The Accidental Public Servant


Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai - 2013
    After a successful career in the private sector, Nasir El-Rufai rose to the top ranks of Nigeria's political hierarchy, serving first as the privatization czar at the Bureau for Public Enterprises and then as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja under former President Olesegun Obasanjo. In this tell-all memoir, El-Rufai reflects on a life in public service to Nigeria, the enormous challenges faced by the country, and what can be done while calling on a new generation of leaders to take the country back from the brink of destruction. The shocking revelations disclosed by El-Rufai about the formation of the current leadership and the actions of prominent statesmen make this memoir required reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of power politics in Africa's most populous nation.

Red Tape and White Knuckles: One Woman's Motorcycle Journey Through Africa


Lois Pryce - 2009
    She put on her sparkly crash helmet, armed herself with maps and a baffling array of visas, and got on her bike. Destination: Cape Town - and the small matter of tackling the Sahara, war-torn Angola and the Congo Basin along the way - this feisty independent woman's grand trek through the Dark Continent of Africa is the definitive motorcycling adventure.Colourful and hilarious, Red Tape and White Knuckles is an action-packed tale about following your dreams that will have you packing your bags and jetting off into the sunset on your own adventure before you know it.

Battle on the Lomba 1987: The Day a South African Armoured Battalion shattered Angola’s Last Mechanized Offensive - A Crew Commander's Account


David Mannall - 2014
    

Regina's Men


Lynn Ray Lewis - 2014
    Contains language and actions some may deem offensive. Sexually explicit content. MFMM with MM scenes. Mild BDSM. Regina would do anything for the cousin who took her in when she had nowhere else to go, even stand in as a replacement for a dinner date. What she is confronted with at the dinner could change her life, she just doesn't know if it is for the better. Trey and Quinn come to town for business with plans to play in their down time. Instead, they meet a woman who has the ability to offer them everything. Adam is a cop who has lost the will to survive after losing everything he held dear. A chance encounter with a victim brings back memories he is not sure he is ready to face. To Regina, one attentive man would be enough for any woman, so with three, the doubts begin to surface, will she be enough for them? Add in the baggage that each man carries with them, and she is not so sure. Will the men choose to move on with her? Or wallow in the past with bittersweet memories.

A Different Sun


Elaine Neil Orr - 2013
    When Emma Davis reads the words of Isaiah 6:8 in her room at a Georgia women’s college, she understands her true calling: to become a missionary. It is a leap of faith that sweeps her away to Africa in an odyssey of personal discovery, tremendous hardship, and profound transformation.For the earnest, headstrong daughter of a prosperous slave owner, living among the Yoruba people is utterly unlike Emma’s sheltered childhood—as is her new husband, Henry Bowman. Twenty years her senior, the mercurial Henry is the object of Emma’s mad first love, intensifying the sensations of all they see and share together. Each day brings new tragedy and heartbreak, and each day, Emma somehow finds the hope, passion, and strength of will to press onward. Through it all, Henry’s first gift to Emma, a simple writing box—with its red leather-bound diary and space for a few cherished keepsakes—becomes her closest confidant, Emma’s last connection to a life that seems, in this strange new world, like a passing memory.A tale of social and spiritual awakening; a dispatch from a difficult era at home and abroad; and a meditation on faith, freedom, and desire, A Different Sun is a captivating fiction debut.

The Passport of Mallam Ila


Cyprian Ekwensi - 1960
    

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away


Christie Watson - 2011
    Without running water or electricity, Warri is at first a nightmare for Blessing. Her mother is gone all day and works suspiciously late into the night to pay the children's school fees. Her brother, once a promising student, seems to be falling increasingly under the influence of the local group of violent teenage boys calling themselves Freedom Fighters. Her grandfather, a kind if misguided man, is trying on Islam as his new religion of choice, and is even considering the possibility of bringing in a second wife.But Blessing's grandmother, wise and practical, soon becomes a beloved mentor, teaching Blessing the ways of the midwife in rural Nigeria. Blessing is exposed to the horrors of genital mutilation and the devastation wrought on the environment by British and American oil companies. As Warri comes to feel like home, Blessing becomes increasingly aware of the threats to its safety, both from its unshakable but dangerous traditions and the relentless carelessness of the modern world.

We Will Be Free: Overlanding In Africa and Around South America


Graeme Robert Bell - 2015
    Written with passion and from the heart, We Will Be Free is more than just another travel book, it is a modern manifesto, a declaration of independence and self sufficiency. “From the title to the very last page of the book, I was intrigued and entertained! It is full of unabashedly honest and hilarious metaphors describing life on the road and what it's like to be a part of the "overlanding tribe."Graeme makes you feel like you are a part of the travel adventure as he divulges his raw, poetic and amusing consciousness.This book is both a salty and a tender work of art about a beautiful family. The Bell family, on paper and in real life, will inspire you to live life fully and in your own way.Overland The Americas”.

Tales of Freedom


Ben Okri - 2009
    Quick and stimulating to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world.

Madmen and Specialists: A Play


Wole Soyinka - 1971
    Set in the "surgery" of a doctor, the play is populated by mendicants and the "insane," all fodder for "experimentation" by a shape-shifting doctor whose experiments may be more sinister than they at first appear. "Soyinka's Nobel Prize for Literature is a triumphant affirmation of the universality of this novelist, poet, filmmaker, and political activist."-Guardian

Assignment: Casablanca


Peter J. Azzole - 2019
    Their mission is simply to provide a temporary Top Secret special intelligence communications center to support U.S. members of a high level Allied war planning meeting.An easy mission quickly goes awry. Only two months after the Allied assault and occupation of Casablanca (Operation TORCH), the city remains a hotbed of Vichy and German sympathizers and spies. One unexpected event leads to another. Things get dicey, with life threatening situations, shots fired and dead bodies. Tony is diverted from Casablanca on a brief classified fact-finding mission to a neutral country's island. That mission gets complicated and ultimately results in spy catching and another death. Returning to Casablanca, events result in Tony meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.Between "Casablanca's" covers are communications intelligence, counter-intelligence, military politics, diplomatic tension, WWII history, family dynamics, and in the final analysis, a very exciting, twisting and fast moving story.

The Ropes That Bind: Based on a True Story of Child Sexual Abuse


Tracy Stopler - 2016
    Blaming herself for the heinous crime that happened because she didn't "go straight to school," Tali is bound by invisible chains of secrecy, shame, and self-imposed isolation. Her harrowing and illuminating journey to recovery begins in her twenties with the support of her mentor, Dr. Daniel Benson, with whom she experiences deep love and then heartbreak. Feeling lost, Tali travels to Israel where Kabbalah sparks her spiritualism, and then to Africa where an arduous climb up Mount Kilimanjaro ignites a newfound feeling of empowerment. Only when Tali goes back to the Bronx and learns that her unreported crime scene has become the site of a rehabilitation center, does she understand that there is one more road to travel prior to reaching freedom.

Dad's Greek Mafia Friend


Flora Ferrari - 2020
    He’s so tall and muscly… and mean… and everyone I know seems afraid of him. But there are times when I see him looking at me, see this almost protective look come over him, and it makes me weak in the knees. When Dad asks him to keep an eye on me, the air is almost too thick with tension between us. Is it just my imagination, or do I see hunger in Nico’s eyes as he watches me…. can he really want me as much as I want him? Nico Sasha is out of bounds – I know that- but still it doesn’t stop me from wanting her. She’s not only the daughter of my business partner and best friend, Franco, but I’m twice her age. I’m a bad boy, way too bad for her, but it doesn’t stop me. When Franco asks me to look out for her, it’s a real test of our friendship.. can I trust myself? My mind is obsessed with all the things I want to do to her … and when I find myself alone with her… how can I possibly resist? *Dad's Greek Mafia Friend is a SHORT insta-everything standalone instalove romance with an HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

Victoria's Walk


Christopher Nicole - 1986
    Having spent six years in Africa with her English missionary husband, she knows that the desert is not as empty of water as most suppose, if one knows where to look. Thus she leads her party on an epic two hundred mile walk to gain the fertile grassland to the south. To achieve this, she must drive them ever onwards, quell two mutinies and watch some of her party die. Their lives are saved when they reach an oasis, but to gain true safety they must now face Arab slaver traders, bloodthirsty Ashanti warriors, and the all-consuming forest. Victoria's walk has hardly begun. Set at the turn of the 20th Century, when the British Empire was approaching its zenith, with a handful of administrators and soldiers endeavoring to rule vast areas and dominate peoples they did not understand, VICTORIA'S WALK is a tale of the human spirit at its highest and lowest, its most courageous and its most bestial, of one woman's unceasing fortitude, of the men who loved her, and the women who hated her.

Stuffed


Francesca Penn - 2020
    F*cking Zachary Novak. That should be its own line for when you want to lose your mind.Life isn’t perfect, I know this but why is everything upside down in mine?Now, I’m stuck with him. On an assignment that should be MINE.I don’t like the way he smiles, the way he makes good conversation or anything else but then… I meet Dean. He rescues us from the cold and gives us a place to stay until the snow melts.Dean is the piece to a puzzle I didn’t know I was missing. Not only that, so is Zachary Novak.Two men, one woman… That’s all it takes for me to be flipped upside down instead of my life?I know these things for sure: I’m not hungry and I’m not a turkey.Yet… I’m stuffed.