Margie Orford

International Guest of Honour

Margie Orford is the author of the Dr Clare Hart series.

MARGIE ORFORD, an award-winning journalist and internationally acclaimed writer, is the author of the Clare Hart series. Her novels have been translated into nine languages, with her latest Daddy’s Girl being published in the UK, France, Germany and Holland. She was born in London and grew up in Namibia, the setting for Blood Rose, her highly acclaimed second novel in the series. A Fulbright Scholar, she was educated in South Africa and the United States. She is Executive Vice-President of South African PEN, the patron of Rape Crisis and of the children’s book charity, The Little Hands Trust. She lives in Cape Town.

For more information visit her website: www.margieorford.com

www.margieorford.com


GALLOWS HILL, the new Clare Hart thriller, is released in South Africa inOctober 2011. The woman lay curled up inside the small box. She had been jammed into it. Her head must have pressed up against the top, her feet against the bottom. Her belly would have pressed painfully against her lungs, her thighs. If she had been alive to feel it. A dog scavenging in an illegal building site digs up a bone. A human bone. She drags it back to where her mistress lies dead in an abandoned shed, but there are hundreds more … Skeletons which have lain undisturbed for centuries beneath Gallows Hill, where Cape Town’s notorious gibbets once stood. Investigative profiler Dr Clare Hart is called in by Captain Riedwaan Faizal of the SAPS Gang Unit and soon discovers that a deadly, more recent secret lies hidden among these long-buried bones. Who was the woman in the green silk dress? Who wanted her dead? Who buried her body among these ancient graves? As Clare Hart gets closer to revealing the truth about Gallows Hill, she becomes entangled with a fascinating but vulnerable young woman, and is drawn into a world of art, desire and destructive jealousy. Against the backdrop of corporate corruption and seething political tensions, Clare and Riedwaan’s complex relationship remains as explosive as ever – and their very lives are at risk: the keepers of the secret of the woman in the silk dress will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried. Gallows Hill is the fourth in Margie Orford’s Clare Hart series, published to acclaim around the world. Be warned – read one Clare Hart novel and you’re hooked!	Captain Riedwaan Faizal is a member of Cape Town’s elite Gang Unit. Tough and streetwise, he is used to being a target. But when the danger of his anti-gang war envelops his only daughter and he becomes the prime suspect in her abduction, there is little he can do. He turns to Dr Clare Hart, investigative journalist turned profiler. She is sceptical of Riedwaan Faizal, but she knows only too well what happens when little girls are abducted. Against her better judgement, she agrees to help look for Yasmin. Their desperate search for the missing child, whose chances of survival diminish with each hour, unravels a web of deception and danger that puts all their lives at terrible risk.	A breathtaking, atmospheric thriller and a stunning return for investigator Dr Clare Hart. The gruesome murder of a homeless teenage boy suggests a methodical serial killer is at work in Walvis Bay, a depressed port, isolated in the vast sweep of the Namib Desert. It is a corrupt, claustrophobic place with a shifting population of people who came here only because they had to and where people know everything - and nothing - about each other. As part of a cross-border policing initiative, Dr Clare Hart is sent to profile the possible killer. She works with Captain Tamar Damases, an astute local detective, who heads up the coastal town's Sexual Violence and Murder Unit. Clare is glad to be distracted from the implosion of what was till a few days ago a blossoming love affair with Captain Riedwaan Faizal, who turned out to be more married than she thought.... As the two women trace older crimes that may be related to the recent killings, nothing is as it seemed at first. And as Riedwaan comes to join Clare, to help with the investigation and to try to salvage their relationship, she realises that the harbour holds more than just rusting Russian fishing trawlers, and that a deadly cargo is ready to sail. It's not just their relationship that is in danger, their very lives - and the lives of others - are at stake...	When a beautiful young woman is found murdered on Cape Town's Seapoint promenade, journalist and part-time police profiler, Dr Clare Hart is drawn into the web of a brutal serial killer. As more bodies are discovered, Clare is forced to re-visit the brutal rape of her twin sister and the gang ties that bind Cape Town’s dark crime rings. Is her investigation into human trafficking linked to the murders or is the killer just playing a sick game with her? Like Clockwork is a dark and compelling crime story which exposes the underbelly of porn and prostitution in the Mother City.