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The book contains listings of well over 40 different publishers. There are useful resources for writers and publishers. The back of the catalogue contains articles and short essays about the publishing scene in mostly, but not only Anglophone Africa. There are also items and innovations that are of interest to writers, booksellers, publishers, librarians, and all of those who are interested in the world of African publishing and book development.

Carol Trehorne's only child, Max, is in ICU with severe burns. Max, a performance artist, has set himself alight. He recovers but it becomes clear that he is planning further performances that will put him at risk of serious injury or death. Carol, a single parent and a GP in a busy suburban practice, is worried that her son is not the genius his friends think he is, but might be on drugs or going psychotic. As she discusses her concerns with her son's psychiatrist, she wonders if her past behaviour, in particular her relationship with the adventurous and anti-social Jack, has influenced Max's determination to use his body as a site of violent art in the pursuit of revelation. Carol cannot accept that Max's self-harm will have any effect other than to add to the meaningless violence in the world. Accident raises questions about what kind of life is worth living and what death is worth dying. It explores the different responses artists and scientists can have to violence and self-destructive behaviour, and throws into sharp relief the difficulties parents face when their children me decisions that appear incomprehensible.

This edition is a re-release of Xaba's first poetry collection (first publised in 2005) due to demand from readers and academics. A powerful, ground breaking work that placed Xaba firmly as an important voice the SA literary scene.WordsWhenever I take the pulseof my existence,feel the pinchof my persistenceagainst the grinding grainof my resistanceto the pounding punchof their insistence,words transmit to mea drumroll of deliverance.

Greenwashing, corporate intransigence and bloody secrets. Maggie Cloete,s back. After working in Berlin and Joburg, she returns to present-day Pietermaritzburg as the day news editor for The Gazette. When a well-known environmentalist commits suicide, Maggie finds herself caught in the crossfire of conflicting interests. This escalates as loggers for Sentinel, a local paper company, unearth a gruesome find in the forest. As South Africa,s present confronts its past, Maggie faces the most bitter surprise of her life.

In this second collection Messages from the Bees Robin Winckel-Mellish shows the same qualities as A Lioness at my Heels, but this time runs deeper, darker and stronger. She delves not only into the riotous colours of southern Africa: birds, bees and caracals, but also climate change, while different kinds of love are pinpointed. Her poems of loss and grief are candid and even sensuous, showing the beauty of simplicity in bleakness. Both delicate and reflective these poems honour the wild while retaining a deeply-felt sense of connection with all that is relevant to our lives.

Christine Coates is a poet and writer from Cape Town who spends many hours walking on the mountain or besides the sea. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She has an interest in life-writing or memoir, and the recovery of personal history through public and private imagery. She translated her great-grandfather's Boer War journals and presented them in parallel text as a handmade, leather-bound book. She has undertaken the 800km pilgrimage across Spain, on the Camino de Compostela. Her stories and poems have been published in various literary journals: New Contrast, New Coin, Deep Water Literary Journal, scrutiny2, and the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry Review. Her poems were selected for the EU Sol Plaatje Poetry anthologies 2011 - 2014.

In this, her third collection of poetry, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers invokes images of past and present with hypnotic clarity, summoning the heart and heat of memory - painful and happy alike - with the distinct musicality and visceral punch she is known for. Some poems invite contemplation. Question and provoke. Others are elegiac, moments for reverence in a rich, diverse collection that both spans decades and pauses to revel in the intensity and beauty of a single moment. In liquid form that incorporates prose and poetry, de Villiers fearlessly confronts and disrupts, dipping into a wellspring of images that are euphoric and horrifying. At once prophetic and playful, ice cream headache in my bone is an exploration and celebration of language, a definitive collection that yields and responds, burns and soothes, all the while, calling to a longing for truth, and a tongue not tempered by oppression or pain.

I offer you my perspectives, my many mothers' teachings. I present both hopelessness and moments that excite, the taxi mgosi that makes me write.Johannesburg performance-poet Katleho Kano Shoro puts her stage presence into print with this metapoetic debut collection that captures the cadences of her fearless voice, her unassuming sense of humour, and her enthusiasm for an Afrocentric literary culture. Katleho reflects on creativity, on the writing, reading and performance of poetry, exploring the language that structures it, the forces that inspire it and the transformation that follows our experience of it. From there her words wander through personal relationships and politics, articulating ideas about masculinity, sexuality, blackness, colonialism and our connections to those we love. Crafted with both the spoken and written word in mind, Serurubele invites you not only to read poetry but to voice it, to taste the language as it flows from your tongue, to feel its rhythms and to hear its rhyme. Katleho has performed in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Grahamstown, Swaziland and London, and has been involved in myriad African literary initiatives. Recordings of her readings can be found online.

The title should have warned me. On reading the title poem, I realise any of the poems is a gateway into this passion with compassion, into a garden whose fragrances colour every sound lovers make when words have to cope. Make the lovers poets, see how each facet is etched, each jewel worked and polished. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. , Hugh Hodge

Now Following You is a clever, chilling and compelling read, which deals skilfully with relevant issues , most notably, the power social media gives to stalkers and others who intend harm. Jamie Burchell is a digital native , social media comes as naturally to her as breathing. She Instagrams, tweets and Facebooks her every move. Then a stalker starts using social media to track her movements. As his behaviour escalates, so does her fear. But her blog has never been more popular. The fans can,t get enough of reading about her stalker. She is closer than ever to achieving her dream of becoming a writer. Should she take herself offline, or should she refuse to be intimidated? Soon the stalker starts threatening the people she cares about. But now it,s too late for Jamie to go offline , he,s already following her in real life.

This is modern Lusaka, Zambia, where the line between magic and religion is blurred, the arcane and the mundane muddle and nothing is what it seems. Luse is a sharp street child combing the gang-ridden city in a desperate search for Doctor Georgia Shapiro who she hopes can offer her a way back into her once-bright past. The doctor is trying to unravel the mystery of a friend,s sudden death while attending to the AIDS crisis laying waste to the country around her. Meanwhile The Blood Of Christ Church and its enigmatic leader Priestess Selena Clark gain popularity with their murky promises of salvation and violent clandestine rituals. A small silver box links them in ways they cannot foretell. It will force Luse and Georgia to question who they trust, who they are and for whom they fight. Tanvi Bush's Witch girl is a crime thriller that juggles the past and the present effortlessly, blending AIDS activism, witchcraft, religious extremism and romance to create a well-paced narrative. Luse is so feisty, charming and resourceful that you'll miss her after you finish the book.

'... the past was not yet done with here, I thought to myself; its problems drip-fed into the present, muddying it endlessly.'South Africa in a time of transition: a world of shifting boundaries and fluid identities, under siege from the relentless power of the past.In this evocative and finely crafted debut collection, De Villiers deftly probes the ambiguities of this changing country. From the older woman with her much younger lover, trapped in Johannesburg traffic during 'load shedding' - the new leveler - to the 'gap year' graduates seeking some kind of permanence abroad, each story manages to contain entire worlds. These are lives of unconscious longing; of individuals - often willingly - cast adrift from their history, animated here in poetic yet pared-down prose.

A dazzling collection from across the African continent and diaspora - here SHORT STORY DAY AFRICA has assembled the best nineteen stories from their 2013 competition. Food is at the centre of stories from authors emerging and established, blending the secular, the supernatural, the old and the new in a spectacular celebration of short fiction. Civil wars, evictions, vacations, feasts and romances - the stories we bring to our tables that bring us together and tear us apart.

Swimming with Cobras is a memoir about a journey to find a foothold in a foreign land grappling with its own identity, offering rare and important insight into a corner of South Africa's past. Rosemary Smithis life as an activist in the Eastern Cape began when she moved from England with her South African born husband in the mid-1960s. They made their home in Grahamstown where they raised four children. As a member of the Black Sash she participated in events spanning three decades in an intensely politicised and oppressed province. Through her involvement she made the transition to full integration in a country that at first struck her as alien and strange.

Love Interrupted is set partially in the university town of Grahamstown and partially in rural Limpopo. The stories in this collection have an intimate feel, like conversations eavesdropped on. We hear the voices of black South African women, many of whom have to endure their husbands, nyatsis (mistresses), their abuse or both. Some cope by turning to church, others by turning a blind eye and some, like the narrator of ,Vicious Cycle,, by seeking to understand the legacy of South Africa,s past and the effects of migrant labour on its men. Despite serious themes of patriarchy and racism, there is much humour and lightness in the stories, as in ,Bridal Shower,, in which the narrator encounters a male stripper for the first time, and in ,Toy Boy,, in which a woman befriends the gigolo next door. This is an engaging collection full or rich characters you won,t forget, from Lebo, whose dream is take over the business of her domestic worker,s mother,s boss, and uses a witchdoctor to punish her detractors to MmaPhuti, who spikes her famous ginger-beer with whiskey.