Daily Maverick's Book Editor-at-Large, Joy Watson, shares her book recommendations for the end-of-year season.

And here we are, spinning headlong into the holidays, winding the year down while quietly doing mental arithmetic on the new-year resolutions we made back in January, which somehow feels like five minutes ago. December can feel like a lot. Any month can, really, but December comes with that extra flourish, a kind of emotional cherry on top.

When things tip towards overwhelm, there are always books. I hope you're gifted a few, that your local library has something unexpected waiting for you, that you have friends with good taste who are generous enough to lend you theirs. These are the ones I've scrambled together for my beach bag.

Diplomatic Ties by Mpho Boshego

Debut author Mpho Boshego makes a confident entrance into fiction with Diplomatic Ties. Mbali Langa grows up in Mamelodi, where life is shaped by precarity and crowded domestic arrangements. Her mother has struggled with her mental health since Mbali's father abandoned them, leaving them on her Gogo's doorstep to share a home with aunts and an uncle battling alcoholism. Against this backdrop, Mbali is training to become a diplomat, determined to build a different life.

Things begins to shift when she enters into an illicit relationship...