Reading Matters (week 31) August 11 2026

I interview Joburg’s Brandon Fairweather, well known SA brand manager and a health industry leader. He was born with a congenital heart defect, which required open-heart surgery when he was only 28.

In addition he’s had two strokes, suffered a devastating life-threatening loss of blood and, as if that wasn’t enough, he was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. Instead of drowning under waves of pain, fear and anxiety he decided, now aged 42, to write about his depression and other mental disorders in, The Hell Inside our Heads (Tracey McDonald Publishers). His aim is to feel healed whilst helping others in pain to cope, on a practical level, with the tools he’s used to mend and recover.

Brave, inspiring.

The Light Between Oceans (PRH) by M L Stedman is one of the most moving, unforgettable novels I’ve recently read. Tom, a lighthouse keeper on a remote island off the Australian mainland, hears a baby crying in a washed-up boat and finds a dead man there too. Tom’s wife, Isabel, runs towards it and cuddles the infant.

What are they to do? They’ve struggled to have a baby. Stedman’s debut novel has been showered with awards and sold nearly five million copies worldwide. Mesmerising, heartbreaking, a must-read.

I was sent the first book in the Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem (Sphere / Jonathan Ball). I read all night. A serial killer in Virginia, USA, has brutalised and strangled three women in their bedrooms.

Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical officer, knows more deaths will follow unless she can dig up new forensic evidence to help the police. Actually, I didn’t go to sleep. I was too frightened to do so. Cornwell has, at the last count, written 42 books. Don’t miss this one.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall