Recent Arrivals - Hardback Fiction

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are called to a safari lodge in Botswana's Okavango Delta to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest. The Okavango makes Precious appreciate once again the beauty of her homeland: it is a paradise of teeming wildlife, majestic grasslands and sparkling water. However, it is also home to rival safari operators, fearsome crocodiles and disgruntled hippopotamuses. What's more, Mma Makutsi still does not have a date for her wedding to Phuti Radiphuti and is feeling rather tetchy herself.

Karl is a troubled writer standing on the precipice of forty. After a degree of success in his early career he is now battling with what he terms his 'opus', his legacy to the world. But his partner Lori, the main breadwinner, is also thinking about her destiny and wants a child. As they embark on fertility treatment, Karl is forced to confront his deepest fear - that he will turn out to be like his father, a travelling salesman who was found dead after apparently committing murder when Karl was just thirteen. Unbeknown to Lori, Karl has already taken loans out against their house to pay for his mother's care home, and his freelance work, ghosting for a crime writer called Perry Fennimore, has dried up.

At age eighty-three and in failing health, Olivia Morrow knows she has little time left. The last of her line, she faces a momentous choice: expose a long-held family secret, or take it with her to her grave. Olivia has in her possession letters from her deceased cousin Catherine, a nun, now being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church. These letters reveal that, at the age of seventeen, Catherine gave birth to a son and gave him up for adoption and they identify the father as Alex Gannon, a world-famous doctor, scientist and inventor of medical patents.

On 7 December 1941, four brothers exploring a pit on a small island off the coast of Washington state make an extraordinary discovery, only to be interrupted by news of Pearl Harbor. In the present, Juan Cabrillo, Captain of US spy-ship Oregon, chasing the remnants of a crashed satellite in the Argentine jungle, makes a shocking discovery of his own. His search to untangle the mystery leads him, first, to that small island and its secret, and then much farther back, to an ancient Chinese expedition, and a curse that seems to have survived for over 500 years. If Cabrillo's team is successful in its quest, the reward could be incalculable. If not ...the only reward is death.