Editor’s Note
Dear reader,
Before you look through this compendium, I would like to note a few things
- Both authors and books may be mentioned multiple times, because of course, a thing or person can be more than one thing ;)
- the symbol ‘*’ means that that book has not yet been published.
- If you would like to recommend books or let me know about any mistakes, you can do so by using this form:
Please be aware that I will only accept literature written, illustrated or edited by people who identify as black (also no Rachel Dolezals, thank you).
NOTE: Thank you for all the submissions so far, hosting the Black Lit Challenge is occupying most of my time at the moment, but I will make sure to update this document once I manage to find some more time.
I have spent hours curating this compendium with much care and enthusiasm and thus I do hope you find something here that will peak your interest!
Sincerely,
GENRES
Anthology/Short Stories
Addis Ababa Noir - Maaza Mengiste (editor)
In this edited collection authors, set pull back the curtain on despair and depravity, offering an intimate glimpse into the raw, beating heart of Addis Ababa.
Atlanta Noir - Tayari Jones (editor)
Atlanta is one of America’s most dynamic and fastest-growing cities, with an increasingly diverse population. This collection honours the city’s transformation - albeit in a chilling manner.
The Black Ball - Ralph Ellison
Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories.
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America - Ibi Zoboi (editor)
An anthology that delves into the closeted thoughts, hidden experiences, and daily struggles of black teens across the country. From a spectrum of backgrounds - urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more - Black Enough showcases diversity within diversity.
Black Girl Magic - Mahogany L. Browne (editor)
A anthology that celebrates and canonizes the words of Black women across the diaspora.
A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
An Elegy for Easterly: Stories - Petina Gappah
A collection of short stories showing the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe’s regime, taking the reader across the city of Harare, from the townships beset by power cuts to the manicured lawns of privilege and corruption, where wealthy husbands keep their first wives in the “big houses” while their unofficial second wives wait in the “small houses,” hoping for a promotion.
Falling in Love with Hominids - Nalo Hopkinson
A collection of tales, mixed with the modern with Afro-Caribbean folklore and occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.
Fat Time: Stories - Jeffery Renard Allen*
A powerful collection encompassing ten short stories, the collection is loosely linked around African notions of time and place, along with African views of space, cosmology, and metaphysics. The stories are set in invented locations in both Africa and America and play out over a continuum of time.
Flying Home and Other Stories - Ralph Ellison
The tales in Flying Home range in setting from the Jim Crow South to a Harlem bingo parlor, from the hobo jungles of the Great Depression to Wales during the Second World War. By turns lyrical, scathing, touching, and transcendently wise, Flying Home and Other Stories is a historic volume, an extravagant last bequest from a giant of our literature.
Friday Black - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day is revealed. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world.
Ghost Summer: Stories - Tananarive Due
A short story collection that takes you to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness.
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
This book follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
Grand Union: Stories - Zadie Smith
A collection of short fiction exploring a wide range of subjects, from first loves to cultural despair, as well as the desire to be the subject of your own experience. This novel contends with race, class, relationships, and gender roles in a world that feels increasingly divided.
Heads of the Colored People - Nafissa Thompson-Spires
A collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examining the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era.
How Are You Going to Save Yourself - J.M. Holmes
This book illuminates in breathtaking detail an entire world - one that has been underrepresented in American fiction. At times funny, often uncomfortable, occasionally disturbing, these stories fearlessly engage with issues of race, sex, drugs, class, and family.
How Long 'til Black Future Month? (Dreamblood #0.5) - N.K. Jemisin
In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination.
How to Love a Jamaican - Alexia Arthurs
A collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
Kabu Kabu - unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis - generally get you where you need to go, but Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu Kabu takes the reader to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations.
Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold - Bolu Babalola*
A collection of love stories from history and mythology retold. From the homoromantic Greek myths, to magical Nigerian folktales, to the ancient stories of South Asia showing the vibrance and colours of love around the world.
Nine Bar Blues - Sheree Renée Thomas*
Story collection weaving emotion, spirit, and music, captivating readers with newfound alchemy and the murmurs of dark gods. Rooted in rhythm, threaded with magic, these tales encompass worlds that begin in river bottoms, pass through spectral gates, and end in distant uncharted worlds. These stories describe the pain that often accompanies the confines of sanctuary and the joy that is inextricably bound to the troubles of hard living.
A collection of stories that crosses the barriers of class, race, gender and sexual politics in Zimbabwe to explore the causes and effects of crime, and to meditate on the nature of justice.
Six Stories and An Essay - Andrea Levy
This collection opens with an essay about how writing has helped Andrea Levy to explore and understand her heritage. She explains the context of each piece within the chronology of her career and finishes with a new story, written to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
A collection of short stories, including "Greedy Choke Puppy," which is said to be "a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf)".
So We Can Glow: Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith*
A short story collection exploring female obsession and desire. Readers will be drenched in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days, the intense friendships of teenage girls, and the innate bonds felt between women, evoking the pangs of loss and motherhood, the headiness and destructive potential of desire, and the pure exhilaration of being female.
Three Strong Women - Marie NDiaye
A story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer finding herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with only the name of a cousin who lives in France, a place Khady can barely conceive, but must now take a desperate flight towards.
Training School for Negro Girls - Camille Acker
A TSA agent who has never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. In this debut collection of stories, each of them navigate life’s “training school”—with its lessons on gentrification and respectability—while fighting to create a vibrant sense of self in this love letter to Washington, DC.
Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves - Glory Edim (editor)
An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature.
What is Not Yours is Not Yours - Helen Oyeyemi
This collection contains tales that span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation?
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky - Lesley Nneka Arimah
This collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.
The Whispering Trees (Cassava Shorts) - Abubakar Adam Ibrahim*
The magical tales capture the essence of life, death and coincidence in Northern Nigeria. Myth and reality intertwine in stories featuring political agitators, newly-wedded widows, and the tormented whirlwind, Kyakkyawa. The two medicine men of Mazade battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch. And who is Okhiwo, whose arrival is heralded by a pair of little white butterflies?
Children’s Books
Sulwe - Lupita Nyong’o (writer) Vashti Harrison (illustrator)
Sulwe has skin the color of midnight. She is darker than everyone in her family. She is darker than anyone in her school. Sulwe just wants to be beautiful and bright, like her mother and sister. Then a magical journey in the night sky opens her eyes and changes everything.
Hair Love - Matthew A. Cherry (writer) Vashti Harrison (illustrator)
When mommy is away, it’s up to daddy to do his daughter’s hair in this ode to self-confidence and the love between fathers and daughters.
Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History - Vashti Harrison
Featuring forty trailblazing black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations.
Mae Among the Stars - Roda Ahmed (writer) Stasia Burrington (Illustrator)
Inspired by the life of the first African American woman to travel in space, Mae Jemison.
Classics
The Souls of Black Folks - W.E.B. Du Bois
A founding work in the literature of black protest in which Du Bois affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind.
Comics
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet - Ta-Nehisi Coates (writer)
When a superhuman terrorist group The People sparks a violent uprising, the land famed for its incredible technology and proud warrior traditions will be thrown into turmoil. If Wakanda is to survive, it must adapt, but can its monarch survive the necessary change?
Black Panther: Long Live The King - Nnedi Okorafor (writer)
As the nation of Wakanda rebuilds in the wake of revolution, T'Challa finds his people besieged by a massive monster tearing through the country, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake!
Farmhand - Rob Guillory (writer)
A story about a farmer growing human organs. Deep in the soil of the Jenkins Family Farm, something dark has taken root, and it's beginning to bloom.
House of Whispers - Nalo Hopkinson (writer)
Latoya is in a coma. Her girlfriend enlists the help of Latoya’s two younger sisters. Using the Book of Whispers, they mistakenly steal the essence of Erzulie, a deity of voodoo mythology. The psychic blowback of the spell causes her house to crash into the Dreaming, beside the Houses of Secrets and Mystery and their custodians, Cain and Abel.
Ironheart - Eve L. Ewing (writer)
Riri Williams, the armored hero called Ironheart who took the comics world by storm, takes center stage! When a group of world leaders is held hostage by one of Spider-Man's old foes, Riri must step up her game.
LaGuardia - Nnedi Okorafor (writer)
LaGuardia revolves around a pregnant Nigerian-American doctor, Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka, who has just returned to NYC under mysterious conditions.
Shuri - Nnedi Okorafor (writer)
T’Challa has disappeared, and everyone is looking at the next in line for the throne. Wakanda expects Shuri to take on the mantle of Black Panther again and lead their great nation, but she’s happiest in a lab, surrounded by her own inventions. So it’s time for Shuri to go rescue her brother yet again — with a little help from Storm, Rocket Raccoon and Groot, of course! But when her outer-space adventure puts the entire cultural history of her continent at risk from an energy-sapping alien threat, can Shuri and Iron Man save Africa?
Victor LaValle's Destroyer - Victor LaValle (writer)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein beseeched his creator for love and companionship, but in 2017, the monster has long discarded any notions of peace or inclusion. He has become the Destroyer, his only goal to eliminate the scourge of humanity from the planet.
Contemporary
An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
A deft exploration of love, loyalty, race, justice, and both Black masculinity and Black womanhood in 21st century America. Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe
Chris, Ikem and Beatrice are like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated President of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere of oppression and intimidation they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. But in a world where each day brings a new betrayal, hope is hard to cling on to.
Arrow of God (The African Trilogy #3) - Chinua Achebe
Ezeulu, the headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But his authority is increasingly under threat. However, Armed with the belief that he is an arrow in the bow of his God, he is prepared to lead his people, even if it is towards their own destruction. But his people will not be dominated so easily.
This book explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side."
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
This book follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
The story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria, where the trappings of American culture reign supreme.
Here Comes the Sun - Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman. Captured in the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick - Zora Neale Hurston
A collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture.
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel.
Jonah's Gourd Vine - Zora Neale Hurston
The story of John Buddy Pearson, "a living exultation", a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there's also Mehaley and Big 'Oman, as well as the scheming Hattie, who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attention.
A Man of the People - Chinua Achebe
This novel foreshadows the Nigerian coups of 1966 and shows the color and vivacity as well as the violence and corruption of a society making its own way between the two worlds.
Manchester Happened - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
A collection of short stories, weaving between Manchester and Kampala, re-imagines the journey of Ugandans who choose to make England their home.
Moses, Man of the Mountain - Zora Neale Hurston
Based on the familiar story of the Exodus, this story blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith.
No Longer at Ease (The African Trilogy #2) - Chinua Achebe
Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl, he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil.
Set in northwest London, this tragicomic novel follows four locals - Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan - as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.
Set on both sides of the Atlantic, this novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions.
Set against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic election victory, Ordinary People is an intimate, immersive study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and aging, and the fragile architecture of love. With its distinctive prose and irresistible soundtrack, it is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.
Our Lady of the Nile - Scholastique Mukasonga
Set at a school for young girls, called "Notre-Dame du Nil" to which girls are sent in order to become the feminine elite of the country and to escape the dangers of the outside world. The book is a prelude to the Rwandan genocide and unfolds behind the closed doors of the school, in the interminable rainy season. Friendships, desires, hatred, political fights, incitation to racial violence, persecutions... The school soon becomes a fascinating existential microcosm of the true 1970s Rwanda.
Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms of Jamaica, Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru in vignettes spanning more than a decade as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another.
Salvage the Bones (Bois Sauvage #1) - Jesmyn Ward
An epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Seraph on the Suwanee - Zora Neale Hurston
A story of two people at once deeply in love and deeply at odds, set among the community of "Florida Crackers" at the turn of the twentieth century. Hurston's only novel about white characters.
Sing, Unburied, Sing (Bois Sauvage #2) - Jesmyn Ward
An epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families - the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered.
Speak No Evil - Uzodinma Iweala
A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
Stay with Me - Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Set in Nigeria, this story gives a voice to both husband and wife as they tell the story of their marriage--and the forces that threaten to tear it apart.
Two brown girls dream of being dancers—but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, about what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi*
A novel about faith, science, religion and love.
Aria Jackson lived through the car crash that killed her father and baby sister when she was nine. At 25 she begins to unearth secrets about family, friends, her past, and her altered reality in this journey through truth and forgiveness.
Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
We Are Not Like Them - Christine Pride and Jo Piazza*
This book follows the enduring friendship between two women, one a working-class white woman married to a cop and the other a successful African-American TV journalist. Alexanda Machinist at ICM Partners represented the authors.
We Cast a Shadow - Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Set in a near-future society plagued by resurgent racism, segregation, and expanding private prisons, our narrator knows his biracial Nigel might not survive. There is one potential solution: a new experimental medical procedure that promises to save lives by turning people white.
Where the Line Bleeds (Bois Sauvage #3) - Jesmyn Ward
An epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.
Contemporary Fantasy
This book explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side.
The Icarus Girl - Helen Oyeyemi
Jessamy “Jess” Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that she makes a friend who understands her: a ragged little girl named TillyTilly. But soon TillyTilly’s visits become more disturbing, until Jess realizes she doesn’t actually know who her friend is at all.
The Last Warner Woman - Kei Miller
Adamine Bustamante is born in one of Jamaica's last leper colonies. When Adamine grows up, she discovers she has the gift of "warning": the power to protect, inspire, and terrify. But when she is sent to live in England, her prophecies of impending disaster are met with a different kind of fear—people think she is insane and lock her away in a mental hospital. Now an older woman, the spirited Adamine wants to tell her story.
It’s a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn’t seen her in six years. He’s unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn’t exist. He’s infatuated with her. But he also made her up. “You’re a villain,” she tells him. ‘A serial killer . . . can you grasp that?” Will Mr Fox meet his muse’s challenge, to stop murdering his heroines and explore something of love? What will his wife Daphne think of this sudden change in her husband? Can there be a happy ending – this time?
She Would Be King - Wayétu Moore
This reimagines the story of Liberia’s early years through three characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a British colonizer and a Maroon slave, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.
The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates
An unexpected journey taking Hiram Walker, a man born into bondage, from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopian movements in the North.
What is Not Yours is Not Yours - Helen Oyeyemi
This collection contains tales that span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation?
Wizard of the Crow - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
This novel dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburĩrian people. Among the contenders: His High Mighty Excellency; the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, Wizard of the Crow reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.
Crime
Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel - Shawn A. Cosby*
A crime novel set in the rural African-American community of Virginia in which a former getaway driver is pulled into one last job
Trouble Is What I Do (Leonid McGill #6) - Walter Mosley*
Fantasy
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1) - Marlon James
In the first novel in The Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.
The Book of Phoenix (Who Fears Death 0.1) - Nnedi Okorafor
The Book of Phoenix is a unique work of magical futurism. A prequel to Who Fears Death.
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
BOY Novak turns twenty and decides trying a new life. Flax Hill is home to Arturo Whitman - craftsman, widower, and Snow’s farther. SNOW is mild-mannered, deeply cherished and radiant - exactly the girl Boy never was. Boy is beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that’s simply a characteristic she shares with her dad, harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow’s sister, Bird. After BIRD’s birth, Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo’s family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart.
The Broken Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #2) - N.K. Jemisin
In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a homeless man who glows like a living sun to her strange sight. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city.
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways--farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.
The Changeling - Victor LaValle
One man’s thrilling journey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after seemingly committing an unforgivable act of violence.
The City We Became (The City #1) - N.K. Jemisin*
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
Everfair is a Neo-Victorian alternate history novel exploring the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.
Falling in Love with Hominids - Nalo Hopkinson
A collection of tales, mixed with the modern with Afro-Caribbean folklore and occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) - N.K. Jemisin
Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Might Sanze, the world spanning empire collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land.
The Fires of Vengeance (The Burning #2) - Evan Winter*
In order to reclaim her throne and save her people, an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in the second book of The Burning.
The story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly inhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #1) - N.K. Jemisin
Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.
How Long 'til Black Future Month? (Dreamblood #0.5) - N.K. Jemisin
In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination.
The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) - N.K. Jemisin
In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. The Gatherers, the keepers of this peace are Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe, and kill those judged corrupt. But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, the Gatherer Ehiru must question everything he knows. Someone is murdering innocent dreamers in the goddess's name, and now he must protect the woman he was sent to kill - or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.
King of the Rising (Islands of Blood and Storm #2) - Kacen Callender*
Sequel to the Caribbean-inspired fantasy book Queen of the Conquered.
The Kingdom of Gods (Inheritance Trilogy #3) - N.K. Jemisin
For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameris' ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.
When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.
Midnight Robber - Nalo Hopkinson
It's Carnival time, and the Carribean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favourite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.
Moon Witch, Night Devil (The Dark Star Trilogy #2) - Marlon James*
The sequel to Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the second book in the Dark Start Trilogy.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Amos Tutuola
This novel recounts the fate of a mortal who strayed into the world of ghosts. The bush is the wilderness of Western Africa. Here, as every hunter and traveler knows, mortals venture at great peril, and it is here that a small boy is left alone.
The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) - N.K. Jemisin
The sequel to The Fifth Season and second book in The Broken Earth trilogy.
The Prey of Gods - Nicky Drayden
In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present day challenges.
Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella—through visits both mundane and supernatural—tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.
The Salt Roads - Nalo Hopkinson
This novel transports readers across centuries and civilizations as it fearlessly explores the relationships women have with their lovers, their people, and the divine. Jeanne Duval, the ginger-colored entertainer, struggles with her lover poet Charles Baudelaire...Mer, plantation slave and doctor, both hungers for and dreads liberation...and Thais, a dark-skinned beauty from Alexandria, is impelled to seek a glorious revelation-as Ezili, a being born of hope, unites them all.
The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood #2) - N.K. Jemisin
Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. A mysterious and deadly plague now haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Someone must show them the way.
The exploration of the relationship between two sisters in this richly textured and deeply moving novel.
A collection of short stories.
Song of Blood & Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles #1) - L. Penelope
An epic fantasy about an outcast drawn into a war between two powerful rulers.
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps #1) - Kai Ashante Wilson
Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. The Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with a song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.
The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) - N.K. Jemisin
The sequel to The Obelisk Gate and third book in The Broken Earth trilogy.
Storm of Locusts (The Sixth World #2) - Rebecca Roanhorse
The sequel to Trail of Lightning and the second book in The Sixth World series. It’s been four weeks since the bloody showdown at Black Mesa, and Maggie Hoskie, Diné monster hunter, is trying to make the best of things. Only her latest bounty hunt has gone sideways, she’s lost her only friend, Kai Arviso, and she’s somehow found herself responsible for a girl with a strange clan power.
Stormsong (The Kingston Cycle #2) - C.L. Polk
The sequel to Witchmark. In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own.
A Taste of Honey - Kai Ashante Wilson
Long after the Towers left the world, the emperor brought his court to Olorum. As the royalty negotiates over trade and public matters, the divinity seeks assistance among the local gods. Aqib, fourth-cousin to the royal family, has other concerns. His heart has been captured by Lucrio, a handsome Daluçan soldier. In defiance of Saintly Canon and of his father’s and brother’s disapproval, he finds himself in a whirlwind romance. Neither Aqib nor Lucrio know whether their love can survive all the hardships the world has to throw at them.
A story about a pair of twins, Auben and Kasim, of which the former is seen as the lesser twin. Their strained relationship threatens to snap when Auben starts hearing voices that speak to his dangerous side - encouraging him to perform evil deeds that go beyond innocent mischief. Lechery, deceit, and vanity run rampant. And then there are the inexplicable blood cravings...
Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1) - Rebecca Roanhorse
While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.
Who Fears Death (Who Fears Death #1) - Nnedi Okorafor
In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, follow the Great Book, exterminating the Okeke. When the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl. Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny - to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture – and eventually death itself.
Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle #1) - C.L. Polk
In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own.
Queen of the Conquered (Islands of Blood and Storm #1) - Kacen Callender
An ambitious young woman with the power to control minds seeks vengeance against the royals who murdered her family, in a Caribbean-inspired fantasy world embattled by colonial oppression.
Fiction
In the attic room at 26 Waifer Avenue, identical twins Georgia and Bessi Hunter share nectarines and forge their identities, while escaping from the sadness and danger that inhabit the floors below. But innocence lasts for only so long--and dreams, no matter how vivid and powerful, cannot slow the relentless incursion of the real world.
Addis Ababa Noir - Maaza Mengiste (editor)
In this edited collection authors, set pull back the curtain on despair and depravity, offering an intimate glimpse into the raw, beating heart of Addis Ababa.
An Act of Defiance - Irene Sabatini*
Harare, 2000. Gabrielle is a newly-qualified lawyer fighting for justice for a young girl. Ben is an urbane and charismatic junior diplomat, attached to Harare with the American embassy. With high-level pressure on Gabrielle to drop her case, and Robert Mugabe’s youth wing terrorising his political opponents, they begin a tentative love affair. But when both fall victim to a shocking attack, their lives splinter across continents and their stories diverge, forcing Gabrielle on a painful journey towards self-realisation.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - James Weldon Johnson
The first fictional memoir ever written by a black person narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century--from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast.
Beasts of No Nation - Uzodinma Iweala
As civil war rages in an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born - Ayi Kwei Armah
A railway freight clerk in Ghana attempts to hold out against the pressures that impel him toward corruption in both his family and his country.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze - Maaza Mengiste
An epic tale of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia’s revolution.
Ricky Rice was as good as invisible: a middling hustler, recovering dope fiend, and traumatized suicide cult survivor running out the string of his life. Until one day a letter appears, summoning him to the frozen woods of Vermont to be inducted into a band of paranormal investigators.
The Black Ball - Ralph Ellison
Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories.
Black Bottom Saints - Alice Randall*
From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson, has been the pulse of Detroit’s famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for a African-American newspaper, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, rubbing elbows with legendary black artists. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats. As he lays dying in the Kirkwood Hospital, he reflects on his life, the community that was the center of his world, and the remarkable people who helped shape it.
Furo Wariboko – born and bred in Lagos – wakes up on the morning of his job interview to discover he has turned into a white man. As he hits the city streets running, still reeling from his new-found condition, Furo finds the dead ends of his life open out before him. As a white man in Nigeria, the world is seemingly his oyster – except for one thing: despite his radical transformation, Furo's ass remains robustly black...
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
This tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change- in painful, devastating ways. What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
The Book of Memory - Petina Gappah
Memory is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has been convicted of murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers?
The Boy Next Door - Irene Sabatini
In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, tragedy strikes in the house next door to Lindiwe Bishop; her neighbor has been burned alive. His stepson, Ian McKenzie, is the prime suspect but is soon released. Lindiwe can't hide her fascination with this boisterous and mysterious white man, and they soon forge an unlikely closeness. Years after Ian returns to see Lindiwe, now a sophisticated, woman, and discovers a devastating secret that will alter both of their futures, and draw them closer together even as the world seems bent on keeping them apart.
Changes: A Love Story - Ama Ata Aidoo
Esi decides to divorce after enduring yet another morning's marital rape. Though her friends and family remain baffled by her decision (after all, he doesn't beat her!), Esi holds fast. When she falls in love with a married man—wealthy, and able to arrange a polygamous marriage—the modern woman finds herself trapped in a new set of problems.
Chike and the River - Chinua Achebe
Eleven-year-old Chike longs to cross the Niger River to the city of Asaba, but he doesn’t have the sixpence he needs to pay for the ferry ride. With the help of his friend S.M.O.G., he embarks on a series of adventures to help him get there. Along the way, he is exposed to a range of new experiences that are both thrilling and terrifying.
The Coyotes of Carthage - Steven Wright*
Toussaint Andre Ross has one more shot. Despite being a successful African-American political consultant, his aggressive tactics have tarnished his firm's reputation. His boss and mentor Mrs. Fitz is exiling him to the boondocks of South Carolina with $250,000 of dark money to introduce a ballot initiative on behalf of a mining company. The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting in favor of the sale of pristine public land to the highest bidder.
Cry of Metal & Bone (Earthsinger Chronicles #3) - L. Penelope
An epic fantasy about an outcast drawn into a war between two powerful rulers.
The Death of Comrade President - Alain Mabanckou*
Starting as a tender, wry portrait of an ordinary Congolese family, the scope of this story quickly expands into a powerful examination of colonialism, decolonization and dead ends of the African continent.
The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi
This is the tale of Vivek Oji. It begins with his end, his naked body shrouded on his mother's doorstep, and moves backwards through time to unpick the story of his life and the mystery surrounding his death.
The Dragonfly Sea - Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, lives solitary, stubborn Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself - from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China.
Stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s. Odidi, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events.
An Elegy for Easterly: Stories - Petina Gappah
A collection of short stories showing the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe’s regime, taking the reader across the city of Harare, from the townships beset by power cuts to the manicured lawns of privilege and corruption, where wealthy husbands keep their first wives in the “big houses” while their unofficial second wives wait in the “small houses,” hoping for a promotion.
Evening Primrose - Kopano Matlwa
Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender and the medical profession through the eyes of a junior doctor.
Fat Time: Stories - Jeffery Renard Allen*
A powerful collection encompassing ten short stories, the collection is loosely linked around African notions of time and place, along with African views of space, cosmology, and metaphysics. The stories are set in invented locations in both Africa and America and play out over a continuum of time.
Fear Of Stones And Other Stories - Kei Miller
This collection of stories is peopled mainly by rejects of society, sad and lonely souls trying to come to terms with, to survive in, antagonistic circumstances.
The First Woman - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi*
A powerful feminist rendition of Ugandan origin tales, The First Woman tells the story of Kirabo, the equivalent of Eve in Ugandan mythology.
The Fishermen - Chigozie Obioma
In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers take advantage of their strict father's absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his brothers. This prophecy unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.
Flying Home and Other Stories - Ralph Ellison
The tales in Flying Home range in setting from the Jim Crow South to a Harlem bingo parlor, from the hobo jungles of the Great Depression to Wales during the Second World War. By turns lyrical, scathing, touching, and transcendently wise, Flying Home and Other Stories is a historic volume, an extravagant last bequest from a giant of our literature.
Friday Black - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day is revealed. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world.
Fruit of the Lemon - Andrea Levy
Faith Jackson knows little about her parents' lives before they moved to England. When her parents announce that they are moving "home" to Jamaica, Faith's fragile sense of her identity is threatened. At her parents' suggestion, in the hope it will help her to understand where she comes from, Faith goes to Jamaica for the first time. There she meets her Aunt Coral, whose storytelling provides Faith with ancestors, whose lives reach from Cuba and Panama to Harlem and Scotland.
The Fugitivities - Jesse McCarthy*
After a difficult first year teaching at a Brooklyn public high school, Jonah Winters decides to leave his job to vagabond through South America with his friend Octavio.
Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before.
Girls at War and Other Stories - Chinua Achebe
In this collection of stories, Achebe takes us inside the heart and soul of a people whose pride and ideals must compete with the simple struggle to survive, re-creating with energy and authenticity the major issues of daily life in Africa.
God Help the Child - Toni Morrison
A tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish ...
A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret.
Grand Union: Stories - Zadie Smith
A collection of short fiction exploring a wide range of subjects, from first loves to cultural despair, as well as the desire to be the subject of your own experience. This novel contends with race, class, relationships, and gender roles in a world that feels increasingly divided.
The Hairdresser of Harare - Tendai Huchu
Vimbai is the best hairdresser in Mrs. Khumalo’s salon, and she is secure in her status until the handsome, smooth-talking Dumisani shows up one day for work. Despite her resistance, the two become friends, and eventually, Vimbai becomes Dumisani’s landlady. He is as charming as he is deft with the scissors, and Vimbai finds that he means more and more to her. Yet, by novel’s end, the pair’s deepening friendship—used or embraced by Dumisani and Vimbai with different futures in mind—collapses in unexpected brutality.
Heads of the Colored People - Nafissa Thompson-Spires
A collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examining the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era.
Fiction. African Studies. The healers tells a story of the conflict and regeneration focused on replacing toxic ignorance with the healing knowledge of African unity.
Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing Korean War veteran who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with not only physical scars. He is shocked out of his crippling apathy when he needs to rescue his medically abused younger sister and return her to the small Georgia town they’re from that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.
House of Stone - Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
In the chronic turmoil of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Abednego and Agnes Mlambo’s teenage son, Bukhosi, has gone missing and their lodger Zamani, seems to be their last, best hope for finding him. In his eagerness to help, he is almost a part of the family - but almost isn’t nearly enough. He is desperate to extract their life stories and make their family history his own. As the Mlambos pray for Bukhosi’s return, he will stop at nothing to make a home for himself - and each of them must confront the past to find a place in the future.
Moving between Ghana and London, Hold is an intimate, moving, powerful coming-of-age novel. It’s a story of friendship and family, shame and forgiveness; of learning what we should cling to, and when we need to let go.
How to Love a Jamaican - Alexia Arthurs
A collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
I Do Not Come to You by Chance - Adaobi Tricia Nwaubania
A deeply moving novel set amid the perilous world of Nigerian email scams, I Do Not Come to You by Chance tells the story of one young man and the family who loves him.
The Interpreters - Wole Soyinka
Novel spotlighting a small circle of young Nigerian intellectuals living in Lagos
Narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, the nameless protagonist journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies.
Jazz - Toni Morrison
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?
Ladivine - Marie NDiaye
A mesmerizing and heart-stopping psychological tale of a trauma that ensnares three generations of women, one of who is captive to a secret shame.
Little Family - Ishmael Beah*
Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's chaos. When Elimane makes himself of service to the shadowy William Handkerchief, it seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when Khoudi comes under the spell of the "beautiful people" the desire to resume an interrupted coming of age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist.
Let Me Look at You - Michael J. Wilson*
A novel that captures the loneliness of millennial life in New York City and what happens when people become enamored with someone solely through the public persona they craft through social media.
A Long Time Comin' - Robin W. Pearson*
Beatrice Agnew has always kept her mouth shut and just because she finds out she's dying doesn't mean she can't keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they'd best take it up with Jesus. Then her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice's doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother's heart and home inside out.
The young man Bedri experiences the terrible isolation brought about by an act of violence, while his father, Da'uud, casualty of a geopolitical conflict, driving a taxi, is witness to curious gestures of love and anger; Lia faces the sometimes unbridgeable chasms of family; and fierce June, ambivalent and passionate with her string of lovers, now in middle age discovers: "There is nothing universal or timeless about this love business. It is hard if you really want to do it right."
Loving Donovan - Bernice L. McFadden
Despite being born to a broken-hearted mother and a faithless father, Campbell still believes in the power of love… if she can ever find it. Living in the same neighborhood, but unknown to Campbell until a chance meeting brings them together, is Donovan, the "little man" of a shattered home-a family torn apart by anger and bitterness. In the face of these daunting obstacles, Donovan dreams of someday marrying, raising a family, and playing for the NBA. But, deep inside, Campbell and Donovan live with the histories that have shaped their lives.
Maps (Blood in the Sun #1) - Nuruddin Farah
This first novel in the Sun trilogy tells the story of Askar, a man coming of age in the turmoil of modern Africa. With his father a victim of the bloody Ethiopian civil war and his mother dying the day of his birth, Askar is taken in and raised by a man named Misra amid the scandal, gossip, and ritual of a small African village. As an adolescent, Askar goes to live in Somalia's capital, striving to find himself just as Somalia struggles for national identity.
Mr Loverman - Bernardine Evaristo
Barrington Jedidiah Walker. Barry to his friends. Trouble to his wife. Seventy-four years old, Antiguan born and bred, flamboyant Hackney personality Barry is known for his dapper taste and fondness for retro suits. He is a husband, father and grandfather. And for the past sixty years, he has been in a relationship with his childhood friend and soulmate, Morris. Wife Carmel knows Barry has been cheating on her, but little does she know what is really going on. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington has big choices to make.
Mullumbimby - Melissa Lucashenko
When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she hopes for a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. When Jo unexpectedly finds love on one side of the Native Title divide she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the Good Life.
Never Far From Nowhere - Andrea Levy
This is the story of two sisters, Olive and Vivien, born in London to Jamaican parents and brought up on a council estate. They go to the same grammar school, but while Vivien's life becomes a chaotic mix of friendships, youth clubs, skinhead violence, A-levels, discos and college, Olive, three years older and a skin shade darker, has a very different tale to tell...
Nine Bar Blues - Sheree Renée Thomas*
Story collection weaing emotion, spirit, and music, captivating readers with newfound alchemy and the murmurs of dark gods. Rooted in rhythm, threaded with magic, these tales encompass worlds that begin in river bottoms, pass through spectral gates, and end in distant uncharted worlds. These stories describe the pain that often accompanies the confines of sanctuary and the joy that is inextricably bound to the troubles of hard living.
North of Dawn - Nuruddin Farah
For decades, Gacalo and Mugdi have lived in Oslo, where they've led a peaceful, largely assimilated life and raised two children. Their beloved son, Dhaqaneh, however, is driven by feelings of alienation to jihadism in Somalia, where he kills himself in a suicide attack. The couple reluctantly offers a haven to his family. But on arrival in Oslo, their daughter-in-law cloaks herself even more deeply in religion, while her children hunger for the freedoms of their new homeland, a rift that will have life altering consequences for the entire family.
The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family - Bettye Kearse*
In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse - a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison - shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.
An Orchestra of Minorities - Chigozie Obioma
A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, this is a heart-breaking and mythic story about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything to win the woman he loves.
Our Sister Killjoy - Ama Ata Aidoo
Out of Africa with her degree and her all-seeing eyes comes Sissie. She comes to Europe, to a land of towering mountains and low grey skies and tries to make sense of it all. What is she doing here? Why aren't the natives friendly? And what will she do when she goes back home?
The Palm-Wine Drinkard - Amos Tutuola
Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure.
Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage.
Pauper, Brawler, And Slanderer - Amos Tutuola
Amos Tutuola's tales, drawing on the Yoruba folk tradition and the unique rhythms and idiom of Nigerian English, combine the resonance of universal myth with airs on a range of human vagaries. The leading characters here, as signalled by their nicknames, have all been rejected by patrician parents and forced to set out on what becomes a 'non-return' journey--in the visible sense, at least.
Petals of Blood - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya.
The River Between - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Christian missionaries attempt to outlaw the female circumcision ritual and in the process create a terrible rift between the two Kikuyu communities on either side of the river.
In this collection Gappah crosses the barriers of class, race, gender and sexual politics in Zimbabwe to explore the causes and effects of crime, and to meditate on the nature of justice.
When Imelda Richardson leaves Watersgate, Jamaica, she is doing so for the second time. One of the young Jamaicans who left the island after the devastating hurricane of 1974, Imelda's travels to England. But when her mother dies Imelda returns to Watersgate. When Tessa Walcott's panties are stolen she and Imelda decide to set up a Neighborhood Watch. But they haven't counted on Pastor Braithwait. As a Pentecostal fervor sweeps through the village, the tensions between old and new come to a head.
Self-Portrait in Green - Marie NDiaye
A courageous, strikingly honest, and unabashedly innovative self-portrait, NDiaye’s kaleidoscopic look at the women in green is a revelation to us all — about how we form our identities, how we discover those things we repress, and how our obsessions become us.
That Deadman Dance - Kim Scott
That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant.
Silence Is My Mother Tongue - Sulaiman Addonia*
A novel that Questions what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be an individual when circumstance has forced the loss of all that makes a home or a future. Saba arrives in an East African refugee camp as a young girl, devastated to have been wrenched from school and forced to abandon her books as her family flees to safety. In this unfamiliar, crowded and often hostile community, she must carve out a new existence. Whilst struggling to maintain her sense of self, she remains fiercely protective of her mute brother, Hagos.
Six Stories and An Essay - Andrea Levy
This collection opens with an essay about how writing has helped Andrea Levy to explore and understand her heritage. She explains the context of each piece within the chronology of her career and finishes with a new story, written to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
A novel about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger.
A Small Silence - Jumoke Verissimo*
Imprisoned for ten years for his rage against society, activist and retired academic Prof resolves to live a life of darkness after his release from prison.
So We Can Glow: Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith*
A short story collection exploring female obsession and desire. Readers will be drenched in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days, the intense friendships of teenage girls, and the innate bonds felt between women, evoking the pangs of loss and motherhood, the headiness and destructive potential of desire, and the pure exhilaration of being female.
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. This story follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, introducing an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Speak No Evil - Uzodinma Iweala
A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
The Spider King's Daughter - Chibundu Onuzo
Abike Johnson is the child of her wealthy father. She lives in a mansion in Lagos, protected by guards and ferried everywhere in a jeep. A world away, in the slums, a hawker struggles to make sense of the world. His family lost everything after his father's death and now he sells ice cream at the side of the road to support his family. When Abike buys ice cream from him, they strike up an unlikely romance. But as they grow closer, revelations from the past threaten their relationship and Abike and the hawker must decide where their loyalties lie.
This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines from their close-knit childhood in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.
Sweet Medicine - Panashe Chigumadzi
The story of Tsitsi, a young woman who compromises the values of her Catholic upbringing to find romantic and economic security through otherworldly means. It takes place in Harare at the height of Zimbabwe’s economic woes in 2008. The book is a thorough and evocative attempt at grappling with a variety of important issues in the postcolonial context: tradition and modernity; feminism and patriarchy; spiritual and political freedoms and responsibilities; poverty and desperation; and wealth and abundance.
Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar's descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife's dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.
Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
Three Strong Women - Marie NDiaye
A story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer finding herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with only the name of a cousin who lives in France, a place Khady can barely conceive, but must now take a desperate flight towards.
Too Much Lip - Melissa Lucashenko
Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things: her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Old family wounds open as the Salters fight to stop the development of their beloved river. And the unexpected arrival on the scene of a good-looking dugai fella intent on loving her up only adds more trouble.
Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston “Tuffy” Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea Cap’n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council.
Two Thousand Seasons - Ayi Kwei Armah
Set in the era of European slave raiding wars in Africa, known to Europeans as The Enlightenment, the narrative centers on a group of adolescent friends tricked and sold by an African king to European slavers. On the trans-Atlantic voyage, the group organizes a successful shipboard revolt, then returns to the continent to begin the work of their lives - organizing to end the rule of injustice established by European invaders and their African collaborators.
The Warmest December - Bernice L. McFadden
This story tells the story of one family and the alcoholism and abuse that marked their lives forever. Moving fluidly between the past and the present - between a young girl choosing which belt she'll be whipped with each night and her older self at the bedside of her dying father - it is an ultimately cathartic tale of hope, healing and forgiveness.
We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo
Darling is ten years old, yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, she and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few.
The White Boy Shuffle - Paul Beatty
A story about teenage-surf-bum Gunnar Kaufman who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighbourhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a ‘divided, downtrodden people’.
Wizard of the Crow - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Commencing in “our times” and set in the “Free Republic of Aburĩria,” the novel dramatizes a battle for control of the souls of the Aburĩrian people. Among the contenders: His High Mighty Excellency; the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank.
Weep Not, Child - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Tells the moving story about the effects of the Mau Mau war on the lives of ordinary men and women in Kenya. In the forests, the Mau Mau are waging war against the white government, and two brothers, Kamau and Njoroge, and the rest of the family must decide where their loyalties lie.
Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo
Deep in the Niger Delta, officer Chike Ameobi deserts the army and sets out on the road to Lagos. He is soon joined by a wayward private, a naive militant, a vulnerable young woman and a runaway middle-class wife. The shared goals of this unlikely group: freedom and new life.
What We All Long For - Dionne Brand
This novel follows the stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto. There’s Tuyen, a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents. She’s in love with her best friend Carla, a biracial bicycle courier, who’s still reeling from the loss of her mother to suicide eighteen years earlier. Oku is a jazz-loving poet who, unbeknownst to his Jamaican-born parents, has dropped out of university. Jackie feels alienated from her parents, former hipsters from Nova Scotia who never made it out of subsidized housing after their lives became entangled with desire and disappointment.
Whispers of Shadow & Flame (Earthsinger Chronicles #2) - L. Penelope
An epic fantasy about an outcast drawn into a war between two powerful rulers.
Folktales
The First Woman - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi*
A powerful feminist rendition of Ugandan origin tales, The First Woman tells the story of Kirabo, the equivalent of Eve in Ugandan mythology.
Mules and Men - Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's first great collection of African American tales, songs and sayings.
The Palm-Wine Drinkard - Amos Tutuola
Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure.
Graphic Novel
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation - Octavia E. Butler
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. This marks the start time-defying episodes with a white boy, during which she realizes the challenge she’s been given.
Noughts Crosses Graphic Novel - Malorie Blackman
Callum is a nought - an inferior white citizen in a society controlled by the black Crosses. Sephy is a Cross - and the daughter of one of the most powerful, ruthless men in the country. In their hostile, violent world, noughts and Crosses simply don't mix. But when Sephy and Callum's childhood friendship grows into love, they're determined to find a way to be together.
Historical Fiction
Augustown - Kei Miller
Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacher man and a great thing that did not happen. The story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Blonde Roots - Bernardine Evaristo
What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers today? We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman enslaved and taken to the New World, movingly recounting experiences of tremendous hardship and the dreams of the people she has left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.
The Book of Night Women - Marlon James
This is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear.
The Book of Harlan - Bernice L. McFadden
During World War II, two African American musicians are captured by the Nazis in Paris and imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Book of Not (Nervous Conditions #2) - Tsitsi Dangarembga
A sequel to Nervous Conditions, this is a powerful and engaging story about one young woman's quest to redefine the personal and political forces that threaten to engulf her. As its title suggests, this is also a book about denial and unfulfilled expectations and about the theft of the self that remains one of colonialism's most pernicious legacies. The novel disrupts any comfortable sense of closure to the dilemmas of colonial modernity explored in Nervous Conditions and as such is a fitting sequel.
A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s.
The Confessions of Frannie Langton - Sara Collins
A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London.
Conjure Women - Afia Atakora*
A sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother's footsteps as a midwife; and their master's daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
Every Light in the House Burnin' - Andrea Levy
'Better opportunity' - that's why Angela's dad came to England from America in 1948 on the Empire Windrush. Six months later her mum joined him in Earl's Court. Twenty years and four children later, Mr Jacob has become seriously ill and starts to move unsteadily through the care of the National Health Service. As Angela tries to help her mother through this, she finds herself reliving her childhood years, spent on a council estate in Highbury.
Gathering of Waters - Bernice L. McFadden
A deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi - a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.
Jamaica, 1938. Gloria Campbell is sixteen years old when a single violent act alters the course of her life forever. Alive with the energy of a country at a crossroads, this is a story of love in many forms, and of Gloria's evolution-from a frightened girl on the run to a woman fully possessed of her own power.
Glorious - Bernice L. McFadden
Set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of McFadden’s rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. This marks the start time-defying episodes with a white boy, during which she realizes the challenge she’s been given.
Kintu - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Uganda’s history reimagined through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan.
The Last Warner Woman - Kei Miller
Adamine Bustamante is born in one of Jamaica's last leper colonies. When Adamine grows up, she discovers she has the gift of "warning": the power to protect, inspire, and terrify. But when she is sent to live in England, her prophecies of impending disaster are met with a different kind of fear—people think she is insane and lock her away in a mental hospital. Now an older woman, the spirited Adamine wants to tell her story.
Leaving Atlanta - Tayari Jones
A coming-of-age story of three young black children set against the backdrop of the Atlanta child murders of 1979.
The Long Song - Andrea Levy
Tthis tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was present when slavery was declared no more. This story also tells of July's mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides.
The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician - Tendai Huchu
Three very different men struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love as they attempt to find a place for themselves in Britain. The Magistrate tries to create new memories and roots, fusing a wandering exploration of Edinburgh with music. The Maestro, a depressed, quixotic character, sinks out of the real world into the fantastic world of literature. The Mathematician, full of youth, follows a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, until their three universes collide.
A Mercy - Toni Morrison
This story reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter, a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.
This Mournable Body (Nervous Conditions #3) - Tsitsi Dangarembga
A novel about the obstacles facing women in Zimbabwe. Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a youth hostel. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow’s boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point.
Nervous Conditions (Nervous Conditions #1) - Tsitsi Dangarembga
This novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women's rights.Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the 'nervousness' of the 'postcolonial' conditions that bedevil us still. In Tambu and the women of her family are fighting a daily battle with their changing world with a mixture of tenacity, bewilderment and grace.
Nowhere Is a Place - Bernice L. McFadden
Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets; but Sherry is determined to know the full story. In just a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.
The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell
A Zambian novel that follows three generations of three families, telling the story of a nation, and of the grand sweep of time
Out of Darkness, Shining Light - Petina Gappah
The captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried explorer and missionary Dr. Livingstone's body, his papers and maps, fifteen hundred miles across the continent of Africa, so his remains could be returned home to England and his work preserved there. Narrated by Halima, the doctor's sharp-tongued cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a rigidly pious freed slave, it’s a story encompassing all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization - the hypocrisy at the core of the human heart - while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love.
Pao - Kerry Young
A tale of post-colonial Jamaica from a unique and politically potent perspective, Pao moves from the last days of British rule through periods of unrest at social and economic inequality, through tides of change that will bring about Rastafarianism and the Back to Africa Movement. Pao is a novel of race, class and creed, love and ambition, and a country in the throes of tumultuous change.
The Pirate's Daughter - Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Spanning two generations of women whose destinies become inextricably linked with the matinee idol’s, this lively novel tells the provocative history of a vanished era, of uncommon kinships, compelling attachments, betrayal and atonement in a paradisal, tropical setting.
Praise Song for the Butterflies - Bernice L. McFadden
Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mom. Then the Katas’ lifes takes a turn for the worse, Abeo’s father, places her in a religious shrine, hoping that this sacrifice will serve as religious atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is enslaved there. When finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again.
Radiance of Tomorrow - Ishmael Beah
At the center are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles: food scarcity; murders, thievery, retaliation and rape. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they’re forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike.
Remembered - Yvonne Battle-Felton
Surrounded by ghosts and the wounded, Spring, an emancipated slave, is forced to rewrite her story in order to face the prospect of a future without her child. With the help of her dead sister, newspaper clippings and reconstructed memories, she shatters the silences that have governed her life in order to lead Edward home.
The Shadow King - Maaza Mengiste
A gripping novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record.
She Would Be King - Wayétu Moore
This reimagines the story of Liberia’s early years through three characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a British colonizer and a Maroon slave, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.
Show Me A Mountain - Kerry Younga
Fay Wong is a woman caught between worlds. Her father is a Chinese immigrant who conjured a fortune out of nothing; her mother, of African heritage, grew up on a plantation and now reigns over their mansion on Lady Musgrave Road, sipping Earl Grey tea in the Kingston afternoons. But the Chinatown haunts where her father spends his time are out of bounds to Fay, and the rooms of Lady Musgrave Road are filled with her mother's long-kept secrets and uncontrollable rages-rages against which Fay rebels as she grows from a girl into a headstrong woman.
Small Island - Andrea Levy
Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.
Sugar (Sugar Lacey #1) - Bernice L. McFadden
Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out--but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace.
These Ghosts are Family - Maisy Card*
A transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations. It explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is an engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.
Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy #1) - Chinua Achebe
Chronicles pre-colonial life in the south-east Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during the late nineteenth century through the experiences of Okonkwo, a famous wrestling champion in the villages of Umuofia.
This Bitter Earth (Sugar Lacey #2) - Bernice L. McFadden
Sugar Lacey is on her way out of Bigelow, Arkansas, where she’d come to break with the past. With her worn leopard-print suitcase and her head held high, she walks past the prying eyes of its small-minded, cruel-hearted townsfolk, praying for the strength to keep going. She doesn’t stop until she arrives at her childhood home in Short Junction. Here she learns the truth about her parentage: a terrible tale of unrequited love, of one man’s enduring hatred, and of the black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women.
The True History of Paradise - Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Easter 1981, Jamaica is in a state of emergency: Violence floods the streets and police are everywhere. Staring at the closed coffin of Lana, her mother and sister confront the cruelest kind of loss. Jean, who was Lana's sister and closest confidante, has always been attuned to the spirit world, and now, as Jean makes her way towards America and safety, she is overcome by memories, not only of Lana but also of her forebears, African, Creole, Scottish, Indian, and Chinese. Ancestral voices tell of the hardships and wonders, of the beauty and atrocity, that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience.
Under the Udala Trees - Chinelo Okparanta
Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
Washington Black - Esi Edugyan
Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human.
The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates
An unexpected journey taking Hiram Walker, a man born into bondage, from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopian movements in the North.
We Are All Birds of Uganda - Hafsa Zayyan
Moving between two continents over a troubled century, We Are All Birds of Uganda is a multi-layered, moving and immensely resonant novel of generational love, loss and what it means to find home.
Horror
The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to stay afloat with his father, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.
When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother saved him from drowning by pulling him out of a treacherous ocean current, sacrificing her life for his. Now, thirty years later, Hilton begins to think his borrowed time is running out. His wife, the only elected African–American judge in Dade County, Florida, has begun receiving racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, and Hilton's sleep is plagued by nightmares more horrible than any he has ever experienced.
Blood Colony (African Immortals #3) - Tananarive Due
Fana Wolde, seventeen years old, the only immortal born with the Living Blood. She can read minds, and her injuries heal immediately. When her best friend is imprisoned by Fana's family, Fana helps her escape and together they run away from Fana's protected home to join the Underground Railroad. But Fana has more than her parents to worry about…
The Changeling - Victor LaValle
One man’s thrilling journey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after seemingly committing an unforgivable act of violence.
The Devil in Silver - Victor LaValle
Pepper isn’t mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison.
Ghost Summer: Stories - Tananarive Due
A short story collection that takes you to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness.
The Gilda Stories - Jewelle L. Gómez
Escaping from slavery in the 1850s Gilda's longing for kinship and community grows over two hundred years. Her induction into a family of benevolent vampires takes her on an adventurous and dangerous journey full of loud laughter and subtle terror.
The Good House - Tananarive Due
Working to rebuild her law practice after her son commits suicide, Angela Toussaint journeys to the family home where the suicide took place, hoping for answers, and discovers an invisible, evil force that is driving locals to acts of violence.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - P. Djèlí Clark
Set in an alternate Cairo, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed
Anthony James weighs 315 pounds, is possibly schizophrenic, and he’s just been kicked out of college. He’s rescued by his mother, sister, and grandmother, but they may not be altogether sane themselves.
The story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly inhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
The Living Blood (African Immortals #2) - Tananarive Due
Jessica Jacobs-Wolde's life was destroyed when her husband, David Wolde killed both their daughter Kira and Jessica herself--and revived Jessica with his healing blood. David was a Life Brother, a member of an ancient, secret, and immortal African clan. Now Jessica, hiding with her surviving daughter in rural Botswana, attempts to make sense of her new existence, and of Fana's growing abilities. Jessica's only hope of teaching Fana to control her dangerous talents is to travel to Ethiopia and find the Life Brothers' hidden colony.
The Murders of Molly Southbourne (Molly Southbourne #1) - Tade Thompson
The rule is simple: don't bleed. For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?
My Soul to Keep (African Immortals #1) - Tananarive Due
When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.
My Soul to Take (African Immortals #4) - Tananarive Due
The last and fourth book in the African Immortals book.
The Survival of Molly Southbourne (Molly Southbourne #2) - Tade Thompson
Who was Molly Southbourne? What did she leave behind? A burnt-out basement. A name stained in blood. Bodies that remember murder, one of them left alive. A set of rules that no longer apply. Molly Southbourne is alive. If she wants to survive, she’ll need to run, hide, and be ready to fight. Some want her alive, some want her dead, and all hold a piece to the puzzle in her head. Can Molly escape, or will she confront the bloody history that made her?
White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi
In a vast, mysterious house, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. Miranda, with her keen sense for spirits, is leaving them slowly - Slipping away from them - And when one dark night she vanishes entirely, the survivors are left to tell her story. "Miri I conjure you "
LGBTQ+
The Deep - Rivers Solomon (writer), Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
A story re-imagining history, about water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners - who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one - the historian. This demanding role is destroying Yetu and so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities- and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.
The young man Bedri experiences the terrible isolation brought about by an act of violence, while his father, Da'uud, casualty of a geopolitical conflict, driving a taxi, is witness to curious gestures of love and anger; Lia faces the sometimes unbridgeable chasms of family; and fierce June, ambivalent and passionate with her string of lovers, now in middle age discovers: "There is nothing universal or timeless about this love business. It is hard if you really want to do it right."
Here Comes the Sun - Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman. Captured in the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect.
Crossfire: A Litany for Survival - Staceyann Chin
Crossfire collects Staceyann Chin's empowering, activist-driven poetry.
Don't Call Us Dead - Danez Smith
Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood and a diagnosis of HIV positive.
I Am Nobody's Nigger - Dean Atta
Exploring race, identity, and sexuality, Dean Atta shares his perspective on family, friendship, relationships, and London life, from riots to one-night stands.
The New Testament - Jericho Brown
In The New Testament, Jericho Brown continues his tender examination of race, masculinity, and sexuality. These poems bear witness to survival in the face of brutality, while also elegizing two brothers haunted by shame, two lovers hounded by death, and an America wounded by war and numbered by religion.
An Ordinary Wonder - Buki Papillon*
This is a powerful coming of age story of an intersex twin, Oto, who is forced to live as a boy and adhere to prohibitive Yoruba traditions despite his desire to live as a girl. His wealthy and powerful family are ashamed of him and we see Oto become more estranged from his twin sister and experience heart-breaking brutality at the hands of his mother.
Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms of Jamaica, Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru in vignettes spanning more than a decade as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another.
Drunk on its own rhythms and full of imaginative and often frightening imagery, PLEASE is the album playing in the background of the history and culture that surround African American/male identity and sexuality.
Sacrament of Bodies - Romeo Oriogun*
This collection interogates how a queer man in Nigeria can heal in a society where everything is designed to prevent such restoration. With honesty, precision, tenderness of detail, and a light touch, Oriogun explores grief and how the body finds survival through migration.
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps #1) - Kai Ashante Wilson
Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. The Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with a song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.
Speak No Evil - Uzodinma Iweala
A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
Stormsong (The Kingston Cycle #2) - C.L. Polk
The sequel to Witchmark. In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own.
A Taste of Honey - Kai Ashante Wilson
Long after the Towers left the world, the emperor brought his court to Olorum. As the royalty negotiates over trade and public matters, the divinity seeks assistance among the local gods. Aqib, fourth-cousin to the royal family, has other concerns. His heart has been captured by Lucrio, a handsome Daluçan soldier. In defiance of Saintly Canon and of his father’s and brother’s disapproval, he finds himself in a whirlwind romance. Neither Aqib nor Lucrio know whether their love can survive all the hardships the world has to throw at them.
The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie?
Under the Udala Trees - Chinelo Okparanta
Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon
Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.
Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle #1) - C.L. Polk
In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own.
What We All Long For - Dionne Brand
This novel follows the stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto. There’s Tuyen, a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents. She’s in love with her best friend Carla, a biracial bicycle courier, who’s still reeling from the loss of her mother to suicide eighteen years earlier. Oku is a jazz-loving poet who, unbeknownst to his Jamaican-born parents, has dropped out of university. Jackie feels alienated from her parents, former hipsters from Nova Scotia who never made it out of subsidized housing after their lives became entangled with desire and disappointment.
Middle Grade
Contemporary
As Brave As You - Jason Reynolds
Genie’s summer is full of surprises. The first is that he and his big brother, Ernie, are leaving Brooklyn for the very first time to spend the summer with their grandparents all the way in Virginia - in the COUNTRY! The second surprise comes when Genie figures out that their grandfather is blind. Thunderstruck and - being a curious kid - Genie peppers Grandpop with questions about how he covers it so well (besides wearing way cool Ray-Bans).
This story follows an 11-year-old black boy and his white grandmother on an impromptu road trip through America using The Green Book.
For Black Girls Like Me - Mariama J. Lockington
Makeda June Kirkland is eleven years old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena - the only other adopted black girl she knows - for a new life. In New Mexico, everything is different. At home, Makeda’s sister is too cool to hang out with her anymore and at school, she can’t seem to find one real friend.
Ghost (Track #1) - Jason Reynolds
Running. That's all that Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But never for a track team. Nope, his game has always been ball. But when Ghost impulsively challenges an elite sprinter to a race - and wins - the Olympic medalist track coach sees he has something: crazy natural talent. Thing is, Ghost has something else: a lot of anger, and a past that he is trying to outrun. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed and meld with the team, or will his past finally catch up to him?
Ghost Boys - Jewell Parker Rhodes
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that’s been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
King and the Dragonflies - Kacen Callender*
Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.
Look Both Ways - Jason Reynolds
This book contains ten tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings, and brilliantly weaves them into one wickedly funny, piercingly poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.
Lu (Track #4) - Jason Reynolds
Lu was born to be cocaptain of the Defenders. He was born albino, but that’s got nothing to do with being a track star. Lu has swagger, plus the talent to back it up, and with all that - not to mention the gold chains and diamond earrings - no one’s gonna outshine him. Lu knows he can lead Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and the team to victory at the championships, but it might not be as easy as it seems. Suddenly, there are hurdles in Lu’s way - literally and not-so-literally - and Lu needs to figure out, fast, what winning the gold really means.
My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich - Ibi Zoboi
Twelve-year-old Ebony-Grace Norfleet has lived with her beloved grandfather Jeremiah in Huntsville, Alabama ever since she was little. As one of the first black engineers to integrate NASA, Jeremiah has nurtured Ebony-Grace’s love for all things outer space and science fiction - especially Star Wars and Star Trek. But in the summer of 1984, when trouble arises with Jeremiah, it’s decided she’ll spend a few weeks with her father in Harlem.
The Only Black Girls in Town - Brandy Colbert*
Beach-loving surfer Alberta has been the only black girl in town for years. Alberta's best friend, Laramie, is the closest thing she has to a sister, but there are some things even Laramie can't understand. When the bed and breakfast across the street finds new owners, Alberta is ecstatic to learn the family is black-and they have a 12-year-old daughter just like her.
Patina (Track #2) - Jason Reynolds
Patina, or Patty, runs like a flash. She runs for many reasons—to escape the taunts from the kids at the fancy-schmancy new school she’s been sent to since she and her little sister had to stop living with their mom. She runs from the reason WHY she’s not able to live with her “real” mom any more: her mom has The Sugar, and Patty is terrified that the disease that took her mom’s legs will one day take her away forever. So Patty’s also running for her mom, who can’t. But can you ever really run away from any of this?
Some Places More Than Others - Renée Watson
All Amara wants is to visit her father's family in Harlem. Her wish comes true when her dad decides to bring her along on a business trip. She can't wait to finally meet her extended family and stay in the brownstone where her dad grew up. But her family, and even the city, is not quite what Amara thought. Her dad doesn’t speak to her grandpa. But as she learns more and more about Harlem - and her father’s history - Amara realizes how, in some ways more than others, she can connect with this other home and family.
Sunny (Track #3) - Jason Reynolds
Sunny is just that - sunny. Sunny is the chillest dude on the Defenders team. But Sunny’s life isn’t always that bright. Sunny is a murderer. Or at least, that’s what he thinks. His mom died at birth, and based on how Sunny’s dad treats him - ignoring him, making Sunny call him Darryl, never “Dad” it’s no wonder Sunny thinks he’s to blame. It seems the only thing Sunny can do right in his dad’s eyes is win first place ribbons running the mile, just like his mom did. But Sunny doesn’t like running, never has. So he stops. Right in the middle of a race.
Fantasy
Black Panther: The Young Prince - Ronald L. Smith
Black Panther. Ruler of Wakanda. This is his destiny. But right now, he's simply T'Challa-the young prince. Life is comfortable for 12-year-old T'Challa in Wakanda, an isolated, technologically advanced African nation. When he's not learning how to rule a kingdom from his father-the reigning Black Panther-or testing out the latest tech, he's off breaking rules with his best friend, M'Baku. But as conflict brews near Wakanda, T'Challa's father makes a startling announcement: he's sending T'Challa and M'Baku to school in America
The Jumbies (The Jumbies #1) - Tracey Baptiste
A spine-tingling tale rooted in Caribbean folklore. Corinne La Mer isn't afraid of anything Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest. In the tale that ensues, Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn't know she possessed.
The Jumbie God's Revenge (The Jumbies #3) - Tracey Baptiste
In book three of the popular Jumbies series, Corinne must use her emerging supernatural powers to battle the angry god who would destroy her Caribbean island home.
Twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher was born into a family with a rich tradition of practicing folk magic: hoodoo, as most people call it. But even though his name is Hoodoo, he can't seem to cast a simple spell. Then a mysterious man called the Stranger comes to town, and Hoodoo starts dreaming of the dead rising from their graves.
Nnamdi’s father was a good chief of police. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people believed the Chief of Chiefs, most powerful of the criminals, was responsible. Nnamdi has vowed to avenge his father, but he wonders what a 12-year-old can do. Until a mysterious nighttime meeting, the gift of a mystical object that enables super powers, and a charge to use those powers for good changes his life forever.
The Last Last-Day-of-Summer - Lamar Giles
When two adventurous cousins accidentally extend the last day of summer by freezing time, they find the secrets hidden between the unmoving seconds, minutes, and hours are not the endless fun they expected.
Maya and the Rising Dark - Rena Barron*
After her father goes missing, 12-year-old Maya uncovers that he is the keeper of the gateway between our world and The Dark. To find her father, she'll need to unlock her own powers and fight a horde of creatures set on starting a war. Stranger Things meets Percy Jackson set on the south side of Chicago.
The Mesmerist - Ronald L. Smith
Thirteen-year-old Jessamine Grace and her mother make a living as sham spiritualists - until they discover that Jess is a mesmerist and that she really can talk to the dead. Soon she is plunged into the dark world of Victorian London’s supernatural underbelly and learns that the city is under attack by ghouls, monsters, and spirit summoners.
Race to the Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse
Lately, seventh grader Nizhoni Begay has been able to detect monsters, like that man in the fancy suit who was in the bleachers at her basketball game. Turns out he's Mr. Charles, her dad's new boss at the oil and gas company, and he's alarmingly interested in Nizhoni and her brother, Mac, their Navajo heritage, and the legend of the Hero Twins. Nizhoni knows he's a threat, but her father won't believe her.
Rise of the Jumbies (The Jumbies #2) - Tracey Baptiste
Corinne LaMer defeated the wicked jumbie Severine months ago, but things haven’t exactly gone back to normal in her Caribbean island home. Everyone knows Corinne is half-jumbie, and many of her neighbors treat her with mistrust. When local children begin to go missing, snatched from the beach and vanishing into wells, suspicious eyes turn to Corinne.
Shuri: A Black Panther Novel (Marvel) - Nic Stone
For centuries, the Chieftain of Wakanda (the Black Panther) has gained his powers through the juices of the Heart-Shaped Herb. Much like Vibranium, the Heart-Shaped Herb is essential to the survival and prosperity of Wakanda. But something is wrong. The plants are dying. No matter what the people of Wakanda do, they can't save them. And their supply is running short. It's up to Shuri to travel from Wakanda in order to discover what is killing the Herb, and how she can save it, in the first volume of this all-new, original adventure.
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky (Tristan Strong #1) - Kwame Mbalia
A story about a seventh-grader who is grieving from the loss of his best friend. After the only item he has left of his friend gets stolen, he winds up punching a hole into the sky of a realm in which both African-American folk heroes and ancient African gods reside. Can Tristan manage to save their world by sealing the hole?
Horror
When twelve-year-old Rory applies for a job at a spooky old mansion in his gloomy seaside town, he finds the owner, Lord Foxglove, odd and unpleasant. But he and his mom need the money, so he takes the job anyway. Rory soon finds out that his new boss is not just strange, he’s not even human—and he’s trying to steal the townspeople’s shadows.
The Jumbies (The Jumbies #1) - Tracey Baptiste
A spine-tingling tale rooted in Caribbean folklore. Corinne La Mer isn't afraid of anything Then, one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest. In the tale that ensues, Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn't know she possessed.
Twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher was born into a family with a rich tradition of practicing folk magic: hoodoo, as most people call it. But even though his name is Hoodoo, he can't seem to cast a simple spell. Then a mysterious man called the Stranger comes to town, and Hoodoo starts dreaming of the dead rising from their graves.
The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away - Ronald L. Smith
Twelve-year-old Simon is obsessed with aliens. When he's too worried about them to sleep, he listens to the owls hoot outside. Then something strange happens on a camping trip, and Simon begins to suspect he’s been abducted. But is it real, or just the overactive imagination of a kid who loves fantasy and role-playing games and is the target of bullies and his father’s scorn?
LGBTQ+
Hurricane Child - Kacen Callender
Twelve-year-old Caroline is a Hurricane Child. Hated by everyone in her small school, she can see things that no one else can see. One day her mother left home and never came back. When Kalinda, a new student who seems to see the things Caroline sees, arrives Caroline's luck begins to turn around. Joined by their common gift, Kalinda agrees to help Caroline look for her mother. Soon, they discover the healing power of a close friendship between girls.
King and the Dragonflies - Kacen Callender*
Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.
Contemporary fantasy
Hurricane Child - Kacen Callender
Twelve-year-old Caroline is a Hurricane Child. Hated by everyone in her small school, she can see things that no one else can see. One day her mother left home and never came back. When Kalinda, a new student who seems to see the things Caroline sees, arrives Caroline's luck begins to turn around. Joined by their common gift, Kalinda agrees to help Caroline look for her mother. Soon, they discover the healing power of a close friendship between girls.
Non-Fiction
It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah
The host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tells the story of growing up half black, half white in South Africa under and after apartheid in this young readers' adaptation.
Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box - Evette Dionne*
An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement--when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.
Never Caught - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
This book recounts the Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.
In 1956, one year before federal troops escorted the Little Rock 9 into Central High School, fourteen year old Jo Ann Allen was one of twelve African-American students who broke the color barrier and integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee. At first things went smoothly for the Clinton 12, but then outside agitators interfered, pitting the townspeople against one another.
Poetry
Soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.
The Crossover (The Crossover #1) - Kwame Alexander
"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering," announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this novel of family and brotherhood.
Science Fiction
The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away - Ronald L. Smith
Twelve-year-old Simon is obsessed with aliens. When he's too worried about them to sleep, he listens to the owls hoot outside. Then something strange happens on a camping trip, and Simon begins to suspect he’s been abducted. But is it real, or just the overactive imagination of a kid who loves fantasy and role-playing games and is the target of bullies and his father’s scorn?
Non-Fiction
Africa's Tarnished Name - Chinua Achebe
Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent.
Aké: The Years of Childhood - Wole Soyinka
Begin Again - Eddie S. Glaude Jr.*
A book about James Baldwin’s America and its urgent lessons for our own.
Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It by Charlamagne Tha God
Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected - Nnedi Okorafor
Can We All Be Feminists? - June Eric-Udorie
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir - Wayétu Moore*
The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays - Chinua Achebe
Achebe gives a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhibiting its middle ground.
Fat Girls Deserve Fairy Tales Too - Evette Dionne
Feel Free: Essays - Zadie Smith
A Fragile Freedom - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
A book about African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City.
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest - Hanif Abdurraqib
Going to the Territory - Ralph Ellison
In Going to the Territory, Ellison provides dramatically fresh readings of William Faulkner and Richard Wright, along with new perspectives on the music of Duke Ellington and the art of Romare Bearden. He analyzes the subversive quality of black laughter, the mythic underpinnings of his masterpiece Invisible Man, and the extent to which America's national identity rests on the contributions of African Americans.
Decolonising the Mind - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A book about the politics of language in African literature.
Don't Touch My Hair - Emma Dabiri
A More Perfect Reunion: Race, Integration, and the Future of America - Calvin Baker
A case for integration showing how it is the single most radical, discomfiting idea in America, and why solving this fundamental problem is the only way forward.
I Don't Want to Die Poor: Essays - Michael Arceneaux*
Shadow and Act - Ralph Ellison
A collection of essays in which Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America.
The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family - Sylvia A. Harvey*
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow - Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica - Zora Neale Hurston
A firsthand account of the weird mysteries and horrors of voodoo.
That Hair - Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra - Chinua Achebe
Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection.
These Bones Will Rise Again - Panashe Chigumadzi
This book reflects on the November 2017 ousting of Robert Mugabe, radically reframing the history of Zimbabwe to include the perspectives of workers, women and urban movements.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us - Hanif Abdurraqib
They Were Her Property - Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
A book about white women as slave owners in the American South.
Trading Twelves - Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion.
Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture - Emma Dabiri*
You Must Set Forth at Dawn - Wole Soyinka
Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots - Morgan Jerkins
Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves - Glory Edim (editor)
An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature.
Autobiography / Memoir
Aftershocks: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu*
A memoir in which Owusu grapples with the fault lines of identity, the meaning of home, black womanhood, and the ripple effects, both personal and generational, of emotional trauma.
Around the Way Girl - Taraji P. Henson
A book about family, friends, the hustle required to make it from DC to Hollywood, and the joy of living in your own truth.
The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga
A moving, unforgettable tribute to a Tutsi woman who did everything to protect her children from the Rwandan genocide, by the daughter who refuses to let her family's story be forgotten.
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address.
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings, providing readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here.
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah
The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime memoir about one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.
A rebellious boy’s journey through the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family - this is the riveting story of a generation told through one dazzlingly poetic new voice.
The Cancer Journals - Audre Lorde
Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
The Collected Essays - Ralph Ellison
This collection includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead.
The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir - D. Watkins
The smartest kid on his block in East Baltimore, D. was certain he would escape the life of drugs, decadence, and violence that had surrounded him since birth. But when his brother Devin is shot-only days after D. receives notice that he's been accepted into Georgetown University-the plans for his life are exploded, and he takes up the mantle of his brother's crack empire. D. succeeds in cultivating the family business, but when he meets a woman unlike any he's known before, his priorities are once more put into question.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir - Wayétu Moore*
An engrossing memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States.
Dreams in a Time of War (Memoirs #1) - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author of Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood.
Dust Tracks on a Road - Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston autobiography, an imaginative and exuberant account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to a prominent place among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance.
Everything's Trash, But It's Okay - Phoebe Robinson
Robinson's latest essay collection is a call to arms. She tackles a wide range of topics, such as giving feminism a tough-love talk in hopes it can become more intersectional; telling society's beauty standards to kick rocks; and demanding that toxic masculinity close its mouth and legs (enough with the manspreading already!), and get out of the way so true progress can happen.
Free Cyntoia - Cyntoia Brown-Long
In her own words, Cyntoia Brown shares the riveting and redemptive story of how she changed her life for the better while in prison, finding hope through faith after a traumatic adolescence of drug addiction, rape, and sex trafficking led to a murder conviction.
How We Fight For Our Lives - Saeed Jones
From poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
Hurricanes: A Memoir - Rick Ross, Neil Martinez-Belkin
The highly anticipated memoir from hip-hop icon Rick Ross chronicles his coming of age amid Miami’s crack epidemic, his star-studded controversies and his unstoppable rise to fame.
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl - Issa Rae
A collection of humorous essays on what it’s like to be unabashedly awkward in a world that regards introverts as hapless misfits, and black as cool.
More Than Enough - Elaine Welteroth
In this part-manifesto, part-memoir, the revolutionary editor who infused social consciousness into the pages of Teen Vogue explores what it means to come into your own - on your own terms.
The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir - Jenifer Lewis
The "Mega Diva" and legendary star of Black-ish looks back on her memorable journey to fame and the unforgettable life lessons she learned along the way.
Notes from a Young Black Chef - Kwame Onwuachi, Joshua David Stein
By the time he was twenty-seven, Kwame Onwuachi had competed on Top Chef, cooked at the White House, and opened and closed one of the most talked about restaurants in America. In this inspiring memoir, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age. Growing up in the Bronx and Nigeria (where he was sent by his mother to "learn respect"), food was Onwuachi's great love.
The Last Black Unicorn - Tiffany Haddish
Growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles, Tiffany learned to survive by making people laugh. If she could do that, then her classmates would let her copy their homework, the other foster kids she lived with wouldn’t beat her up, and she might even get a boyfriend. By turns hilarious, filthy, and brutally honest, The Last Black Unicorn shows the world who Tiffany Haddish really is.
Let Love Have the Last Word - Common
A memoir that explores how love and mindfulness can build communities and allow you to take better control of your life through actions and words.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah
The devastating story of war through the eyes of a child soldier. Beah tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and became a soldier.
Obviously: Stories from My Timeline - Akilah Hughes
In Akilah Hughes's world, family and life are often complicated, but always funny. Through intimate and hilarious essays, Akilah takes readers along on her journey from the small Kentucky town where she was born--and eventually became a spelling bee champ and 15-year-old high school graduate--to New York City, where she took careful steps to fulfill her dream of becoming a writer and performer.
The Other Side of Paradise - Staceyann Chin
In this memoir Chin shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir..
Outraged: Why Everyone Is Shouting and No One Is Talking - Ashley 'Dotty' Charles*
A candid exploration of the state of outrage in our culture, how it debases our civil discourse, and how we can channel it back into the fights that matter.
Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights - Ayaan Hirsi Ali*
This book describes the massive cultural changes waves of Islamic immigration have made to Europe’s sexual politics.
Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me - Charlamagne Tha God
In this book Charlamagne Tha God reveals his blueprint for breaking free from your fears and anxiety to reach that elusive next level of success. Fear is holding you back. It’s time to turn the tables and channel your fears to actually fuel your success.
So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know - Retta
In So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know, Parks and Recreation star Retta takes us on her not-so-meteoric rise from roaches to riches.
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra - Chinua Achebe
Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection.
This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare - Gabourey Sidibe
A memoir by the Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empireactress.
You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain - Phoebe Robinson
A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson.
We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America - D. Watkins
From the row houses of Baltimore to the stoops of Brooklyn, with searing conviction and full compassion, D. Watkins, lays bare the voices of the most vulnerable and allows their raw, intimate stories to uncover the systematic injustice threaded within our society. Honest and eye-opening, We Speak for Ourselves makes us listen, feel, and create a course toward change that starts right where we are.
We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union
A powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman.
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir - Patrisse Khan-Cullors
A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America - and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.
Yassmin's Story - Yassmin Abdel-Magied
At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she was the only woman and certainly the only Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian background Muslim woman. With her hijab quickly christened a "tea cosy," there could not be a more unlikely place on earth for a young Muslim woman to want to be. This is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde
ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her. Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization.
Biography
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" - Zora Neale Hurston
In 1927, of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.
Never Caught - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
This book recounts the Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.
She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman - Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before.
Feminism
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House - Audre Lorde
From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Audre Lorde
A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde's literary and philosophical personae. These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the concept of difference - difference according to sex, race, and economic status.
A collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde
ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her. Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization.
Politics
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of the history of the Reconstruction-era American experiment in multiracial democracy in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president."
Race
The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America - D. Watkins
When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enough - after the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody - Watkins was on the streets when the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding hometown with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings, providing readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here.
From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias, a personal examination of one of the central controversies and culturally powerful issues of our time, and its influence on contemporary race relations and criminal justice.
The Dark Fantastic - Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
A book about race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games.
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower - Brittney Cooper
How to Be an Antiracist - Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America - but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
In this book Oluo explores the complex reality of today's racial landscape--from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement--offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide
The Souls of Black Folks - W.E.B. Du Bois
A founding work in the literature of black protest in which Du Bois affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind.
A collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today.
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir - Patrisse Khan-Cullors
A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America - and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide - Carol Anderson
A book in which Anderson reframes the continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.
Self-help
Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible - Yomi Adegoke, Elizabeth Uviebinené
The long-awaited guide to life for a generation of black British women inspired to make lemonade out of lemons, and find success in every area of their lives.
Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change - Chelsea Kwakye, Ore Ogunbiyi
As a minority in a predominantly white institution, taking up space is an act of resistance. Recent Cambridge grads Chelsea and Ore experienced this first-hand, and wrote Taking Up Space as a guide and a manifesto for change.
Plays
Death and the King's Horseman: A Play - Wole Soyinka
Based on events that took place in Oyo, an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria, in 1946, this play concerns the intertwined lives of Elesin Oba, the king's chief horseman; his son, Olunde, now studying medicine in England; and Simon Pilkings, the colonial district officer. The king has died and Elesin, his chief horseman, is expected by law and custom to commit suicide and accompany his ruler to heaven.
For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf - Ntozake Shange
Passionate and fearless this play reveals what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century.
The Lion and the Jewel - Wole Soyinka
Set in the Yoruba vilage of Ilunjinle. The main characters are Sidi (the jewel), 'a true village belle' and Baroka (the Lion), the crafty and powerful Bale of the village, Lakunle, the young teacher, influenced by western ways, and Sadiku, the eldest of Baroka's wives. How the Lion hunts the Jewel is the theme of this ribald comedy
Poetry
1919 - Eve L. Ewing
Poetic reflections on race, class, violence, segregation, and the hidden histories that shape our divided urban landscapes. Ewing uses speculative and Afrofuturist lenses to recast history, and illuminates the thin line between the past and the present. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots that resulted in 38 deaths and almost 500 injuries that has shaped the last century, but is widely unknown. 1919 explores this event, through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city.
The Absurd Man: Poems - Major Jackson*
With intense musicality and buoyant lyricism, The Absurd Man follows the titular speaker as he confronts the struggle for meaning in a technological world and the difficulty of social and political unity, finding refuge in intellectual and sensuous passions. At once melancholic and jubilant, Jackson considers the journey of humanity, with all its foibles, as a sacred pattern of discovery reconciled by art and the imagination.
The Black Unicorn: Poems - Audre Lorde
A collection of poems by a woman who writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity. Her rhythms and accents have the timelessness of a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America, beyond the North American earth, to Abomey and the Dahomeyan Amazons.
Build Yourself a Boat - Camonghne Felix
A poetic exploration of trauma, healing, and survival. This collection is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains.
Can I Kick It? - Idris Goodwin
Situated squarely in the oral traditions of hip-hop and BreakBeat Poetry, Idris Goodwin’s work bridges the divide between the reader and the poet.
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion - Kei Miller
In this collection Miller dramatizes what happens when one system of knowledge, one method of understanding place and territory, comes up against another. We watch as the cartographer, used to the scientific methods of assuming control over a place by mapping it, is gradually compelled to recognize - even to envy - a wholly different understanding
The Collected Poems - Audre Lorde
Collected here for the first time are more than three hundred poems from one of this country's major and most influential poets, representing the complete oeuvre of Audre Lorde's poetry.
Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman Bob Kaufman
This is the most comprehensive selection of his verse to date, a volume that contains a lot of previously uncollected work.
Crossfire: A Litany for Survival - Staceyann Chin
Crossfire collects Staceyann Chin's empowering, activist-driven poetry.
The Crown Ain't Worth Much - Hanif Abdurraqib
This is a collection, that is a sharp and vulnerable portrayal of city life in the United States.
Don't Call Us Dead - Danez Smith
Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood and a diagnosis of HIV positive.
Electric Arches - Eve L. Ewing
Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewing's narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances, and identifies everyday objects - hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook - as precious icons.
Fellon - Reginald Dwayne Betts
This tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Betts confronts the funk of post incarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person’s life.
For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf - Ntozake Shange
Passionate and fearless this play reveals what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century.
A Fortune for Your Disaster - Hanif Abdurraqib
Poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'.
The Half-God of Rainfall - Inua Ellams
The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic story and a lyrical exploration of pride, power and female revenge.
Shire turned her eye to London, interrogating the capital and its continuing transformation, even while lending voice to its oft unheard or under-represented communities and spaces. Collecting work authored during Shire's tenure, 'Her Blue Body' stands as testament and witness, negotiating the complexities of heritage, cultural sensitivity, sensuality, trauma and womanhood, framed and ordered by a sequence of memorial poems, focused through the lens of Shire's intimate and unflinching vision.
I Am Nobody's Nigger - Dean Atta
Exploring race, identity, and sexuality, Dean Atta shares his perspective on family, friendship, relationships, and London life, from riots to one-night stands.
I Know How to Fix Myself - Ashley Makue
A collection of poems.
This collection explors landscape, legends and histories. Here is a world in which it is both possible to hide and to heal, a landscape as much marked by magic as it is by murder.
The January Children - Safia Elhillo
“The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth date January 1.” What follows is a deeply personal collection of poems that describe the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one’s own land.
Joker, Joker, Deuce - Paul Beatty
A collection of poems, exploring aspects of race, identity, and popular culture.
A Light Song of Light - Kei Miller
Exploring the relationship between poetry and song, the pieces in this collection work to define the elemental human struggles of good versus evil and light against darkness. The poems take different shapes—newly forged dictionary definitions; praise-songs celebrating the Singerman in a Jamaican road gang; and simple narratives of ghosts, bandits, and other night creatures.
Living Weapon: Poems - Rowan Ricardo Phillips*
A love song to the imagination, a new blade of light honed in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere; four NYPD officers enter a cell phone store; concrete sidewalks hang overhead. Here, in his third collection of poems, Phillips offers ruminations on violins and violence, on hatred, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself.
Love Your Curls: A poetic tribute to curly hair inspired by real women - Taiye Selasi
The Love Your Curls book is a poetic tribute to curly hair.
The Lucky Daughter - Mariama J. Lockington
These poems about race, sexuality, families (found, formed, and inherited) are brutal in their honesty and beauty...The voices in these poems are constantly trying to grow themselves up despite a world determined to destroy them. Fresh and pungent from gardens, wet from internal and external rivers, and complicated by profound questions of existence, these poems trace their voices back to before conception, rooting themselves in the histories of both violence and hope, all the way back to Lucy, our oldest ancestor.
Magical Negro is an archive of Black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. They connect themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification, while exploring and troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans.
Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus - Anaïs Duplan
Opening with an essay whose physical printing, white text on black pages, is unique and the setup for an exploration of gender norms and the commodification of Black bodies in our culture. The collection of poems are standard black text on white pages but they question and challenge both the reader and the speaker. They challenge whiteness. The speaker repeatedly questions themselves, the publication of the chapbook, and their history. They call out the reader out. They call themselves out.
all
of the
unsleeping. gold sweeping. poems.
i have in my hands.
The New Testament - Jericho Brown
In The New Testament, Jericho Brown continues his tender examination of race, masculinity, and sexuality. These poems bear witness to survival in the face of brutality, while also elegizing two brothers haunted by shame, two lovers hounded by death, and an America wounded by war and numbered by religion.
Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night - Morgan Parker
Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night is a powerful debut collection from a promising new and necessary voice. It is hyper-contemporary, drawing on what it means to be alive today when our phones autocorrect our texts and we’ve given into a kind of living that prioritizes work, money, and power over justice, equality, and happiness.
Our Men Do Not Belong To Us - Warsan Shire
Poems about how women deal with the violence of all kinds of exploitation, but they are never didactic or simplistic. Shire fills her poems with the effects of her complex sense of identity in transcultural Africa.
Drunk on its own rhythms and full of imaginative and often frightening imagery, PLEASE is the album playing in the background of the history and culture that surround African American/male identity and sexuality.
Sacrament of Bodies - Romeo Oriogun*
This collection interogates how a queer man in Nigeria can heal in a society where everything is designed to prevent such restoration. With honesty, precision, tenderness of detail, and a light touch, Oriogun explores grief and how the body finds survival through migration.
salt. a literary work.
She Felt Like Feeling Nothing (What She Felt #1) - R.H. Sin
R.H. Sin pursues themes of self-discovery and retrospection. With this book, the poet intends to create a safe space where women can rest their weary hearts and focus on themselves.
Take This Stallion - Anaïs Duplan
Poems that make evident an ever-expanding world by opening themselves up into that world. It balances the intellect, image, music, and emotion in ways so unfamiliar that a blurb couldn't possible characterize the work. - Jericho Brown
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth - Warsan Shire
What elevates 'teaching my mother how to give birth', what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam;
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé - Morgan Parker
Using political and pop-cultural references as a framework this collection explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness.
There Is an Anger that Moves - Kei Miller
Diverse in theme as well as form, this new collection explodes onto the page with a maturity and dynamism rarely seen in such a young poet. Using language full of unique beauty and charisma, Miller writes everything from love poems to biblical chronicles, exploring themes such as conflicting identity, home and family, and the spirit of his Jamaican ancestors.
Titanic - Bridget Minamore
In this debut pamphlet, Minamore explores the sensibilities surrounding love, loss, and the subsequent struggles we all face at some point in our relationships. Themed around a series of popular songs and a certain sinking ship, Minamore riffs from poem to poem with a choice selection of humorous and somber verse.
The Tradition - Jericho Brown
The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie?
We Inherit What the Fires Left - William Evans*
An emotionally vulnerable poetry collection exploring the themes of inheritances, dreams, and injuries that are passed down from one generation to the next and delving into the lived experience of a black man in the American suburbs today.
We Want Our Bodies Back - Jessica Care Moore*
Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel I by R.H. Sin
Sin’s first poetry collection.
Whiskey Words & a Shovel II by R.H. Sin
Sin’s stanzas inspire strength through the pure emotional energy and the vulnerability of his poems. Relationships, love, pain, and fortitude are powerfully rendered in his poetry, and his message of perseverance in the face of emotional turmoil cuts to the heart of modern-day life.
Whiskey Words & a Shovel III - R.H. Sin
R.H. Sin s final volume in the Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel series expands on the passion and vigor of his first two installments. His stanzas inspire strength through the raw, emotional energy and the vulnerability of his poems. Relationships, love, pain, and fortitude are powerfully rendered in his poetry, and his message of perseverance in the face of emotional turmoil cuts to the heart of modern-day life.
Romance
Blitzed (Playbook #3) - Alexa Martin
According to Brynn Larson, Maxwell Lewis is more trouble than he's worth. She doesn't care if he's a football god with a rock-hard body that brings most women to their knees. After an encounter that ends poorly, she's not interested in giving him a second chance. The last thing Brynn expects is for him to turn up at her bar months later, hat in hand. It doesn't matter if he brings more customers to her business--she's still not going on a date with him.
A Duke by Default (Reluctant Royals #2) - Alyssa Cole
Tavish McKenzie doesn’t need a rich, spoiled American telling him how to run his armory…even if she is infuriatingly good at it. Tav tries to rebuff his apprentice, and his attraction to her, but when Portia accidentally discovers that he’s the secret son of a duke, rough-around-the-edges Tav becomes her newest makeover project.
Forbidden Promises - Synithia Williams*
Get in and get out. That was India Robidoux’s plan for this family visit. But when her brother needs her help with his high-profile political campaign, India has no choice but to stay and face the one man she’s been running from for years—Travis, her sister’s ex-husband. One hot summer night when Travis was still free, they celebrated her birthday with whiskey and an unforgettable kiss. The memory is as strong as ever—and so are the feelings she’s tried so hard to forget.
Fumbled (Playbook #2) - Alexa Martin
When Poppy and TK cross paths in the most unlikely of places, emotions they've suppressed for years come rushing back. But with all the secrets they never told each other lying between them, they'll need more than a dating playbook to help them navigate their relationship.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters #1) - Talia Hibbert
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion. The next items?
Intercepted (Playbook #1) - Alexa Martin
Marlee Harper is the perfect girlfriend. She's definitely had enough practice by dating her NFL-star boyfriend for the last ten years. But when she discovers he has been tackling other women on the sly, she vows to never date an athlete again. There's just one problem: Gavin Pope, the new hotshot quarterback and a fling from the past, has Marlee in his sights.
Love in Colour: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold - Bolu Babalola*
A collection of love stories from history and mythology retold. From the homoromantic Greek myths, to magical Nigerian folktales, to the ancient stories of South Asia showing the vibrance and colours of love around the world.
Not the Girl You Marry - Andie J. Christopher
Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy, internet media company instead of covering hard-hitting politics. Fed up with his fluffy articles and the app-based dating scene as well, he strikes a deal with his boss to write a final piece de resistance: How to Lose a Girl. Easier said than done when the girl he meets is Hannah Mayfield, and he's not sure he wants her to dump him.
Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5) - Jasmine Guillory*
Dating is the last thing on Olivia Monroe's mind when she moves to LA to start her own law firm. But when she meets a gorgeous man at a hotel bar and they spend the entire night flirting, she discovers too late that he is none other than hotshot junior senator Max Powell. Olivia has zero interest in dating a politician, but when a cake arrives at her office with the cutest message, she can't resist--it is chocolate cake, after all.
A Princess in Theory (Reluctant Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole
Prince Thabiso is the sole heir to the throne of Thesolo who is tracking down his missing betrothed. When Naledi mistakes the prince for a pauper, Thabiso can’t resist the chance to experience life—and love—without the burden of his crown.
The Proposal (The Wedding Date #2) - Jasmine Guillory
When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part - they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans...
Royal Holiday (The Wedding Date #4) - Jasmine Guillory
Vivian Forest has been out of the country a grand total of one time, so when she gets the chance to tag along on her daughter Maddie’s work trip to England to style a royal family member, she can’t refuse. She’s excited to spend the holidays taking in the magnificent British sights, but what she doesn’t expect is to become instantly attracted to a certain private secretary, his charming accent, and unyielding formality.
The Wedding Date (The Wedding Date #1) - Jasmine Guillory
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist. On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend... After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew and Alexa head back to their own lives. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...
The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date #3) - Jasmine Guillory
A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty.
The Worst Best Man - Mia Sosa*
Critically acclaimed author Mia Sosa delivers a sassy, steamy enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy about a woman whose new job requires her to work side-by-side with the best man who ruined her wedding: her ex-fiancé's infuriating, irritating, annoyingly handsome brother.
Science Fiction
Binti (Binti #1) - Nnedi Okorafor
Binti is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution in the galaxy. To accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers. Oomza has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If she hopes to survive the legacy of a war, she will need the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University.
The Black God's Drums - P. Djèlí Clark
Creeper, a scrappy young teen, is done living on the streets of New Orleans. Instead, she wants to soar, and her sights are set on securing passage aboard the smuggler airship Midnight Robber. Her ticket: earning Captain Ann-Marie’s trust using a secret about a kidnapped Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.
The Book of Phoenix (Who Fears Death 0.1) - Nnedi Okorafor
Phoenix was grown and raised among other genetic experiments in New York’s Tower 7. She is an “accelerated woman” only two years old but with the body and mind of an adult, Phoenix’s abilities far exceed those of a normal human. Then one evening, Saeed another biologically altered human witnesses something so terrible that he takes his own life. Devastated by his death and Tower 7’s refusal to answer her questions, Phoenix finally begins to realize that her home is really her prison, and she becomes desperate to escape.
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways--farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.
A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
The Deep - Rivers Solomon (writer), Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
A story re-imagining history, about water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners - who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one - the historian. This demanding role is destroying Yetu and so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities- and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.
Escaping Exodus - Nicky Drayden
A story of a young woman named Seske, heir to the command of a biological, city-size starship carved up from the insides of a spacefaring beast. Her clan has just now culled their latest ship and the workers are preparing the cavernous creature for the onslaught of the general populous still in stasis. It’s all a part of the cycle her clan had instituted centuries ago. Of course there wouldn’t be much of a story if things didn’t go terribly, terribly wrong.
The story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly inhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - P. Djèlí Clark
Set in an alternate Cairo, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.
Home (Binti #2) - Nnedi Okorafor
How Long 'til Black Future Month? (Dreamblood #0.5) - N.K. Jemisin
In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) - N.K. Jemisin
Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Might Sanze, the world spanning empire collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land.
Kabu Kabu - unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis - generally get you where you need to go, but Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu Kabu takes the reader to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations.
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. This marks the start time-defying episodes with a white boy, during which she realizes the challenge she’s been given.
When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.
Midnight Robber - Nalo Hopkinson
It's Carnival time, and the Carribean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favourite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.
The Night Masquerade (Binti #3) - Nnedi Okorafor
Binti has returned home, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse. Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her. Once again it is up to Binti, to intervene.
The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) - N.K. Jemisin
The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring – madman, world-crusher, savior – has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever. It continues with a lost daughter, found by the enemy. It continues with the obelisks, and an ancient mystery converging on answers at last. The Stillness is the wall which stands against the flow of tradition, the spark of hope long buried under the thickening ashfall. And it will not be broken.
The Old Lie - Claire G. Coleman
Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz have been drawn into a war that is not their own. Lives will be destroyed, families will be torn apart. Trust will be broken. When the war is over, some will return to a changed world. Will they discover that glory is a lie? Claire G. Coleman's new novel takes us to a familiar world to ask what we have learned from the past. The Old Lie might not be quite what you expect.
The Prey of Gods - Nicky Drayden
In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present day challenges.
Riot Baby - Tochi Onyebuchi
Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella—through visits both mundane and supernatural—tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.
Rosewater (The Wormwood Trilogy #1) - Tade Thompson
Rosewater is a town on the edge. Formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless - people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again - but when something begins killing off others like himself, he must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.
The Rosewater Insurrection (The Wormwood Trilogy #2) - Tade Thompson
All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood…
The Rosewater Redemption (The Wormwood Trilogy #3) - Tade Thompson
Life in the newly independent city-state of Rosewater isn't everything its citizens were expecting. The Mayor finds that debts incurred during the insurrection are coming back to haunt him. Nigeria isn't willing to let Rosewater go without a fight. And the city's alien inhabitants are threatening mass murder for their own sinister ends...
The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) - N.K. Jemisin
This is the way the world ends... for the last time. The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women. Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe. For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the world’s evil, and accepted what her mother will not: sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.
Terra Nullius - Claire G. Coleman
The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to have a nation of peace, and to bring the savages into line. Families are torn apart, reeducation is enforced. This rich land will provide for all. This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history.
Resistance Reborn - Rebecca Roanhorse
The Resistance is in ruins. In the wake of their harrowing escape from Crait, what was once an army has been reduced to a handful of wounded heroes. Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, Chewbacca, Leia Organa -- their names are famous among the oppressed worlds they fight to liberate. But names can only get you so far, and Leia's last desperate call for aid has gone unanswered.
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon
Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire
We Cast a Shadow - Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Set in a near-future society plagued by resurgent racism, segregation, and expanding private prisons, our narrator knows his biracial Nigel might not survive. There is one potential solution: a new experimental medical procedure that promises to save lives by turning people white.
Thriller/Mystery
Atlanta is one of America’s most dynamic and fastest-growing cities, with an increasingly diverse population. This collection honours the city’s transformation - albeit in a chilling manner.
Catherine House - Elisabeth Thomas*
A gothic-infused novel, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.
Children of the Street (Darko Dawson #2) - Kwei Quartey
In the slums of Accra, teenagers are turning up dead. Inspector Darko Dawson has seen many crimes, but this latest string of murders- in which all the young victims bear a chilling signature - is the most unsettling of his career. Are these heinous acts a form of ritual killing or the work of a lone, cold-blooded monster? With time running out, Dawson embarks on a journey through the city and confronts the brutal world of the urban poor, where street children are forced to fight for their very survival and a cunning killer seems just out of reach.
Death at the Voyager Hotel - Kwei Quartey
In the cosmopolitan West African city of Accra, the Voyager Hotel is widely known as a low-priced, well-run lodging perfectly suited to cash-strapped tourists. But one early March morning, it gains a notoriety it would rather not have. Hotel guest Heather Peterson, a beautiful, young Oregonian teacher, is found dead at the bottom of the pool.
Death by His Grace (Darko Dawson #5) - Kwei Quartey
Katherine Yeboah's marriage to Solomon Vanderpuye is all the talk of Accra high society. But when it becomes apparent that Katherine is infertile, Solomon's extended family accuses her of being a witch, hounding her until the relationship is so soured Solomon feels compelled to order Katherine out of the house they shared. Alone on her last night there, Katherine is savagely murdered by an intruder wielding a machete.
Gold of Our Fathers (Darko Dawson #4) - Kwei Quartey
Darko Dawson has just been promoted to Chief Inspector in the Ghana Police Service. But he doesn’t have long to celebrate because his new boss is transferring him from Accra, out to remote Obuasi in the Ashanti region, an area now notorious for the illegal exploitation of its gold mines. When he arrives, he finds the headquarters in complete disarray. The office is a mess of uncatalogued evidence and cold case files, morale is low, and discipline among officers is lax. Then, the body of a Chinese mine owner is unearthed in his own gold quarry.
The Missing American - Kwei Quartey*
Accra private investigator Emma Djan's first missing persons case will lead her to the darkest depths of the email scams and fetish priests in Ghana, the world's Internet capital.
Murder at Cape Three Points (Darko Dawson #3) - Kwei Quartey
A canoe washes up at a Ghanaian off-shore oil rig site. Inside it are the bodies of a prominent, wealthy couple, Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo, who have been ritualistically murdered. Pillars in their community, they are mourned by everyone, but especially by their niece Sapphire. She is not happy that months have passed since the murder and the local police have made no headway in figuring out who committed the gruesome crime.
My Sister the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite
A dark novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water…
Wife of the Gods (Darko Dawson #1) - Kwei Quartey
Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field - and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years. When we first meet Dawson, he’s been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghana’s capital city to lead a murder investigation: In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman - a promising medical student - has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.
Young Adult
Contemporary
On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola thought she would finally find a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own. Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost.
All American Boys - Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely
Rashad is absent again today. That’s the sidewalk graffiti that started it all… Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next - that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing - the cop just kept pounding him. Over and over, pummeling him into the pavement. So then Rashad, an ROTC kid with mad art skills, was absent again…and again…stuck in a hospital room. Why? Because it looked like he was stealing. And he was a black kid in baggy clothes. So he must have been stealing. And that’s how it started.
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America - Ibi Zoboi (editor)
An anthology that delves into the closeted thoughts, hidden experiences, and daily struggles of black teens across the country. From a spectrum of backgrounds - urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more - Black Enough showcases diversity within diversity.
The Boy in the Black Suit - Jason Reynolds
Just when seventeen-year-old Matt thinks he can’t handle one more piece of terrible news, he meets a girl who’s dealt with a lot more - and who just might be able to clue him in on how to rise up when life keeps knocking him down.
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree - Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls. Some managed to escape. Many are still missing. A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband, these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. A girl who works hard in school and to help her family. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach. Even if the voices on Papa’s radio tell more fearful news than tales to tell by moonlight.
Separated by distance - and Papi's secrets - two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they've lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine - Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
When a school presentation goes very wrong, Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti and writing the report of a lifetime… You might ask the obvious question: What do I, a 17-year-old Haitian American from Miami with way too little life experience, have to say about anything? Actually, a lot.
The sequel to Dear Martin.
Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.
Everything, Everything - Nicola Yoon
A romance story about a girl,with a disease making her allergic to the world. When they get new next door neighbours, Olly catches her eye.
I Wanna Be Where You Are - Kristina Forest
When Chloe Pierce’s mom forbids her to apply for a spot at the dance conservatory of her dreams, she devises a secret plan to drive two hundred miles to the nearest audition. But Chloe hits her first speed bump when her annoying neighbor Eli insists upon hitching a ride, threatening to tell Chloe’s mom if she leaves him and his smelly dog, Geezer, behind. So now Chloe’s chasing her ballet dreams down the east coast—two unwanted (but kinda cute) passengers in her car, butterflies in her stomach, and a really dope playlist on repeat.
A novel which examines class, privilege, and how a stroke of good luck can change an entire life.
Finding Yvonne - Brandy Colbert
Since she was 7 years old, Yvonne has had her trusted violin to keep her company, especially in those lonely days, after her mom walked out. But with graduation just around the corner, she is forced to face she might not be good enough to attend a conservatory after high school. She meets a street musician and fellow violinist who understands her struggle. He’s mysterious, charming, and different from Warren, the familiar and reliable boy who has her heart. But when Yvonne becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she has to make the most difficult decision yet about her future.
Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender*
Felix Love has never been in love.What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, he also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle....
Full Disclosure - Camryn Garrett
In a community that isn't always understanding, an HIV-positive teen must navigate fear, disclosure, and radical self-acceptance when she falls in love--and lust--for the first time.
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
How It Went Down (How It Went Down #1) - Kekla Magoon
When 16-year-old Tariq Johnson dies from two gunshot wounds, his community is thrown into an uproar. Tariq was black. The shooter, Jack Franklin, is white. In the aftermath of Tariq's death, everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events line up. Day by day, new twists further obscure the truth. Tariq's friends, family, and community struggle to make sense of the tragedy, and to cope with the hole left behind when a life is cut short. In their own words, they grapple for a way to say with certainty: This is how it went down.
Let Me Hear a Rhyme - Tiffany D. Jackson
Biggie Smalls was right. Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean that Quadir and Jarrell are okay letting their best friend Steph’s tracks lie forgotten in his bedroom after he’s killed—not when his beats could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a celebration, not after years of having each other’s backs.
Light It Up (How It Went Down #2) - Kekla Magoon
A girl walks home from school. She's tall for her age. She's wearing her winter coat. Her headphones are in. She's hurrying. She never makes it home. In the aftermath, while law enforcement tries to justify the response, one fact remains: a police officer has shot and killed an unarmed thirteen-year-old girl. The community is thrown into upheaval, leading to unrest, a growing movement to protest the senseless taking of black lives, and the arrival of white supremacist counter demonstrators
Little & Lion - Brandy Colbert
When Suzette comes from her boarding school she isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are and her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new… the same girl her brother is in love with.
Not So Pure and Simple - Lamar Giles
A contemporary teen novel that spotlights the consequences of societal pressure, confronts toxic masculinity, and explores the complexity of what it means to be a “real man.”
A book that explores old friendships, new crushes, and the path to self-discovery.
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it - she has to make it.
Opposite of Always - Justin A. Reynolds
When Jack and Kate meet at a party, Jack knows he’s falling hard. But this love story is complicated. It is an almost happily ever after. Because Kate dies. And their story should end there. Yet Kate’s death sends Jack back to the beginning, the moment they first meet, and Kate’s there again. Jack isn’t sure if he’s losing his mind. Still, if he has a chance to prevent Kate’s death, he’ll take it.
The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo
A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world.
Theo is better now. She's eating again, dating guys who are almost appropriate, and well on her way to becoming an elite ballet dancer. But when her oldest friend, Donovan, returns home after spending four long years with his kidnapper, Theo starts reliving memories about his abduction - and his abductor. Donovan isn't talking about what happened, and even though Theo knows she didn't do anything wrong, telling the truth would put everything she's been living for at risk. But keeping quiet might be worse.
A retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, balancing cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in her vibrant reimagining of this classic.
The Revolution of Birdie Randolph - Brandy Colbert
Dove "Birdie" Randolph works hard to be the perfect daughter and follow the path her parents have laid out for her. But then Birdie falls hard for Booker, a sweet boy with a troubled past...whom she knows her parents will never approve of. When her estranged aunt Carlene returns to Chicago Birdie notices the tension building at home. As Birdie becomes closer to both Booker and Carlene, she yearns to spread her wings. But when long-buried secrets rise to the surface, everything she's known to be true is turned upside down.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Logans #4) - Mildred D. Taylor
Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year—the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she's black—to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride—no matter how others may degrade them, the Logans possess something no one can take away.
Roman and Jewel - Dana L. Davis*
A story about teen actors who headline with an international R&B superstar in a hip-opera broadway musical.
Shiny Broken Pieces (Tiny Pretty Things #2) - Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton
June is starting to finally see herself as a prima ballerina. However, getting what she wants might cost her everything - including the only boy she’s ever loved. Legacy dancer Bette is determined to clear her name after she was suspended and accused of hurting her rival, Gigi. Even if she returns, though, will she ever regain the spotlight she craves? And Gigi is not going to let Bette - or the other dancers who bullied her - go unpunished. But as revenge consumes her, Gigi may be the one who pays the price.
The Sun Is Also a Star - Nicola Yoon
Natasha: I believe in science and facts. I’m not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a New York City street and falls in love. Not when my family is being deported to Jamaica. Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, student, living up to my parents’ expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store - for both of us. The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now - Dana L. Davis
For16 year-old Tiffany Sly, life hasn’t been safe or normal for a while. Losing her mom to cancer has her a little bit traumatized and now she has to leave her hometown of Chicago to live with the biological dad she’s never known.
Tiny Pretty Things (Tiny Pretty Things #1) - Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton
Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette's desire to escape the shadow of her ballet-star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever.
The Voice in My Head - Dana L. Davis
For Indigo Phillips, life has always been her and her identical twin—Violet. The perfectly dressed, gentle, popular sister. But now Violet is terminally ill and, in a few hours, plans to die on her own terms via medically assisted suicide. Even though she and Violet have drifted apart lately, Indigo doesn’t know how to face life without the only person who really understands her. Until suddenly she hears a mysterious voice claiming to be God, insisting that if she takes Violet to a remote rock formation in the Arizona desert, her sister will live.
The Voting Booth - Brandy Colbert
Marva was born ready for this day. She’s always been driven to make a difference in the world, and what better way than to vote in her first election? Duke is so done with this election. He just wants to get voting over with so he can prepare for his band’s first paying gig tonight. Only problem? Duke can’t vote. They may have started out as strangers, but as Duke and Marva team up to beat a rigged system (and find Marva’s missing cat), it’s clear that there’s more to their connection than a shared mission for democracy.
When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds
In Bed Stuy, New York, a small misunderstanding can escalate into having a price on your head - even if you’re totally clean. This gritty, triumphant novel captures the heart and the hardship of life for an urban teen.
When You Were Everything - Ashley Woodfolk*
It’s been 27 days since Cleo and Layla’s friendship imploded. Nearly a month since Cleo realized they’ll never be besties again. Now, Cleo wants to erase every memory, good or bad, that tethers her to her ex–best friend. But pretending Layla doesn’t exist isn’t as easy as Cleo hoped, especially after she’s assigned to be Layla’s tutor. Despite budding new friendships with other classmates - and a raging crush on a gorgeous boy named Dom - Cleo’s turbulent past with Layla comes back to haunt them both.
Who Put This Song On? - Morgan Parker
Life may be a never-ending hamster wheel of agony, but Morgan finds her crew of fellow outcasts, blasts music like there’s no tomorrow, discovers what being black means to her, and finally puts her mental health first. She decides that, no matter what, she will always be intense, ridiculous, passionate, and sometimes hilarious. After all, darkness doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Darkness is just real.
With the Fire on High - Elizabeth Acevedo
With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.
You Must Be Layla - Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Layla's mind goes a million miles a minute, so does her mouth – unfortunately her better judgement can take a while to catch up! She believes she was justified for doing what she did, but a suspension wasn’t the way she wanted to start at her fancy new high school. She however is determined to show everyone she deserves her scholarship and sets her sights on winning a big invention competition. Looking outside and in, Layla will need to come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be if she has any chance of succeeding.
Fantasy
Akata Warrior (Akata Witch #2) - Nnedi Okorafor
A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book.
Akata Witch (Akata Witch #1) - Nnedi Okorafor
Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All she wants to do is be able to play football and not be bullied at school. But when she befriends Orlu and Chichi Sunny is thrown into the world of the Leopard People, where your worst defect becomes your greatest asset. Together, Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha form the youngest ever Oha Coven. Their mission is to track down Black Hat Otokoto, the man who is kidnapping and maiming children.
The Belles (The Belles #1) - Dhonielle Clayton
Camellia is a Belle. In Orléans, Belles control Beauty, which is a commodity coveted above all else. There people are born gray and damned, and only with the help of a Belle can they transform and be made beautiful. Camellia wants to be the favorite - the Belle chosen by the Queen of Orléans to live in the royal palace, to tend to the royal family and their court, to be recognized as the most talented Belle in the land. Though once Camellia arrives at court, it becomes clear that being the favorite is not everything she always dreamed it would be.
A Blade So Black (The Nightmare-Verse #1) - L.L. McKinney
The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she's trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Life in real-world Atlanta isn't always so simple, as Alice juggles keeping up appearances. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice's handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she’s ever gone before.
Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1) - Tomi Adeyemi
But everything in Zélie’s life changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy.
Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha #2) - Tomi Adeyemi
Book two of the Legacy of Orïsha series.
A Crown So Cursed (The Nightmare-Verse #3) - L.L. McKinney
The third book in The Nightmare-Verse quartet.
A Dream So Dark (The Nightmare-Verse #2) - L.L. McKinney
Still reeling from her recent battle (and grounded until she graduates), Alice must abandon her friends to complete her mission: find The Heart and prevent the Red Lady's rise. But the deeper she ventures into Wonderland, the more topsy-turvy everything becomes. It’s not until she’s at her wits end that she realizes - Wonderland is trying to save her.
Daughters of Nri (The Return of the Earth Mother #1) - Reni K. Amayo
A gruesome war results in the old gods' departure from earth. The only remnants of their existence lie in two girls. Twins, separated at birth. Goddesses who grow up believing that they are human. Daughters Of Nri explores their epic journey of self-discovery as they embark on a path back to one another
The Everlasting Rose (The Belles #2) - Dhonielle Clayton
In this sequel to The Belles, Camille, her sister Edel, and Remy must race against time to find Princess Charlotte. Sophia's Imperial forces will stop at nothing to keep the rebels from returning Charlotte to the castle and her rightful place as queen. With the help of an underground resistance movement that rejects beauty treatments entirely-and the backing of alternative newspaper The Spider's Web, Camille uses her powers, her connections and her cunning to outwit her greatest nemesis, Sophia, and restore peace to Orleans.
The Good Luck Girls (The Good Luck Girls #1) - Charlotte Nicole Davis
Aster, the protector Violet, the favorite Tansy, the medic Mallow, the fighter Clementine, the catalyst. The country of Arketta calls them Good Luck Girls--they know their luck is anything but. Sold to a "welcome house" as children and branded with cursed markings. Trapped in a life they would never have chosen.
Kingdom of Souls (Kingdom of Souls #1) - Rena Barron
Magic has a price—if you’re willing to pay. Born into a family of powerful witchdoctors, Arrah yearns for magic of her own. But each year she fails to call forth her ancestral powers, while her ambitious mother watches with growing disapproval. There’s only one thing Arrah hasn’t tried, a deadly last resort: trading years of her own life for scraps of magic. Until the Kingdom’s children begin to disappear, and Arrah is desperate to find the culprit.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man - Jason Reynolds
Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He's even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he's Spider Man.
A River of Royal Blood (A River of Royal Blood #1) - Amanda Joy
Set in a North African-inspired fantasy world where two sisters must fight to the death to win the crown.
The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor
In West Africa in 2070, after fifteen-year-old "shadow speaker" Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, she embarks on a dangerous journey across the Sahara to find Jaa, her father's killer, and upon finding her, she also discovers a greater purpose to her life and to the mystical powers she possesses.
Zahrah the Windseeker - Nnedi Okorafor
In the northern Ooni Kingdom, fear of the unknown runs deep, and children born dada are rumored to have special powers. 13 year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl, but unlike other kids in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks. Only her best friend, Dari, isn't afraid of her, even when something unusual begins happening. The two friends investigate, edging closer and closer to danger. When Dari's life is threatened. Zahrah must face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.
Historical Fiction
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come (Logans #8) - Mildred D. Taylor
Cassie Logan is a young woman, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated by the racist society of America, and the often violent confrontations that brought about change.
The Friendship (Logans #5.5) - Mildred D. Taylor
Cassie Logan and her brothers have been warned never to go to the Wallace store, so they know to expect trouble there. What they don t expect is to hear Mr. Tom Bee, an elderly black man, daring to call the white storekeeper by his first name. The year is 1933, the place is Mississippi, and any child knows that some things just aren’t done.
The Gold Cadillac (Logans) - Mildred D. Taylor
Lois and Wilma are proud of their father's brand-new gold Cadillac, and excited that the family will be driving it all the way from Ohio to Mississippi. But as they travel deeper into the rural South, there are no admiring glances for the shiny new car; only suspicion and anger for the black man behind the wheel. For the first time in their lives, Lois and her sister know what it's like to feel scared because of the color of their skin. A personal, poignant look at a black child's first experience with institutional racism.
Inventing Victoria - Tonya Bolden
A story that illuminates post-Reconstruction America in an intimate portrait of a determined young woman who dares to seize the opportunity of a lifetime.
The Land (Logans #1) - Mildred D. Taylor
The son of a prosperous landowner and a former slave, Paul-Edward Logan is unlike any other boy he knows. His white father has acknowledged him and raised him openly-something unusual in post-Civil War Georgia. But as he grows into a man he learns that life for someone like him is not easy.
Let the Circle Be Unbroken (Logans #5) - Mildred D. Taylor
Continuing the story of the Logan family. The children are happy in their warm, stable family but outside is a climate of fear and tension. Their friend T.J. goes on trial for murder and stands before an all-white jury. Cousin Suzella tries to pass for white, with humiliating consequences. And when Cassie's neighbour stands up for her right to vote she and her cousin are driven from their home. Cassie is realising what it means to grow up black and powerless, but her family stand together, proving that courage, love and understanding can defy even the deepest prejudices.
Ninth Ward (The Louisiana Girls Trilogy #1) - Jewell Parker Rhodes
Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She doesn't have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker, wise in the ways of the world and able to predict the future. So when Mama Ya-Ya's visions show a powerful hurricane--Katrina--fast approaching, it's up to Lanesha to call upon the hope and strength Mama Ya-Ya has given her to help them both survive the storm.
The Road to Memphis (Logans #6) - Mildred D. Taylor
The third book in the powerfully written Logan family saga finds the 17-year-old Cassie Logan dreaming of college and law school. But no amount of schooling can prepare her for the violent explosion that takes place when her friend Moe lashes out at his white tormenters--an action unheard of in Mississippi. Moe will be in even greater danger if he stays in town, so it is up to Cassie, her brother, and their friends to accompany Moe on the road to Memphis--and to safety.
Saving Savannah - Tonya Bolden
The story of an African-American girl becoming a woman on her own terms against the backdrop of widespread social change in the early 1900s America.
A Song Below Water - Bethany C. Morrow*
Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Nevermind she's also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers. At least she has her bestie Effie by her side as they tackle high school drama, family secrets, and unrequited crushes. But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation.
Song of the Trees (Logans #3) - Mildred D. Taylor
With the depression bearing down on her family and food in short supply, Cassie isn't sure where her next meal will come from. But there is one thing that she knows will always be there-the whispering trees outside her window. Cassie's trees are a steady source of comfort to her, but they also happen to be worth a lot of money. When Mr. Andersen tries to force Big Ma to sell their valuable trees, Cassie can't just sit by and let it happen. She knows that her family needs the money, but something tells her that they need the trees just as much.
Sugar (The Louisiana Girls Trilogy #2) - Jewell Parker Rhodes
Ten-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road sugar plantation along the banks of the Mississippi. Slavery is over, but laboring in the fields all day doesn't make her feel very free. Thankfully, Sugar has a knack for finding her own fun, especially when she joins forces with forbidden friend Billy, the white plantation owner's son.
Towers Falling - Jewell Parker Rhodes
When her fifth-grade teacher hints that a series of lessons about home and community will culminate with one big answer about two tall towers once visible outside their classroom window, Deja is confused. She starts a journey of discovery, with new friends Ben and Sabeen. But just as she gets closer to answering big questions about who she is, what America means, and how communities can grow (and heal), she uncovers new questions, too. Like, why does Pop get so angry when she brings up anything about the towers?
The Well: David's Story (Logans #2) - Mildred D. Taylor
During a drought, the Logan family shares their well water with all their neighbors, black and white alike. But David and Hammer find it hard to share with Charlie Simms, who torments them because they are black. Hammer's pride and Charlie's meanness are a dangerous mixture, and tensions build and build.
Horror
Jane was born just before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville - derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do, but she quickly gets caught in the middle of a conspiracy.
LGBTQ+
The Black Flamingo - Dean Atta
A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen - then at university he finds his wings as a drag artist, The Black Flamingo. A bold story about the power of embracing your uniqueness. Sometimes, we need to take charge, to stand up wearing pink feathers - to show ourselves to the world in bold colour.
Little & Lion - Brandy Colbert
When Suzette comes from her boarding school she isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are and her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new… the same girl her brother is in love with.
A book that explores old friendships, new crushes, and the path to self-discovery.
Jam lives in a town where there aren’t any monsters. However when she meets Pet, a creature who emerges from one of her mother's paintings, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt the monster that is in her best friend Redemption home.
This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story - Kacen Callender
A rom-com about Nathan Bird, who has sworn off happy endings but is sorely tested when his former best friend, Ollie, moves back to town.
Contemporary fantasy
Jam lives in a town where there aren’t any monsters. However when she meets Pet, a creature who emerges from one of her mother's paintings, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt the monster that is in her best friend Redemption home.
Poetry
The Black Flamingo - Dean Atta
A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen - then at university he finds his wings as a drag artist, The Black Flamingo. A bold story about the power of embracing your uniqueness. Sometimes, we need to take charge, to stand up wearing pink feathers - to show ourselves to the world in bold colour.
For Every One - Jason Reynolds
For Every One is just that: for every one. For every one person. For every one dream. But especially for every one kid. The kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream.
Long Way Down - Jason Reynolds
A novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.
The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo
A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world.
Rebound (The Crossover 0.5) - Kwame Alexander
Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as readers get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshipping, basketball star his sons look up to.
Solo - Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess
Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he’d give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for lost potential, failure, and tragedy. The one true light is his girlfriend, Chapel, but her parents have forbidden their relationship, assuming—like many—that Blade will become just like his father.
Swing - Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess
Things usually do not go as planned for seventeen-year-old Noah. He and his best friend Walt (aka Swing) have been cut from the high school baseball team for the third year in a row, and it looks like Noah’s love interest since third grade, Sam, will never take it past the “best friend” zone. Noah would love to retire his bat and accept the status quo, but Walt has big plans for them both, which include making the best baseball comeback ever, getting the girl, and finally finding cool.
Thriller/Mystery
Allegedly - Tiffany D. Jackson
Mary killed a baby. Allegedly. The media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it? She wouldn’t say. Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. When she meets Ted and has a child the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma.
The one secret she cares about keeping - her identity - is about to be exposed. Unless Lauren "Panda" Daniels - an anonymous photoblogger who specializes in busting classmates and teachers in compromising positions - plays along with her blackmailer's little game of Dare or… Dare. But when the game turns deadly, Panda doesn't know what to do. And she may need to step out of the shadows to save herself… and everyone else on the Admirer's hit list.
I shouldn’t tell you where I’m from or why my family moved to Stepton, Virginia. I shouldn’t tell you who I really am, or my hair, eye, and skin color. And I definitely shouldn’t tell you about my friend Eli Cruz and the major conspiracy he was about to uncover when he died - right after I moved to town. About how I had to choose between solving his murder with his hot sister, Reya, and “staying low-key” like the Program has taught me. About how moving to Stepon changed my life forever. But I’m going to.
Monday's Not Coming - Tiffany D. Jackson
Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for school for days, Claudia knows that something is wrong. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is of even less help. As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she’s gone?
Nikki Tate is infamous, even by Las Vegas standards. Her dad is sitting on death row, convicted of killing his best friend in a gambling dispute turned ugly. And for five years, he’s maintained his innocence. But Nikki wants no part of that. She’s been working on Operation Escape Vegas: playing in illegal card games so she can save up enough money to get out come graduation day.
Sixteen-year-old Paris Secord's (aka DJ ParSec) career - and life - has come to an untimely end, and the local music scene is reeling. No one is feeling the pain more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and Paris's chief groupie, Fuse. But suspicion trumps grief, and since each suspects the other of Paris's murder, they're locked in a high-stakes game of public accusations and sabotage.
Romance
Everything, Everything - Nicola Yoon
A romance story about a girl,with a disease making her allergic to the world. When they get new next door neighbours, Olly catches her eye.
I Wanna Be Where You Are - Kristina Forest
When Chloe Pierce’s mom forbids her to apply for a spot at the dance conservatory of her dreams, she devises a secret plan to drive two hundred miles to the nearest audition. But Chloe hits her first speed bump when her annoying neighbor Eli insists upon hitching a ride, threatening to tell Chloe’s mom if she leaves him and his smelly dog, Geezer, behind. So now Chloe’s chasing her ballet dreams down the east coast—two unwanted (but kinda cute) passengers in her car, butterflies in her stomach, and a really dope playlist on repeat.
Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender*
Felix Love has never been in love.What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, he also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle....
A Love Hate Thing - Whitney D. Grandison
When Tyson Tricehen and Nandy Smith, two young people, from completely different worlds are stuck under one roof, the house may not be big enough for their hate…or their love.
Now That I've Found You - Kristina Forest*
Eighteen-year-old Evie Jones is poised to be Hollywood’s next big movie star, following in the footsteps of her über famous grandma, Evelyn Conaway. That is, until a friend's betrayal ultimately leads to Evie being fired and blacklisted. A public appearance with Evelyn Conaway, AKA Gigi, is just the thing to save Evie’s floundering career. But the week Evie plans to present Gigi with a major award in front of Hollywood’s elite, Gigi, a recluse who’s been out of the limelight for almost 20 years, disappears.
Opposite of Always - Justin A. Reynolds
When Jack and Kate meet at a party, Jack knows he’s falling hard. But this love story is complicated. It is an almost happily ever after. Because Kate dies. And their story should end there. Yet Kate’s death sends Jack back to the beginning, the moment they first meet, and Kate’s there again. Jack isn’t sure if he’s losing his mind. Still, if he has a chance to prevent Kate’s death, he’ll take it.
A retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, balancing cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in her vibrant reimagining of this classic.
The Sun Is Also a Star - Nicola Yoon
Natasha: I believe in science and facts. I’m not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a New York City street and falls in love. Not when my family is being deported to Jamaica. Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, student, living up to my parents’ expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store - for both of us. The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story - Kacen Callender
A rom-com about Nathan Bird, who has sworn off happy endings but is sorely tested when his former best friend, Ollie, moves back to town.
AUTHORS / EDITORS / ILLUSTRATORS
Australia
Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian)
Yassmin's Story, You Must Be Layla
Claire G. Coleman (Wirlomin-Noongar-Australian)
Terra Nullius
Kim Scott (Noongar-Australian)
That Deadman Dance, Taboo
Melissa Lucashenko (Goorie-Australian)
Mullumbimby, Too Much Lip
Canada
What We All Long For, Love Enough
Chelsea L. Polk
Witchmark, Stormsong
China
Kerry Young (Chinese-African-British)
Pao, Gloria, Show Me A Mountain
Cyprus
Dean Atta (Jamaican-Cypriot)
I Am Nobody's Nigger, The Black Flamingo
Brazil
Egypt
Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian)
Yassmin's Story, You Must Be Layla
Dominican Republic
Elizabeth Acevedo (Dominican-American)
The PoetX, With the Fire on High, Clap When You Land
Naima Coster (Dominican-American)
Eritreia
Sulaiman Addonia (Eritrean-Ethiopian)
The Consequences of Love, Silence is My Mother Tongue*
Ethiopia
Sulaiman Addonia (Eritrean- Ethiopian)
The Consequences of Love, Silence is My Mother Tongue*
The Shadow King, Beneath the Lion's Gaze
French
Marie NDiaye (Senegalese-French)
Three Strong Women, Ladivine, Self-Portrait in Green
Ghanian
Changes: A Love Story, Our Sister Killjoy
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Two Thousand Seasons
Housegirl
Yaa Gyasi (Ghanaian-American)
Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom*
Bridget Minamore (Ghanaian-British)
Titanic
Taiye Selasi (Ghanaian-Nigerian-British)
Ghana Must Go
Kwei Quartey (Ghanaian-American)
Wife of the Gods, Children of the Street
Haiti
Anais Duplan (Hatian-American)
Take This Stallion, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus
Roxane Gay (Hatian-American)
Hunger
Maika Moulite (Haitian-American)
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine
Maritza Moulite (Haitian-American)
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine
Ibi Zoboi (Haitian-American)
Pride, American Street
Hawaii
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Honduras
Ireland
Emma Dabiri (Nigerian-Irish)
Don't Touch My Hair, Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture*
Jamaica
How to Love a Jamaican
Dean Atta (Jamaican-Cypriot)
I Am Nobody's Nigger, The Black Flamingo
These Ghosts are Family
The Pirate's Daughter, The True History of Paradise
The Other Side of Paradise, Crossfire: A Litany for Survival
Yrsa Daley-Ward (Jamaican-Nigerian)
The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir, Bone
From Harvey River, By Love Possessed, Selected Poems
Andrea Levy (Jamaican British)
Small Island, The Long Song
Candice Carty-Williams (Jamaican-British)
Queenie
Sara Collins (Jamaican-British)
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Here Comes the Sun, Patsy
Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads
A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Book of Night Women, Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Augustown, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, The Last Warner Woman
Zadie Smith (Jamaican-British)
White Teeth, On Beauty, Swing Time
Everything, Everything, The Sun is Also a Star
Kerry Young (Chinese-African)
Pao, Gloria, Show Me A Mountain
Kenya
Dust, The Dragonfly Sea
Sulwe
A Grain of Wheat, The River Between, Wizard of the Crow
Liberia
She Would Be King, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir*
Nigerian
GraceLand
Stay with Me
Tomi Adeyemi (Nigerian-American)
Children of Blood and Bone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance
Things Fall Apart, Every Man, No Longer at Ease
Americanah, We Should All Be Feminists, Half of a Yellow Sun
Reni K. Amayo (Nigerian-British)
Daughters of Nri
Everything Good Will Come, A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta, The Bead Collector
Blackass
We Won't Fade into Darkness,
My Sister the Serial Killer
Emma Dabiri (Nigerian-Irish)
Don't Touch My Hair, Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture*
Yrsa Daley-Ward (Jamaican-Nigerian)
The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir, Bone
The Half-God of Rainfall
Akwaeke Emezi (Nigerian-Tamil)
Freshwater, Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji
June Eric-Udorie (Nigerian-Irish/British)
Diana Evans (Nigerian-British)
Ordinary People, 26a
Bernardine Evaristo (Nigerian-British)
Oil on Water by Helon Habila
Uzodinma Iweala (Nigerian-American)
Speak No Evil, Beasts of No Nation
Born on a Tuesday, Becoming Nigerian: A Guide
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
The Fishermen, An Orchestra of Minorities
Temi Oh (Nigerian-British)
Irenosen Okojie (Nigerian-British)
Nnedi Okorafor (Nigerian-American)
Akata Witch, Binti, Who Fears Death
Chinelo Okparanta (Nigerian-American)
The Famished Road, Astonishing the Gods
Welcome to Lagos, The Spider King's Daughter
Notes from a Young Black Chef
Helen Oyeyemi (Nigerian-British)
Boy, Snow, Bird, What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Mr. Fox
Taiye Selasi (Ghanaian-Nigerian-British)
Ghana Must Go
Death and the King's Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel, Aké: The Years of Childhood
Tade Thompson (Nigerian-British)
The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Pauper, Brawler, And Slanderer, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
On Black Sisters Street
Panama
Veronica Chambers (Panamanian-America)
Puerto-Rico
Rwanda
The Barefoot Woman
Saint Thomas
This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story, Queen of the Conquered, Hurricane Child
Senegal
Marie NDiaye (Senegalese-French)
Three Strong Women, Ladivine, Self-Portrait in Green
Somalia
Roda Ahmed (Somalian-Norwegian)
Mae Among the Stars
Maps, North of Dawn
Warsan Shire (Somalian-British)
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, Our Men Do Not Belong To Us, Her Blue Body
South-Africa
I Know How to Fix Myself
Evening Primrose
Born a Crime
Sudan
Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian)
Yassmin's Story, You Must Be Layla
Safia Elhillo
The January Children
Tamil
Akwaeke Emezi (Nigerian-Tamil)
Freshwater, Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji
Trinidad and Tobago
The Jumbies
Vashti Harrison (Trinidadian-American)
Little Leaders, Sulwe, Hair Love
Uganda
Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe
The Ballad of Black Tom, The Changeling, The Devil in Silver
Kintu, Manchester Happened
The United Kingdom
Reni K. Amayo (Nigerian-British)
Daughters of Nri
Andrea Levy (Jamaican British)
Small Island, The Long Song
Candice Carty-Williams (Jamaican-British)
Queenie
Sara Collins (Jamaican-British)
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
June Eric-Udorie (Nigerian-Irish/British)
Diana Evans (Nigerian-British)
Ordinary People, 26a
Bernardine Evaristo (Nigerian-British)
Girl, Women, Other
Bridget Minamore (Ghanaian-British)
Titanic
Temi Oh (Nigerian-British)
Irenosen Okojie (Nigerian-British)
Helen Oyeyemi (Nigerian-British)
Boy, Snow, Bird, What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Mr. Fox
Taiye Selasi (Ghanaian-Nigerian-British)
Ghana Must Go
Warsan Shire (Somalian-British)
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, Our Men Do Not Belong To Us, Her Blue Body
Tade Thompson (Nigerian-British)
Kerry Young (Chinese-African-British)
Pao, Gloria, Show Me A Mountain
The United States of America
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Training School for Negro Girls
Friday Black
The Crossover, Booked, Rebound
This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality
The Heart of a Woman, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Mom & Me & Mom
She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman
A Taste of Honey, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps
Giovanni’s Room, The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Kingdom of Souls, Maya and the Rising Dark*
Remembered
The Sellout, The White Boy Shuffle, Slumberland
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Fellon: Poems, Bastards of the Reagan Era, A Question of Freedom
Inventing Victoria, Saving Savannah
Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Fledging
Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System
The Tradition, The New Testament
Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me, Black Privilege
Hair Love
The Black God’s Drum, The Haunting of Tram Car 015
The Belles, The Everlasting Rose, Tiny Pretty Things
Between the World and Me, The Water Dancer, Black Panther
Brandy Colbert
Little Lion, Pointe
A Princess in Theory, A Duke by Default
Let Love Have the Last Word
The Good Luck Girls
The Voice in My Head, Roman and Jewel, Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now
The Prey of Gods, Escaping Exodus, Temper
The Souls of Black Folk
The Good House, My Soul to Keep, The Between
Invisible Man, Juneteenth, Shadow and Act
Ironheart, 1919, Electric Arches
Build Yourself a Boat
I Wanna Be Where You Are, Now That I've Found You*
Full Disclosure
Not So Pure and Simple*
Farmhand
The Last Black Unicorn
Around the Way Girl
How Are You Going to Save Yourself
Don't Tell Me Not to Ask Why: Poetry Prose
- Feminism is for Everybody, All About Love, Ain't I a Woman
Obviously: Stories from My Timeline
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Dread Nation, Deathless Divide
Allegedly, Let Me Hear a Rhyme, Monday's Not Coming
The Broken Earth Trilogy, Inheritance, Dreamblood
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
An American Marriage, Silver Sparrow, Leaving Atlanta
A River of Royal Blood
The Ballad of Black Tom, The Changeling, The Devil in Silver
The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir
For Black Girls Like Me, The Lucky Daughter
Sister Outsider, Zami, The Collected Poems
How It Went Down, Light It Up
Sugar, SugaThis Bitter Earth, Gathering of Waters
The Brother/Sister Plays, Choir Boy, The Brothers Size
A Blade So Black, A Dream So Dark, A Crown So Cursed*
Slay
Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon
Becoming
Ghost Boys
Who Put This Song On?
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know
Opposite of Always, Long Way Down, All American Boys
Rebecca Roanhorse (African-American, Ohkay Owingeh, Pueblo)
Trail of Lightning, Storm of Locusts, Resistance Reborn
Hurricanes: A Memoir
Everything's Trash, But It's Okay
Everfair, New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color
This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare
Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel I, II, She Felt Like Feeling Nothing
For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
Hoodoo, Black Panther: The Young Prince, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away
An Unkindness of Ghosts, The Deep
Dear Martin, Odd One Out, Jackpot
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Land, Let the Circle Be Unbroken
Heads of the Colored People
The Hate U Give, On the Come Up
The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
Dark Matter
The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, The Temple of My Familiar
Salvage The Bones, Men We Reaped, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Kawai Strong Washburn (Hawaiian)
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
The Cook Up, The Beast Side, We Speak for Ourselves
More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)
The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, Zone One
Brown Girl Dreaming, Another Brooklyn, Red at the Bone
Native Son, Black Boy, Uncle Tom’s Children
Zambia
The Old Drift
Zimbabwe
Buck: A Memoir by M.K. Asante
We Need New Names
These Bones Will Rise Again, Sweet Medicine
Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not, This Mournable Body
The Book of Memory, An Elegy for Easterly, Out of Darkness, Shining Light
The Hairdresser of Harare, The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician
The Boy Next Door, Peace and Conflict, An Act of Defiance
House of Stone
UNKNOWN
Salt, Nejma