Martine Vosmaer Books

The best novel to date from the leading figure in South African crime fiction.

Kent Haruf, award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel of masterful authority. The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide unveils the immemorial truths about human beings: their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another.

Why would a mathematics professor from Cambridge University, renting a holiday home outside Cape Town, require a false identity and three bodyguards? And where is he, now that they are dead? The only clue to the bodyguards' murder is the snake engraved on the shell casings of the bullets that killed them. Investigating the massacre, Benny Griessel and his team find themselves being drawn into an international conspiracy with shocking implications. It seems it is not just the terrorists and criminals of Britain and South Africa who may fear the Professor's work, but the politicians too. As the body count begins to spiral viciously, Benny must put his new-found love life aside and focus on finding the one person who could give him a break in the case: a teenage pickpocket on the run in the city. But Benny is not the only person hunting for Tyrone Kleinbooi . . . Relentlessly suspenseful, topical, hard-hitting and richly rewarding, COBRA is a superb novel from an author who is acclaimed around the world as a brilliant voice in crime fiction.

It's no simple case of murder. The charred remains of a woman have been found, and Detective Lena Adams is charged with homicide. The evidence leads Sara Linton - Grant Country's resident medical examiner/pediatrician - and her husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, to those who are poisoning a small town with their sickening hatred.

"With Deon Meyer you can't go wrong. He's a writer whose work I admire, wait for and then devour." — Michael Connelly Lemmer's First Law: Don't get involved. But when Emma le Roux looks at him with pleading eyes, when the roof of his Karoo house needs big repairs, when the cause is good and just, laws can be broken. So he sighs, and says, yes, he'll ride shotgun for two rare black rhinos. Bad decision. Because on a dark and dusty road in Limpopo, they stick a Smith & Wesson Model 500 against his head. They kick him and beat him, they lie, they deceive him, and they steal his Glock, the one with his fingerprints all over it. They should have killed him. And now he goes after them--the start of a trail of violence that will run the length and breadth of a country, and touch many lives. It will leave a trail of blood through the first private-investigation dossier of former cop Mat Joubert. It's a "fifty-five," police slang for a missing persons case. It will stomp fear and horror through the life of Milla Strachan, who walked out on her rich, cheating husband and abusive teenage son to start a new life. A trail of death, stretching from the Chizarira to the Cape Waterfront. And at the end of it, nobody will be untouched.

Maximilian Ophuls is knifed to death on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India, slaughtered by his Kashmiri driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar, the Clown. This book presents the story of Max, his killer, and his daughter - and of a fourth character, the woman who links them all.

'I'll shoot a policeman every day until you arrest the murderer of Hanneke Sloet'. Shortly after the South African Police Services receive this threatening email, a policeman is shot by a sniper and recovering alcoholic Benny Griessel is ordered to reopen the Sloet case.

Ο Ελεάζαρ φον Βογκάου είναι ανταποκριτής στην Αλκάνταρα της Βραζιλίας, ενώ η γυναίκα του Ελάινε συμμετέχει σε επιστημονική αποστολή στη ζούγκλα του Μάτο Γκρόσο. Η κόρη τους Μοέμα, φοιτήτρια εθνολογίας, είναι εθισμένη σε ουσίες. Στην ιστορία εμπλέκονται και άλλοι χαρακτήρες, όπως η μιγάδα Σολεντάντ, η γοητευτική Ιταλίδα Λορεντάνα, ο διεφθαρμένος κυβερνήτης και η αλκοολική σύζυγός του, καθώς και ο Νέλσον, ένα ανάπηρο αγόρι από τις φαβέλες που επιθυμεί εκδίκηση. Κεντρικό πρόσωπο είναι ο Αθανάσιος Κίρχερ, Ιησουίτης του 17ου αιώνα, αναγνωρισμένος επιστήμονας με ποικίλα ενδιαφέροντα, που σχετίζεται με την αιγυπτιολογία, τη γλωσσολογία και την ιατρική. Η βιογραφία του, γραμμένη από τον μαθητή του Κάσπαρ Σοτ, φτάνει στα χέρια του Ελεάζαρ, ο οποίος καλείται να επιμεληθεί την έκδοση. Αυτή η βιογραφία συνδέει τις ζωές των χαρακτήρων σε ένα μυθιστόρημα-ποταμό, που αναδεικνύει τις ανθρώπινες ανησυχίες και την αναζήτηση του χαμένου παραδείσου. Το έργο είναι γεμάτο ανατροπές και εξερευνά τις σχέσεις μεταξύ αλήθειας και φαινομένων, πραγματικότητας και μυθοπλασίας, συνδυάζοντας περιπέτεια, φιλοσοφία, ψυχολογία και πολιτική. Αναφορές σε Μπόρχες, Κορτάσαρ και Έκο προσθέτουν βάθος στην αφήγηση.

Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, disappears in a devastating earthquake, leaving behind her long-time lover Ormus Cama, who finds, loses, seeks, and finds her again and again throughout his life in music.

When the rich and famous visit South Africa, their first port of call is often Body Armor, the personal security company offering two types of protection: the big and intimidating muscle men called Gorillas or the lean and hungry former government body guards, referred to as Invisibles. Lemmer is a freelance Invisible. The tiny and beautiful Emma le Roux, a brand consultant from Cape Town, wants to hire him. He needs the money, so he listens to her story. Lemmer’s First General Law is: Don’t get involved. But he has never failed as a body guard and he’s also grown a little too fond of Emma. He uncovers simmering racial and political tensions, greed, corruption, and a network of eco-terrorists. He follows the leads until he finds what he’s after: The people who attacked Emma. Getting to them will be extremely dangerous, and exposing them could have international political implications. If he fails, both he and Emma will end up dead. But Lemmer is sick and tired of being invisible. He goes after them, against all odds.

'Pavese's novels are works of an extraordinary depth where one never stops finding new levels, new meanings' Italo Calvino June, 1943. Allied aircraft are bombing Turin; fascist Italy is on its knees. Every evening, after a day's teaching in the city, Corrado returns to the safety of the hills and the care of his two doting landladies. He has no attachments, no obligations. Yet against his better judgement he is drawn to the easy warmth of a circle of anti-fascists who congregate at a nearby tavern, and confronted with a painful choice: emotional and political commitment, with all its dangers - or devastating retreat. Pavese's extraordinary semi-autobiographical novel is a lucid portrayal of missed opportunities and human weakness, set against the seductive intensity of the Italian countryside. Translated with an introduction by Tim Parks

"The first of four novels in a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories. Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art - via a bit of very contemporary skulduggery and skull-diggery - Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means. Autumn is part of the quartet Seasonal- four stand-alone novels, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are), exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take and in our ways with narrative."

A tall, yellow-haired young European traveler, calling himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', arrives at the court of the Grand Mughal, Emperor Akbar, with a captivating tale that soon captivates the entire imperial capital. He claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, Qara K z, 'Lady Black Eyes', renowned for her beauty and rumored powers of enchantment. Captured by an Uzbek warlord and later the Shah of Persia, she ultimately becomes the lover of Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune and commander of the Ottoman Sultan's armies. When Argalia returns to Florence with his Mughal mistress, her presence mesmerizes the city, leading to a series of troubles. The narrative explores a woman's struggle for autonomy in a patriarchal society, juxtaposing the hedonistic Mughal capital, where Akbar grapples with belief, desire, and familial treachery, with the sensual yet brutal world of Florence, where Niccol Machiavelli learns about the harsh realities of power. Despite their geographical distance, these worlds reveal striking similarities, with the enchantments of women influencing both. The story raises questions about the truth of Mogor's claims and the fate of the lost princess, leaving readers to ponder the consequences of deceit.

The Woman in the Blue Cloak is a brilliant investigation which will thrill and entertain fans of Deon Meyer's much-loved detective Benny Griessel.

Written in spare, matter of fact prose, this work is the sexual diary of a well-known Parisian intellectual who likes to spend her nights in the singles clubs of Paris and the Bois de Boulogne where she has sex with a succession of anonymous men.

In 'het wonder vna San Baudolino' laat Eco zich van zijn beste kant zien: het boek bevat spitsvondige, erudiete en hilarische stukken over de meest uiteenlopende onderwerpen, in Eco's bekende superieure stijl geschreven.

Speurend naar de daders van een bomaanslag op de Parijse synagoge, loopt ster-reporter Catherine Welles de mysterieuze 'Bulgaar' tegen het lijf. Het verhaal van hun liefde speelt zich af tegen de achtergrond van haar journalistieke belevenissen die spannend en soms aangrijpend zijn.