Chantelle Shaw

Dead at Daybreak
by Deon Meyer

An antiques dealer is burned with a blow torch, then killed, execution-style - a single shot to the back of the head with an M16. The contents of the safe are missing and the only clues are a scrap of blank paper and the unusual weapon used, the choice of mercenaries, not burglars. Now ex-cop Zatopek 'Zed' van Heerden has fourteen days in which to fill in the blanks in this dead man's past - a past which only seems to begin in 1983...Set against the backdrop of a society on the verge of breakdown, "Dead at Daybreak" spins the reader from the lush suburbs of Capetown, to a gripping climax in the searing heat of the Veldt.

The Children of Húrin
by J. R. R. Tolkien

In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves.

Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire....

Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Trilogy, No 5)
by Douglas Adams

It's easy to become disheartened when your planet has been demolished for an unnecessary hyperspacial express route, the woman you love has vanished in a misunderstanding about the nature of space/time, the spaceship in which you are travelling crashed in flames on a remote and Bob-fearing planet, and all you have to fall back on are a few sandwich-making skills. However, instead of becoming disheartened, Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life a bit and immediately all hell breaks loose.