New releases from Penguin Books SA (January 2007)

		Losing you by Nicci French Nina Landry is supposed to be taking her two children on a Christmas holiday today. But the road away from Sandling Island seems littered with obstacles. Most pressing of all, her fifteen-year-old daughter, Charlie, has yet to return from a night out... Minute by minute, Nina's unease builds to worry and then panic. Has Charlie run away? Or has something more sinister happened to her? And why will nobody take her disappearance seriously? As a series of half-buried secrets leads Nina from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas - and more whether they'll ever leave it again. Buy it now!
		Whitethorn by Bryce Courtenay From Bryce Courtenay comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English. The world is also on the brink of war and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany. Tom's English name proves sufficient for him to be ostracised, marking him as an outsider. And so begin some of life's tougher lessons for the small, lonely boy. Like the whitethorn, one of Africa's most enduring plants, Tom learns how to survive in the harsh climate of racial hatred. Then a terrible event sends him on a journey to ensure that justice is done. On the way, his most unexpected discovery is love. Buy it now!
		Veiled Kingdom by Carmen Bin Ladin On September 11th 2001, Carmen Bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law's name would be linked to these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to the victims in America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. In 1974 Carmen, half Swiss and half Persian, married Yeslam Bin Laden and found herself inside the complex and vast clan, part of a culture that she neither knew nor understood. Determined to protect her daughters from the inevitable restrictions within a society riddled with hypocrisy and contradiction, in 1985 she moved back to Switzerland, her home country. Carmen's story takes us inside one of the most powerful, secretive and repressive kingdoms in the world and the Bin Laden family's role within it. She is one of the few women to have acquired, through her husband, intimate knowledge of the inner workings of this society. Buy it now!
		Tibetan Book of the Dead by Thupten Jinpa One of the greatest works created by any culture and overwhelmingly the most influential of all Tibetan Buddhist texts in the West, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has had a number of distinguished translations, but strangely all of these have been partial abridgements. Now the entire text has not only been made available in English but in a translation of quite remarkable clarity and beauty. A comprehensive guide to living and dying The Tibetan Book of the Dead contains exquisitely written guidance and practices related to transforming our experience in the daily life, on the processes of dying and the after-death state, and on how to help those who are dying. As originally intended this is as much a work for the living, as it is for those who wish to think beyond a mere conventional lifetime to a vastly greater and grander cycle. Buy it now!
		Love Walked In by Maria De Los Santos "My life - my real life - started when a man walked into it, a handsome stranger in a perfectly cut suit, and, yes, I know how that sounds ..." For 31-year-old Cornelia Brown, life is a series of movie moments, and "Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up". So imagine Cornelia's delight when her very own Cary Grant walks through the door of the hip Philadelphia cafe. But when Cornelia meets 11-year-old Clare, their lives are forever changed in unexpected ways ... Funny, touching and smart, Love Walked In is a winning tribute to classic film and true romance. Buy it now!