A few months ago, we covered what you’ll be seeing from us in the first half of 2020. And if we did the math right, that means we owe you news about six more months of releases. So here it is! We think we’ve got something for every kind of reader — from those reading their very first books, to those who’ve been reading for just a little bit longer. Many of these books are available for pre-order now.
June 2020
This year, we’re excited to publish even more thriller/crime novel under our African Crime Reads Series. We’ve got a new page on our website where you can find all of the books under that banner. There’s family dramas, gritty police procedurals, techno-thrillers, and political thrillers; as we add new titles, we hope that every kind of crime fiction lover will find something to love. We’re excited to be the North American publisher for the family drama meets thriller novel Outside the Lines by Ameera Patel.
Ameera’s novel was long-listed for a Barry Ronge Fiction Award when it was released in South Africa in 2017. The novel focuses on the class, religious, and racial divisions in the suburbs of Johannesburg. When drug-addicted Cathleen is kidnapped, the lives of those around her suddenly intersect and the divisions between them blur in this intimate drama blending elements of thriller, crime novel, family drama, and black comedy. Pre-orders are available now.
Also set for June, the final installment in Peter Church’s Dark Web Trilogy. Bitter Pill brings readers back to the shadowy operation, Dark Video, a video-sharing service where people are willing to pay any price for some of the Internet’s most disturbing videos. The demand for these videos is getting higher, the requests more depraved, and Dark Video begins tapping into a new service that blurs the boundaries between the real and virtual. This final chapter of the trilogy is a fast-paced ride through a violent underground world where no price is to high to pay to deliver every fantasy—no matter how twisted. Pre-orders are available now.
September 2020
Like his 2019 release The Wall, Max Annas’ The Farm is another tense thriller set in South Africa. The hours tick by as a diverse group of people barricade themselves in a farmhouse as protection against an attack from unseen shooters. Who is the target of the attack? What has motivated it? Politics? Revenge? Greed? Drugs? Weapons? Eight hours, minute by minute. An explosive mixture of psychological thriller and Neo-western with a political subtext. Winner of the 2015 German Crime Writing Prize. The Farm is translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds.
January 2021
While this isn’t technically a 2020 release, we’re excited about this early 2021 title. We’re pleased to be the North American publisher for The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. When it was published in South Africa, the novel was the winner of the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize. As Imogen Zula Nyoni, aka Genie, lies in a coma at Mater Dei Hospital. her family and friends struggle to come to terms with her impending death. With the lightest of touches, and with an overlay of magical-realist beauty, this novel sketches, through the lives of a few families and the fate of a single patch of ground, decades of national history (a country in Southern Africa that is never named) – from colonial occupation through the freedom struggle, to the devastation wrought by the sojas, the HIV virus, and The Man Himself.
Another early 2021 we’re excited about is Divine Justice by Joanne Hichens. Joanne is a prolific crime writer from South Africa, and we’re pleased to bring US readers the first in her Rae Valentine series. A newly-minted private eye, a recovering drug addict fresh off a breakup, and teamed up with an alcoholic business partner who just can’t seem to get it right, private investigator Rae is carrying a heavy load these days. When she finds herself in the middle of a violent world of diamond theft, white supremacy, and religious zealots—a world that doesn’t want someone like her—the case may be more than she can handle. From Cape Town to the banks of the Orange River in Namibia, the tension rises as Rae fights for her life and discovers that the missing diamonds are linked to the illicit dealings of the brutal gang without conscience.
