Our Books

In a city that has lost its shimmer, Lindanathi and his two friends Ruan and Cecelia sell illegal pharmaceuticals while chasing their next high. Lindanathi, deeply troubled by his hand in his brother's death, has turned his back on his family, until a message from home reminds him of a promise he made years before. When a puzzling masked man enters their lives, Lindanathi is faced with a decision: continue his life in Cape Town, or return to his family and to all he has left behind.

Rendered in lyrical, bright prose and set in a not-so-new South Africa, The Reactive is a poignant, life-affirming story about secrets, memories and the redemption that comes from facing what haunts us most.

A raw, eye-opening memoir from a North East firefighter, charting her journey into the male dominated heart of the British Fire and Rescue Service.

Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid follows young, idealistic recruit, Kate Fullen, as she negotiates training school and settles into life on the watch. With incidents and routine tasks woven into the fabric of the story, it describes the consuming pressure, emotional turmoil and unpredictable nature of the job.

Utilising the rare perspective of a northern, queer, working-class female firefighter, Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid examines the more intricate difficulties experienced by minority groups and gives a voice to a profession that is seldom heard and rarely seen.

Pasta-fanatic, girl-next-door Faye Bonsu is back for another adventure in love, life and culture!

Faye Bonsu seems to have it all: a drop-dead gorgeous and successful boyfriend, a bourgeoning career as an interior designer and a rent-free mansion in leafy Hampstead to call home. But with all her friends shifting into yummy-mummy mode, a man who seems to have no desire to put a ring on it, tricky clients, and a very attractive and single boss, things are not quite as simple as they might appear.
Hoping to escape from her suddenly complicated life and revive her wilting romance, Faye returns to sunny Ghana for what she hopes will be the time of her life. But life doesn't always offer second chances and when disaster strikes, she is forced to confront the biggest question of her life and to make a choice that comes with consequences she will have to live with forever.

Evelyn Dove embraced the worlds of jazz, musical theatre and, most importantly, cabaret, in a career spanning five decades from the 1920s through to the 1960s. A black British diva with movie star looks, she captivated audiences and admirers around the world, enjoying the same appeal as the 'Forces Sweetheart' Vera Lynn throughout the Second World War.

Refusing to be constrained by her race or middle-class West African and English backgrounds, she would perform for infamous Russian leader, Joseph Stalin; become a regular vocalist for the BBC and a celebrated performer across continental Europe, India and the US.

At the height of her fame in the 1930s, she worked with the pioneers of black British theatre, replacing Josephine Baker as the star attraction in a revue at the Casino de Paris and scandalizing her family by appearing on stage semi-nude.

This is a celebration of an extraordinary career punctuated with vertiginous highs and profound lows, and places Dove in historical context with artists of her time, such as Adelaide Hall, Dame Cleo Laine and Dame Shirley Bassey.

The new satire from the author of Radio Sunrise.

Who will be the next president of the Society of Journalists in Lagos? Who is qualified to lead the esteemed body of journalists and help uphold professional ethics in the state? Will honesty and integrity be able to beat charisma and misinformation?

When a sick man flies in from a neighbouring country, he becomes Nigeria's first ebola case-patient zero. As the cases rise and journalists across the country vie for the lead in reporting the news on the imminent pandemic, Ifiok and his colleagues must immediately tackle the spread of the virus by raising awareness, sharing information, and supporting the outreach efforts of health workers. Unfortunately, they also have to battle against hysteria, misinformation, corruption and denial. Ifiok's love life could be a much needed escape from the stresses of work, if not for his meddling mother and the outdated traditions of society.

Will Ifiok succeed in his quest to become the next president of the Society of Journalists, win the battle against misinformation and find love along the way?

'Patricia's shoes. That's what I'd heard that morning, echoing outside of my bathroom window.'

After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith's picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs spirals out of control, causing her to hire an assistant to keep her world from hurtling off its axis. In comes the composed and elegant Brianna. But Elizabeth's obsession is catching, and Brianna quickly becomes accomplice rather than diversion.

Why? Because Brianna has questions, too...

She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth's neighbourhood saw him and thought to call the police. Who she can hold responsible for his death. As the two women hurtle towards the truth, it becomes clear that neither of them is who they claim to be.

A scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions.

The revolution will not take place indoors.

Kenyan beekeeper-turned-farmer Jess de Boer embarks upon a decade-long journey to find purpose and potential in the explosive world of regenerative agriculture.

From honey hunting in the last remaining pockets of rainforest in southern Ethiopia, to gardening in the depths of Kenya's largest slum, Jess takes you to the arid lands of Northern Kenya where a group of pioneering farmers have begun to connect the people with the dust beneath their feet.

This is a journey into restorative action. Confronting the challenges of our stagnant education systems, unsustainable food production techniques and the growing disconnect of our youth, de Boer merges fact and science with hard-won wisdom in this inspiring and accessible tale of proactivity and hope.

Simon Weekes becomes an overnight celebrity after his heroics during the 7/7 Bombings. But Simon can't afford the newfound fame and attention - he has too much to lose.

July 7, 2005. Simon Weekes is travelling on the London Underground when his tube carriage is wrecked by a bomb blast. Virtually everyone is killed and almost all the survivors are severely injured. Except for Simon.

Having quickly and calmly organised the small band of survivors out of the wreckage and to safety, word of Simon's heroics get out in the days following the bombing. Now under the full glare of the media spotlight, he becomes an overnight celebrity, hounded for interviews and regularly approached in the street by autograph hunters.

The only thing is, he doesn't want all the attention. He can't afford it. He has too much to lose.

A visual overview of contemporary African fashion, Fashion Africa is a comprehensive guide compiled with an ethical perspective.

Jacqueline Shaw promotes Africa as a place not just for sourcing materials, but with the potential to be a vital epicentre of trade within the global marketplace. This guide is the first of its kind to bring together designers, design companies, ethical manufacturers and more, all with an African connection.

Fashion Africa is a comprehensive guide to the designers, materials, and sustainable practices available on continental Africa, and provides an excellent resource in conjunction for the very vibrant growing industry already in existence.

A stunningly crafted debut short story collection, The Blink That Kills the Eye takes a poetic torch to the shadows of daily life, illuminating the characters, situations, emotions and dilemmas that pour into even the most ordinary existences.

From building sites to prison cells... from the birth of love to the last moments of breath... poet Anthony Anaxagorou expertly navigates through the tangled nets of invisibility, desperation and power to bring us time-defining tales of tragedy and hope - commenting on the irony of our shrinking capacity to really see ourselves or each other in a world increasingly defined by appearances and dangerous preconceptions.

While each story stands affectingly on its own, Anaxagorou also weaves an affecting chronology, the lives of the characters overlapping and intertwining as they develop individually.

Exploring themes of invisibility, alienation, abuse, and loss, this brave and touching short story collection shows the poet-educator at his soul-stirring best.

A writer in self-imposed exile in London receives a call from the Prime Minister of his former country, inviting him to return to write the Prime Minister's biography. As he embarks from his small flat in west London to the modern Caribbean island he once called home, he immediately finds himself thrust into a world of exceptional wealth, power, and corruption.

In the midst of this turmoil the writer falls deeply in love. As the love affair advances, the writer's passion for the island resurfaces, until the loss of a close friend propels him to make one final, potentially cataclysmic decision that will change everything.

Winner of the Betty Trask Award 2016.

"A novel of epic proportions... I fully expect to see Butterfly Fish on many an award nomination list." - Yvette Edwards

"A stunningly well-written book, juggling different timescales with great skill. Benin itself is vividly imagined in a historical narrative that runs in parallel with the contemporary London one. It is a wonderful novel." - Simon Brett OBE

"A wonderful, richly drawn novel, cleverly juxtaposing scenes from everyday London with African folklore and mysticism." - Joanne Harris

A stunning debut from the author of Speak Gigantular.

A fragile outsider living in London, Joy struggles to pull the threads of her life back together after her mother's sudden death. Emptiness consumes her and, needing to fill the gaps of her loss, she finds she is drawn to a unique artefact inherited from her mother - a warrior's head cast in brass that belonged to a king in eighteenth century Benin, Nigeria.

Joy is haunted by a beautiful young woman who appears in her photographs, familiar yet beguilingly distinct, the woman trails her wherever she goes. Joy begins to dream of a different time, a different place. She feels an inexplicable pull towards this mysterious female, and a past revealing itself through clues is scattered in her path. As family secrets come to light, she unearths the ties between her mother, grandfather, the wife of the king, a fearsome warrior, and the brass head's pivotal connection to them all.

Haunting and compelling, Butterfly Fish is a richly told story of love and hope; of family secrets, power, political upheaval, loss and coming undone.

WINNER 2017 NAACP AWARD FOR FICTION

"Simply miraculous... As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music." -Washington Post

From the bestselling author of Richard and Judy 2021 Book Club pick Sugar, is a riveting and masterful work of delicious fiction navigating the Blues and the Jazz Age, and the experience of Black people under Nazi occupation.


After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move from Macon, Georgia to Harlem where Harlan becomes a professional musician. When Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre, affectionately referred to as ""The Harlem of Paris"", Harlan jumps at the opportunity, convincing Lizard to join him.

But after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany, irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life.

Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden's mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden's familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters to create a layered and complex navigation of the true history of Black people caught under Nazi occupation and in concentration camps.

"McFadden packs a powerful punch with tight prose and short chapters that bear witness to key events in early twentieth century history...McFadden presents a remarkably crisp portrait of one average man's extraordinary bravery in the face of pure evil." - Booklist

"There is so much beauty in the words that Bernice L. McFadden wrote to deliver this story that I am in awe of her writing. This is one read that will stay with me for a very long time, and I will never tire of recommending it to all" - La Chouett Blog

On Reflection: Moments, Flight and Nothing New attempts to grapple with the complexities of our present moment. Personal and imagined stories appear as fragments of everyday scenes forming a narrative of self-discovery. Vignettes accompanied by photography explore life's contradictions, trauma, and the ways in which we navigate the fluidity of cities.

The poems move back and forth in time and across Europe, highlighting a range of experiences and perspectives of our modern society as a series of snapshots. In each, we catch a glimpse of ourselves, demonstrating how such moments and characters influence our journeys. Written from the consciousness of a British Ghanaian, the collection is a love letter to the lived and shared experience of those struggling and learning about the various intersections of their identity. Through the voice of Akos and other characters, Wiredu reaches to understand the significance of history, its effect on an evolving African diaspora in Europe, and finds hope in the present as she proposes an optimistic dialogue about the future.

Emily's story begins on St. Stephen's Day, 2010, in St. John's, Newfoundland when she gives birth to a baby girl named Sadie Jane with a shock of snow-white hair. Within 3 months Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic disorder where pigment fails to form in the skin, hair and eyes, with accompanying maladies such as photophobia and partial blindness.
Emily is drawn to understanding her child's differences by researching the cultural beliefs associated with albinism worldwide; a journey that takes her to a faraway continent, through her own family tree, and all the while unearthing discoveries that vacillate between beauty, amazement and horror.

At a time when medicine is a highly sought-after career for Indian women, it is hard to imagine what it was like for the pioneers. The story of how firmly they were bound in fetters of family, caste and society, and how fiercely they fought to escape, needs to be told. In Lady Doctors, Kavitha Rao unearths the extraordinary stories of six women from the 1860s to the 1930s, who defied the idea that they were unfit for medicine by virtue of their gender.

From Anandibai Joshi, who broke caste rules by crossing an ocean, to Rukhmabai Raut, who escaped a child marriage, divorced her husband and studied to be a doctor; from Kadambini Ganguly, who took care of eight
children while she worked, to child widow Haimabati Sen, who overcame poverty and hardship-these women had a profound and lasting impact. And in their forgotten lives lie many lessons for modern women. In truth, the compelling stories of these radical women have been erased from our textbooks and memories, because histories have mostly been written by men, about men. In an immensely readable narrative, and with impeccable research, Lady Doctors rectifies this omission.

'If by some chance you happen on these letters, know that I waited for you. And if you don't find me, it is not because I stopped waiting...'

A chance encounter on a football pitch in Cameroon sees Fatima cross paths with Bessem, opening up the page for an all-consuming, law and logic defying romance.

Even knowing that same-sex relationships are criminalised, Fatima and Bessem decide to live out their love. All seems to be going well, until one day tragedy strikes, and Fatima disappears...

Thirteen years have passed, and Bessem is now a university professor, keeping her sexuality secret, but the memory of Fatima never leaves her. When one coincidence becomes several, Bessem takes the signs as a cosmic command: to go and find her old lover again.

Told mostly through unsent letters, These Letters End in Tears, powerfully charts all the different ways that love, despite all odds, comes out on top.

Can a love story survive in an economically challenged Brooklyn on the verge of World War II?

Marie and Benjamin are in love, but World War II is approaching and so is the military draft for Benjamin. But one adversity after the other forces them to separate.

Heartbroken, Marie can only keep surviving while hoping that Benjamin comes back to her. But while he's away, another man comes knocking on her heart. Pushed to marry him by everyone around her, Marie needs to make a tough decision-waiting for Benjamin and following her dreams to see the world or move on with her life with another man?

New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with a new essay collection that is equal parts thoughtful, hilarious, and sharp about human connection, race, hair, travel, dating, Black excellence, and more.

Written in Phoebe's unforgettable voice and with her unparalleled wit, Robinson's latest collection, laced with spot-on pop culture references, takes on a wide range of topics. From the values she learned from her parents (including, but not limited to, advice on not bringing outside germs onto your clean bed) to her and her boyfriend, lovingly known as British Baekoff, deciding to have a child-free union, to the way the Black Lives Matter movement took center stage in America, and, finally, the continual struggle to love her 4C hair, each essay is packed with humor and humanity.

By turns insightful, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartfelt, Please Don't Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes is not only a brilliant look at our current cultural moment, but a collection that will stay with you for years to come.

When in service of money and power, is love a deadly game of an eye for an eye?

In this politically charged thriller, Leona, an internationally renowned Sudanese-Nigerian model was in her youth asked by her father to marry Akinola, a billionaire and son of his rival and kill him afterwards, to avenge her mother.

Now on her deathbed, Leona is driven to confess her sins and find absolution.

But how does one begin to do that? For as dastardly as the sin, it was an act of love, loyalty, disobedience, and perceived fairness.

Set against a background of real events, Colours of Hatred is a complex web of plots detailing how one woman moved from childhood through the fire and anvil of love, loss, longing, lust, and duty.... to become a woman whose life stands for mpre than another person's bitter machinations.

"Smart, fierce, and poignant: perhaps the most exciting novel yet by this very talented writer." Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

A Young Pakistani photographer and his American born Pakistani-German lover travel from California to Pakistan in an attempt to exorcize their pasts, in order to build their shared future.

Up in the glaciers of Northern Pakistan, a tragedy at a mountain lake entwines the fates of the two lovers with the people they encounter there: Miryam, a nomad, travelling with her family into the mountains to escape persecution, and Irfan, haunted by ghosts and hoping that the mountains may offer him a reprieve from his troubles.

An expansive look at the intersection of cultures and what happens at those intersections, Thinner Than Skin is a powerful and moving read.

Tackling conflicts both internal and external, The Blink That Killed the Eye is a moving reflection on how those rendered invisible by society struggle to regain control over their lives.

While each story stands affectingly on its own, Anthony Anaxagorou also weaves an affecting chronology - the lives of the characters overlapping and intertwining as they develop individually.

Exploring themes of invisibility, alienation, abuse, and loss, this brave and touching short story collection shows the poet-playwright at his soul-stirring best.

A sparkling satire on international aid and celebrity, Looking for Bono charts one man's accidental quest to bring water to his community.

Baba is a semi-literate man living a simple life centred on the local auto repair shop in Palemo, how he will find his next meal and an obsession with his disinterested, Nollywood star-wannabe wife Munira and her voluptuous body. Baba is acutely aware of the water corruption that has left him, on occasion, without so much as a drop to even brush his teeth. One day on the news, a story about international humanitarian Bono flashes onscreen. Bono is in Africa to do good and like a thunderbolt, Baba decides that Bono is the answer to all of his problems. Once Bono hears about the local water issues he will want to step in and convince the president of Nigeria to end the corruption. Once the water is flowing, Baba can clean up and Munira will set her sights a little closer to home. Before he knows it, Baba is a celebrity being feted by the Lagos media and Munira has turned into his virtuous wife.

Will the ensuing media storm engulf Baba as he is launched into a world of high stakes foreign aid dealings and competing interests? Or will he return to his simple life with water for his community and the renewed affections of his Munira?

It is 1903. A lame and frail Malangana - 'Little Suns' - searches for his beloved Mthwakazi after many lonely years spent in Lesotho. Mthwakazi was the young woman he had fallen in love with twenty years earlier, before the assassination of Hamilton Hope ripped the two of them apart.

Intertwined with Malangana's story, is the account of Hope - a colonial magistrate who, in the late nineteenth century, was undermining the local kingdoms of the eastern Cape in order to bring them under the control of the British. It was he who wanted to coerce Malangana's king and his people, the amaMpondomise, into joining his battle - a scheme Malangana's conscience could not allow. Zakes Mda's fine novel Little Suns weaves the true events surrounding the death of Magistrate Hope into a touching story of love and perseverance that can transcend exile and strife.