Top reads for the holidays

Whether you are looking for the perfect gift or need something to keep you occupied during your well-deserved down-time, we are pleased to bring you some of the current top-selling books according to Exclusive Books.

The Sentinel

Authors: Lee Child and Andrew Child

Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd

About the book

The edge-of-your-seat, heart-in-mouth new Jack Reacher thriller for 2020 – his 25th adventure. No one’s bigger than Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher gets off the bus in a sleepy no-name town outside Nashville, Tennessee. He plans to grab a cup of coffee and move right along. Not going to happen. The town has been shut down by a cyber-attack. At the centre of it all, whether he likes it or not, is Rusty Rutherford. He is an average IT guy, but he knows more than he thinks. As the bad guys move in on Rusty, Reacher moves in on them . . . And now Rusty knows he is protected; he is never going to leave the big man’s side. Reacher might just have to stick around and find out what the hell’s gone wrong . . . and then put it right, like only he can.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End

Author: Jeff Kinney

Publisher: Penguin Random House Children’s UK

About the book

In The Deep End, book 15 of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series from #1 international bestselling author Jeff Kinney, Greg Heffley and his family hit the road for a cross-country camping trip, ready for the adventure of a lifetime. But things take an unexpected turn, and they find themselves stranded at a campsite that is not exactly a summertime paradise. When the skies open up and the water starts to rise, the Heffleys wonder if they can save their vacation – or if they are already in too deep.

The Whistleblowers

Author: Mandy Wiener

Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa

About the book

Whistleblowers are seldom seen as heroes. Instead, they are often viewed through a negative lens, described as troublemakers, disloyal employees, traitors, snitches and, in South Africa, as impimpis or informers. They risk denigration and scorn, not to mention dismissal from their positions and finding their careers in tatters.

With corruption and fraud endemic in democratic South Africa, whistleblowers have played a pivotal role in bringing wrongdoing to light. They have provided an invaluable service to society through disclosures about cover-ups, malfeasance and wrongdoing. Their courageous acts have resulted in the recovery of millions of rands to the fiscus and to their fellow citizens as well as improved transparency and accountability for office bearers and politicians. Some would argue it was whistleblowing that brought down a president and the corrupt ‘state capture’ regime.

But in most cases, the outcomes for the whistleblowers themselves are harrowing and devastating. Some have been gunned down in orchestrated assassinations, others have been threatened and targeted in sinister dirty-tricks campaigns. Many are hounded out of their jobs, ostracised and victimised. They struggle to find employment and are pushed to the fringes of society. Where there is litigation, this drags on and on through the courts. Mental health and relationships suffer. The psychological burden of choosing to speak up when there has been little reward or compensation is a heavy one to carry. The Whistleblowers shines a light on their plight, advocating for a change in legislation, organisational support and social attitudes in order to embolden more potential whistleblowers to have the courage to step up.

Their status as whistleblowers is sometimes contentious – this book delves into whether they deserve the status or whether they were, in fact, complicit in the wrongdoing they claimed to expose.

These are the raw and evocative accounts of South Africa’s whistleblowers, told in their own voices and from their own perspectives: from the hallowed corridors of parliament to the political killing fields of KwaZulu-Natal, from the fraud-riddled platinum belt to the impoverished, gang-ridden suburb of Elsies River, from the gantried freeways of Gauteng to the Bosasa blesser’s facebrick campus in Krugersdorp, from the wild east of Mpumalanga to the corporate jungle of Sandton, and from the wide farmlands of the Free State to that compound of corruption in Saxonwold.

The information contained in this article is of a general nature and intended for information purposes only.