"Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy. Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles...

"In her parched, crumbling corner of a Cape Town public housing complex, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the South African police department. Her family home, recently reclaimed by the government, has become the scene of a criminal investigation. The remains of several bodies have just been unearthed from their land, after decades underground. Detectives pepper her with questions: Was your brother a member of a pro-apartheid group in the...

"Hans van Rooyen is a former police general raised by two women who survived the 1899 South African War. He finds himself being cared for in an old age home by the daughter of liberation struggle activists. At age 80, he carries with him the memories of crimes he committed as an officer under the apartheid governments. Having eluded the public confessions at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his time in the Border Wars, he retained his position...

"At once a shocking, unputdownable thriller and a brilliantly imagined journey through South Africa's troubled history, The Monster's Daughter is one of the most original and exciting debuts since Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. December 2010. A disgraced young constable named Alet Berg is reassigned to the sleepy provincial town of Unie, where she makes a terrifying discovery: the body of a young woman, burned beyond recognition. The...