The Deep Blue Between
£7.85Twin sisters Hassana and Husseina’s home is in ruins after a brutal raid. But this is not the end but the beginning of their story, one that will take them to unfamiliar cities and cultures, where they will forge new families, ward off dangers and truly begin to know themselves.
As the twins pursue separate paths in Brazil and the Gold Coast of West Africa, they remain connected through shared dreams of water. But will their fates ever draw them back together?
A sweeping adventure with richly evocative historical settings, The Deep Blue Between is a moving story of the bonds that can endure even the most dramatic change.
And Then He Sang A Lullaby
£7.85AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way. August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Segun is an openly gay student who is reluctant to fall in love with August, wanting only to be with a man who is comfortable with his sexuality and has the capacity to love without shame. But when the Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act is passed, August and Segun must find a way to tend to their blossoming romance in a country determined to eradicate them. And even while they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of people whose lives and loves are legal, the two young lovers find kindness, understanding, solace and comfort in the arms of each other and in unexpected places.
Henrietta Lacks: The Mother of Modern Medicine
£9.99Henrietta Lacks: The Mother of Modern Medicine introduces young readers to the remarkable story of story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancer cells revolutionised medical science. This book charts Henrietta’s life, from her upbringing in Virginia through to the births of her five children, before she passed away aged31 from cervical cancer. Henrietta’s cells lived on, taking from her tumour while she was undergoing surgery without her knowledge, leading to the discovery of the first ‘immortal cell line’, and giving Henrietta the name ‘the mother of modern medicine’.
Birds of West Africa
£9.99Birds of Our Land is a child’s guide to West African birds with the aim of introducing children to some of the many fascinating birds that they may not be familiar with. It explains the basic features of birds and key things to note in observing them and is accompanied by beautiful paintings by illustrator Robin Gowen of 25 birds representing the major species in the region.
Love Offers No Safety
£16.99Love Offers No Safety: Nigeria’s Queer Men Speak tells the stories of a marginalized community in their own words. These collected narratives include stories of love, heartbreak, tenderness, and struggle, and show that there is no one universal queer experience. Love Offers No Safety also serves as an exploration of what it is to be a man–how societal pressures foster toxic masculinity, and the barriers this creates for learning to understand one another, also challenges society at large to re-think its idea of what being a man entails and what this means for society itself and how such concepts limits men and women’s freedom to be, to live and to understand each other.
Crossing the Stream
£9.99Ato hasn’t visited his grandmother’s house since he was seven. He’s heard the rumors that she’s a witch, and his mother has told him he must never sit on the old couch on her porch. Now here he is, on that exact couch, with a strange looking drink his grandmother has given him, wondering if the rumors are true. What’s more, there’s a freshly dug hole in her yard that Ato suspects may be a grave meant for him. Meanwhile at school, Ato and his friends have entered a competition to win entry to Nnoma, the island bird sanctuary that Ato’s father helped created.
But something is poisoning the community garden where their project is housed, and Ato sets out to track down the culprit. In doing so, he brings his estranged mother and grandmother back together, and begins healing the wounds left on the family by his father’s death years before.
Avenues by Train
£14.99When seven-year-old Jedza witnesses a tragic incident involving a train and the death of his close boyhood friend in his hometown Miner’s Drift, he is convinced that his life is haunted. Now in his mid-20s, Jedza is a down-and-out electrician, moving to Harare in the hopes that he will escape the darkness and superstitions of the small town. But living in the shadowy restless atmosphere of the Avenues with its mysterious pools of water rising under musasa trees, he is tormented by the disappearance of his sister and their early encounters with ancestral spirits, the shapeshifting power of the njuzu and a vengeful ngozi. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.
An eclectic, experimental novel, AVENUES BY TRAIN is a brash and confident debut by an exciting new voice
Why Do You Dance When You Walk
£12.99One morning in Paris on the way to kindergarten, a little girl asks her father “Papa, why do you dance when you walk?” The question is innocent and serious. Why does her father limp, why can’t he ride a bicycle or a scooter? Her father feels compelled to answer, to bring back the memories of his childhood in Djibouti and tell her what happened to his leg. It was a place of sunlight and dust and sickness, a sickness that made him different, unique. They called him a skinflint and a runt, but he was the smartest kid in his school.
Waberi remembers the shifting desert of Djibouti, the Red Sea, the shanty roofs of the houses in his neighborhood, an immense loneliness and some unforgettable characters: Papa-la-Tige who sold baubles to tourists, his tough, silent mother Zahra who trembled, and his grandmother nicknamed Cochise. He tells of the moment when his life changed forever and the ensuing struggle that made him a man, a man who knows the value of poetry, silence and freedom, a man who is still dancing.
Obioma
£6.998 year-old Obioma is a football star. She uses a special stick to score goals and never loses a race in her wheelchair! But when she moves to a new city, she has to go to a new school where she has no friends, and everyone calls her “the girl with the wheelchair”. Obioma misses playing football most of all, until one day a girl named Ayana asks her to race. Once they start playing football, everyone joins in and Obioma finds a new team to play with!
Female Fear Factory
£11.99 – £12.99Patriarchy does not respect national boundaries. It is unabashedly promiscuous in its influences and tethers. Yet, it does use nationalism very productively.
An empty street at night. A crowded bus. A lecture hall. All sites of female fear, instilled in women and those who have been constructed female, from an early age.
Drawing on examples from around the world – from Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa to Saudi Arabia, the Americas and Europe, Gqola traces the construction and machinations of the female fear factory by exposing its lies, myths, and seductions. She shows how seemingly disparate effects, like driving bans, street harassment, and coercive professors, are the product of the ever-turning machinery of the female fear factory, and its use of fear as a tool of patriarchal subjugation and punishment.
Female Fear Factory: Unravelling Patriarchy’s Cultures of Violence is a sobering account of patriarchal violence in the world, and a hopeful vision for the work of unapologetic feminist imaginative strategies across the globe.
Unfinished Business
£8.99Dead pastors. Corrupt government officials. And over 100 million dollars unaccounted for. Amaka is back in this electrifying third instalment in the Amaka Thrillers series.
A frantic phone call interrupts Amaka Mbadiwe’s new life in London. A renowned pastor has been assassinated in his hotel room while one of her girls, Funke, hid naked and terrified inside a sofa. Amaka is headed back to Lagos, and to a new world of private jets, money-laundering and mega-churches. With her trusted ally Police Inspector Ibrahim out of the country, and the hostile Inspector Musa breathing down her neck, Amaka must race against the clock to rescue Funke and untangle this twisted web of religion, power and politics.
With a punishing intensity, full of twists and turns, Unfinished Business oscillates with scandal, corruption and sleaze.
A Mind to Silence and Other Stories
£10.99Includes the 2021 and 2022 shortlisted AKO Caine Prize stories as well as stories from the Caine Prize workshop
A woman who carries her fate and that of her community in her hair is beguiled by the deceptive designs of Europeans out to colonise her most prized possession. A man finds happiness in the reincarnation of a lost love. A young woman risks her life for freedom through the cultural practice of a human loan scheme.
Tales of sacrifice, love, freedom, self-discovery and loss fill the pages of this larger-than-life tapestry of stories from across Africa and its diaspora. Forged in a diversity of tempers and forms, these stories range from the epistolary to the experimental, from mysteries, noirs and political thrillers to speculative fiction and futurism, and much more. In prose that moves from visual and lyrical to gritty and visceral, these writers explore fate, memory, the fragility of love and the duplicitous nature of human interactions.
Grandma and the Moon’s Hidden Secret
£9.99Àdùké lives with her grandparents in Ibadan and Grandma is her favourite person in the world. She loves when Grandma sings to her, and gives her treats from her stall. But one day, Àdùké comes home from school and can’t find Grandma anywhere! Àdùké doesn’t understand why Grandma can’t come back, but then her aunt Yímiká tells her a secret. Can she really see Grandma if she squints up at the moon?
Àdùkẹ́ ń gbé pẹ̀ lú àwọn òbí òbí rẹ̀ ní ìlú Ìbàdàn, Ìyá Àgbà ló sì fẹ́ràn jùlọ lágbàáyé.
Ó fẹ ́ràn kí Ìyá Àgbà máa kọrin fún àti bí wọ́n ṣe máa ń fun ní kókóró láti inú ìsọ̀ wọn.
Ní ọjọ́ kan, Àdùkẹ́ dé láti ilé-ìwé, ṣùgbọ́ n kò rí Ìyá Àgbà níbì kankan! Àdùkẹ́ ò mọ ìdí tí
Ìyá Àgbà ò le padà wá mọ́. Nígbà náà ni àntí Yímíká sọ àṣírí kan fún.
Ṣé lóòótọ́ ni ó lè rí Ìyá Àgbà nínú òṣùpá tí ó bá ṣe ojú rẹ̀ tínńtín?
The Elevator Kiss
A steamy romance set in the beautiful city of Cape Town. It’s Christmas and Sindi has been invited to her friend’s stunning new apartment for dinner. She finds herself in the elevator with a handsome man in a dashing blue suit. Their impromptu kiss under the mistletoe ignites unanticipated desire. But Sindi is focused on rebuilding her life after a messy break-up. Edward is the last thing she needs. Or so she thinks.
A Tailor-Made Romance E Book
£4.16Phoenix Advertising Agency star Tishe is looking forward to her first date with sharply-dressed Adnan. She is shocked when she discovers that he is a tailor. She vows that there will be no second date … ever. But once they share a goodnight kiss, everything changes. They embark on a whirlwind romance as she struggles to reconcile her disapproval for Adnan’s profession with her burning desire for him. Will Tishe give Adnan a chance? Find out in this racy romance.
Black Sparkle Romance E-Book
£4.16Mira is ambitious and creative but she’s stuck as a PA to the ruthless editor of fashion magazine Black Sparkle. A string of disastrous dates threatens to put her off men forever. And then she crashes into the Mercedes of tiger-eyed Dominic. Mira’s luck changes when she’s promoted to assistant editor, but Dominic is the photographer for her first edition in charge. Sparks fly as the creative energy of two talented individuals fuels a heady mix of fear and desire.
Love’s Persuasion E Book
£4.16Things are changing at Lagos firm City Finance. But for Ada Okafor, a bright and dedicated trainee, the only change worth noticing is the dashing, new British-trained assistant MD, Tony Okoli. Ambitious and determined, Ada ignores her feelings for Tony and focuses on juggling her work in accounts with studying. But the two are drawn together and they embark on a secret and passionate affair. Their love is truly tested as they fight to persuade themselves and the world that love, in the end, trumps social status.
A Taste of Love E-Book
£4.16They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But this delectable romance has Toby, manager of the Bar-Rage, winning over feisty mum and successful baker Adoo with his delicious pizza, suave good looks and his calm, confident demeanour. Soon, Adoo and Toby are enjoying spontaneous dates. Adoo loves how Toby treats her son, and is thrilled to find a man her son approves of. Will Toby and Adoo commit or will they only have A Taste of Love?
Finding Love Again E-Book
£4.16Kambi thinks the serene Obudu Mountain Resort is the perfect place to finish her poetry collection and heal her broken heart. But along comes Beba, the gorgeous man from her past who reignites the spark between them. Can Kambi resist Beba’s charms and keep up the pretence of being his fake fiancee to help him in his quest to find his mother? Or will a phony engagement be the key for Kambi to begin Finding Love Again?