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A Bookshop in Algiers


Kaouther Adimi - 2017
    A beautiful little novel about books, history, ambition and the importance of literature to everyone, especially people who are trying to find a voice.' Nick HornbyIn 1936, a young dreamer named Edmond Charlot opened a modest bookshop in Algiers. Once the heart of Algerian cultural life, where Camus launched his first book and the Free French printed propaganda during the war, Charlot's beloved bookshop has been closed for decades, living on as a government lending library. Now it is to be shuttered forever. But as a young man named Ryad empties it of its books, he begins to understand that a bookshop can be much more than just a shop that sells books. A Bookshop in Algiers charts the changing fortunes of Charlot's bookshop through the political drama of Algeria's turbulent twentieth century of war, revolution and independence. It is a moving celebration of books, bookshops and of those who dare to dream.

July's People


Nadine Gordimer - 1981
    The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and relationships—gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.Nadine Gordimer was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

A Heart to Mend


Myne Whitman - 2009
    Before long she lands the job of her dreams with the foremost oil company in the city and makes several new friends. She also gradually resolves the mystery of why her aunt previously cut all ties with their family. But the best part about her new life is meeting Edward Bestman. HE HAS A CLOSED PAST Edward is good-looking, super rich but emotionally scarred. Gladys gets him to see that she loves him and that together they can surmount all their differences. However, when they return from a romantic trip abroad, they find that some unnamed people are about to take over his business empire. Edward's past has come back to haunt both of them as Gladys is enmeshed in the loss of several million shares of the Bestman Group. AND HE WILL PAY...WITH HIS HEART Who are the people close to Edward who want to betray him and destroy his happiness with Gladys? Will Edward overcome his fear of love and commitment and put his trust in Gladys?

The Moor's Account


Laila Lalami - 2014
    His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés.But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril—navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition’s treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes’s Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquistadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers.

A Story Like the Wind


Laurens van der Post - 1972
    The narrative of A Story like the Wind continues in A Far-Off Place.

The Teller of Secrets


Bisi Adjapon - 2018
    But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women's secrets and men's secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places.As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family’s complicated past and troubled present, as well as society’s many double standards that limit her and other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways. Funny, fresh, and fiercely original, The Teller of Secrets marks the American debut of one of West Africa's most exciting literary talents.

Blood Sisters


Barbara Keating - 2005
    During their childhood years in the Kenya Highlands three girls from vastly different backgrounds become blood sisters, promising that nothing will ever destroy the bond between them. But the legacy of the Mau Mau rebellion, and the tensions and upheavals of newly independent Kenya, tear their childhood dreams apart. Separated by distance and by family obligation, the three young women are thrown into a larger world of conflicting interests. Camilla Broughton Smith becomes a successful model in the studios and smoky nightclubs of London in the swinging sixties. Sarah Mackay is sent to university in her native Ireland, an alien experience that only strengthens her resolve to return to Africa. Hannah Van der Beer's family struggles to retain the farm that her Afrikaans forebears established at the turn of the century. Time and again their bond is almost destroyed. Their friendship becomes a backdrop for competing love interests and broken promises. Political unrest brings violence, and savage murder becomes part of their lives. "Blood Sisters" is the story of painful transition, from the innocent ideals of childhood to the demands of reality, amidst the cataclysmic events of the African continent

Somewhere Out There


Mike Lunnon-Wood - 2019
    His skills sharpened in the midst of a brutal African civil war, he was at once a policeman, soldier and detective – a tracker of men. He thought he’d left that life behind him, but then he learns that his particular expertise is required again. Two teenage girls have been abducted and are being held to ransom, hidden deep within the Zimbabwean bush that was once his hunting ground. The mother of one of the girls begs him to help and, unable to walk away, Max returns to Africa with a handpicked team of former comrades-in-arms. But it soon becomes clear that nothing is quite what it seems and that if he is able to find the girls, it might only open the door to something far more sinister… SOMEWHERE OUT THERE is perfect for fans of books like A Time To Die, The Leopard Hunts in The Darkness and The Dogs of War, or of movies like The Wild Geese, The Dirty Dozen or The Expendables. *** SOMEWHERE OUT THERE is the first book Mike Lunnon-Wood wrote but has never previously been published. Mike passed away in 2008 and the manuscript was only discovered by his son Piers some years later along with two other unpublished thrillers which will be published shortly. Mike is the author of six other outstanding thrillers available from Silvertail Books: Let Not The Deep, King’s Shilling, Congo Blue, Long Reach, Dark Rose and Angel Seven. ***

Skyline


Patricia Schonstein Pinnock - 2000
    Drug dealers from Nigeria, Zimbabwean wire-workers, immigrants from Rwanda and Sudan, a Mozambican refugee - all escaping the ruins of war in the peace of the new South Africa - bear down on her fragile world, then scoop her into theirs. "Skyline" is an unflinching look at one girl's coming of age in the colourful and violent streets of a city waking up to the rest of Africa.

The Barefoot Woman


Scholastique Mukasonga - 2008
    Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother's voice in a haunting work of art.

The Hundred Wells of Salaga


Ayesha Harruna Attah - 2018
    Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the 19th century. Set in pre-colonial Ghana, The Hundred Wells of Salaga is a story of courage, forgiveness, love and freedom. Through the experiences of Aminah and Wurche, it offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born


Ayi Kwei Armah - 1968
    The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the novel that catapulted Ayi Kwei Armah into the limelight. The novel is generally a satirical attack on the Ghanaian society during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime and the period immediately after independence in the 1960s. It is often claimed to rank with Things Fall Apart as one of the high points of post-colonial African Literature.

Daughters Who Walk This Path


Yejide Kilanko - 2012
    An adoring little sister, their traditional parents, and a host of aunties and cousins make Morayo's home their own. So there's nothing unusual about her charming but troubled cousin Bros T moving in with the family. At first Morayo and her sister are delighted, but in her innocence, nothing prepares Morayo for the shameful secret Bros T forces upon her. Thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her, Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister from a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike—once shielded by her own mother—provides Morayo with a safe home and a sense of female community that sustains her as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa


Francesca Marciano - 1998
    Challenged by race, by class, and by a longing for home, here are "safari boys" and samaritans, reporters bent on their own fame, travelers who care deeply about elephants but not at all about the people of Africa. They all know each other. They meet at dinner parties, they sleep with each other, they argue about politics and the best way to negotiate their existence in a place where they don't really belong. At the center is Esmé, a beautiful young woman of dazzling ironies and introspections, who tells us her story in a voice both passionate and self-deprecating. Against a paradoxical backdrop of limitless physical freedom and escalating civil unrest, Esmé struggles to make sense of her own place in Africa and of her feelings for the two men there whom she loves--Adam, a second-generation Kenyan who is the first to show her the wonders of her adopted land, and Hunter, a British journalist sickened by its horrors.        Rules of the Wild evokes the worlds of Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, and Ernest Hemingway. It explores unforgettably our infinite desire for a perfect elsewhere, for love and a place to call home. It is an astonishing literary debut.

Season of Crimson Blossoms


Abubakar Adam Ibrahim - 2016
    Brought together in unusual circumstances, Binta and Reza faced a need they could only satisfy in each other. Binta - previously reconciled with God - now yearns for intimacy after the sexual repression of her marriage, the pain of losing her first son and the privations of widowhood. Meanwhile, Reza's heart lies empty and waiting to be filled due to the absence of a mother. The situation comes to a head when Binta's wealthy son confronts Reza, with disastrous consequences. This story of love and longing - set against undercurrents of political violence - unfurls gently, revealing layers of emotion that defy age, class and religion.