Online Farmer

What Makes Them Great? by Douglas Kruger (Penguin, R230) Regardless of the size of your business, success depends on being the one who is chosen over the competition by customers in your market. Yet many of the personality factors, habits and strategies of successful business owners are similar.

Kruger provides a lively overview of the ingredients for success with examples from across the globe, from Beyoncé and Simon Cowell to Chelsea Clinton and Mohandas Gandhi, weaving in plenty of personal observation along the way.

His short and sharp inspirational insights also make excellent daily motivational readings.

In The Jaws Of The Croco dile by Ray Ndlovu (Penguin, R250)

Harare-based Ndlovu’s byline is familiar to all those who follow his incisive commentary and well-covered news from Zimbabwe, both across Africa and the globe. Here he interviews President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his family, allies and opponents, using the results to probe the machinations, including horse-trading, brinkmanship and death threats, that brought him to power.

Pacy yet detailed, In the Jaws of the Crocodile is vividly written, and might well become the foundation of an Mnangagwa biopic. Steal A Few Cents by Rupert Smith ( Roundfire, R225) Few young professionals manage to be both highfliers and committed to practising the humane and honest values they preach.

This is what makes Mpho Mamela such a standout in his workplace and community, and the man least likely to commit suicide by throwing himself onto a deadly conveyor belt at a Mpumalanga mine. Smith’s novel casts lawyer Stephen Wakefield in the role of an informal detective who has to deal with the fallout of discovering alarming aspects of the behaviour of both Mamela’s nearest and dearest and his bosses.

Steal a Few Cents neatly captures South Africa’s corporate and mining culture, and has good characterisation. • Farmer’s Weekly’s book reviewer, Patricia McCracken, is a features and investigative journalist.