Sunday bestselling books

Another Sunday is here and as usual we highlight the best selling books on the online retail platforms:

Exclusive Books
1. Twilight
2. New Moon
3. Breaking Dawn
4. Assegai
5. Eclipse
6. Slumdog Millionaire
7. The Shack
8. 8th Confession
9. Paths of Glory
10. Eat, Pray, Love

Amazon
1. 7 days in the top 100 Cook Yourself Thin: Skinny Meals You Can Make in minutes - Lifetime Television
2. The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) - Rick Riordan
3. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto - Mark R. Levin
4. The Shack - William P. Young
5. Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 9) - Charlaine Harris
6. Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) - Stephenie Meyer
7. The Twilight Saga Collection - Stephenie Meyer
8. Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) - Stephenie Meyer
9. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
10. New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) - Stephenie Meyer

Take2
1. Burning Wild - Feehan, Christine
2. Breaking Dawn - Meyer, Stephenie
3. Eclipse - Meyer, Stephenie
4. New Moon - Meyer, Stephenie
5. Twilight - Meyer, Stephenie
6. Twilight - Meyer, Stephenie
7. Vision in White - Roberts, Nora
8. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
9. Lover Avenged - Ward, J. R.
10. Dream Warrior - Kenyon, Sherrilyn

Kalahari.Net
1. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
2. Breaking Dawn - Meyer, Stephenie
3. Twilight - Meyer, Stephenie
4. New Moon - Meyer, Stephenie
5. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think about Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment - Steve Harvey
6. The Shack - William P. Young
7. Assegai - Wilbur Smith
8. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
9. New Moon (softcover) - Stephenie Meyer
10. Twilight (softcover) - Stephenie Meyer

Dean Koontz - Your heart belongs to me

The latest offering from Dean Koontz is an absolute cracker...

One word for you - SUBTEXT - you'll have to read the book to understand what I mean but I promise you it is well worth the read.

As Koontz has gone along, he's moved more away from the macabre horror stories to the psychological thrillers with a twist and this one was no different. Let's put it this way - I started reading the book about 7:30 this morning and three hours later I was wrapping it up - it was just that damn engrossing and arguably one of the best books of his I have ever read....

... One of those books that leaves you thinking about the world as a whole and not just escaping into fiction for a while.

The story itself involves a multi-millionaire with everything to live for. He suddenly learns that he has less than a year to live unless he receives a vital heart transplant.

Out of the blue a heart becomes available and everything goes smoothly until he starts getting threatening letter and warnings - somebody wants their heart back....

After that you're sucked along on a fantastic read that will leave you gasping for breath... Wow!

Author: Dean Koontz
Title: Your Heart Belongs to me
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-726756-9
Loot price: R279.00 (see banner right)

A cracking book - rated it four and half out of five.

Lisa Scottoline - Daddy's Girl

Being a guy I tend to prefer quality smash and bash types of action and adventure stories but even I had to admit that Lisa Scottoline's "Daddy's Girl" wasn't a bad read.

Basically Natalie Greco is a professor at a local college who gets convinced to do some lecturing at the local prison.

Unfortunately a prison riot during one of her lectures turns her world upside down and suddenly one of the guards and two of the prisoners are dead.

However as she tries to save the guard, he tells her a secret message to pass on to his wife.

The more baffled Greco becomes by the message the deeper she starts to dig and suddenly people are warning her not to ask too many questions. When she still wont take the hint she ends up being framed for another brutal murder and she is forced to run.

Author: Lisa Scottoline
Title: Daddy's Girl
ISBN-13: 978-0-330-44385-
Loot Price: R93 (See banner right)

A good little story with a handy twist at the end.

Rated it a 3 and a half out of 5

Robin Cook - Foreign Body

Robin Cook's "Foreign Body" promised a helluva lot and didn't deliver where it counted.

The story-line itself was pretty useful but the end just fizzled out and I got this sinking feeling when the story was starting to get exciting and there were only 10 pages left in the book.

Basically the story is set in the hub of the Indian "medical tourism" industry. Foreigners from the US and UK, unable to afford quality healthcare at home have started taking their ailments to the likes of India and Thailand and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of medical attention they are receiving... and this has far reaching financial implications for healthcare groups in these countries.

So of course one "entrepreneurial" healthcare provider out of the US decides to take some action and begins bumping off a few of these medical tourists in the hope that a bit of bad press might bloody the noses of the Indians - which it does to some extent.

However a medical student gets a little suspicious when her granny dies and she decides to jump on a plane and fly to India to investigate....

... and then it is all resolved and everybody is happy...

Sorry to burst the bubble but that's how the book went - one moment you were in a great little story - the next it was all resolved and everyone was happy again. It irritated me to no end.

Title: Foreign Body
Author: Robin Cook
ISBN-13: 978-0-330-44553-5
Loot price: R105.00 (see banner right)

Anyway I rated it a 3 out of 5 - maybe some of our readers will find it a better read than I did.

Is it Coz I’m Black debuts in SA stores

It is election day in South Africa and I thought it was fitting to highlight the following book and "meet the author" event organised by Exclusive Books.

We invite you to celebrate the launch of Is it Coz I’m Black; a unique opportunity to meet and talk to the author.

VENUE: Exclusive Books, The Zone
DATE: Tuesday, 5 May 2009
TIME: 6 for 6:30pm
RSVP: Exclusive Books on: 011 327 5736

About the Book
The much-anticipated follow-up to Ndumiso Ngcobo’s best-selling Some Of My Best Friends Are White sees the urban Zulu warrior returning to aim his streetwise eye at a fresh range of typically South African characters and social issues. With chapters titles such as "Jou Ma Se Passion Gap", "Come Off It! You’d Kill For Julius Malema" and "The Afrikaner-Americans Of The East Rand", his range of targets this time around includes various incantations of his coloured cousins, the mind-bogglingly awful South African driver, personal-security paranoia that sees us living in Amish-style complex enclosures, black men with condom troubles, the notion that our "xenophobia" is actually xenophobia, the ludicrous mammal-sacrificing ceremonies of traditional African weddings, general government incompetence and very very scary angry-white-male syndrome.

About the Editor
Ndumiso Ngcobo was born in Mpumalanga Township in KwaZulu-Natal. Raised on a rural diet of conservative Catholicism and Zulu traditionalism, he managed to successfully incorporate writing and beer drinking into his daily corporate life. His first book, Some Of My Best Friends Are White, was shortlisted for the Neilsen Bookseller’s Choice Award 2008. He has subsequently been widely published in various South African media, and has become one of the most widely read bloggers on the Mail & Guardian-hosted site www.thoughtleader.co.za. He was the first blogger to receive official media accreditation for an ANC conference (in Polokwane).

Bestsellers

As usual on a Sunday we review the online retailers to find out what books are hot and what's not:

Exclusive Books:
1. Twilight
2. New Moon
3. Breaking Dawn
4. Assegai
5. Eclipse
6. Slumdog Millionaire
7. The Shack
8. 8th Confession
9. Paths of Glory
10. Eat, Pray, Love

CNA:
1. A good woman
2. A new earth
3. Eat, pray, love
4. Obama: From promise to power
5. Rich dad, poor dad
6. Scarpetta
7. The secret
8. The Shack
9. The story of Edgar Sawtelle

Take2
1. Breaking Dawn - Meyer, Stephenie
2. Twilight - Meyer, Stephenie
3. New Moon - Meyer, Stephenie
4. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
5. The Immortal Hunter - Sands, Lynsay
6. You're So Vein - Warren, Christine
7. Eclipse - Meyer, Stephenie
8. New Moon - Meyer, Stephenie
9. Nauti Intentions - Leigh, Lora
10. Burning Wild - Feehan, Christine

Kalahari.net
1. New moon - Stephanie Meyer
2. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer (HC)
3. Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer
4. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
5. The Shack - William P. Young
6. Assegai - Wilbur Smith
7. Jane’s delicious garden: An organic guide to growing your own food - Jane Griffiths
8. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
9. The Love Dare - Stephen Kendrick; Alex Kendrick
10. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts

Amazon.com
1. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin
2. Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) by Stephenie Meyer
3. Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) by Stephenie Meyer
4. The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World by W. Cleon Skousen
5. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano
6. The Twilight Saga Collection by Stephenie Meyer
7. New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer
8. The Shack by William P. Young
9. Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) by Stephenie Meyer
10. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Alexander McCall Smith's - "Tea Time for the Traditionally Built" is a new release by Penguin Books SA and I thought it might be an interesting title for local readers.

The book is available from online retailer Loot for R156 (a 34% discount to the retail list price) - see banner right.

Synopsis reads as follows:
Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree: there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. When the glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's unsuspecting fiancé, it becomes exasperatingly clear that some men do not know how to recognise a ruthless Jezebel even when she is bouncing up and down on the best bed in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. In her attempt to foster understanding between the sexes and find the traitor on Mr Football's team, Mma Ramotswe ventures into new territory, drinks tea in unfamiliar kitchens and learns to trust in the observational powers of small boys.