Harare Review of Books

Here’s your cool list of 2024 books by authors on the continent and in the Diaspora. There’s absolutely no way I could list every book that’s coming, but here’s what I think is notable—let’s call this a work in progress. (You can support my work and independent bookstores by preordering what catches your eye on Bookshop; links on titles.)

Highlights: Lots of non-fiction coming in January, including something from Common (swoon), and I’m keen to read a book about Black women’s activism. Also, you can finally get your hands on Tlotlo Tsamaase’s Womb City! The sequel to Everfair is coming. There’s a poetry anthology with so many stars. New books from Paulina Chiziane, Wole Talabi, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Chigozie Obioma, Gayl Jones, Sofia Samatar, Percival Everett, Karen Jennings, Tomi Adeyemi, Helen Oyeyemi, Damilare Kuku, Tobi Ogundiran, and Kiley Reid. Also a translation from Reunion that I’m excited for! An interesting-looking book from Shayla Lawson. Nnedi’s trilogy of novellas in August (not sure if they’re all coming together). A collab between Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker. O. O. Sangoyomi’s debut is generating lots of interest. Zeinab Badawi’s book of African history. Captive, a Short Story Day Africa anthology, is coming in April. And OEB’s wonderful essay, A Few Rules, in book form, from Chronicle Books.

If you’re the read-ey type, or if there’s a particular book that’s caught your eye, here’s more detail below from publishers as available. Please note that publication dates listed below may change.

January

African Icons – Tracey Baptiste / Algonquin Young Readers
Meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world. Black history is a rich and thrilling collection of stories that begins thousands of years ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, bestselling author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world. Menes: Creator of Dynasties; Merneith: A Queen Erased; Imhotep: From Peasant to God; Aesop: The Wisest Man in the Ancient World; Hannibal Barca: Unparalleled Military Strategist; Terence: North African Playwright; Amanirenas: Warrior, Diplomat, Queen; Tin Hinan: Founding a City on the Dunes; Mansa Musa: The Richest Man of All Time; Queen Idia: Kingmaker. Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for readers to pore over and return to again and again. Both an empowering and energetic read and an essential correction to Eurocentric tellings of history, African Icons will enthrall readers of all ages.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years – Shubnum Khan / Viking
“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic misfits, seeking solely to disappear into the mansion’s dark corridors. Except for Sana. Unlike the others, she is curious and questioning and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion: To the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects—and to the door at its end, locked for decades. Behind the door is a bedroom frozen in time and a worn diary that whispers of a dark past: the long-forgotten story of a young woman named Meena, who died there tragically a hundred years ago. Watching Sana from the room’s shadows is a besotted, grieving djinn, an invisible spirit who has haunted the mansion since her mysterious death. Obsessed with Meena’s story, and unaware of the creature that follows her, Sana digs into the past like fingers into a wound, dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone living and dead at Akbar Manzil. Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.

Ida B Wells Marches for the Vote – Dinah Johnson / Christy Ottaviano Books/Little Brown and Company
A picture book biography about Ida B. Wells and her life as a suffragist, with a focus on the Women’s March of 1913.

Of Greed and Glory – Deborah G Plant / Amistad
A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America’s obsession with continuing human bondage from the editor of the New York Times-bestselling Barracoon. Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American’s personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans–including author Deborah Plant’s brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America–are deprived of these basic freedoms every day. In her studies of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant became fascinated by Hurston’s explanation for the atrocities of the international slave trade. In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote: “But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory.” We look the other way when the basic human rights of marginalized and stigmatized groups are violated and desecrated, not realizing that only the practice of justice everywhere secures justice, for any of us, anywhere. An active vigilance is required of those who would be and remain free; with Of Greed and Glory, Deborah Plant reveals the many ways in which slavery continues in America today and charts our collective course toward personal sovereignty for all.

The Gardins of Edin – Rosey Lee / Crown
When the bonds in their family begin to fray, four Black women fight to preserve their legacy, heal their wounds, and move forward together in this heartwarming contemporary debut novel with loose parallels to beloved women from the Bible. “The surprises and heart in this fast-paced family drama kept me turning pages late into the night.”—KJ Dell’Antonia, New York Times bestselling author of The Chicken Sisters The four women of the Gardin family live side-by-side in Edin, Georgia, but residing in tight proximity doesn’t mean everything is picture-perfect. Ruth runs the family’s multimillion-dollar peanut business, a legacy of the Gardins’ formerly enslaved ancestors. But tensions have intensified since the death of her husband, Beau, and she feels like an outsider in the very place she wishes to belong. Sisters Mary and Martha fuel the family tension. Martha’s unfounded mistrust of Ruth causes her to constantly seek ways to undermine Ruth’s decisions with the business, while Mary, trying to focus on her new restaurant that serves healthy comfort food, is dragged into the family fray by Martha. For years, Naomi, the matriarch who raised the sisters after their parents’ death and supported Ruth in her grief, has played peacemaker. But as she decides to take a step back, hidden truths, life-and-death circumstances, and escalating clashes finally force the Gardin women to grapple with what it means to be a family. A heartwarming Southern story of family and all its many complexities, The Gardins of Edin delivers a thoughtful portrayal of four women trying to hold on to their secrets. Women who just might—if they can only let go—find the peace they seek by holding on to one another.

The Best That You Can Do – Amina Gautier / Soft Skull
Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, a collection of short stories that elaborate the realities of a diasporic existence, split identities, and the beautiful potency of meaningful connections Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers and families in Puerto Rico, these stories explore the cultural confusion of being one person in two places—of having a mother who wants your father and his language to stay on his island but sends you there because you need to know your family. Loudly and joyfully filled with Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, and budding romances, these stories are saturated in summer nostalgia, and place readers at the center of the table to enjoy family traditions and holidays: the resplendent and universal language of survival for displaced or broken families. Refusing to shy away from dysfunction, loss, obligation, or interrogating Black and Latinx heritages, Gautier’s stories feature New York neighborhoods made of island nations living with seasonal and perpetual displacement. Like Justin Torres’ We the Animals, or Quiara Alegria Hudes’ My Broken Language, it’s the characters-in-becoming—flanked by family and rich with detail—that animate each story with special frequencies, especially for readers grappling split-identities themselves.

Faebound – Saara El-Arifi / Del Rey
Two elven sisters become imprisoned in the intoxicating world of the fae, where danger and love lie in wait. Faebound is the first book in an enchanting new trilogy from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Final Strife. Yeeran was born on the battlefield, has lived on the battlefield, and one day, she knows, she’ll die on the battlefield. As a warrior in the elven army, Yeeran has known nothing but violence her whole life. Her sister, Lettle, is trying to make a living as a diviner, seeking prophecies of a better future. When a fatal mistake leads to Yeeran’s exile from the Elven Lands, both sisters are forced into the terrifying wilderness beyond their borders. There they encounter the impossible: the fae court. The fae haven’t been seen for a millennium. But now Yeeran and Lettle are thrust into their seductive world, torn among their loyalties to each other, their elven homeland, and their hearts.

Kinning – Nisi Shawl / Tor
Kinning, the sequel to [[Nisi Shawl]]’s acclaimed debut novel Everfair, continues the stunning alternate history where barkcloth airships soar through the sky, diverse peoples build a new society together, and colonies claim their freedom from imperialist tyrants. The Great War is over. Everfair has found peace within its borders. But our heroes’ stories are far from over. Tink and his sister Bee-Lung are traveling the world via aircanoe, spreading the spores of a mysterious empathy-generating fungus. Through these spores, they seek to build bonds between people and help spread revolutionary sentiments of socialism and equality—the very ideals that led to Everfair’s founding. Meanwhile, Everfair’s Princess Mwadi and Prince Ilunga return home from a sojourn in Egypt to vie for their country’s rule following the abdication of their father King Mwenda. But their mother, Queen Josina, manipulates them both from behind the scenes, while also pitting Europe’s influenza-weakened political powers against one another as these countries fight to regain control of their rebellious colonies. Will Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope, freedom, and equality to anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces inside and out?

Broughtupsy – Christina Cooke / Catapult
Akúa is returning home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years. Her younger brother has died suddenly, and Akúa hopes to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over three fateful weeks, the sisters visit significant places from their childhood where Akúa spreads her brother’s ashes. But time spent with Tamika only seems to make apparent how different they are and how alone Akúa feels. Then Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who reveals a different side of Kingston. As the two women grow closer, Akúa is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what it means to be a gay woman in Jamaica. Her trip comes to a frenzied and dangerous end, but not without a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister—and herself. By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy asks: What are we willing to do for family, and what are we willing to do to feel at home?

Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism – Jenn M Jackson / Random House
A reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks like—from a professor of political science and columnist for Teen Vogue. “Jenn M. Jackson is a beautiful writer and excellent scholar. In this book, they pay tribute to generations of Black women organizers and set forward a bold and courageous blueprint for our collective liberation.”—Imani Perry, author of South to America This is my offering. My love letter to them, and to us. Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons? A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements. Across eleven original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods. For a new generation of movement organizers and co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for everyone.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts – Crystal Wilkinson / Clarkson Potter
A lyrical culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians, through powerful storytelling alongside nearly forty comforting recipes, from the former poet laureate of Kentucky. People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed. Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine. An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia. As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum – Antonia Hylton / Legacy Lit
In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, that New York Times bestselling author Clint Smith describes as “a book that left me breathless.” On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum. In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations. As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus. In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.

And Then We Rise: A Guide to Loving and Taking Care of Self – Common / HarperOne
From the multi-award-winning performer, author, and activist, a comprehensive program for addressing mental and physical health—and encouraging communities to do the same. Common has achieved success in many facets of his life and career, from music to acting to writing. But for a long time, he didn’t feel that he had found fulfillment in his body and spirit. And Then We Rise is about Common’s journey to wellness as a vital element of his success. A testimony to the benefits of self-care, this book is composed of four different sections, each with its own important lessons: “The Food” focuses on nutrition. “The Body” focuses on fitness. “The Mind” focuses on mental health. And “The Soul” focuses on perhaps the most profound thing of all—spiritual well-being. Common’s personal stories act as the backbone of his book, but he also wants to give his readers the gift of professional expertise. Here, he acts as the liaison to his own nutritionist and chef, his own physical trainer, and his own therapist, as well as to those who act as his spiritual influences. Wise, accessible, and powerful, And Then We Rise offers a comprehensive, holistic approach to wellness that will allow readers to transform their thinking, their actions, and, ultimately, their lives.

Womb City – Tlotlo Tsamaase / Erewhon Books
WOMB CITY imagines a dark and deadly future Botswana, rich with culture and true folklore, which begs the question: how far must one go to destroy the structures of inequality upon which a society was founded? How far must a mother go to save the life of her child? Nelah seems to have it all: wealth, fame, a husband, and a child on the way. But in a body her husband controls via microchip and the tailspin of a loveless marriage, her hopes and dreams come to a devastating halt. A drug-fueled night of celebration ends in a hit-and-run. To dodge a sentencing in a society that favors men, Nelah and her side-piece, Janith Koshal, finish the victim off and bury the body. But the secret claws its way into Nelah’s life from the grave. As her victim?s vengeful ghost begins exacting a bloody revenge on everyone Nelah holds dear, she?ll have to unravel her society’s terrible secrets to stop those in power, and become a monster unlike any other to quench the ghost’s violent thirst. This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman’s right to her own body.

Be a Revolution: How Everday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too – Ijeoma Oluo / Harper One
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America. In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them? With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World–and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems–like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more–she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live. This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.

Come and Get It – Kiley Reid / G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for… Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance. Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors. As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they soon become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue – and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want. Sharp, intimate and provocative, Come and Get It takes a lens to our money-obsessed society in a tension-filled story about desire, consumption and bad behaviour.

I Did a New Thing: 30 Days to Living Free – Tabitha Brown / William Morrow and Company
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Feeding the Soul (Because It’s My Business) presents an inspirational guide for encouraging positive changes in your life—one day and one challenge at a time. I did a new thing today! Years ago, Tabitha Brown started a 30-day personal challenge that she called “I Did a New Thing!” The challenge was simple. Every day she would do something she’d never done before. Sometimes it was something small like trying a new food. Other times, she’d step it up a bit and speak to someone she’d never spoken to before. Still other times, she’d do the hard thing—facing a fear that she had, like having that tough conversation with a friend. No matter what it was, the point was that she was going to take a leap of faith and watch God open up a new lane for her. One of the “new things” she tried was a vegan challenge. She’d been struggling with illness for nearly a year and was desperately searching for healing. She challenged herself to eat vegan every day for thirty days, and six years later, her life has never been the same—all because she decided to do a new thing. In I Did a New Thing, Tab shares her own stories and those of others, alongside gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Whether that means having the hard conversation or trying for a promotion or simply wearing something different or doing something kind for someone else, Tab has a plan for you: Try one new thing, every single day, for thirty days. You don’t have to wait until Monday or the beginning of a new month or year to get started. There’s no set time and place or any extra preparation required. All you have to do is show up for yourself. And that can start right now.

Ladies First/First Things First – Nadirah Simmons / Twelve
LADIES FIRST reframes the history of hip-hop but, this time, women are given credit for all their trailblazing achievements that have left an undeniable impact on music. LADIES FIRST takes readers on a journey through some of the most notable firsts by women in hip-hop history and their importance. Real firsts like Queen Latifah becoming the first solo woman rapper to have a major record deal, Lauryn Hill remains the only female rapper in history who has earned a total of 8 Grammy awards, MC Lyte being the first solo woman rapper to release a full album, Nicki Minaj becoming the first female rapper in history to have a net worth of $100 million, and April Walker being the first woman to dominate in the streetwear game, not to forget metaphorical firsts like Missy Elliott being the first woman rapper to go to space. LADIES FIRST is a celebration of the achievements of women in hip-hop who broke down barriers and broke the mold.

This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets – Kwame Alexander / Little Brown and Company
A breathtaking new poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, edited by Why Fathers Cry at Night author and #1 New York Times bestseller Kwame Alexander. In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of anthems for our time, at turns tender and piercing, and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Amanda Gorman, Terrance Hayes, and Nikki Giovanni, This is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy. This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller’s In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens “Black woman joy” with indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Day, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of “home” through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith, Rachel Long, and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From “jewels in the hand” (Patricia Spears Jones) to “butter melting in small pools in the hearts” (Elizabeth Alexander), This is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music and raised fists. Marilyn Nelson puts it this way in “How I Discovered Poetry: ” “It was like soul-kissing, the way the words / filled my mouth.” This is the Honey is definitive, fresh, and deeply moving, a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.

Blazing Toward Freedom – Carolyn Jenkins / CP Consult LLC
This narrative is framed by historical events and shared through the lens of a Black perspective, presenting factual subject matter often absent from regular school curricula. Whereas Blazing Toward Freedom is Clark’s story, it is also an American story.From dehumanized slaves to second class citizens and to fighters for civil rights, Septima Poinsette Clark passionately tells this riveting story of her family’s lineage in America in Blazing Toward Freedom: Septima Poinsette Clark’s Story from Slave to Queen Mother of the Movement.In this creative nonfiction narrative, an aged Clark speaks from her Johns Island nursing home and takes the reader on a journey from the 1800s to the 1970s. She uses chronological historical events as the backdrop to her story in two parts.In Part One, Clark moves the reader from the deadly and diseased slave ship to a Carolina rice plantation to experience both Gullah and elitist southern lifestyle traditions. Next, she drives the reader into the bloody American Civil War and through emancipation.In Part Two, Clark shares her life story teaching citizenship and literacy skills. She bravely confronts Jim Crowism, segregation and institutionalized barriers against equality and voting rights. Clark’s phenomenal work crosses over with the work of some of America’s most renowned civil rights icons including Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and others.Blazing Toward Freedom, framed by significant historical events, is an important diversely inclusive American story.

The House of Plain Truth – Donna Hemans / Zibby Books
Set in Brooklyn, Cuba, and mostly Jamaica, The House of Plain Truth traces one older woman’s decision to pursue and hold onto what has deep meaning to her—in her blood and in her bones. What does it look like to uphold the wishes of those who have departed the world and why is it that the most unlikely characters crystallize what matters most? When Pearline leaves her life in Brooklyn and returns to her childhood home of Jamaica to care for her dying father, Rupert, she leaves her grown daughter to cope, overwhelmed, with her granddaughter back in Brooklyn. Yet Pearline feels called to return to her childhood home and soon dives deep into her family of origin. Ostracized by her sisters for moving to America decades earlier and only coming “home” due to their father’s imminent passing, Pearline must assert her own familial identity as she strives to hold onto the family’s home over her sisters’ objections. Always lurking in the back of Pearline’s mind is her family’s traumatic past in Cuba, where Rupert had sought a better life and where four of Pearline’s siblings remained when the rest of the family left for Jamaica, including one who was lost for good. In lush, lyrical prose inspired by the author’s own family story, this novel explores the divided loyalties within a family, the true meaning of home, and what one woman has to sacrifice to get what she ultimately wants.

February

Neighbors and Other Stories – Diane Oliver / Grove Press
A bold and haunting debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism from Diane Oliver, a missing figure in the canon of twentieth-century African American literature, with an introduction by Tayari Jones A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver’s insightful stories reverberate into the present day. There’s the nightmarish “The Closet on the Top Floor” in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; “Mint Juleps not Served Here” where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; “Spiders Cry without Tears,” in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school. These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World – Shayla Lawson / Penguin Dutton/Tiny Reparations Books
Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability. With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self. Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship [[Zimbabwe]], then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal. Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

Convergence Problems – Wole Talabi / DAW
Convergence Problems is a new short story collection from award-winning, Nebula-nominated Nigerian author Wole Talabi Containing brand-new stories, rewrites of early work, and a few previously published pieces, Wole Talabi’s new collection, Convergence Problems, consists of sixteen short stories and one previously unseen novella. All of the stories in this collection are set in, or relate to, [[Africa]], and investigate the rapidly changing role of technology in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice; constantly converging to our future selves. In Lagos, Nigeria, a roadside mechanic volunteers to undergo a procedure that will increase the electrical conductivity of his skin by orders of magnitude. On Mars, a woman races against time and a previously undocumented geological phenomenon to save her brother. In Nairobi, a tech support engineer tries to understand what is happening when an AI system begins malfunctioning in ways that could change the world.

The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country – Matt Ruff / Harper
In this thrilling adventure, a blend of enthralling historical fiction and fantastical horror, Matt Ruff returns to the world of Lovecraft Country and explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty. Summer, 1957. Atticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina to mark the centennial of their ancestor’s escape from slavery, but an encounter with an old nemesis leads to a life-and-death pursuit. Back in Chicago, George Berry is diagnosed with cancer and strikes a devil’s bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure–but only if George brings Winthrop back from the dead. Fifteen-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a trip to Nevada for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. But Hippolyta has a secret–and far more dangerous–agenda that will take her and Horace to the far end of the universe and bring a new threat home to Letitia’s doorstep. Hippolyta isn’t the only one keeping secrets. Letitia’s sister, Ruby, has been leading a double life as her white alter ego, Hillary Hyde. Now, the supply of magic potion she needs to transform herself is nearly gone, and a surprise visitor throws her already tenuous situation into complete chaos. Yet these troubles are soon eclipsed by the return of Caleb Braithwhite. Stripped of his magic and banished from Chicago at the end of Lovecraft Country, he’s found a way back into power and is ready to pick up where he left off. But first he has a score to settle . . .

The Villain’s Dance – Fiston Mwanza Mujila / Deep Vellum Publishing
Following the international success of his debut novel Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujila is back with his highly anticipated second novel, which follows a remarkable series of characters during the Mobutu regime. The Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as Congo-Kinshasa or DRCongo, has had a series of names since its founding. The name of Zaire best corresponds to the experience of the novel’s characters. The years of Mobutu’s regime were filled with utopias, dreams, fantasies and other uncontrolled desires for social redemption, the quest for easy enrichment and the desecration of places of power. Among these events: Zairians’ immigration to Angola during the civil war boycotting the borders inherited from colonization, as if the country did not have its own diamonds, and the occupation of public places by children from outside. The author creates the atmosphere of the time through a roundup of characters: the diviner Tshiamuena, also known as Madonna of the Cafunfo mines, prides herself of being God with whoever is willing to listen to her. Franz Baumgartner, an apprentice writer originally from Austria and rumba lover, goes around the bars in search of material for his novel. Sanza, Le Blanc and other street children share information to the intelligence services when they are not living off begging and robbery. Djibril, taxi driver, only lives for reggae music. As soon as night falls, each character dances and plays his own role in a country mined by dictatorship.

The Maroons – Louis Timagène Houat / Restless Books
The first-ever English translation of the first known novel to be written about Réunion Island, The Maroons relates in minute detail the horrors of slavery in the nineteenth century. A narrative full of shock and fervor, Louis Timagène Houat’s only book embodies abolitionist history and the author’s intense defense of miscegenation. Frême, The Maroons’ protagonist, is a young Black man enslaved on Réunion, a small island to the east of what is now Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Forced into slavery at the Atelier Colonial, the director rescues Frême to serve his children. As they grow up, Frême is returned to the Atelier, this time as a carpenter. Plagued by the memory of his childhood sweetheart, he finds Marie and decides to flee to the forest to live alongside the Maroons, enslaved people who have chosen freedom at the risk of their lives. While there, they meet resistance fighters demonstrating fraternity among races and interracial relations. The novel captures romance, violent episodes, and ideals of abolition at a time when freedom for enslaved persons remained an illusion. The Maroons is the first-ever English translation of Les Marrons by Louis Timagène Houat. Written with the express intent of raising public awareness about the abject conditions of slavery under the French empire, the book also attests to the widespread phenomenon of enslaved people escaping captivity to forge a new life for themselves outside the reach of so-called “civilization.” While nineteenth-century literature of the Americas offers several examples of escape narratives, The Maroons represents a rare contribution to the genre set in the Indian Ocean. Banned by colonial authorities at the time of its publication in 1844, the book fell into obscurity for over a century, only to be rediscovered in the late 1970s by Reunionese researcher Raoul Lucas. Since its reissue in 1988, the novel has been recognized for its extraordinary historical significance and high literary quality. Presented here in a sensitive translation by the young superstar of Mauritian literature, Aqiil Gopee, and with an informative introduction by Shenaz Patel, the Restless Books edition of The Maroons will serve as a valuable resource for rethinking the nineteenth-century canon as well as a fascinating read for anyone interested in the struggle for freedom and social justice.

Blessings – Chukwuebuka Ibeh / Doubleday Books
When Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family’s apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend. Interweaving the perspectives of Obiefuna and his mother Uzoamaka, as they reach towards a future that will hold them both, BLESSINGS is an elegant and exquisitely moving story of love and loneliness. Asking how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness, it is a stunning, searing debut.

The Lagos Wife – Vanessa Walters / Atria Books
Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband, a palatial house in the heart of Lagos and a glamorous group of friends. She left London and a troubled family past behind to become part of a community of expat wives. But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her so-called perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her aunt Claudine flies to Nigeria to take matters into her own hands. As she digs into her niece’s life, she uncovers a hidden truth. But the more she finds out about Nicole, the more Claudine’s own buried history threatens to come to light.

March

The Truth of the Aleke – Moses Ose Utomi / Tordotcom
Moses Ose Utomi returns to his Forever Desert series with The Truth of the Aleke, continuing his epic fable about truth, falsehood, and the shackles of history. The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming. 500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people. Seventeen-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God’s Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility—destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God’s Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.

Grow Where They Fall – Michael Donkor / Random House
Bright and precocious ten-year-old Kwame Akromah knows how to behave. He knows the importance of good manners, how to stay at the top of the class and out of the way when his mother and father are angry with each other. But when his charismatic cousin Yaw arrives from Ghana to live with the family while he looks for work, the rules Kwame has learned about the world can no longer guide him. Twenty years later, Kwame is a secondary-school teacher, popular with his students and depended on by his friends. His is a life spent elegantly weaving between the classroom, the labyrinth of Grindr politics and increasingly intermittent visits to his parents’ home. Behind the confident façade, however, he is as driven by caution as he was as a boy. But when electrifying changemaker Marcus Felix is appointed as headteacher, Kwame must reckon with himself as he never has before. Can he face the ghosts of his childhood? How will he learn to move through the world without losing who he is? And where does existing stop and living begin? Grow Where They Fall is a beautifully written, spirited and deeply moving novel about a young man finding the courage to expand the limits of who he might become, from the acclaimed author of Hold.

You Get What You Pay For – Morgan Parker / One World
The award-winning author of Magical Negro traces the trauma and beauty of existing as a Black woman back through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to her battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyper-awareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In this collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Morgan and her therapist, Morgan examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages, through such topics as the ubiquity of a beauty culture that excludes Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious. With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.

Dominoes – Phoebe McIntosh / Random House
A tender and provocative debut novel about a mixed-race British woman who makes the shocking discovery in the days leading up to her wedding that her fiancé’s family may have enslaved her ancestors Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before the wedding of a young couple. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother and a white father she’s never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. But the commonalities between the two outweigh their differences; funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon. Layla’s best friend, Sera, isn’t so sure—about Andy, or the fact that her best friend is engaged to marry a white man. As Layla’s wedding date approaches, Sera prompts her friend to research her heritage more, and in the undertaking, Layla makes a shocking discovery: It’s not just possible but extremely likely that Andy’s ancestors enslaved Layla’s in Jamaica, and that the money from that enslavement helped build his family’s wealth. What seemed like a fairy-tale romance is suddenly derailed as Layla begins to uncover parts of her history and identity that she never could have imagined—or had simply learned to ignore. The task takes her to Jamaica for the first time, where she meets family members for the first time, and uncovers truths about her family’s history that will change the way she thinks about herself and her future. As the clock ticks down to her wedding—four days, three days, two days—Layla must make a decision: commit to the man she loves or expose a shameful history that has gone unspoken for far too long. Conversation-starting, open-hearted, and unforgettable, Dominoes shows us that only by fully confronting the past can one hope to move forward.

Pride and Joy – Louisa Onomé / Atria Books
Black Cake meets Death at a Funeral in this heartwarming and hilarious novel about three generations of a Nigerian Canadian family grappling with their matriarch’s sudden passing while their auntie insists that her sister is coming back, from an author with a “razor-sharp, smart and tender” (Nafiza Azad, author of The Wild Ones) voice. Joy Okafor is overwhelmed. The recently divorced life coach whose phone won’t stop ringing is also the dutiful Nigerian daughter who has planned every aspect of her mother’s seventieth birthday weekend on her own. As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids try to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition: Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ himself on Easter Sunday. Desperate to believe that they’re about to witness a miracle, the family overhauls their birthday plans to welcome the Nigerian Canadian community and the host of AJAfrika TV to help spread the word that Mama Mary is coming back. But skeptical Joy is struggling to deal with the loss of her mother and not allowing herself to mourn just yet while going through the motions of planning a funeral that her aunt refuses to allow. Filled with humour and flawed, deeply relatable characters that leap off the page, Pride and Joy will draw in readers as the Okafors prepare for a miracle while coming apart at the seams, praying that they haven’t actually lost Mama Mary for good and grappling with what her loss would truly mean for each of them.

Those Beyond the Wall – Micaiah Johnson / Del Rey
Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a series of sudden and inexplicable deaths in a searing sci-fi thriller from the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds. Scales is the best at what she does: She is an enforcer who keeps the peace in Ashtown, a rough, climate-ravaged desert town. But that fragile peace is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed within Ash’s borders, right in front of Scales’s eyes. Even more incomprehensible is that there was seemingly no murderer. When more mutilated bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it. She teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist in order to uncover the truth, delving into both worlds to track down the invisible killer. But what they find points to something bigger and more corrupt than they could’ve ever foreseen—and it could spell doom for the entire world.

Parasol Against the Axe – Helen Oyeyemi / Riverhead Books
The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about storytelling, competitive friendship, and a triumvirate of women on a reality-bending weekend in Prague. Literature is full of cities that are as unique and richly described as actual characters: Dickens’ London, Edith Wharton’s New York, and now, Helen Oyeyemi’s Prague. Parasol Against the Axe captures the Czech capital as a living thing—one that can let you in or spit you out. When Hero arrives in Prague for her friend Sophie’s bachelorette weekend, she has no idea what’s in store. This city has a penchant for playing gentle tricks on unsuspecting tourists. A book Hero is reading seems to be warping her mind: the text changes each time she picks it up, revealing startling new stories about the city’s history. Figures from Czech lore appear during bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering wisdom, humor, and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sophie’s past appears unexpectedly, forcing them to confront their friendship head-on, their sense of reality is further blurred. Who is the duper and who is the duped, and just who—or what—is shaping their story? An adventurous, kaleidoscopic novel like only Helen Oyeyemi can write, Parasol Against the Axe explores the lines between reality and fiction: When different narratives clash, whose version is true? How much can a reader influence a story? And finally, in a battle between friends, is it better to be the parasol or the axe?

Where Sleeping Girls Lie – Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé / Feiwel & Friends
In Where Sleeping Girls Lie — a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades — a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears. It’s like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again… Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school, this time at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school, after being home-schooled all her life. Misfortune has clung to her seemingly since birth, but even she doesn’t expect her new roommate, Elizabeth, to disappear after Sade’s first night. Or for people to think Sade had something to do with it. With rumors swirling around her, Sade catches the attention of the girls collectively known as the ‘Unholy Trinity’ and they bring her into their fold. Between learning more about them—especially Persephone, who Sade is inexplicably drawn to—and playing catchup in class, Sade already has so much on her plate. But when it seems people don’t care enough about what happened to Elizabeth, it’s up to she and Elizabeth’s best friend, Baz, to investigate. And then a student is found dead. The more Sade and Baz dig into Elizabeth’s disappearance, the more she realizes there’s more to Alfred Nobel Academy and its students than she thought. Secrets lurk around every corner and beneath every surface…secrets that rival even her own.

April

Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa – Sola Njoku, Moso Sematlane, Aba Amissah Asibon, Kabubu Mutua, Doreen Anyango, Salma Abdulatif Yusuf, Zanta Nkumane, Emily Pensulo, N A Dawn, Khumbo Mhone, Yovanka Paquete Perdigão, Josephine Sokan / Short Story Day Africa/Catalyst Press
Twelve new and emerging writers from Africa and the African Diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that tear us apart. Introducing Captive, the latest anthology from Short Story Day Africa. Passion and mania, creation and destruction, honesty and deception: the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts–Claustrophobia & Inescapable Obsessions; Metamorphosis, Cycles & Identity; andSelf-awareness, Illusion, Delusion & Deception–the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans. Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stagnates to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the beats of Tom Jones… Flip the page to Ghana to examine a neglected fertility fetish or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us… Slip into the small town life of a Ladybrand store clerk healing a broken heart in the arms of a man who cannot love him… Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the prismatic nature of the human soul.

Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name – Ukamaka Olisakwe / Griots Lounge
When the streams suddenly run dry in Ani Mmadu, the people know it is time to atone for a sin that goes back to the very beginning of their world, the consequence of one woman?s rebellion against the all-powerful and unforgiving, jealous god. To avert this catastrophe and for the waters to flow and nourish the farms again, the people must send an Aja?a child chosen by the Oracle?into the Forest of Iniquity, to atone for that great Sin. It falls on young Adanne to save her people this time. But the Ajas sent into the dreaded forest tend never to return. Is Adanne the long-awaited one who will buck the trend and end her people?s suffering? Don?t Answer When They Call Your Name is an extraordinary novel bursting with kaleidoscopic worlds and beings. It is a feat of the imagination from a born storyteller.

Gleem – Freddy Carrasco / Drawn & Quarterly
Imbued with cyberpunk attitude and in the rebellious tradition of afrofuturism, GLEEM is drawn with a fierce momentum hurtling towards a future world. Carrasco’s distinct cinematic style layers detailed panels and spreads, creating a multiplicity of perspectives, at once dizzying and hypnotic. Vignettes unspool in proximity to our own social realities and expand into the outer layers of possibility. Whether in the club or a robot repair workshop, the characters in these three interconnected stories burst across frames until they practically step off the page. A boy becomes bored at church with his grandmother until he tries a psychedelic drug. A group of friends are told that they need a rare battery if they want any chance of reviving their friend. Street style and cybernetics meet and burst into riotous dancing. Kindness and violence might not be as distant from each other as we think. GLEEM unsettles with a confidence that could make you believe in anything.

Ash Dark as Night – Gary Phillips / Soho Press
In the follow-up to One-Shot Harry, fearless crime photographer and occasional private eye Harry Ingram finds himself im the LAPD’s crosshairs after capturing damning evidence of police brutality. An atmospheric dive into a city on the brink that’s brimming with remarkable historical detail, Ash Dark as Night is perfect for fans of Walter Mosley and James Ellroy. Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene, including images of the police as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on civilians. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost—until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. The photo makes front-page news. A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate Moses “Mose” Tolbert, last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash, and clandestine agendas—all the while grappling with his newfound fame, which puts him in the sightlines of LAPD’s secretive intelligence division. Ash Dark as Night is a nail-biting ride-along through midcentury Los Angeles with a crime fiction legend in the driver’s seat.

Perfect Little Angels – Vincent Anioke / Arsenal Pulp Press
A beautifully imagined story collection set largely in Nigeria that explores themes of masculinity and suppressed queerness through the lens of (un)conditional love In this stunning debut story collection set largely in Nigeria, questions abound: What happens when we fall short of society’s–and our own–expectations? When our personal desires conflict with the duties we are bound with? The characters in Perfect Little Angels confront these dilemmas and more in these brilliantly imagined tales. In a boarding school, tensions brew between students and vengeful staff. An addict seeks a fresh start in pottery class. A man returns home from university abroad with confessions that unravel his mother’s world. Amid winter storms, a ghost delights her grief-stricken partner. And atop a hill surrounded by rot and garbage, two lovers dare to embark on a secret, dangerous romance. Human desires–for connection, salvation, and understanding–imbue these deeply Nigerian stories with universal resonance. In Vincent Anioke’s tenderly written stories, characters seek love in different permutations from teachers, parents, dead partners, and even God. Perfect Little Angels is a nuanced exploration of masculinity, religion, marginalization, suppressed queerness, and self-expression through the lens of (un)conditional love.

James – Percival Everett / Doubleday Books
James is an enthralling and ferociously funny novel that leaves an indelible mark, inspiring us to see Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a wholly new and transformative light. Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize for his novel The Trees, Professor Percival Everett is one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime. The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, toward the elusive promise of free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries: the family he is desperate to protect and the constant lie he must live. And together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all . . . From the shadows of Huck Finn’s mischievous spirit, Jim emerges to reclaim his voice, defying the conventions that have consigned him to the margins.

Manny and the Baby – Varaidzo / Scribe Publications
London, 1936. Two sisters are ready to take the city and the world by storm. Bath, 2012. Two young Black men are figuring out who they are, and who they want to become. Manny Powell is forthright, intellectual, and determined to make her mark on the London literary scene. Her younger sister, Rita ‘The Baby’, just wants to dance. Chasing their dreams across smoky Soho jazz clubs, they soon find themselves part of the burgeoning Black ambition movement, and must learn how to navigate it as women. As tensions rise, and fascism and war snap at their heels, Rita finds herself drawn to the mysterious mimic and trumpeter, Ezekiel Brown, from Jamaica, and the trio are faced with choices that will alter their lives forever. Itai has fled London to his late father’s flat in Bath. Listening to cassette tapes his father made, he realises there is a lot he doesn’t know about the man’s life — who is Rita? Why did his father record her life story? And might she hold the answers to Itai’s questions? Meanwhile, his developing friendship with Josh, a young athlete who moonlights as a dealer to fund his training, is on unsteady ground. As the country prepares for the 2012 Olympics, Josh is under increasing pressure from his bosses to find out just what the hell Itai is really doing in their city. Manny and the Baby is a character-driven debut novel, full of heart, about what it means to be Black and British, now and in the past.

A Few Rules for Predicting the Future – Octavia Butler / Chronicle Books
The wise words of science fiction icon Octavia E. Butler live on in this beautiful and giftable little volume. “There’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.” Originally published in Essence magazine in the year 2000, Octavia E. Butler’s essay “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future” offers an honest look into the inspiration behind her science fiction novels and the importance of studying history and taking responsibility for our actions if we are to move forward. Organized into four main rules, this short essay reminds readers to learn from the past, respect the law of consequences, be aware of their perspectives, and count on the surprises. Citing the warning signs of fascism, the illusive effects of fear and wishful thinking, and the unpredictable nature of what is yet to come, Butler shares realistic but hopeful suggestions to shape our future into something good. An inspiring and motivational gift for students and recent graduates, fans of Butler’s work, and anyone seeking a brighter day tomorrow, this exquisite gift book includes stunning Afrofuturist artwork by Manzel Bowman alongside the full text of the original essay.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain – Sofia Samatar / Tordotcom
Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin. The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars. His whole world changes—literally—when he is yanked “upstairs” to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.” The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite. The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn. Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation—and redesign the entire world.

A Kind of Madness – Uche Okonkwo / Tin House Books
A searing, unflinching collection of stories set in Nigeria that explores themes of community expectations, familial strife, and the struggle for survival.

Weird Black Girls – Elwin Cotman / Scribner
From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman, an irresistibly unnerving collection of stories that explore the anxieties of living while Black—a high-wire act of literary-fantastical hybrid fiction. A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn. In each of the seven stories in this collection, characters pursue their obsessions on paths to glory and destruction while around them their worlds twist and warp, oscillating between reality and impossibility. On display throughout is Cotman’s ability to reveal truths about the human experience—about friendship, love, betrayal, bitterness—through whimsy, horror, and fantasy. Elegiac in tone, imaginative and humorous in their execution, the character-driven stories in Weird Black Girls challenge, incite, and entertain.

One of Us Knows – Alyssa Cole / William Morrow and Company
From the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of When No One Is Watching comes a riveting thriller about the new caretaker of a historic estate who finds herself trapped on an island with a murderer–and the ghosts of her past. Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity. Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers–including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect. Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island–and their own past–or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.

Crooked Seeds – Karen Jennings / Hogarth Press
A woman in post-apartheid South Africa confronts her family’s troubled past in this taut and compelling novel from the Booker Prize longlisted author of An Island

An African History of Africa – Zeinab Badawi / Ebury Publishing
Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa’s history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa’s spectacular history – from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilisations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

We Were Girls Once – Aiwanose Odafen / Simon and Schuster
‘We were three: complete, as we were meant to be…’ Ego, Zina and Eriife were always destined to be best friends, ever since their grandmothers sat next to each other on a dusty bus to Lagos in the late 1940s, forging a bond that would last generations. But over half a century later, Nigeria is a new and modern country. As the three young women navigate the incessant strikes and political turmoil that surrounds them, their connection is shattered by a terrible assault. In the aftermath, nothing will remain the same as life takes them down separate paths. For Ego, now a high-powered London lawyer, success can’t mask her loneliness and feelings of being an outsider. Desperate to feel connected to Nigeria, she escapes into a secret life online. Zina’s ambition is to be anyone but herself; acting proves the ultimate catharsis, but it comes at the cost of her family. And Eriife surprises everyone by morphing from a practising doctor to a ruthless politician’s perfect wife. When Ego returns home, the three women’s lives become entwined once more, as Nigeria’s political landscape fractures. Their shared past will always connect them, but can they – and their country – overcome it?

Village Weavers – Myriam J A Chancy / Tin House
From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families–forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets–and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship–until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier’s rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Dominican family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and–perhaps–forgive the past. Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls–connected their entire lives–who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.

Sweetness in the Skin – Ishi Robinson / Harper
A winning debut novel about a young teenage girl in Jamaica determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime. Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse. Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam, so she can free herself from her household and reunite with her beloved aunt in France. In a moment of ingenuity, she turns her passion for baking into a true business. Making batches of sweet potato pudding, coconut drops and chocolate cakes, Pumkin develops a booming trade—but when her school and her mother find out what she’s up to, everything she’s worked so hard for may slip through her fingers. . . . Sweetness in the Skin is a funny and heartbreaking story about a young girl figuring out who she is, what she is capable of—and where she truly belongs.

May

An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children – Jamaica Kincaid, Kara Walker / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A unique collaboration from two of America’s leading artists that explores the fascination and hidden history of the plant world. In this hard-hitting, witty, deeply original book, the renowned novelist Jamaica Kincaid offers an ABC of the plants that define our world and reveals the often brutal history of colonialism behind them. Kara Walker, one of America’s greatest visual artists, illustrates each entry with provocative, brilliant, enthralling, multilayered watercolors. There has never been a book like An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children—inventive, surprising, and telling—about what our gardens reveal about the truth of history.

The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi and Black TV Nerd Shit – Julian Randall / Bold Type Books
This brilliant, adult nonfiction debut from the acclaimed MG author and poet weaves two personal narratives of recovery and reclamation, spliced with a dazzle of pop-culture The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall’s return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather. Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is Randall’s journey to get his ghost story back.

The Joyful Cry of the Partridge – Paulina Chiziane, David Brookshaw / Archipelago
A potent whirl of history, mythology, and grapevine chatter, The Joyful Cry of the Partridge absorbs readers into its many hiding places and along the wandering paths of its principal characters, whose stark words will stay with you long after the journey is done. No one knows where Maria des Dores came from. Did she ride in on the armored spines of crocodiles, was she carried many miles in the jaws of fish? The only clear fact is that she is here, sitting naked in the river bordering a town where nothing ever happens. The townspeople murmur restlessly that she is possessed by perverse impulses. They interpret her arrival as an omen of crop failure or, in more hopeful tones, a sign that womankind will soon seize power from the greedy hands of men. As The Joyful Cry of the Partridge unfolds, Paulina Chizianespirals back in time to Maria’s true origins: the days of Maria’s mother and father when the pressure to assimilate in Portuguese-controlled Mozambique formed a distorting bond on the lives of black Mozambicans.

Lost Ark Dreaming – Suyi Davies Okungbowa / Tordotcom
The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa. Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level. There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself – Onyi Nwabineli / Graydon House
Every second of Anuri’s life has been documented on social media. Now, it’s time to take back control. Anuri’s stepmother, Ophelia, is the ultimate ‘mumfluencer’. Throughout Anuri’s childhood, she catalogued every minute, milestone and carefully curated family outing on social media, cultivating a devoted – and sizeable – following. Now twenty-five years old, life looks pretty perfect on the outside. Ophelia’s fans could be forgiven for wondering why Anuri spends much of her time insulting men online for money, battling the call of alcohol, running from a PhD application, and reminding herself that she is now allowed to choose her own outfits. But when she sees her little sister being pushed down the same rocky path by Ophelia, she decides to take back control. Her stepmother, however, isn’t giving up without a fight. Put away your phone and get ready to rethink your ‘harmless’ social media habit, in this darkly hilarious page-turner from an exciting new voice.

Like Water Like Sea – Olumide Popoola / Cassava Republic Press
LIKE WATER LIKE SEA is an immersive novel of self-discovery, resilience, and the unifying power of love. It follows the life of Nia, a queer, bi/pansexual naturopath in London, as her life unfolds across three pivotal moments, spanning from her 28th year to a life-altering realisation at the age of 50. At the heart of this gripping narrative lies Nia’s profound encounter with grief. A decade after the devastating loss of her sister, who tragically succumbed to suicide while battling with cyclothymia—a similar mental illness that her mother battles with—Nia’s world is forever transformed. As she grapples with the pain of her sister’s passing, Nia embarks on a poignant self-exploration, revealing grief as the ultimate manifestation of love, forever shaping our very being.

It Waits in the Forest – Sarah Dass / Rick Riordan Presents
Inspired by Caribbean folklore, eighteen-year-old Selena gets pulled into a string of mysterious murders on her island home. Unlike the other residents of the small Caribbean Island of St. Virgil, Selina DaSilva does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving the island to study Pharmacology—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma. Now her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to conning gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be there is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel, newly employed at the local newspaper and eager to put his investigative skills to use. Desperate to put an end to the killings and claim justice for Selina’s family, these two former lovers race to find answers. But evil bides its time. And as long-buried feelings and long-hidden secrets about Selina’s family’s past begin to reveal themselves, only one answer remains—and it waits in the forest.

June

Barda – Ngozi Ukazu / DC Comics
Darkseid is…and life on Apokolips is tough–but then, it is hell after all. And no one knows this better than Barda, Granny Goodness’s right hand warrior. But Barda has a secret…she is in love. Or she is drawn to the idea of it anyway, whether it be the beauty of a flower, her affection for her closest friend, Aurelie, or the mysterious and fierce enemy warrior, Orion, who is the only match for Barda’s strength. But when Granny decides Barda is becoming too soft, she assigns Barda a task that might be more than she can handle–to break the seemingly unbreakable Scott Free. And as Barda questions why Scott has such hope and what he might have done to promote such hatred from Granny, she finds herself drawn to him in a way she never expected. The only thing is, we do not speak of love on Apokolips… Join New York Times bestselling author-illustrator NGOZI UKAZU (Check, Please) as she takes readers on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery, deep friendships, and first loves!

Four Eids and a Funeral – Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Adiba Jaigirdar / Feiwel & Friends
Ex-best friends, Tiwa and Said, must work together to save their Islamic Center from demolition, in this romantic story of rekindling and rebuilding by award-winning authors Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé & Adiba Jaigirdar! These days, Said Hossain spends most of his time away at boarding school. But when his favorite hometown librarian Ms. Barnes dies, he must return home to New Crosshaven for her funeral and for the summer. Too bad being home makes it a lot harder to avoid facing his ex-best friend, Tiwa Olatunji, or facing the daunting task of telling his Bangladeshi parents that he would rather be an artist than a doctor. Tiwa doesn’t understand what made Said start ignoring her, but it’s probably that fancy boarding school of his. Though he’s unexpectedly staying through the summer, she’s determined to take a page from him and pretend he doesn’t exist. Besides, she has more than enough going on, between grieving her broken family and helping her mother throw the upcoming Eid celebration at the Islamic Center—a place that means so much to Tiwa. But when the Islamic Center accidentally catches fire, it turns out the mayor plans to demolish the center entirely. Things are still tense between the ex-friends but Tiwa needs Said’s help if there’s any hope of changing the mayor’s mind, and Said needs a project to submit to art school (unbeknownst to anyone). Will all their efforts be enough to save the Islamic Center, save Eid, and maybe save their relationship?

Ghostroots – Pemi Aguda / W. W. Norton and Company
The supernatural looms over the grime and sweat of everyday life in Lagos in this debut collection of stories from a prize-winning young Nigerian writer. A woman sees the ghost of her abusive mother in her daughter’s face. A mysterious virus wipes out all the boys on one street. A young architect turns up to measure a house, only to find that her drawings make no sense, and the house seems to resist her… The Lagos of these twelve sinister and beguiling stories is multi-faceted, peopled by Pentecostal Christians and exasperated atheists; by tight-knit extended families and struggling single fathers. Here are characters cursed by guilt, bound by the ties of ancestors and community; or enchanted by the allure of mysticism and would-be prophets. There are gossips and party girls – and a schoolboy followed home by a group of tribal masquerades, cloaked in feathers and twinkling beads. Yes, his mother has warned him not to bring strangers home, but he is sure she will understand … Exploring the dark borders between psychology and superstition, these feverishly imaginative stories of trauma, betrayal, terror and love lay bare the forces of myth, tradition, gender, sexuality and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by a deep empathy, and glinting with humour and insight, they announce a major new literary talent.

For Such a Time as This – Shani Akilah / Simon and Schuster
Gabby and Jonathan cross paths at the wedding of a mutual friend. They both wonder if this could be the start of something, but fate has other ideas. When Niah tries to call out her employer for their empty words about diversity and inclusion, she comes face to face with racism reaching right to the very top. Sharna is holding onto her own secret when she sets out for Jamaica to visit her grandfather, on a trip that throws fresh light onto the family history she has always taken for granted. Shani Akilah’s stunning collection brings to life the stories of Black-British Londoners as they explore friendship and romance, community and independence, and navigate their way through the relationships that make them who they are.

The Road to the Country – Chigozie Obioma / Hogarth Press
The twice Booker-shortlisted author returns with his third novel, THE ROAD TO THE COUNTRY, about a young man, Tunde, whose brother is involved in an accident and stranded just as the Biafran war begins. Tunde spends the novel travelling through a war zone to be reunited with his brother – to bring him home and to ask for forgiveness for the part he played in the accident, a part his brother has no knowledge of. A modern day BAND OF BROTHERS or BIRDSONG, THE ROAD TO THE COUNTRY is set to stand alongside HALF OF A YELLOW SUN as the defining novel of one of the most devastating civil wars of the 20th century.

Children of Anguish and Anarchy – Tomi Adeyemi / Henry Holt and Company
New allies rise. The Blood Moon nears. Zélie faces her final enemy. The king who hunts her heart. When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland. Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands. But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

The Liquid Eye of a Moon – Uchenna Awoke / Catapult
A Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, Uchenna Awoke’s masterful debut breaks the silence about a hidden and dangerous contemporary caste system Fifteen-year-old Dimkpa dreams of the day his father will be made village head. He will return to school and maybe even go on to university; his mother will no longer have to break her back foraging wild food to sell at market; they will have the money to build a fine tomb for his aunt Okike; and his family’s status as ohu ma, the lowest Igbo caste, won’t matter anymore. But when his father is passed over for a younger man, breaking tradition, Dimkpa realizes that he must make his own fate. Journeying from his small village in rural Nigeria, to Lagos, Awka, and home again, Dimkpa learns that no money is easy money, that superstition runs deep, that knowledge is power, and that sometimes it is better to live in the present than to always be chasing a future just out of reach. The Liquid Eye of a Moon is by turns hilarious and poignant, capturing all the messiness of adolescence, and the difficulty of making your own way in a world that seeks to oppress you.

July

After The End – Olukorede S Yishau / Masobe
A poignant exploration of grief, closure and the intricacies of life.

Masquerade – OO Sangoyomi / Forge Books
O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey through a reimagined, pre-colonial West Africa, amid power struggles and political intrigue that turn an entire region on its head. Òdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Already shunned as social pariahs, living conditions for Òdòdó and the other women in her blacksmith guild grow even worse under Yorùbá rule. Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife. In a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy becomes too enticing to resist. And as tensions with rival states reveal elaborate schemes and enemies hidden in plain sight, she must re-forge the shaky loyalties of the court to her favor, or risk losing everything—including her life. Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale of the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery in a patriarchal society, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.

The Road to the Salt Sea – Samuel Kolawole / Amistad
As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice. Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess. But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself–a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe and a new life in a better place is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom. As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs–his ideas about betterment and salvation–are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.

The World Was in Our Hands Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict – Chitra Nagarajan / Cassava Republic
While the Boko Haram conflict has reached a certain level of culturation saturation, what is known about the conflict remains patchy. This collection, featuring interviews with 47 people of all genders, ages and a variety of religious backgrounds, foregrounds the realities of those who are living through the conflict and presenting the humanity of all concerned. Even as they discuss the conflict, their narratives also reflect realities beyond violence, making this an essential cultural archive. From age hierarchies and the culture of deference to elders to high levels of gender inequality and gender-based violence; from frustrations with government to unhappiness at community leaders who are seen as corrupt, politicised, and uncaring; and from the links and connections between people across national boundaries to how people mobilise to support one another, often at great personal danger.

In the Shadow of the Fall – Tobi Ogundiran / Tordotcom
A cosmic war reignites and the fate of the orisha lie in the hands of an untried acolyte in this first entry of a new epic fantasy novella duology by Tobi Ogundiran, for fans of N. K. Jemisin and Suyi Davies Okungbowa. “The novella of the year has arrived!”—Mark Oshiro, #1 New York Times bestselling author Ashâke is an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, yearning for the day she is made a priest and sent out into the world to serve the orisha. But of all the acolytes, she is the only one the orisha refuse to speak to. For years she has watched from the sidelines as peer after peer passes her by and ascends to full priesthood. Desperate, Ashâke attempts to summon and trap an orisha—any orisha. Instead, she experiences a vision so terrible it draws the attention of a powerful enemy sect and thrusts Ashâke into the center of a centuries-old war that will shatter the very foundations of her world.

Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow – Damilare Kuku / HarperVia
Humor and poignance mix in this powerful polyphonic novel about family secrets, judgmental aunties, and Brazilian butt lifts, from the internationally bestselling author of Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad. “You want to act like you don’t know that everybody dey buy bumbum now?” Freshly out of Obafemi Awolowo University, 20-year-old Temi has a clear plan for her future: she is going to surgically enlarge her backside like all the other Nigerian women, move from Ile-Ife to Lagos, and meet a man who will love her senseless. When she finally finds the courage to tell her mother, older sister, and aunties, her announcement causes an uproar. Nigerian families can really be an obstacle in a girl’s journey to physical perfection. But as each of the other women try to cure Temi of what seems like temporary insanity, they begin to spill long-buried secrets, including the truth of Temi’s older sister’s mysterious disappearance five years earlier. In the end, it seems like Temi might be the sanest of them all… In Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow, Damilare Kuku brings her signature humor, boldness, and compassion to each member of this loveable but exasperating family, whose lives reveal the ways in which a woman’s physical appearance can dictate her life and relationships and show just how sharp the double-edged sword of beauty can be.

August

Half Portraits Under Water – Dennis Mügaa / Masobe Books

And So I Roar – Abi Daré / Hachette UK
The New Novel From the Author Of the Word-of-mouth Sensation the Girl With the Louding Voice. When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother – terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria – and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades. Back home in Lagos a few days later, Adunni, a plucky fourteen-year-old runaway, is lying awake in Tia’s guest room. Having escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future, she’s finally found refuge with Tia, who has helped her enroll in school. It’s always been Adunni’s dream to get an education, and she’s bursting with excitement. Suddenly, there’s a horrible knocking at the front gate. . . . It’s only the beginning of a harrowing ordeal that will see Tia forced to make a terrible choice between protecting Adunni or finally learning the truth. And Adunni will learn that her ‘louding voice’ is more important than ever, as she must advocate to save not only herself but all the young women of her home village, Ikati. If she succeeds, she may transform Ikati into a place where girls are allowed to claim the bright futures they deserve – and shout their stories to the world.

The Unicorn Woman – Gayl Jones / Beacon Press
Marking a dramatic new direction for Jones, a riveting tale set in the Post WWII South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal. Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities. A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he’s a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he is a true self-educated intellectual and a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love. As he moves around the south, from his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, primarily, to his second home of Memphis, Tennessee, he recalls his love affairs in post-war France and encounters with a variety of colorful characters and mythical prototypes: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists, and bigots. The lead among these characters is, of course, The Unicorn Woman, who exists, but mostly lives in Bud’s private mythology. Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of Black (and Indigenous) people in a time and place of frustration, disappointment, and spiritual hope.

She Who Knows: Kponyungo – Nnedi Okorafor / DAW
Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Kponyungo is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy. When there is a call, there is often a response. Najeeba knows. She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same. Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

September

Nothing to report yet (:

October

Hassan and Hassana Share Everything – Elnathan John / Cassava Republic Press
Hassan and Hassana are twins, and they’re practically identical. Even though one is a boy and the other a girl, ever since they were babies people have had trouble telling them apart. For their 8th birthday, Hassan gets a bike and Hassana gets drums. Hassan’s friends tell him that girls can’t ride bikes, leaving him with an important decision to make. Will he decide to share or will he let Hassana feel left out? A beautiful story about sharing, kindness and standing up for what is right.

November

Outriders Africa – Layla Mohamed Bibi Bakare-Yusuf / Cassava Republic Press
Journeying outside the boundaries of one’s society to see and discover how others live, or what lies beyond the horizon, is central to our humanity and the birth of inventions and creativity. Travel writing provides opportunities for both self-exploration and ethnocentrism. It is therefore unsurprising that some of the most enduring stereotypes about Africa and Africans have come from travel writing by European men and women, with tropes of monstrosity, backwardness, inferiority, infantilism and foreboding. In the last few years, a handful of Black and African authors have emerged in the travel writing scene. They are however not enough to counter-balance the damaging legacy that 400 years of white European journeying authors has brought to the genre. The Outrider project is an invitation for writers to explore travel writing through the “African Gaze”. Two paired writers travel in and through the same society and write about their experience and encounters from their own embodied perspective.