagined Child is a carefully plotted ‘whodunit’ that combines Jo-Anne’s trademark lyrical style with tight suspense and will keep you guessing until the last page.
About the author
Jo-Anne Richards is a South African novelist and journalist, whose work has been published internationally. She teaches creative writing through Allaboutwriting and lectures at Wits University in Johannesburg
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by Thando on Jan 22nd, 2013
Jo-Anne Richards, author of My Brother’s Book, has written about the hopes and wishes that she has for the new year on the All About Writing blog.
One of her wishes is that her new book, The Imagined Child, will be well received and that it will make a difference. The book is set to be released in March.
I’m not sure I believe in new year resolutions. I’m more likely to have new year wishes.
Like, please let my new book be exceptional. Let people like it and get what I was trying to do. Perhaps more importantly, let it make a difference to the people who read it. These are my personal hopes for the year.
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by Thando on Jul 18th, 2012
Pan Macmillan is delighted to invite you to the launch of Amanda Coetzee’s latest novel, Redemption Song.
The launch will take place in the staff room of Fields College in Rustenburg on 25 July.
Don’t miss it!
Event Details
- Date: Wednesday, 25 July 2012
- Time: 6:00 PM
- Venue: Fields College Staff Room
226 Kloppers Street, Rustenburg | Map
- RSVP: laura@panmacmillan.co.za, 011 731 3440
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