Abalone crisis cleaved by underling who blows the lid
POACHER – CONFESSIONS FROM THE ABALONE UNDERWORLD Kimon de Greef and Shuhood Abader Kwela Books
JAILED for poaching abalone, Shuhood Abader started writing his story. For more than 15 years, he’d been a small cog in a dark underworld stretching from the Cape to China’s luxury seafood market. As abalone – perlemoen, perly – vanishes from the South African coast, Shuhood’s personal narrative takes readers to the heart of the crisis. Kimon de Greef’s postgraduate research on poaching led him into journalism and today he is an expert on the illicit abalone trade. He contextualises Abader’s raw, immediate tale by showing how the system works: from desperate fishing communities via gang strongholds on the Cape Flats, tik, guns and police complicity. A nail-biting story of one man, deeply conflicted, committed to his faith and searching for a better way.
HOME FIRE Kamila Shamsie Bloomsbury Publishing
WINNER of the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction and long-listed for the Booker Prize last year among many other accolades, Home Fire is a compelling story of how loyalties are torn apart when love and politics collide. Shamsie is a master storyteller. Her main character, Isma, is finally free after years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death. She resumes a long dream of studying in America but can’t stop worrying about her sister Aneeka back in London – or their brother Parvaiz, who’s disappeared to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Two families’ fates are devastatingly entwined.
THREE LITTLE LIES Laura Marshall Sphere
THIS electrifying new thriller from a mistress of story-telling is about friendship, betrayal and revenge. Sasha North has gone missing. Everyone says she’s run away, but her best friend knows better. They’ve known each other since they were teenagers, when Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to her friend’s life, until a brutal attack changed both their lives forever. Her friend knows what happened on that fateful night and who wants revenge. And if Sasha has been taken, does that mean she’s next?