These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first three – One Call Away, The Secret History of Sharks, and Addict – along with Harlan Coben’s Nobody’s Fool, which was reviewed in full on Sunday April 20, are all on Exclusive Books’s list of top reads for April.
Some of the books below will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

One Call Away: The (intimate) story of the doctor who stood between death and survival, by Anne Biccard (Jacana)
This is Johannesburg doctor Dr Anne Biccard’s third memoir of working in A&E at a Gauteng public hospital, written with concern, humour and warmth.
She admits doctors aren’t always right. One of the first cases she mentions is that of a small child who fell off the bed and may have a broken arm. The child is cradling his left arm, but when Biccard studies the X-rays, she can’t see a problem.
Clearly though something is wrong, so she rings a radiologist – at home at dawn on a Sunday – to ask her to have a look. She confirms the arm is fine, adding: “But it is just the broken clavicle…”
Biccard had scrutinised the arm in great detail, but her eye never went as high as the collar bone, which is clearly snapped in half.
“Ohhh,” she says weakly, to chortles on the other end of the line.
Biccard describes what practising medicine is like in all its gory glory, and doesn’t spare the reader much.

If you’re a young person dreaming of being a doctor, a book like this might set your ambitions in stone, or drive you, screaming, away from the medical profession.
But I thoroughly enjoyed her first two books, and expect to enjoy this one too.

The Secret History of Sharks – The rise of the ocean’s most fearsome predators, by John Long (Quercus)
John Long, now Strategic Professor of Palaeontology at Flinders University in Australia, has been collecting shark fossils, mainly teeth, since the age of seven.
He has, he says, a deep respect for the role sharks have played in regulating their ecosystems, and how they have adapted over hundreds of millions of years to Earth’s constant engine of change.
He describes sharks as “the poster children for evolutionary success, the prism through which we can see the struggles of all life – maybe even our own”.
They have some extraordinary gifts: their sense of smell is capable of detecting minute amounts of blood or other organic compounds in the water from hundreds of metres away.
They are also able to detect the faint electrical fields of other living creatures, which Long points out is handy when your prey might be buried under sand.
“It has been claimed that sharks can detect electric currents as weak of one billionth of a volt, and that if two AA batteries were connected under the sea, a shark could sense the charge from a thousand miles away.”
How did sharks survive so many extinction events that wiped out other creatures, such as the dinosaurs?
The answers are here, in more than 400 pages. That might be a bit much for the average reader, but the American scientist, author and historian Jared Diamond says of this book: “Will keep you on the edge of your sea from its first page to its last.”

Addict – A tale of drugs and recovery, by Milton Schorr (Penguin)
Milton Schorr was a happy little Cape Town boy, singing around the house. He had a mum, a dad and two sisters. He didn’t see his dad much, as he was always working, but his mum loved him.
When he was seven his dad left, and the family had to move to a much smaller home. Mum had to work now, and just wasn’t that loving, always-there presence any more.
In his early teens, Milton became enraged, furious, angry. Shoplifting, porn, cigarettes of course, booze, weed. It all helped him to be the person he felt he really was – broken, a wreck, unlovable.
When he was 15 he watched the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Basketball Diaries. He writes: “Where others saw a tragedy on the screen, I saw something more. In Leo’s haunted face as he wandered the streets of New York a drug-soaked wreck, I saw absolution. I saw peace.
“Because release comes when the inside matches the outside, even if just for a moment.”
So at 17, when he was offered heroin, he stuck out his arm. A friend said: “You sure?” Milton nodded. “The answer was always yes.”
Clean for 19 years when he sat down to write this book, he asked himself: “Why did I choose to see the dark, when my friends did not?”
This book is the answer.

Juliet Prowse: Born to Dance – The extraordinary life story of my aunt, by Juliet E Prowse
When I received an email from Juliet Prowse, I was a bit surprised. I’d certainly heard of her, but was she still alive?
Well, no, she died in 1996, just days before her 60th birthday, it turns out. My emailer was Juliet E Prowse, the famous dancer’s niece, who had written a biography of her. Would I give it some publicity?
When I was growing up, Juliet Prowse – the aunt – was famous in her home country of South Africa as a dancer, singer and actor. She was also famous for her legs that went on forever. There’s a picture of Prowse on the back cover of this volume doing the splits while upright and dancing in high heels.
Photographs would appear in the newspapers of her with Frank Sinatra, who asked her to marry him, and Elvis Presley, with whom she starred in the film GI Blues. She had a 40-year career, mainly in the US, and was hugely famous.
Not bad for a girl who spent part of her childhood in Kimberley and who grew up in South Africa.

The Lions’ Den, by Iris Mwanza (Canongate)
Newly qualified lawyer Grace Zulu has her first case: to defend Willbess Mulenga against charges of committing acts “against nature” – being in drag at a pub, and later being caught having sex with an unknown male patron. This might be 1990s Zambia, but Zulu is pretty sure homosexuality isn’t “against nature”.
It’s a pro bono case, which no one else wanted, but Zulu is excited about the challenge.
When she goes to the central police station to meet her client, the policeman at the door asks her for an “expediting fee”. However, when it emerges they come from neighbouring villages, he drops this demand, saying that next time she must just bring a “token of appreciation”.
But when Mulenga is brought into the interview room, Zulu is shocked. His face is bruised, his right eye swollen shut, and one of his teeth is chipped.
The policeman tells her Mulenga was injured when he resisted arrest, but Zulu points out the injuries are fresh, while Mulenga was arrested five weeks earlier.
Her argument angers the policeman, who tells her the interview is over. Enraged, Zulu threatens to file a complaint for police brutality, and for soliciting a bribe.
The policeman shoves Zulu with such force that she falls, hitting her head on the floor and passing out.
And that’s the beginning of what looks like a fascinating debut novel.
Dr Iris Mwanza is a Zambian-American writer, a lawyer and deputy director of women and leadership in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first four are from the list of Exclusive Books’s top reads for March. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Only Good Things – Celebrating 100 feel-good SA stories of 2024, by Brent Lindeque, Tyler Leigh Vivier, Ashleigh Nefdt and Nothando Mthembu (Good Things Guy)

The word boep – specifically the term beer boep – has been added to the Oxford Dictionary.

It means, as we all know: “A protuberant belly or paunch [especially] on a man, attributed to beer consumption.”

This is just one of the stories to smile about in the Good Things Guy Brent Lindeque’s second coffee table volume of stories to brighten our days. And since things, both international and national, are somewhat dire, we all need a touch of cheer.

In his introductory letter to this title, Lindeque says the Good Things Guy has blossomed from a simple idea to share the brighter side of SA to become “something much bigger than I could ever have imagined. It has become a movement, one that has firmly cemented itself as SA’s leading platform for good news.”

Lindeque says his good news stories are a source of inspiration, not just for individuals but also for mainstream news outlets. “It’s been amazing to watch them pick up our stories, further spreading the ripple effect of hope.”

So here you can read about a foreign stem cell donor who helped save the life of a local leukaemia sufferer; a Cape Town man who moved into a flat after a lifetime in a shack; a poisoned dog who was rescued; a penguin with scoliosis having his life saved by a device that enabled him to swim; clean-up initiatives; a memorial to Pigcasso, the painting pig; the love story of a couple who shared a desk in grade 4, years later reached out to each other on Twitter, and then got engaged back in their grade 4 classroom; how to work wonders with your budget; turning beach plastics into artworks – the list goes on.

My only criticism: there should be 365 stories in this book, so we can start each day with a positive energy boost. May the Good Things Guy team go from strength to strength.

Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old – Thoughts on ageing as a woman, by Brooke Shields (Piatkus)

Well, for one thing Brooke Shields is not old – she’s 59. Also, she’s still gorgeous.

But even she is aware the years are ticking by.  She writes that the first time it dawned on her she had reached “a certain age”, she was walking in downtown New York with her two “stunning” daughters.

She’s used to being recognised in the street, but this time the glances were being cast at her daughters, not her.

She writes: “I had every single feeling, all at once. What are you doing ogling my babies I will cut you but also aren’t they gorgeous but also, wait, no one’s gazing at me? When did that happen? Am I over?

“Protectiveness, pride, melancholy – it all smacked me upside the head in one quintessential New York moment.”

I remember going to a restaurant with my mother and younger sister, and the waitress spoke exclusively to my sister and me – until my mother pointed out, quite forcefully, that she was paying for the lunch and would appreciate it if the waitress spoke to her too.

Which leads on to Shields’s next point: that brands trip over themselves to capture the coveted 18-to 34 demographic, even though surveys show it’s women over 40 who have the most purchasing power. “We have accumulated wealth, and we’re making 85% of the household-buying decisions… We are ignored by brands, and when we are targeted, it’s for wrinkle cream or menopause supplements. Talk about short-sighted.”

She quotes the American Psychological Assocation’s Monitor on Psychology describing ageism in the US as “one of the last socially acceptable prejudices”.

This book is more than a memoir, it’s a reflection of where she’s been and where she hopes she’s going. She writes about “having work done”, although very little on herself other than colouring her roots and having treatment to even her skin tone.

She is happy accepting her limits, and says acceptance is not defeat but is understanding that you can’t or don’t want to do something, and then just not doing it.

I think this book looks interesting.

The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil, by Shubnum Khan (Macmillan)

Dreams can true, sometimes it just takes a little time.

So writes Shubnum Khan in a note to readers at the start of this novel.

Akbar Manzil is a house, once a grand one, near Durban. But nearly a century after it was built, it is crumbling and dreary when, in 2014, Sana Malek, neither girl or woman, and her father move in, the latest in a long line of tenants.

Sana discovers the house’s deserted west wing, where former tenants’ stuff has been left behind. And at the end of the passage is a locked door, probably unopened for years.

Slowly Sana begins to discover the truth about the house, and its secrets, including the djinn, who sits weeping in a cupboard.

The novel is described as a haunting, a mystery and a love story.

It was first published in 2024, but has been reissued in 2025, with the author’s note and a set of frequently asked questions added to the original text.

Khan, whose debut novel was Onion Tears, said this one took her 13 years to write. It was rejected by publishers numerous times, and endlessly reworked.

Eventually the manuscript sold on auction to one of the biggest publishing houses in New York, and was later selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

All of this, she says, seemed impossible for an SA author making her US debut, “let alone one still living in Durban”.

The Favourites, by Layne Fargo (Chatto & Windus)

Katerina has known since toddlerhood she wanted to win an Olympic gold medal in ice dance. But when, as a pre-teen, she meets Heath, who has grown up in the foster system in Chicago, there is an instant connection.

She teaches him to skate, and he becomes her partner in all ways. But Kat’s homelife hasn’t been that much better than Heath’s, and they see their connection as a way of escaping their troubled pasts.

They achieve their dream to become champion ice dancers, and eventually qualify for the Olympics, where a terrible incident destroys everything.

Ten years after what Kat calls the most terrible day of her life, an unauthorised documentary about Kat and Heath and their relationship is broadcast, reiterating the sensational rumours about the pair.

Kat decides the time has come to the story in her own words – and it’s a pretty wild story.

Precipice, by Robert Harris (Hutchinson Heinemann)

If you’ve seen the movie Conclave you’ll be familiar with the work of Robert Harris, who not only wrote the novel on which it was based but also co-wrote the screenplay.

After his first novel, Fatherland, became a bestseller, he was able to stop being a journalist – he was editor of the Observer at 30 – and turn to fulltime fiction.

He has specialised in historical fiction and Precipice is his latest. It is a story about the (true) relationship between the British Prime Minister, HH Asquith, and a woman less than half his age, on the eve of the outbreak of World War 1.

The powers that be realise top secret documents are being leaked, and an intelligence officer is assigned to discover the source.

It emerges Asquith likes to discuss affairs of state with the gorgeous 26-year-old Hon Venetia Stanley. And we also know, right from the off, she has a wide variety of friends of various nationalities.

In a note, Harris says all the letters quoted in the text from Asquith are authentic, as are the telegrams, newspaper reports and official documents.

Looking forward to this one.