'Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will love Scotty Elliott's Sibanda series' Sunday Times (SA) When a skinned body is discovered on the side of the railway line deep in the Matabele bush, Detective Inspector Jabulani Sibanda, along with his sidekicks, Sergeant Ncube and the troublesome Land Rover, Miss Daisy, is back on the trail of a murderer. As more girls go missing and more bones are discovered, Sibanda realises they are dealing with the signature of a vicious serial killer who chooses the train as his killing field. Suspects abound, and the trio pursues the leads relentlessly, but the warped psychopath is elusive. Has Sibanda met his match? To complicate matters, his unrequited love interest, Berry Barton, is back on his radar, Gubu police station politics are as partisan as ever and Sgt Ncube, in an attempt to equal the brilliance of his boss, has discovered the wonders of the Oxford English Dictionary, to hilarious results. With winter tightening its grip, and drought and hardship threatening the population, Sibanda uses a risky strategy to trap his nemesis. Can he pull it off? Praise for C. M. Elliott: 'Her plot keeps readers guessing right to the end, when the monster meets a truly satisfying fate . . . Elliott's skill as a writer lies in her ability to create and flesh out characters that are so lifelike, they thrum in your head for days after finishing her books' Business Live 'Will have you hooked' The Gremlin 'C.M. Elliott has created a lively cast of characters and an intricate, clever plot' Margaret von Klemperer, The Witness 'A thrilling detective yarn and a finely-drawn picture of the counterpoint between the gentle music of the bush and the harsher notes of poachers' deadly gunfire' The Citizen

"When a skinned body is discovered on the side of the railway line deep in the Matabele bush, Detective Jabulani Sibanda, along with his sidekick, Sergeant Ncube and the troublesome Land Rover, Miss Daisy, is back on the trial of a murderer. As more girls go missing and more bones are discovered by the tracks, Sibanda realises they are dealing with a vicious serial killer who chooses the train as his killing field. ... With winter tightening its grip, and drought and hardship threatening the population, Sibanda uses a risky strategy to trap his nemesis."--Back cover.

Sibanda and the Rainbird introduces Detective Inspector Jabulani Sibanda, a bush-savvy policeman stationed in a large village on the borders of a national park in rural Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Sibanda’s expertise often outranks – and frustrates – his colleagues, not least his superiors. But when Sibanda isn’t feeling challenged enough, there’s always his courtship of local beauty Khanyi Mpofu to keep him busy and further distract him from his memories of Berry Barton who he met while studying in the UK. However, Sibanda soon encounters more pressing matters. A horribly mutilated corpse is discovered in the park near the luxurious Thunduluka Lodge. At first it looks like the corpse was savaged by vultures, but Sibanda quickly concludes that the victim was murdered for body parts and from then on nothing is quite like it seems. With Sibanda are his trusty sidekicks: Sergeant Ncube and Miss Daisy. Ncube is an overweight, many-wived mechanical genius and Miss Daisy is an ancient, truculent Land Rover that is the apple of Ncube’s eye. And then there is the bush itself, explored through Sibanda’s passion for and encyclopaedic knowledge of it, which emerges as a character in its own right in this madcap, contemporary African adventure.

'Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will love Scotty Elliott's Sibanda series' Sunday Times (SA) Detective Sibanda and Sergeant Ncube are back! Two bodies are discovered near Gubu, one burning at the base of a tree struck by lightning and, on the banks of the Zambezi, a second killing which threatens to tear Detective Sibanda's life apart. The victims are not connected as one is a foreign wildlife researcher and the other a local driver, but Sibanda's intuition tells him the murders are linked. The only clues are a fragment of material found in the brain of one victim, a puncture wound in the thigh of the other, and a diary full of coded names. As the men investigate further, they find links to an ivory smuggling gang and in their pursuit of the killer, Sibanda and Ncube not only have to cope with their temperamental Landrover, their chief inspector's lack of cooperation, but a rough and remote landscape full of wild and dangerous adventure. Praise for C. M. Elliott: 'C.M. Elliott has created a lively cast of characters and an intricate, clever plot' Margaret von Klemperer, The Witness 'A thrilling detective yarn and a finely-drawn picture of the counterpoint between the gentle music of the bush and the harsher notes of poachers' deadly gunfire' The Citizen 'Her plot keeps readers guessing right to the end, when the monster meets a truly satisfying fate . . . Elliott's skill as a writer lies in her ability to create and flesh out characters that are so lifelike, they thrum in your head for days after finishing her books' Business Live 'Will have you hooked' The Gremlin

"When a skinned body is discovered on the side of the railway line deep in the Matabele bush, Detective Jabulani Sibanda, along with his sidekick, Sergeant Ncube and the troublesome Land Rover, Miss Daisy, is back on the trial of a murderer. As more girls go missing and more bones are discovered by the tracks, Sibanda realises they are dealing with a vicious serial killer who chooses the train as his killing field. ... With winter tightening its grip, and drought and hardship threatening the population, Sibanda uses a risky strategy to trap his nemesis."--Back cover.

It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie and their zealous leader Millicent at the ancient city of Kashgar to establish a mission. As they encounter resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar...In present-day London, Frieda opens her door to find a man sleeping on the landing. Tayeb, a Yemeni refugee, has arrived in Frieda's life just as she learns that she is next-of-kin to a stranger, a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises. The two wanderers embark on a journey that is as great, and as unexpected, as Eva's.

The bed, dressed in hand sewn quilt or threadbare blanket, may in and of itself be memorable, but it is what happens in the bed - the sex and lovemaking, the dreams, the reading, the nightmares, the rest, giving birth and dying - which give 'bed' special meaning. Whether a bed is shared with a book, a child, a pet or a partner, whether lovers lie in ecstasy or indifference, whether 'bed' relates to intimacy or betrayal, it is memories and recollections of 'bed', in whatever form, which have triggered the writing of these thirty stories by women from southern Africa. Well known writers Joanne Fedler, Sarah Lotz, Arja Salafranca, Rosemund Handler and Liesl Jobson will delight, but you will discover here new writers from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia, each with a unique voice as they cast light on the intimate lives of women living in this part of the world and the possibilities that are both available to and denied them. The BED BOOK of short stories - some quirky and tender, others traumatic or macabre - is the perfect companion to take to bed with you, to keep you reading long into the night.