One is black, one white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed. And both are sworn enemies, sharing hedge and hostility which they prune with a zeal that belies the fact that they are both over eighty.But one day an unforeseen event forces the women together. And gradually the bickering and sniping softens into lively debate, and from there into memories shared. But could these sparks of connection ever transform into friendship? Or is it too late to expect these two to change?

    Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood.After chance brings Fiona and Danny together, their love of the band Fading Stars, big dreams, and desire to run away from their families unites them. Danny and Fiona must help one another overcome the burden of their parents’ pasts. But one ugly truth might shatter what they have…

    Johannesburg.Gin has returned home from New York to throw a party for her mother's eightieth birthday; a few blocks away, at the Residence, Nelson Mandela's family prepares to announce Tata Mandela's death...So begins Johannesburg, Fiona Melrose's searing second novel. Responsive to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the story follows a polyphonic course across a single day, culminating in a party and traces the fractures and connections of the city.An irascible mother, a daughter trying to negotiate her birthplace and the people from her past, a homeless hunchback who takes his fight for justice to the doors of a mining company, a mining magnate, a man still haunted by his first love, the domestic workers who serve this cast and populate the neighbourhood, a troubled novelist called Virginia - these are the characters who give voice to the city on a day hot with nerves and tension and history.Johannesburg is a profound hymn to an extraordinary city, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on love.

    Now, haunted by atrocities long-forgotten, her foul-mouthed spirit visits her nephew, Ramon, in modern-day New Jersey. Her hope: That her presence will prompt her descendant to unearth their painful family history.Ramon launches a haphazard investigation into the story of his ancestor, unaware of the forces driving him on his search. Along the way, he falls in love, discovers a new sense of his own identity, faces a run-in with a murderous gangster, and learns of each "lost saint" who helped Marisol during her imprisonment under Batista's reign.Uplifting and evocative, The Book of Lost Saints is a meditation on family, forgiveness, and the violent struggle to be free.

    The book gives an overview to the field of Latino/a speculative, showing the great variety of stories being told by Latino/a writers. Fifty years ago the Latin American "Boom" introduced magical realism to the world; Latin@ Rising is the literature that has risen from the explosion that gave us García Márquez, Jorge Amado, Carlos Fuentes and others. The 21st century writers and artists of Latin@ Rising help us to imagine a Latino/a past, present, and future which have not been whitewashed by mainstream perspectives. Contrary to the popular perception, Latino/a Literature is not just magical realism and social realist protest literature—it also contains much speculative fiction. By showing the actual breadth of genres being used by Latino/a authors, Latin@ Rising will help extend the boundaries of the Latino/a literature canon. Latin@ Rising demonstrates the value of speculative fiction for the Latino/a community: it gives Latinos/as a vital means for imagining a past and a future in which they play a pivotal role, and it constitutes a narrative of the effects of technology on the Latino/a community. The book shows how the richness of the speculative genres provide U.S. Latinos/as with a unique medium to discuss issues of colonialism, migration, and the experience of being bicultural. The 23 authors and artists included in this anthology come from all over the U.S. and from eight different national traditions. They include well-known creators like Kathleen Alcalá, Ana Castillo, Junot Diaz, Giannina Braschi and others; they also include new voices, well worth hearing.All Authors Included: Kathleen AlcaláPablo BresciaPedro ZagittSabrina VourvouliasDaína ChavianoADÁLAna CastilloErnest HoganJunot DíazRichie NarvaezEdmundo Paz-SoldánSteve CastroAlex HernandezCarmen Maria MachadoGiannina BraschiCarlos HernandezAlejandra SanchezDaniel José OlderCarl MarcumMarcos Santiago Gonzalez

    When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father, and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger.Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s debut is a magical realist coming-of-age tale told through the lens of the Swahili and diasporic Hadrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya. Richly descriptive and written with an imaginative hand and sharp eye for unusual detail, The House of Rust is a memorable novel by a thrilling new voice.

    Originally an important hunting ground for the Ojibway, the city of Minneapolis draws from nearby reservations many Native people, people who infuse the city with a strong and ongoing Native presence as well as a potent indigenous past. This story brings to life the people who live in or around this midwestern city. And like a modern city itself, it portrays people of all backgrounds and is a mixture of vibrant cultures and ideas. But also like a modern city, it has an edge, troubled by violence."New York Times" bestselling author Louise Erdrich has twice won the National Magazine Award and her work has been included in both the O. Henry and the Best American collections several times.

    Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure. Since then, The Palm-Wine Drinkard has been translated into more than 15 languages and has come to be regarded as a masterwork of one of Africa's most influential writers.

    In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her--from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee--while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.

    Jeanne Duval, the ginger-colored entertainer, struggles with her lover poet Charles Baudelaire...Mer, plantation slave and doctor, both hungers for and dreads liberation...and Thais, a dark-skinned beauty from Alexandria, is impelled to seek a glorious revelation-as Ezili, a being born of hope, unites them all. Interweaving acts of brutality with passionate unions of spirit and flesh, this is a narrative that shocks, entertains, and dazzles-from an award-winning writer who dares to redefine the art of storytelling.A Nebula Award nominee -- A Locus Magazine recommended book

    In 'Corrag', Susan Fletcher tells us the story of an epic historic event, of the difference a single heart can make - and how deep and lasting relationships can come from the most unlikely places.Other titles:The Highland WitchWitch Light

    The most one can do is make some sort of start and then work toward some kind of ending.One might as well start with Séraphin: playlist-maker, nerd-jock hybrid, self-appointed merchant of cool, Rwandan, stifled and living in Windhoek, Namibia. Soon he will leave the confines of his family life for the cosmopolitan city of Cape Town, in South Africa, where loyal friends, hormone-saturated parties, adventurous conquests, and race controversies await. More than that, his long-awaited final year in law school promises to deliver a crucial puzzle piece of the Great Plan immigrant: a degree from a prestigious university.But a year is more than the sum of its parts, and en route to the future, the present must be lived through and even the past must be survived.

    His first novel in ten years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful and swift, prose, Flight follows this troubled foster teenager--a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father--as he learns that violence is not the answer.The journey for Flight's young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act o violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why "Hell is Re driver, Idaho, in the 1970s." Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans." When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own life, he is mightily transformed by all he has seen.This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant--making us laugh while he's breaking our hearts. Time Out has said that "Alexie, like his characters, is on a modern-day vision quest," and in Flight he seeks nothing less than an understanding of why human beings hate. Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and groundbreaking Alexie.

    In a California of the ’60s and ’70s, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives’ freezers, tape-record high-school locker-room chatter, or collect a community’s gossip while cleaning the teeth of its inhabitants. Mr. Darcy is the captain of the football team, Mansfield Park materializes in a suburb of L.A., bake sales replace balls, and station wagons, not horse-drawn carriages, are the preferred mode of transit. The stories of traversing class, race, and gender leap into our modern world with wit and humor.

    Arriving full of trepidation, the musician discovers that his community no longer recognises him, believing that Taduno is dead. His girlfriend Lela has disappeared, taken away by government agents. As he wanders through his house in search of clues, he realises that any traces of his old life have been erased. All that was left of his life and himself are memories. But Taduno finds a new purpose: to unravel the mystery of his lost life and to find his lost love. Through this search, he comes to face a difficult decision: to sing for love or to sing for his people. Taduno's Song is a moving tale of sacrifice, love and courage.