BOOKS


The Black Issue 2023 Black Authors’ Preview


The first in the unmissable, sexy, sizzling Mead Mishaps series by TikTok sensation Kimberly Lemming. The second is called That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf. They’re both must-reads.


Editor’s Choice


Olumide F Makanjuola & Jude Dibia


Love Offers No Safety Cassava Republic, 20th June, £16.99, PB, 9781913175481


Gathering first-hand accounts, this powerful and necessary anthology tells the stories of queer men in Nigeria, in their own words. It documents their everyday lives, including stories of love, heartbreak, tenderness and struggle, and shows that there is no single universal queer experience. From finding love and facing heartbreak to the power of community and the struggles faced, Love Offers No Safety serves as an exploration of what it is to be a man—how societal pressures foster toxic masculinity, and the barri- ers this creates in under- standing one another.


Lawrence Lindell Blackward Drawn and Quarterly, 26th September 2023, £23, PB, 9781770466784 A new comic about queer Black youth. When Lika puts the call out to all awkward Black folks to come down to the community centre, an inclusive and loving network of Black weirdos is formed, and adventures ensue.


130,000, according to the publisher.


Suzette Mayr The Sleeping Car Porter Dialogue Books, 18th May, £16.99, HB, 9780349703909 The first LGBTQ+ winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize in Canada in 2022, this title tells the story of Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, who must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts and his secret love affair when a mudslide strands a train.


Editor’s Choice


Cin Fabré Wolf Hustle:


A Black Woman on Wall Street Renegade Books, 8th June, £22, HB, 9780349703954


At 19 years old, Fabré pushed herself into brokerage firm VTR Capital and bore witness to a little-known secret in the brokerage sys- tem: Latinx and Black employees were forced to do the drudge work of finding investment leads for white male brokers, with no real pro- spects for promotion. Pulling back the curtain on the inequities she faced, Wolf Hustle reveals how Fabré worked gruelling hours, ascending from cold caller to stockbroker, becoming the only Black woman to do so at her firm. TV rights have gone to Apple TV in a “huge multi-studio bidding war”.


Earl Lovelace The Dragon Can’t Dance Faber, 3rd August, £9.99, PB, 9780571193172 Trinidad, 1970s. Calvary Hill—poverty-stricken and rubbish-strewn—is home to a community of people who come together during the joyful yearly town Carnival, becoming larger-than-life versions of themselves. But when it ends, and the strains of day-to-day life grow large, what happens to the peoples’ hopes and the feeling that “all o’ we is one”? Set in Trinidad in the 1970s, this title explores the desire for identity and belonging, alongside the legacies of a colonial past.


Elle Machray Remember, Remember HarperNorth, 1st February 2024, £14.99, HB, 9780008559533 This début historical novel reimagines the gunpow- der plot to derail the slave trade in 18th-century London.


Nadine Matheson The Kill List HQ, 1st February 2024, £14.99, HB, 9780008548438 A serial killer thriller from the author of The Jigsaw Man and The Binding Room, which both have combined sales of


34 26th May 2023


Karen McCarthy Woolf Top Doll Dialogue Books, 18th January 2024, £14.99, HB, 9780349703459 The début novel from the prizewinning poet is the highly unreliable, semi- fictional biography of eccentric American billion- aire heiress Huguette Clarke, who died in New York’s Beth Israel Hospital, age 106, not having been outside for more than 50 years.


Orlaine McDonald No Small Thing Serpent’s Tail, 4th April 2024, £16.99, HB, 9781800815582 Fifteen years after she walks out of her life a woman is confronted by the daughter she abandoned, struggling to bring up a child of her own. Spanning a year, this is a novel of grief, desire and loss.


Chatto, 7th March 2024, £16.99, HB, 9781784744892 McIntosh was part of the WriteNow scheme. Her début is a “conversation- starting love story” that explores questions of identity and the legacy of the slave-trade in the 21st century. Also acquired in the US in a “major” deal.


Ashleigh Nugent Locks Picador, 22nd June , £16.99, HB, 9781529097894 A coming-of-age comedy of errors, Locks is an electric début novel about growing up, wising up and finding your place in a world of opposites.


Peace Adzo Medie Nightbloom Oneworld, 6th July, £16.99, HB,


9780861546565 The second novel from the author of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club pick His Only Wife. When Selasi and Akorfa were young girls they were more than just cousins, they were an inseparable duo. When a terrible crisis brings them back together as young women, they must confront the secrets that Selasi has worked so hard to bury.


Elvin James Mensah White Spaces S&S, 11th April 2024, £14.99, HB, 9781398514928 Second book from Mensah. There’s no mate- rial yet so that’s all we’re getting.


Malachi McIntosh Parables, Fables, Nightmares Te Emma Press, 14th September, £8.99, PB, 9781915628190 A man jumps, the platform empties, then the stories begin. Filled with tales of tragedy, love, hope and frustration, McIntosh’s début collection of short stories offers surreal and satirical accounts of the many perils of contemporary life.


Phoebe McIntosh Dominoes


Gothataone Moeng Call and Response Oneworld, 5th October, £9.99, PB, 9780861547104 A collection of stories that brings contempo- rary Botswana to life. Set between the rural village of Serowe and the thrumming capital city of Gaborone, this title captures a chorus of voices from a country in flux.


Farai Mudzingwa Avenues By Train Cassava Republic, 26th September, £14.99, HB, 9781913175504 Jedza is a down-and-out electrician who moves to Harare in the hopes of escaping the dark- ness and superstitions of his small town. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.


Onyi Nwabineli Feed the Beast Oneworld, 2nd May 2024, £16.99, HB, 9780861546879 Anuri’s stepmother, Ophelia, is the ultimate “mumfluencer”. Every second of her life has been documented on social media. Now, it’s time to take back control. This is a quirky, original take on online privacy and social media.


Onyi Nwabineli Someday, Maybe Oneworld, 6th July, £9.99, PB, 9780861546473 Eve is left heartbroken by her husband’s unexpected death, but everyone around her seems to be pushing her to move on. Unable to face the future, Eve begins looking back, delving through the history of her marriage in an attempt to understand where it went wrong. So begins an unconventional love story about loss, resilience and a heroine bursting with rage and unexpected joy.


Temi Oh More Perfect S&S, 1st February 24, £7.99, PB, 9781471171314 When Moremi connects her brain to the Panopticon, a network that allows you to see inside the minds and dreams of others, she believes that the technol- ogy will save her from depression, loneliness and, eventually, death. That is until she meets Orpheus


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