American Spy


Lauren Wilkinson - 2019
    She's brilliant, but she's also a young black woman working in an old boys' club. Her career has stalled out, she's overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she's given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic, revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Thomas is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving over the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she's being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.In the year that follows, Marie will observe Thomas, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.Inspired by true events -- Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa's Che Guevara” -- this novel knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you've never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.

Other Women's Children


Perri Klass - 1990
    Amelia Stern became a pediatrician to cure children, not see them die. In a kind of bargain she strikes with herself and fate, she does everything she can to save other women's children, hoping to keep her own child safe from harm.It's never easy. Amelia's hospital life contrasts so starkly with her cozy domestic world that she can't help but bring it home sometimes. Always available for medical emergencies and the needs of her helpless patients, Amelia begins to ignore her own needs. And her family life and marriage fade in importance as she heroically fights to save all of her children.A tender and timely examination of a doctor's world, a mother's world, and a wife's world, OTHER WOMEN'S CHILDREN is a revealing X ray of the complications of women's lives today."Superb . . . A poignant literary page-turner." --The New York Times Book Review

Speak No Evil


Uzodinma Iweala - 2018
    Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine.

Alone


Thomas Moore - 2020
    And I’d dress as the helpline 1-800-C-O-R-E-Y that he set up when he was seventeen, when he was high and giving advice to young fans about how to stay off drugs.The pièce de résistance of my costume would be the contrast that the viewer makes in their mind between the image of Corey Haim in The Lost Boys with a beautiful smile and skin that looks healthier than you’ve ever seen and the TMZ report of pneumonia and the enlarged heart that killed him and the question about whether the reader would carry through the metaphor and make the link between the dolphins he said were in his blood and what they would look like now.

The Darling


Russell Banks - 2004
    Hannah's encounter with Taylor ultimately triggers a series of events whose momentum catches Hannah's family in its grip and forces her to make a heartrending choice.

Behold the Dreamers


Imbolo Mbue - 2016
    In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty—and Jende is eager to please. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses’ summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future. However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ façades. When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende’s job—even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.

Cold Stone Jug


Herman Charles Bosman - 1949
    Its rise to classic status has been unstoppable, and it is now widely considered the founding text of all South African prison writings. As readable as ever, it is now hailed as Bosman's masterpiece of irony as well, vivid and unforgettable.

The Other Americans


Laila Lalami - 2019
    The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraq War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.As the characters--deeply divided by race, religion, and class--tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss's family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, messy and unpredictable, is born.

The Man in My Basement


Walter Mosley - 2004
    Hailed as a masterpiece-the finest work yet by an American novelist of the first rank-this is the mysterious story of a young black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations.Walter Mosley pierces long-hidden veins of justice and morality with startling insight into the deepest mysteries of human nature.

Turn Left at the Zebra: Excitement and Danger on a Magical African Safari


Colin Hayvice - 2018
    Whether it's eye to eye with a four ton elephant, confrontation with a fourteen foot crocodile, a wild cheetah close enough to pat, and a close call with an angry rhino. Join the author on this journey as he embarks on his first African safari where all of the above (and many more) occurs. Envelope yourself in the colors and sounds of the flora and fauna. You will be captivated by his experiences and maybe you will be inspired to plan your own African safari adventure. So now close your eyes and imagine that beautiful huge yellow/orange African sun setting on the horizon as you listen to the roar of a far off lion on the kill.

The Phantom Flotilla: The most exciting true story from the Royal Navy's history


Peter Shankland - 1968
     The Lake formed the boundary between German East Africa (now Tanzania) and the Belgian Congo, and no Allied vessel could be brought against the gunboat because the only completed railway to the Lake was in German territory. No British or Belgian forces could advance into German territory because the Germans could always land troops behind them to cut their lines of communication. Breaking that hold was a military necessity and an incredibly difficult and dangerous task. Not only did the crew have to outwit the Germans but also navigate 3,000 miles of the world’s most hazardous and disease-ridden country. For Lieutenant-Commander Spicer-Simson the dilemma facing the Allied High Command was simply the chance for an incredible adventure. So the sailor turned explorer. Thus began the most astounding voyage in naval history, as ‘Spicer’ led an expedition of two motor-boats through hundreds of miles of bush and mountains to reach the Lake, through a wilderness laid waste by sleeping-sickness and uncharted by roads or communications of any kind. Here is one of the strangest, most exciting passages in the history of the Royal Navy – the true-life adventure which inspired C. S. Forester’s The African Queen. Praise for Phantom Flotilla… ‘A wonderful adventure yarn made all the more absorbing because it really did happen’ - The Evening News Peter Shankland was a military historian whose books include Byron of the Wager, The Phantom Flotilla and Dardanelles Patrol, a story of the submarine operation against Turkey in World War I.

Smouldering Charcoal


Paul Tiyambe Zeleza - 1992
    The middle-class pair become victims of the same brutal violence that the poor and powerless suffer.

The Vagina Ass of Lucifer Niggerbastard


Shawn Wunjo - 2010
    Written based off an outline of the events of Virgil’s Aeneid scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin by a drunk, The Vagina Ass of Lucifer Niggerbastard is an epic tale told in a bizarro-author’s take on the ancient Homeric masters. Hey, all writers are thieves. It’s just illegal if the dead author you steal from hasn’t rotted enough yet. Actually, this book is pretty much nothing like the Aeneid. It’s more like the Odyssey, only more fucked up, more epic, and definitely more interesting to read. Is it a commentary on how fucked up things are yet again? Maybe. Probably. Yes. If you don’t have a sense of humor or “bad words” get your ass in a twist, don’t read this fucking book.

Lost Geography


Charlotte Bacon - 2000
    "Lost Geography" takes the complexity of migration as its central subject: Why do landscape, work, and family lock some people in place and release others? In settings both rural and urban, these stalwart, tragically dispersed yet resilient people respond not only to new environments and experiences but to the eruption of sudden loss and change.As the settings and characters shift in this wise, resonant book, readers are invited to see how habits of survival translate from one generation to another. How are we like our forebears? How does circumstance make us alter what our heritage has told us is important? With unfailing subtlety and elegance, "Lost Geography" teaches us, in a luminous sequence of intense personal dramas, that what keeps us alive isn't so much our ability to understand the details of our past as having the luck and courage to survive the assaults of both the present and history.

The Sheltering Sky


Paul Bowles - 1949
    The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.