BOOKS
The Black Issue 2024 Black Authors’ Preview
Forthcoming titles Black Authors’ Preview A preview of new titles recently published, or issued in the next 12 months
Nature and the environment takes centre stage in this week’s selection of upcoming titles by Black authors
Fiction
lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too is suffering.
Essie J Chambers Swift River Dialogue, 4th July, £16.99, hb, 9780349703862
Debut A début novel of first friendships,
Natasha Onwuemezi @tashaisblue
R
econnection is a main theme of this year’s Black authors’ preview. As mentioned earlier in this issue, Black nature writing is blossoming—demonstrating our desire to reconnect with the natural world in light of huge climate, mental and social crises. We have a number of titles dedicated to traversing the natural world, including The Possibilit of Tenderness by Jason Allen- Paisant, A Rooted World by Joycelyn Longdon and Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Country Garden by Marchelle Farrell. Simi- larly, in children’s fiction, numerous writers are using mythology—particularly West African mythology—as a vehicle to inspire ourselves and newer generations to reconnect to the history of the diaspora. Maria Motunrayo Adebisi’s Koku Akanbi and the King of Lost Souls, Davina Tijani’s Yomi and the Power of the Yumboes and Ashley Thorpe’s The Boy to Beat the Gods provide a master- class in keeping the stories from our past alive. In fiction, we’re seeing flavours of the corruption-of-the-rich made famous by TV show “White Lotus” in Vanessa Walters’s The Lagos Wife and Tomi Oyemakinde’s We Are Hunted, and the American gothic in Yvonne Batle-Felton’s Curdle Creek and Del Sand- een’s This Cursed House. In terms of numbers, submissions for this preview are down on last year, but up on the year before, which was significantly down from the dizzying peak of 2021. Hopefully, instead of this zig-zag effect we’re seeing, there’ll be more stable numbers to look forward to in future.
32 26th May 2024
Elizabeth Acevedo Family Lore Canongate, 4th July, £9.99, pb, 9781805300526 From the National Book Award-winning poet and YA author of The Poet X comes a huge- hearted family saga spanning three genera- tions of women.
Tomi Adeyemi Children of Anguish and Anarchy Macmillan, 25th June, £16.99, hb, 9781035039074 The finale to Adeyemi’s bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series.
‘Pemi Aguda Ghostroots Virago, 6th June, £16.99, hb, 9780349018225 The supernatural looms over the grime and sweat of everyday life in Lagos in this début collection of short stories from a prize-winning young Nigerian writer.
Yvonne Battle-Felton Curdle Creek Dialogue, 10th Oct, £20, hb, 9780349703534 This haunting take on the American Gothic pushes the boundaries of inheritance and blame, asking: how far would you go to keep your community safe?
Maame Blue The Rest of You Verve, 29th Oct, £9.99, pb, 9780857308795 A tender novel set in today’s London and mid-90s Ghana about generational trauma and the Black British experi- ence. It follows massage therapist Whitney Appiah who can physically sense where her clients’ trauma
family secrets and finding the courage to let go, told in a voice full of humour, irreverence and sass.
Brian Chikwava Shamiso Canongate, 30th Jan, £12.99, hb, 9781805301271 Zimbabwean girl meets gender-fluid Afro-Brit boy. They can’t stand each other but fall hopelessly in love, before being trauma- tised into separate paths by their mutual prejudices.
business... from the Bloody Scotland Harvill Secker Crime Writing Award-winner comes a darkly comic new thriller.
Zuri Day
Stuck in the Country With You Afterglow, 5th Dec, £8.99, pb, 9780263322996 A city-meets-country second-chance romance.
Sareeta Domingo Tomorrow Will Be Different Renegade, 8th May, £20, hb, 9781408748763 A novel about changing your life, learning to love yourself—and what it really means to be free.
Akwaeke Emezi Little Rot Faber, 4th July, £18.99, hb, 9780571382804 This new novel follows five people over a weekend that will brutally upend all their lives.
Tiffany Clarke Harrison Blue Hour Verve, 29th Aug, £9.99, pb, 9780857308771 A lyrical postcolonial novel that examines motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma and an unravelling America, delving into complex topical issues from grief and miscarriage to inter- racial relationships and police brutality.
Kalaf Epalanga Whites Can Dance Too Faber, 2nd Jan, £9.99, pb, 9780571371440 Hours before performing at one of Europe’s most iconic music festivals, Epalanga is detained at the border on suspicion of being an illegal immi- grant. An exhilarating début novel told through three different voices.
Percival Everett James Picador, 6th March, £9.99, pb, 9781035031269 From the Booker- shortlisted author comes a heartbreaking, and powerful retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Huck’s friend, the enslaved Jim.
Tochi Eze D G Coutinho
The Light and Shade of Ellen Swithin Vintage, 29th Aug, £18.99, hb, 9781787303614 Business can be murder, but it turns out murder can also be good
This Kind of Trouble Cornerstone, 17th Apr, £16.99, hb, 9781529928747 A century-spanning saga following the fateful reunion of a family with ties to a rural Nigerian village and who each bear
James Hannaham Delicious Foods Europa Editions, 15th Aug, £14.99, pb, 9781787705258 Held captive on a farm, a widow struggles to reunite with her son in this moving story of
Amber Rose Gill One Summer in Miami Mills & Boon, 15th Aug, £8.99, pb, 9780008614010 The latest romance title from “Love Island” winner Gill.
Xochitl Gonzalez Anita de Monte Laughs Last Bloomsbury Publishing, 13th Mar, £8.99, pb, 9781250786241 A first-generation Ivy League student uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death. A Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick
Sam Greenlee The Spook Who Sat by the Door Jacaranda Books, 10th Oct, £21.99, hb, 9781914344404 Dan Freeman is enlisted in the CIA’s elitist espionage programme. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as freedom fighters in this explosive novel.
the consequences of a fateful curse passed down through time.
Mina Fears The Scorpion Queen First Ink, 16th Jan, £8.99, pb, 9781529097221 A crossover fantasy fairy tale about a disgraced merchant’s daughter who is forced to become a chambermaid to an emperor’s daughter.
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