100 books like Love on the Rocks

By Andrew Sesinyi,

Here are 100 books that Love on the Rocks fans have personally recommended if you like Love on the Rocks. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Serowe: Village of the Rain-Wind

Gothataone Moeng Author Of Call and Response: Stories

From my list on glance into Botswana’s past and present.

Why am I passionate about this?

Botswana is not one of the sexy African countries; I sometimes joke in response to people who tell me, a writer from Botswana, that they have never before heard of any writers or literature from Botswana. By that, I mean that my small, landlocked country hardly ever makes international news and is often overshadowed by bigger, more populous countries on the continent. However, there has been a plethora of writing from Botswana published mostly within the African continent but also increasingly in the West. I think this list of books is a great introduction to anyone who is curious to know the country and its people.

Gothataone's book list on glance into Botswana’s past and present

Gothataone Moeng Why did Gothataone love this book?

My home village of Serowe is a place I find fascinating for its history, its culture, its people and their peculiar mix of self-regard and obeisance. Bessie Head, a writer who has had the most influence on my work, was a great chronicler of Serowe throughout her oeuvre of brilliant novels and short stories. But it is this book, a mix of social and oral history, and interviews with the inhabitants of Serowe (of different races, cultures, and classes), that really has my heart.

Covering various historical eras and years spanning from 1875 to around 1963, the book’s subjects ran the gamut from the reign of Khama the Great to the origins of the green milking rubber hedge that is still ubiquitous in the village today. 

By Bessie Head,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Serowe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Serowe:Village of the Rain Wind, Bessie Head blends her skills as a novelist with the actual words of nearly one hundred inhabitants of a Botswanan village called Serowe to present a clear picture of the village community and its history. Serowe is one of the best-known villages in Africa, the capital of the people ruled by the Khamas, of whom Tshekedi and Seretse are the most famous. This collection of writings also tells of a remarkable transition between the setting up and the dismantling of white colonialism in Botswana.


Book cover of Juggling Truths

Gothataone Moeng Author Of Call and Response: Stories

From my list on glance into Botswana’s past and present.

Why am I passionate about this?

Botswana is not one of the sexy African countries; I sometimes joke in response to people who tell me, a writer from Botswana, that they have never before heard of any writers or literature from Botswana. By that, I mean that my small, landlocked country hardly ever makes international news and is often overshadowed by bigger, more populous countries on the continent. However, there has been a plethora of writing from Botswana published mostly within the African continent but also increasingly in the West. I think this list of books is a great introduction to anyone who is curious to know the country and its people.

Gothataone's book list on glance into Botswana’s past and present

Gothataone Moeng Why did Gothataone love this book?

I love this humorous coming-of-age story narrated by a naïve yet academically smart girl who is juggling the various conflicting truths of her life—what she is taught in school, what she learns at home, what she learns from her friends and her siblings, what she is told about how life is and what she observes for herself. How is a person to reconcile all these truths?

By becoming the Queen of England, which is what Monei, the narrator, says she wants to become when she grows up since the Queen is the only woman, as far as Monei can tell, who can make decisions. This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Dow brilliantly captures the perplexed voice of a growing girl and the idiom of Botswana life around Independence.

By Unity Dow,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Juggling Truths as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Unity Dow's third novel, Juggling Truths portrays the childhood of Monei Ntuka in the Botswanan village of Mochudi in Africa. Go to the past with me, so you can take the past to the future, asks her Nkoko. Nei takes us on an extraordinary journey through the many truths that shape her life; the truths of the colonisers and their churches and of her own people. We travel with her through dreams and share the wisdom of her grandmother as she lets the never-ending stories weave their own reality in face of a universe of conflicting truths. Unity Dow recreates…


Book cover of Go tell the Sun

Gothataone Moeng Author Of Call and Response: Stories

From my list on glance into Botswana’s past and present.

Why am I passionate about this?

Botswana is not one of the sexy African countries; I sometimes joke in response to people who tell me, a writer from Botswana, that they have never before heard of any writers or literature from Botswana. By that, I mean that my small, landlocked country hardly ever makes international news and is often overshadowed by bigger, more populous countries on the continent. However, there has been a plethora of writing from Botswana published mostly within the African continent but also increasingly in the West. I think this list of books is a great introduction to anyone who is curious to know the country and its people.

Gothataone's book list on glance into Botswana’s past and present

Gothataone Moeng Why did Gothataone love this book?

I love short stories for all the meaning, depth, substance, and sense of a full life they can reveal in a few short pages, and these short stories by Wame Molefhe do just that.

They are intimate and lovely, and in elegant prose, they reveal women in the thick of life, caught in treacherous circumstances, solitarily mourning extramarital lovers, mourning same-sex love they were not brave enough to pursue, mourning a best friend who might have had an affair with one’s husband thus exposing her to disease.

The characters' names recur in most of the stories, though each character is different, navigating a different set of circumstances. The effect is of intimacy, of encountering and re-encountering relatives or friends around the corner, at the supermarket, at a funeral, or a wedding. 

By Wame Molefhe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Go tell the Sun as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WAME MOLEFHE's stories have a gentle, unassuming yet intimate and captivating feel to them. Set in Botswana, the stories trace the lives of characters whose paths cross and re-cross each others', some times in and through love, at other times through tragedy. And through them the author brings to bear a woman's perspective on the societal mores in which sexual abuse, homophobia and AIDS, among others, flourish and spread. The social content and views are never proclaimed as a loud agenda; instead, it forms a 'natural' backdrop to the lives of the characters, something that may raise a wry comment…


Book cover of Mating

Gothataone Moeng Author Of Call and Response: Stories

From my list on glance into Botswana’s past and present.

Why am I passionate about this?

Botswana is not one of the sexy African countries; I sometimes joke in response to people who tell me, a writer from Botswana, that they have never before heard of any writers or literature from Botswana. By that, I mean that my small, landlocked country hardly ever makes international news and is often overshadowed by bigger, more populous countries on the continent. However, there has been a plethora of writing from Botswana published mostly within the African continent but also increasingly in the West. I think this list of books is a great introduction to anyone who is curious to know the country and its people.

Gothataone's book list on glance into Botswana’s past and present

Gothataone Moeng Why did Gothataone love this book?

“In Africa, you want more, I think.” So goes the first line of this sprawling and complex novel by the American writer Norman Rush. The version of me who has had to read countless broad and sweeping generalisations about my country and my continent was alert upon first reading this line. Suspicious and vigilant; ready to slam the book closed at any nefarious stereotypes. But I confess that the narrator’s voice—the funny, wry, intellectual and calculating voice of an American anthropology student obsessed with a celebrated American anthropologist attempting to build a utopian matriarchal society in the Kgalagadi desert—swept my defenses aside. 

The book is expansive and comic, and also serious about relationships between men and women, courtship, love, social movements and Southern African politics. A sequence early in the book in which the narrator is reduced to weeping at the beauty of the Victoria Falls and lamenting her lack…

By Norman Rush,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mating as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER •  Is love between equals possible? This modern classic is a delightful intellectual love story that explores the deepest canyons of romantic love even as it asks large questions about society, geopolitics, and the mystery of what men and women really want.

“Luminous . . . Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The best rendering of erotic politics . . . since D.H. Lawrence. . . . The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.”—The New York Review of Books

One of The Atlantic’s…


Book cover of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Jinny Alexander Author Of Claude, Gord, Alice, and Maud

From my list on an unusual take on traditional cozy mystery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always adored mysteries. My dad has the entire collection of Agatha Christie books, but even before I read those, I worked through his ancient original hardbacks of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books and the less well-known Malcolm Saville Lone Pine series. I love getting totally engrossed in a series, so I really get to BE the main character–I am one of four siblings, and when I wasn’t too busy reading, we were the Famous Five. I was George. I think I still am, to be perfectly honest–she was fiery, passionate, loved her dog, and wanted to serve justice and out the bad guys. What a role model!

Jinny's book list on an unusual take on traditional cozy mystery

Jinny Alexander Why did Jinny love this book?

This whole series always makes me smile–Mma Ramotswe remains one of the most hilarious main characters in any cozy mystery I’ve ever read. The crimes she comes up against are usually low-key, usually secondary to the backdrop of Botswana, and often solved by accident as much as design.

Precious Ramotswe’s commentary on Botswanan life is simply brilliant, but almost even more amusing is her sidekick, Grace Makutsi, who bumbles through her role as secretary-promoted-to-assistant-detective, and the interaction between the characters never fails to give me laugh-out-loud moments.

This whole series has to be the most feel-good series ever, and now I’m rediscovering it as an audio production of the radio series; it’s as heart-warming as a bright bunch of flowers on a dull day, a bowl of hot soup when you’re sick; a hot bubble bath when it’s snowing outside…I love it, love it, love it!

By Alexander McCall Smith,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Precious Ramotswe, a cheerful woman of traditional build, is the founder of Botswana's first and only ladies' detective agency. Here is a gentle interpretation of the detective role: solving her cases through her innate wisdom and understanding of human nature, she 'helps people with problems in their lives'. With a tone that is as elegant as that which is unfailingly used by his protagonist, Alexander McCall Smith tenderly unfolds a picture of life in Gaborone with a mastery of comic understatement and an evident sympathy for his subjects and their milieu. In the background of all this is Botswana, a…


Book cover of Maru

Evadeen Brickwood Author Of Singing Lizards

From my list on Southern Africa you might not know.

Why am I passionate about this?

I moved from Germany to Botswana when I was a fledgling translator and then on to South Africa 2 years later. I fell in love with this part of Africa that had a hand in making me the person I am today. Since I used to travel a lot, not all of my books are set in Southern Africa, but I have a passion for sharing my African stories with the world. My latest project is the Charlie Proudfoot murder mystery series, which is set in South Africa. Being a translator, I also translate books into German/English and four of them so far, are my own.

Evadeen's book list on Southern Africa you might not know

Evadeen Brickwood Why did Evadeen love this book?

When I moved to Botswana, I wanted to learn more about the country, where I should live for more than 2 years. Somebody gave me books by Bessie Head and I learned so much by just reading these books. Maru was not the only book I’d read by Bessie Head, but it was one of the best books on Botswana.

By Bessie Head,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Maru as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Read worldwide for her wisdom, authenticity, and skillful prose, South African–born Bessie Head (1937–1986) offers a moving and magical tale of an orphaned girl, Margaret Cadmore, who goes to teach in a remote village in Botswana where her own people are kept as slaves. Her presence polarizes a community that does not see her people as human, and condemns her to the lonely life of an outcast. In the love story and intrigue that follows, Head brilliantly combines a portrait of loneliness with a rich affirmation of the mystery and spirituality of life. The core of this otherworldly, rhapsodic work…


Book cover of A Question of Power

Robert V.S. Redick Author Of Master Assassins

From my list on fantasy novels no one ever calls fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love the fantastic—madly, insatiably. Far too much, indeed, to limit myself to what the publishers label “fantasy”. Such labels don’t enlighten us, however much they condition us to predictable purchasing behavior. We’re better off ignoring them. We’re better off defining fantasy for ourselves. These five knockout novels are saturated with fantasy. It’s high time we fantasy lovers recognized our kin.

Robert's book list on fantasy novels no one ever calls fantasy

Robert V.S. Redick Why did Robert love this book?

Do you like a good scare? Well, Stephen King is one kind of scary, but A Question of Power is something else altogether: a descent into a sunless valley writhing with monsters. We know that these monsters dwell in the mind of the main character, Elizabeth. But there’s no safety in knowing that, for we’re locked in with them. If we sometimes climb a tree and feel a fresh breeze on our faces, it’s with the knowledge that those tentacles can slither up and snatch us back into hell at a moment’s notice. And they do. 

I didn’t start with what many consider the most important facts of this novel: that Elizabeth is a mixed-race woman born in South Africa and exiled to Botswana. And those are vital facts. But Elizabeth is also one luminous, suffering soul. Watching her fight her way out of that dark valley is a terrifying…

By Bessie Head,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Question of Power as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"It wasn't any kind of physical stamina that kept her going, but a vague, instinctive pattern of normal human decencies combined with the work she did, the people she met each day and the unfolding of a project with exciting inventive possibilities. But a person eventually becomes a replica of the inner demons he battles with. Any kind of demon is more powerful than normal human decencies, because such things do not exist for him." Bessie Head

In this fast-paced, semi-autobiographical novel, Head exposes the complicated life of Elizabeth, whose reality is intermingled with nightmarish dreams and hallucinations. Like the…


Book cover of Africanfuturism: An Anthology

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Author Of Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations on Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In A Pandemic

From my list on introduce you to African speculative short fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an African speculative fiction writer who had long hoped to see the development of African speculative fiction being embraced by the larger SFF community, it was a joy to see all these anthologies showcasing the works of Africans and platforming them for a larger audience to see. And it's been a joy as well to contribute to this growth both as an award-winning writer and editor of African speculative short fiction. 

Oghenechovwe's book list on introduce you to African speculative short fiction

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Why did Oghenechovwe love this book?

It contains work by some of the most brilliant speculative fiction writers on the continent and also expands on the title, Africanfuturism, in its Introduction by Nnedi Okorafor. She also happens to have a story in the book. Another of the stories in it, by Motswana writer Tlotlo Tsamaase won the 2021 Nommo award for short story and a number of works in it, like Egoli by Tendai Huchu also made recommended reading lists and Year's Best anthologies. The anthology itself was a finalist in the Locus award for best anthology.

By Wole Talabi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Africanfuturism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

n celebration of our 10-year anniversary, we bring you a collection of Africanfuturist stories. Africanfuturism is a term coined by Nigerian sci-fi/fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor to describe science fiction that is rooted in the African world. Other African writers have since embraced the term as a way of identifying what makes their work distinct from Afrofuturism.

Africanfuturism: An Anthology edited by Wole Talabi is the first anthology to directly engage with the idea of Africanfuturism. The collection of 8 science fiction stories cover various aspects of African life. It features a mix of established and emerging voices in the African sci-fi…


Book cover of The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case

Lisa Selvidge Author Of The Magic Campervan, Book 1: The Forbidden Slide

From my list on reads for young kids to read with or without parents.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and a mother. Prior to the birth of my son, I wrote mainly fiction but fiction grounded in reality. As my son grew up, I wanted to write stories for him but as soon as I had written a crocodile story, he had already outgrown it. The years seven until eleven are a magical time for reading and perhaps the age group I enjoy writing for most. As a single, older mother I found the most engaging narratives for myself and my son (who is not a reader although loves being read to) were those that were grounded in reality, particularly the setting and with challenging as well as challenged characters.

Lisa's book list on reads for young kids to read with or without parents

Lisa Selvidge Why did Lisa love this book?

Similar to the Mac B books, this is a series about a character who likes to solve crimes/mysteries, and the characters and settings are realistic. Even more wonderful is that the setting is Botswana and it gives much insight into the country and people. I was fortunate enough to be able to read this with my son while travelling with him in Botswana. Perfect.

By Alexander McCall Smith,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Great Cake Mystery as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 7, 8, 9, and 10.

What is this book about?

THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY - Young Readers

Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective.  In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, and good humor—not to mention help from her loyal assistant, Grace Makutsi, and the occasional cup of tea.
 
Have you ever said to yourself, Wouldn’t it be nice to be a detective?
 
This is the story of an African girl who says just that. Her name is…


Book cover of Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide

Tony Park Author Of Blood Trail

From my list on to read on an African safari.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an Australian who fell in love with Africa in my 30s. I've now written 20 thrillers set in Africa and several non-fiction biographies. My wife and I have travelled extensively on the continent and now spend at least half our lives in Africa, and the remainder in Australia. I'm passionate about Africa's people, wildlife, and fragile natural environment. While my books focus on some of the continent's problems – especially the illegal trade in wildlife – I'm a sucker for a happy ending and find no shortage of positive, inspirational people on my travels who serve as the inspiration for the good guys and girls in my stories. 

Tony's book list on to read on an African safari

Tony Park Why did Tony love this book?

I know Peter – we josh each other and trade funny insults on social media. I hate to say it, but he is a very funny guy. Safari guide memoirs are a dime a dozen in Africa, but this one stands out from the pack because it is both humorous and moving. Peter has a wonderful self-deprecating style and tells, hilariously, of some of his epic failures as a young Australian finding his way in the African bush. Peter loves Botswana, and his passion shines through in this book.

By Peter Allison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whatever You Do, Don't Run as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A hilarious, highly original collection of essays based on the Botswana truism: "only food runs!" With a new introduction and new material from the authorIn the tradition of Bill Bryson, a new writer brings us the lively adventures and biting wit of an African safari guide. Peter Allison gives us the guide's-eye view of living in the bush, confronting the world's fiercest terrain of wild animals and, most challenging of all, managing herds of gaping tourists. Passionate for the animals of the Kalahari, Allison works as a top safari guide in the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta. As he serves the whims…


Book cover of Serowe: Village of the Rain-Wind
Book cover of Juggling Truths
Book cover of Go tell the Sun

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Botswana, South Africa, and Africa?

Botswana 20 books
South Africa 129 books
Africa 265 books