Bongani Shabangu is a black Santa Claus in South Africa, sweltering under the midday sun in an outfit that should strictly speaking only be worn at the North Pole. He is so busy entertaining children and wondering about the situation in South Africa that he forgets to hydrate. He has visions of an ice cold Coke, yet his time runs out as he becomes more and more dehydrated. Hallucinations turn innocent young children into unimaginable horrors and Bongani slowly loses his mind. The short sto...

A collection of 22 short stories from the bizarre to the truly chilling as the author takes you along for a roller coaster ride, welcoming you to the darker side of humanity. She delves into the shadowy world of obsessions, addictions, death and the loss of innocence and imagination. She takes an honest, in depth look at things that happen all around us, yet we tend to ignore. Here we are forced to look at the pain of what it means to be human in all its various facets and to truly explore...

Anne Hurter is a broken woman; trying to resist the undercurrents flowing from a past of sexual abuse and emotional deprivation. Freedom does not lie in the death of her parents, but in the form of a caring and attentive saviour, Louis. Anne is incapable of love and Louis seeks it in the arms of another woman. A fragile Anne is pushed over the brink and finds self-preservation in the form of hoarding at the cost of her three children. Her home becomes her sanctuary. Soon it is filled with ...

Eight year old Abby is heart broken when her mother dies from cancer. She is left behind in the big house with her father who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that the church people, his so called family, did nothing as they suffered alone. The only way in which Abby can deal with her grief is to start building a town out of odds and ends. Here she is able to escape the harsh realities of bullying at school and the fact that she looks more like her mother with each passing day....

He finds himself on a deserted beach. It is a strange, alien place in which there is no colour, no sense of change, time or distance and no memory of a life before. The only thing that differentiates day from night is the intensity of light. How has he gotten to this place and will he ever escape it? He thinks about what exactly it means to be alive as he has no heartbeat, breath or emotions here. He meets a stranger who he knows, on an instinctual level, he cannot look at. Although he ask...

Ilgiprart and Oogithap, Electrosquids from the Fungus Asteroid are sent to earth on a dangerous mission. They have to collect samples to send back to their laboratory on the asteroid. They need to learn more about the planet in order to put their plan of world domination to work.They land somewhat safely on Earth thanks to their companion the Big Giant Head, who is a rather snooty, uptight mission commander. The Head is the brainy leader, while the Electrosquids, Oogitahp and Ilgiprart are...

A South African based story which delves into the superstitions and beliefs of Africans and how it contrasts with those of the affluent predominanatly white society. Thembile is culturally rooted and due to her rather simple mindedness is shunned by the other domestics in the area as she detests gossip. Thembile loves her job and the clean smell that surrounds her. The author juxtaposesthe ordered cleanliness of the kitchenn with the grimy horror that knows Thembile by name. A remnant of o...

STORM is an anthology of short stories around a common theme - a storm. Volume I is a mix of fantasy, science fiction and dystopian stories where people's lives are influenced by the occurrence of a storm, physical, moral or magical. Set in worlds apart from our own, five authors of the Pretoria Writers' Group give life to characters doing battle for the survival of their people, or fall over themselves in the process of trying.What can change the nature of a man? In John's case, i...

STORM is an anthology of four short stories around a common theme - a storm. Volume II is a mix of contemporary stories where people's lives are influenced by the occurrence of a storm, physical, moral or imaginary. Set in a modern day setting, four authors of the Pretoria Writers' Group brings real life in sometimes difficult circumstances to this anthology.Dandelions for Mother is story about a young girl whose heart is broken when her mother dies from cancer. She is left behind ...

Climate change is the most important issue now facing humanity. As global temperatures increase, floods, fires and storms are becoming both more intense and frequent. People are suffering. And yet, emissions continue to rise. This book unpacks the activities of the key actors which have organised past and present climate responses – specifically, corporations, governments, and civil society organisations. Analysing three elements of climate change – mitigation, adaptation and suffering – t...

At a quiet restaurant in an unnamed city a man and a woman sit across from each other. She is distraught. He is quickly drunk. Neither can stop thinking of what they've just seen - a deed so brutal, so terrible as to leave the woman in tears. Was it a moment of meaningless urban violence or was it something more?From the author of the dark short story Hide and Seek and the bestselling novella The Sickroom comes a tale about the things we do for love and the devili...