Reading Matters (week 047) 18 November 2025

Nicole Engelbrecht, author, and Africa’s most successful true crime podcaster has, in her fourth book, Bare Bones (Jonathan Ball), delved into the cold cases of her True Crime SA podcasts.

She goes back to the leads she tracked and the interviews she did, and in spite of that, much of the information in this book has never been made public before. It makes for riveting reading because it is all true. Engelbrecht is professional, never putting the possibility of a case being solved at risk, whether it’s a missing child, the horrifying story of two grown-up sisters disappearing from their home within a short time of each other, or a top businesswoman simply vanishing from her hotel.

In Sky Guide Southern Africa – 2026 (PRH and the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa) you’ll learn that the sun will be eclipsed in February 2026, you’ll see star maps for two bright comets later next year and you can check out the calendar of supermoons and heritage moons.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s many sex victims, some as young as 14, spoke out before she committed suicide. In Virginia Guiffre’s Nobody’s Girl (Knopf/ PRH) Tracy Going, also an author, has reviewed Virginia’s book, and writes: “She tries to explain why she went back day after day into Epstein’s den of sexual perversion… I felt that she didn’t need to do that but I understand why.”

Chris Hammer, a leading Australian crime fiction novelist, has written seven books and now in Legacy (Wildfire/ Allen & Unwin) he takes us into the harsh, dry, horrendous heat of the Outback. His journalist, Martin Scarsden, survives a bomb and gunshots before being told to hide or die.

It kept me up all night.  You’ll lose sleep too.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall