WOMAN ZONE STORIES

Foodie or not, as a 'saffer' there's no way you wont find something to suit your taste in this book - from braais to pies, chips to chakalaka. From home-grown Durban girl Chef Nokx Majozi who serves it all with an overlay of nostalgia, spiced with personal passion. Delicious.

One of the four women who led The Women's March of 1956 to protest the pass laws, little has been known about Lilian Ngoyi. But in this book, media scholar Martha Evans has brought the stylish but fiery orator and activist to life, setting her firmly in apartheid South Africa of the time. Published by Penguin, its release coincides with the 70th anniversary of The March.

Every year the NPO 1000 Women Trust celebrates at Artscape's Women's Humanity Festival with a special event - this year, it was themed Healing Through Art and amongst others, it featured embroiderer Nell Louise Pollock and her powerful healing red-on-white artworks that helped her not only overcome, but gave her the opportunity to share the stories of others - in stitches.

It's impossible not to be moved by Because I Love You, writer and feminist researcher Joy Watson's book (Jonathan Ball) containing the, fictionalised, three stories of three women badly damaged by love. Her own story, part of which she includes here, has give Joy the insight to listen, to learn, to write and reflect. She shared the journey at the Woman Zone Book Club.

Of All Things We Need Hope (Modjaji Books) is indeed a story about hope, but also about forgiveness and restorative justice. And appropriately, in this Mandela Month, about kindness - as well as, unexpectedly, about knitting! Author and writing coach Sally Cranswick explains her thinking behind this story in which a woman visits her son's killer - in prison.