Inspired by journalists Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, Midnight, at the War is a novel about a reporter chasing the biggest story of her career as she contends with a tense newsroom, a dangerous global conflict, and all the problems she’s running away from at home, by the acclaimed novelist that Megha Majumdar calls “a gem of a writer.”

Foreign correspondent Rita Das has left New York for the war-torn Middle East, a reassignment she asks for after she learns she is pregnant and is uncertain whether the father is her husband or her lover. As she strives to shed light on the fallouts of the war, Rita finds herself embroiled in her own conflicts with her interpreter and her news editor, her sources and her colleagues. She is unable to accept the loss of her mother and deal with her guilt for not being at her side when she died.

Fiercely independent and ambitious (and in her journalism, deeply humane), Rita is also in denial about her need for intimate human relationships. As she goes into the field to report on the war, she grapples with the physical and emotional tolls of her pregnant body and a turbulent region where the numbing repetition of war slides suddenly into horror. When her news editor delivers urgent orders for her to return to New York, Rita is faced with a choice about how she wants to live her life as a journalist and a soon-to-be mother.

Set in the years immediately after 9/11, and drawn from Devi Laskar’s own experience as a government reporter in the 1990s and early aughts, Midnight, at the War is an exploration of love and grief, of moral ambiguity and forgiveness, of modern war and the wars we wage within ourselves.

When a middle-aged widowed loses her job at the butcher shop, she’s at a loss as to how to provide for her family—until she’s offered a position that puts her carving skills to new uses in this darkly humorous bestselling Korean thriller.

Mrs. Shim needs money. She’s lost her husband and her job, and she's got three mouths to feed at her kitchen table. If she doesn't find work soon, she and her children are going to lose their home.

So when she answers a vague job ad for the Smile Detective Agency, Mrs. Shim expects the job will be some kind of cleaning position. But when they only ask her questions about her experience as a butcher and what she can do with a cleaver, she begins to realize they want her to do a very different kind of cleaning—they want her to be an assassin. Too scared not to take them up on their offer, she agrees to the position.

And Mrs. Shim soon finds that her new job isn’t so different from her old one in the butcher shop, quickly becoming the agency's best contract killer—but her rise to the top hasn’t gone unnoticed. Jealous of her talents, her agency’s competitors—and even her own colleagues-- begin pointing fingers (and knives) in her direction.

If she wants to keep her job, her family, and her reputation intact, Mrs. Shim is going to have to take out the secretive leader of a rival agency. But when she has the chance to strike, she's stunned to find a familiar face at the end of her blade.

As it turns out, this just may be one mess she can't cut her way out of . . .

A gorgeously illustrated centennial of Langston Hughes' first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, this picture book includes select poems paired with vibrant artwork by more than twenty talented Black illustrators, including award-winners Oge Mora, Frank Morrison, Janelle Washington, and more!

Brought to new life by lively illustrations on every page, Melodies of The Weary Blues introduces Langston Hughes’ intimate reflections on the Black experience in America to young readers in a fresh and approachable way. Featuring poems like “Dream Variation,” “Winter Moon,” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, Hughes’ still resonant words shine like never before for readers everywhere. 

Includes an introduction by the editor, Shamar Knight-Justice, Langston Hughes’ biography and timeline of life, and biographies of all the contributors.

In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.

October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge—his father’s new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.

October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father’s face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window.

One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.

Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.

A Paperback Original

From the author of the international bestseller Butter comes a chilling and perceptive novel about obsession, female friendship, and the slow unraveling of two lives

Eriko’s life looks perfect—from her prestigious job at a Japanese trading firm to her spotless apartment and devoted parents. Her newest project, to reintroduce the controversial Nile Perch into the Japanese market, is as ambitious as she is. But beneath her flawless surface lies a consuming loneliness. Eriko has never been able to hold on to a real friend.

Enter Shoko: a popular lifestyle blogger whose work Eriko follows obsessively. Shoko lives a life of controlled chaos—messy apartment, take-out dinners, a kind, easy-going husband. She writes about daily contentment, though her fractured relationship with her father gnaws at the edges of her happiness.

When Eriko orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Shoko, the two women strike up an unlikely connection. For a fleeting moment, Eriko believes she’s finally found what she’s always longed for. But as her fascination turns to fixation and Shoko’s carefully balanced life begins to dissolve, both women are pushed to breaking points neither of them saw coming.

Deftly translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a taut, provocative novel about modern womanhood, the hunger for connection, and the quiet, ordinary ways our lives can spiral out of control. With razor-sharp insight and disarming empathy, Asako Yuzuki explores how far we’ll go to be seen and what happens when the ones who see us don’t like what they find.

“A culturally layered and gripping collection of stories that are also a testament to their resilience.”—Vanessa Walters, the author of The Lagos Wife

?In this stunning collection, nine Nigerian women discover what it means to confront traditional expectations that have held them hostage for too long.

Meet Ifeoma.She’s been ready to leave her violent husband for some time, but her plans for a quiet departure take an unexpectedly gruesome turn...

Nkechi a housemaid for a rich Lagos family, bears the weight of her Madam's wrath when she discovers her husband's dark secret.

In London,Riliwa meets Mary, a guardian angel full of advice, wisdom and practical support as she navigates her unfamiliar new home. But it soon becomes clear that Mary’s kindness comes at a price.

Passionate, raw and full of heart, Fetto brings to life the rich diversity of Nigerian women’s experiences in these wide-ranging stories.

Joyful and warmhearted, this delightful book honors the blessings of every auntie in a child’s life, by distinguished author Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee) and illustrator Aphelandra (Oneida).

“Hesci! Here come the aunties!”

Aunts by kinship as well as family friends, neighbors, and community members all step up to fill the important role of “auntie.” They are there for life’s joys, sorrows, and celebrations, bringing their own special love.

A wonderful gift from or for a treasured auntie!

A picture book celebration of girl dads everywhere by The Dad Gang CEO, Sean Williams--now in a lower-price format!

A fun read-aloud written in upbeat rhyming verse, Girl Dad is a picture book that honors the loving men who raise, love, and uplift strong girls.

Share Girl Dad with the dads in your life, on Father's Day or any day.

Plus: Don't forget to check out Sean Williams's Boy Dad!

A Bank Street College of Education's Children's Book Committee's Best Children's Books of the Year pick!

In her raw and resonant debut novel, René Peña-Govea seamlessly interweaves prose and poetry to uplift the power of language, the courage to fight injustice, and the complex beauty of finding your people--perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X and Carolina Ixta's Shut Up, This is Serious.

Estela Morales is one of the only Latinas who tested into San Francisco's most exclusive public high school. In her senior year, Estela just wants to keep her head down, eke out a passing grade from her racist Spanish teacher, and get into her dream college.

But after placing second in the Latiné Heritage Poetry Contest behind a non-Latino student, Estela is thrust into citywide debates about merit, identity, and diversity.

Things only get messier when her family is threatened with eviction. As Estela's friends organize against bigotry and her landlady increases the pressure, Estela is suffocating and finds release only in poetry and in a breathless new romance. When tensions finally reach their breaking point, Estela must find a way to undrown the community she loves--and herself.

"In her latest, Riley provides a fresh take on high seas adventure through the eyes of the courageous, swashbuckling, based-on-a-real-life female pirate Jacquotte Delahaye. The research Riley has done on this 1600s saga is truly remarkable, second only to her depictions of the lush Caribbean setting and the diverse, multi-faceted cast of characters. This is one to be savored."  —Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Queen

The real Pirates of the Caribbean were Black, and women! From Vanessa Riley, acclaimed author of Queen of Exiles, comes a sweeping, immersive saga based on the life of the legendary seventeenth-century pirate Jacquotte Delehaye.

The Caribbean Sea, 1675. Jacquotte Delahaye is the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy tavern owner on the island of Tortuga. Instead of marriage, Jacquotte dreams of joining the seafarers and smugglers whose tall-masted ships cluster in the turquoise waters around Tortuga. She falls in love with a pirate, but when he returns to the sea, Jacquotte decides to make her own way. In Haiti she becomes Jacques, a dockworker, earning the respect of those around her while hiding her gender.

Jacquotte discovers that secret identities are fairly common in the chaotic world of seafaring, which is full of outsiders and misfits. She forms a deep bond with Bahati, an African-born woman who has escaped slavery and also disguises herself as a man to navigate the world. They join forces with Dirkje De Wulf, a fearless adventurer who also lives as a man at sea. As Jacques, Jacquotte falls in love with Lizzôa d'Erville, a beautiful courtesan who deals in secrets and sex. While others see their work clothes as a disguise, Lizzôa’s true self is as a woman.

For the next twenty years, Jacquotte raids the Caribbean, making enemies and amassing a fortune in stolen gold. When her fellow pirates decide to increase their profits by entering the slave trade, Jacquotte turns away from piracy and the pursuit of riches. Risking her life in one deadly skirmish after another, she instead begins to plot a war of liberation.

The gripping fourth book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Supernatural Investigations series that began with Amari and the Night Brothers! 

Perfect for fans of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Nevermoor.

In the wake of the extreme losses to the Bureau during the war with Dylan Van Helsing and the magicians, Amari has stepped back from being a Junior Agent to spend the school year as a normal kid. But as she prepares to graduate eighth grade, she's faced with a decision: Return to the Bureau and join the elite new Junior Special Agent Program, or retire for good—which would mean safety, but also losing her memories of the supernatural world.

But soon she finds that she may not have a choice. A deadly new curse is threatening both the supernatural and mortal worlds as, beneath their skin, people are slowly becoming machines—and losing their very humanity. And it's somehow related to the First Magician.

Hundreds of cases have been cropping up, with no cure in sight. And when the curse hits someone close to Amari, it's up to her to get to the bottom of this deadly mystery—even if it means trusting an old enemy.

Clock Striker, Volume 2, is the exciting follow-up to the acclaimed first volume, featuring shonen manga’s first Black female lead character!
 
*2024 School Library Journal Best Manga of the Year*
*2025 CBC Librarians Favorites Winner*

Combining sci-fi, steampunk, action-adventure, and insightful humor, this new volume explores teenage hero Cast’s desire to (once again) save her friend Klaus while dealing with an entire town that confounds her with its unique sharing culture. Something is off—and Cast and her mentor, Ms. Philomena Clock, engineer-warriors called SMITHS, are determined to find out what it is before it’s too late.

Klaus is a runaway prince who has been captured by cybernetic outlaws, the Demon Bandits. Cast has almost never ventured past her hometown, so the demanding trek, including rough terrain and the strange kingdom of Alter, will test her beyond anything she has encountered before.

With a rival SMITH and STRIKER on their tails, as well as the mysterious King of Alter—who seems to have a powerful kingdom despite rejecting cutting-edge technology—can our female dynamic duo save the day?

Clock Striker is rated T for Teen, recommended for ages 13 and up.

Saturday AM, the world’s most diverse manga-inspired comics, are now presented in a new format! Introducing Saturday AM TANKS, the new graphic novel format similar to Japanese Tankobons where we collect the global heroes and artists of Saturday AM. These handsome volumes have select color pages, revised artwork, and innovative post-credit scenes that help bring new life to our popular BIPOC, LGBTQ, and/or culturally diverse characters.

Join in even more adventures with the other action-packed Saturday AM TANKS series:Apple Black, Gunhild, Hammer, Henshin!, The Massively Multiplayer World of Ghosts, Oblivion Rouge, Orisha, Saigami, Soul Beat, Titan King, Underground, and Yellow Stringer.

Awards for Clock Striker 1: "I'm Gonna Be a SMITH!"
*2024 YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens*
*2023 Texas Library Association Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List Winner - Starred Selection*
*2023 Virginia Library Association Graphic Novel Diversity Award Honor Book*
*2022 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics Finalist*

Praise for Clock Striker 1: "I'm Gonna Be a SMITH!"

* “ . . . evokes the energy and exhilaration of classic shonen manga . . . promises deeper lore and mysteries in subsequent volumes”—Publishers Weekly

* “Readers will eagerly anticipate more entries. A fantastic, refreshing series opener.”—Kirkus Reviews

* A “fast-paced story of self-discovery and altruism.”—Sara Smith, Booklist

* “This action-packed graphic novel adventure featuring tenacious female leads will leave shonen manga fans counting down to future volumes”—Amanda Melilli, School Library Journal

In a collection of linked tales filled with irony, humor, and magic, Talking with Boys introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in the Pakistani diaspora in Houston navigating crises of their own making and beyond their control.

Via generations and geographies, the stories expand from Houston into tales from the characters’ pasts in Dubai and Lahore. A community of Pakistani immigrants distract ICE with unlikely bait. A housekeeper in a Dubai mansion plots to liberate her fellow indentured workers. In Lahore, an empty nester finds herself bound by more than a jinxed bracelet. Throughout, Tayyba Kanwal’s remarkable characters navigate economic upheavals, political turmoil, and personal betrayals to pursue love, plot for survival, and play subtle power games to triumph against patriarchal forces of all genders.

From The Unexpected Diva author Tiffany Warren—a dishy and dramatic novel of the Harlem Renaissance and its most famous Black debutante, Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose spectacular wedding to poet Countee Cullen was the society event of the year...even though the bride and groom were not-so-secretly in love with other people.

A century ago, Harlem’s glittering social scene had a single princess: Yolande Du Bois, the only child of N.A.A.C.P. icon W.E.B. Du Bois. Yolande was bold, vivacious, and beloved of every gossip columnist. A true daddy’s girl, Yolande followed her father’s advice on everything: from where she went to college (Fisk—Papa’s alma mater) to which sorority she joined (Delta Sigma Theta). But in matters of the heart, Yolande and her father did not agree. Dr. Du Bois himself curated a string of handsome suitors from the “Talented Tenth” for her, but Yolande’s true love was jazz musician Jimmie Lunceford, son of a working-class family from far-off Denver, Colorado. Their romance was an open secret, and more than a little scandalous.

Despite it all, Yolande wound up marrying her father’s choice: famed poet Countee Cullen. Their lavish uptown wedding was the hottest social ticket of 1928. With three thousand attendees, sixteen bridesmaids, and Langston Hughes as a groomsman, it was truly a sight to behold.

But, immediately after the wedding, Yolande’s carefully constructed fairy tale begins to crumble. Torn between the expectations of her father and society and her heart’s true desire, Yolande is forced to decide whether she must leave Harlem to create a more authentic life on her own terms.

A Harlem Wedding is a heady read about love, notoriety, Black excellence, deception, and the très chic lifestyles of the Black elite, from speakeasies of Harlem and the green fields of Fisk University, all the way to Le Grand Duc in Paris.

"A gratifying romance between kind, confident, deserving leads." ―Kirkus Reviews

A single mom gets a second chance at love with her high school sweetheart.

Wary of love after divorce, Janae Sanders focuses on the best things in her life: her son James and her besties in the Savvy, Sexy, and Single Club. As for romance? Not today, Satan. That is, until high school heartthrob Adam Henderson crashes back into her life at their 20-year reunion. Sparks fly, but just when Janae considers dating again, the new superintendent of James’ school district slashes his beloved arts program. Instead of getting her groove back, Janae gets her protest on.

Returning home after twenty years, Adam jumps at the chance to reacquaint himself with Janae, the one who got away. But he’s nearly reached his limit, juggling a meddling father, school politics, and―unbeknownst to him―Janae’s ire. If he can’t get the head of the PTA off his back after cutting programs that were costing the district money, his debut role as superintendent and his love life hang in the balance.

When a school board meeting is called and they both realize they’ve been dating the enemy, Janae gives Adam two choices: restore the program or lose her. Adam proposes a third option: one weekend at his cabin to talk it all out―funding the arts, and old feelings too. When her girls cheer her on, Janae must decide if she’s willing to risk it all. Armed with sass, sarcasm, and a suitcase full of emotional baggage, Janae and Adam discover that sometimes love shows up in the most infuriating and unexpectedly sexy ways.

From acclaimed author Terah Shelton Harris comes a poignant story of survival and redemption that questions what it means to stop existing and start living.

Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die.

Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts her, Leigh carries on, because survival is in her blood. So, when the transport bus taking her to prison careens off the road, killing everyone onboard except her, she does what's in her nature. She survives. 

While searching for a place to hide, Leigh stumbles upon an unexpected sanctuary: a flower farm in rural Alabama tucked away from the world. What Leigh doesn't expect is the found family there who have built something from the wreckage of their own lives. Especially Jackson, the farm's owner, who sees through Leigh's defenses, offers her small moments of tenderness, encourages her to face her own tragedies. Slowly, Leigh finds peace with the hard pace and soft nature of the farm, taking comfort in the life blooming around her. Maybe she's not beyond redemption, not too broken for something good. And maybe, just maybe, Leigh starts to heal.

But the past isn't so easily buried.

No matter how far she runs, the truth of who she is and the ghosts of the Wildes follow. And when those secrets catch up to her, threatening everything she's come to love, Leigh will have to truly face what she can survive.

"Devi writes about terrible and bitter events with a soft, delicate voice." — Le Figaro

Included in World Literature Today's "75 Notable Translations of 2016"

With brutal honesty and poetic urgency, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country's endless cycle of fear and violence: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve's best friend, the only one who loves Eve without self-interest, who has plans to leave but will not go alone; Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, inspired by Rimbaud, in love with Eve; Clélio, belligerent rebel, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.

Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society. Awarded the prestigious Prix des cinq continents upon publication as the best book written in French outside of France, Eve Out of her Ruins is a harrowing account of the violent reality of life in her native country by the figurehead of Mauritian literature.

The book featurues an original introduction by Nobel Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clézio, who declares Devi "a truly great writer."

Ananda Devi (b. 1957, Trois-Boutiques, Mauritius) is a novelist and scholar. She has published eleven novels as well as short stories and poetry, and was featured at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York in 2015. She was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2010.

The award-winning author of The Resisters returns with an engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.

My mother had died, but still I heard her voice. . .

Gish’s mother—Loo Shu-hsin—is born in 1925 to a wealthy Shanghai family where girls are expected to behave and be quiet. Every act of disobedience prompts the same reprimand: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” She gets sent to Catholic school, where she is baptized, re-named for St. Agnes, and, unusually for a girl, given an internationally minded education. Still, her father would say, "Too bad. If you were a boy, you could accomplish a lot." Aggie finds solace in books, reading every night with a flashlight and an English-Chinese dictionary, before announcing her intention to pursue a Ph.D. in America. It is 1947, and with the forces of Communist revolution on the horizon, she leaves—never to return.

Lonely and adrift in Manhattan, Aggie begins dating Chao-Pei, an engineering student also from Shanghai. While news of their country and their families grows increasingly dire, they set out to make a new life together: marriage, a number one son, a small house in the suburbs. By the time Gish is born, her parents’ marriage is unraveling, and her mother, struggling to understand her strong-willed American daughter, is repeating the refrain that punctuated her own childhood: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!”

Bad Bad Girl is a novel about a mother and a daughter forced to reckon with each other across decades of curiosity and ambition, elation and disappointment, intense intimacy and misunderstanding. Spanning continents and generations, this is a rich, heartbreaking portrait of two fierce women locked in a complicated lifelong embrace.

A young woman must learn to love and trust again after experiencing the brutality of ritual servitude in West Africa.

Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas’ idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo’s father, following his mother’s advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is held in the shrine. When she is 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.

In the tradition of Chris Cleave’s Little Bee, this novel is a contemporary story that offers an eye-opening account of the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. Spanning decades and two continents, Praise Song for the Butterflies will break you heart and then heal it.

Part history, part legend, this is the story of Sundiata Keita: the heroic figure who founded the empire of Mali. A thirteenth-century oral epic, Sundiata sees the full-length tale captured in print for the first time.

This is Sundiata, the epic tale of a man 'great among kings' who, through his legendary deeds and exploits, came to father an empire. For over 800 years, this story has been passed down to generations of listeners through spoken word.

D.T. Niane's novelisation captures all the mystery and majesty of medieval African kingship. This ambitious story ranks alongside the Ancient Greek and Roman classics as one of the world's great adventure stories.

A searing, beautiful novel meditating on war, violence, memory, and the sufferings of the Palestinian people

Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba―the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people―and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.

**Now a feature film starring Paul Nnadiekwe and Blossom Chukwujekwu, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (tiff) in September 2023.** 

This deeply moving novel set amid the perilous world of Nigerian email scams tells the story of one young man and the family who loves him.

Being the opara of the family, Kingsley Ibe is entitled to certain privileges -- a piece of meat in his egusi soup, a party to celebrate his graduation from university. As first son, he has responsibilities, too. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard. Unable to find work, Kingsley cannot take on the duty of training his younger siblings, nor can he provide his parents with financial peace in their retirement. And then there is Ola. Dear, sweet Ola, the sugar in Kingsley's tea. It does not seem to matter that he loves her deeply; he cannot afford her bride price.

It hasn't always been like this. For much of his young life, Kingsley believed that education was everything, that through wisdom, all things were possible. Now he worries that without a "long-leg" -- someone who knows someone who can help him--his degrees will do nothing but adorn the walls of his parents' low-rent house. And when a tragedy befalls his family, Kingsley learns the hardest lesson of all: education may be the language of success in Nigeria, but it's money that does the talking.

Unconditional family support may be the way in Nigeria, but when Kingsley turns to his Uncle Boniface for help, he learns that charity may come with strings attached. Boniface--aka Cash Daddy--is an exuberant character who suffers from elephantiasis of the pocket. He's also rumored to run a successful empire of email scams. But he can help. With Cash Daddy's intervention, Kingsley and his family can be as safe as a tortoise in its shell. It's up to Kingsley now to reconcile his passion for knowledge with his hunger for money, and to fully assume his role of first son. But can he do it without being drawn into this outlandish milieu?

“Storylines and twists abound. But action is secondary to atmosphere: Onuzo excels at evoking a stratified city, where society weddings feature ‘ice sculptures as cold as the unmarried belles’ and thugs write tidy receipts for kickbacks extorted from homeless travelers.” —The New Yorker

When army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians, he knows it is time to desert his post. As he travels toward Lagos with Yemi, his junior officer, and into the heart of a political scandal involving Nigeria’s education minister, Chike becomes the leader of a new platoon, a band of runaways who share his desire for a different kind of life. Among them is Fineboy, a fighter with a rebel group, desperate to pursue his dream of becoming a radio DJ; Isoken, a 16–year–old girl whose father is thought to have been killed by rebels; and the beautiful Oma, escaping a wealthy, abusive husband.

Full of humor and heart, Welcome to Lagos is a high–spirited novel about aspirations and escape, innocence and corruption. It offers a provocative portrait of contemporary Nigeria that marks the arrival in the United States of an extraordinary young writer.

The story of a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom—and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment—from Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years—an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April’s story—spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny—with delicate lyricismand tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April’s stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

Long-listed for the Booker Prize

A radiant, intimate novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer―about family, desire, and what we inherit.

When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once-flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.

Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.

At once sweeping and compressed, Tash Aw’s The South is a family novel of change and desire―a story of what happens when public and private lives collide, told with uncommon grace and beauty.

“Weird and wild.” —BookRiot
“An effective critique of authoritarianism.” —NPR
“Equal parts dystopia, satire, and allegory.—Los Angeles Review of Books

Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising in Egypt, this chilling debut evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring.

In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer.

Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the brother of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet.

Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehia’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehia and save his life.

Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.

But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed.

Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • A modern classic that reveals the tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits. •  "A dazzling achievement for any writer in any language." —The New York Times Book Review

In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri's Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute.

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. 

Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

The death of a Jamaican man’s father raises questions about the father’s political endeavors, and about the plight of 1980s Jamaica.

“Few other novels encapsulate Jamaica’s political upheavals so well. Protagonist Ferron Morgan agonizes over his father’s death, maybe from a doctor’s mistake, maybe from a radical rival’s hands. Meanwhile, he’s running from everything, including his own emotions about his fiancée―with sad results. Bivouac is not an easy or light book, but the immediacy Dawes creates is worth it.” ―Literary Hub, included in 5 Books You May Have Missed in April

“An examination of grief and politics in a deftly written novel set in 1980s Jamaica . . . Astonishing prose.” ―Kirkus Reviews

When Ferron Morgan’s father dies in suspicious circumstances, his trauma is exacerbated by the conflict within his family and among his father’s friends over whether the death was the result of medical negligence or if it was a political assassination. Ferron grew up in awe of his father’s radical political endeavors, but in later years he watched as the resurgence of the political right in the Caribbean in the 1980s robbed the man of his faith.

Ferron’s response to the death is further complicated by guilt, particularly over his failure to protect his fiancée from a brutal assault. He begins to investigate the direction of his life with great intensity, in particular his instinct to keep moving on and running from trouble.

This is a sharply focused portrayal of Jamaica at a tipping point in its recent past, in which the private grief and trauma condenses a whole society’s scarcely understood sense of temporariness and dislocation.

A queer Palestinian refugee plans to come out at his elaborate birthday dinner party in this tragicomic modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

Firas Dareer wakes up on his twenty-third birthday with a sense of purpose: today he’ll jump from a Stage 3 to a Stage 6 in his self-determined Coming Out Scale, professing his sexuality to a captive audience of immediate and extended family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and neighbours. But despite the meticulously designed invitations, carefully chosen place settings and floral centerpieces, painstakingly curated playlist, and agonizingly fretted-over menu, factors begin to spin out of his control.

Threatening to thwart his big moment are his younger brother, whose mental fragility requires him to be monitored at all times; his cantankerous grandfather, who’s just completed his third escape from the retirement home; the Dareers’ embittered housekeeper (and Firas’s arch nemesis), who could scoop the story before he gets the chance; his harried boss, who on this of all days calls him into work at the architecture firm, where his colleagues share a talent for butchering his name; and his mother, whose accidental text message may have blown the cover of an illicit extra-marital affair. There’s also the fact that Firas too has found himself in a love triangle of sorts, choosing between soft and steady Tyrese and fiery Kashif, who makes a sport out of demonstrating how Palestinian he is.

As the future Firas has precisely architected for himself slips further out of his grasp, the past comes crashing in like a wrecking ball. Sharp, darkly funny, and full of surprises, Three Parties pays twisted homage to a literary classic, gleefully upends the western coming-out narrative, and sensitively explores the traumas and pressures faced by Palestinian immigrants—all in the span of a single life-changing day.