What started as a vision about the Olifants River Game Reserve has become the story of a game ranger’s life. With a naturalist’s eye for detail as well as the bigger picture of managing a fragile ecosystem through years of drought and plenty, Mario Cesare brings a storyteller’s delight – and a dash of Italian passion – to sharing his world.

Life-and-death encounters with lion, elephant and buffalo are balanced by rescues and interventions as these giants of the lowveld suffer the effects of human interference in their ecosystem. There are problems with poachers and with rapacious neighbours; then the delights of success – and in the case of the elephant population, the conundrums of too much success.

An inspiring and thrilling memoir of adventure and achievement from an internationally recognised endurance swimmer and ambassador for environmental awareness.

In July 2007, Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first person to swim at the North Pole, in temperatures that would kill a normal person, primarily to raise awareness of climate change. Nicknamed 'the human polar bear' for his ability to raise his body's core temperature at will, he has pioneered swims in the world's most hostile waters, redefining what it is possible to achieve in terms of endurance.

The first edition of Zuma, published in late 2008, concluded with Jacob Zuma’s future balancing on a knife’s edge. National elections loomed, but so did corruption charges and endless court battles.

Since then Zuma’s star has spectacularly risen – the corruption charges were dropped, he led the ANC to election victory and duly became President of South Africa, and his new cabinet and government appointments were generally well received.

The time has come to delve into the story of South Africa’s turbulent history – a story of exploration and conquest, rampant growth and war, oppression and ultimately, liberation.   Captured in Time tells that story in a collection of extracts from the most illuminating, entertaining and significant works written about the country and its diverse people over almost five centuries.

The writers are settlers, explorers, administrators, missionaries, hunters, travellers, novelists, playwrights, poets and politicians. They include Jan van Riebeeck, the first Dutch governor of the Cape, whose journal is the most detailed account in history of a colony's founding; Mazisi Kunene, the Xhosa poet, who chronicled the rise of Shaka, the Zulu empire builder, in epic verse; W C Scully, who took part in the diamond rush at Kimberley that set South Africa on the path to unimaginable wealth; Jan Smuts, the Boer War general who, with Cecil Rhodes, the arch Imperialist, was one of the architects of apartheid; and Nelson Mandela, apartheid's most famous victim, who became its nemesis. The novelists include two Nobel prizewinners, Nadine Gordimer and John Maxwell Coetzee.

In June 2005, Fred van der Vyver, a young actuary and the son of a wealthy Eastern Cape farming family, was charged with murdering his girlfriend, Inge Lotz, allegedly bludgeoning her to death with a hammer as she lay on a couch in her lounge.

The case against Van der Vyver seemed overwhelming. His behaviour at the time of the murder appeared suspicious and incriminating, and a letter, penned by Inge on the morning of her death, suggested that the two had been fighting. But it was forensic evidence that seemed to prove his guilt: his fingerprints were found at the scene, one of his shoes was matched to a blood stain on the bathroom floor, and traces of blood were found on an ornamental hammer that had been given to him by the victim’s parents.

And yet, in one of the most sensational and controversial murder trials in South African legal history, Van der Vyver’s lawyers sought to turn the tables on the police, accusing them of fabricating evidence and lying to the judge.