Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Alain Mabanckou, Jackson P. Brown, Markus Redmond, and Patrick Ochieng.
Dealing with the Dead by Alain Mabanckou
Publisher: Serpents Tail
Date: January 16, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English (Translated from French by Helen Stevenson)
Where to find it: Serpent’s Tail
Alain Mabanckou
Alain Mabanckou is a novelist, journalist, poet, and academic, a French citizen born in the Republic of the Congo. He is currently a Professor of Literature at UCLA.
Dealing with the Dead
Abruptly deceased at the age of twenty-four and trapped forever in flared purple trousers, Liwa Ekimakingaï encounters the other residents of Frère Lachaise cemetery, all of whom have their own complex stories of life and death.
Unwilling to relinquish their tender bond, Liwa makes his way back home to Pointe-Noire to see his devoted grandmother one last time, against all spectral advice. But disturbing rumours swirl together with Liwa’s jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leading him to pursue the riddle of his own untimely demise. A phantasmagorical tale of ambition, community, and forces beyond human control, Dealing with the Dead is a scathing satire on corruption and political violence by one of the foremost chroniclers of modern Central Africa.
The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown
Publisher: Del Rey
Date: July 10, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin, Drayad Books
Jackson P. Brown
Jackson P. Brown is a writer from London, an anime and manga enthusiast, and the founder of Black Girl Writers — a mentoring programme for aspiring Black writers. After winning Penguin Random House’s #WriteNow competition in 2020, her urban fantasy series, GETHSEMANE, was acquired by Del Rey UK. Set in modern London, the story follows Gerald Reaper and Amy St Clair as they solve fantastical mysteries whilst maintaining the secrecy of the city’s underground supernatural community.
The Reaper
Amy is an empath, able to sense the auras of the supernatural creatures that stalk London at night. But sorely lacking in knowledge, she spends night after night searching for answers.
Gerald is a Reaper – a weapon for hire – on the verge of his Awakening. Of coming into his power and becoming the man his family need him to be. The man they demand he be.
When Amy stumbles onto Gerald one night, she notices his strange aura, unlike anything she has seen before. And so, against her better judgement she helps him. In thanks he makes her an offer she can’t refuse: become his partner and he will introduce her to a world she has only ever felt the shallow surface of: the secret underground city.
And their first mission together: find the girl who murdered her parents.
Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond
Publisher: Dafina
Date: Jul 29, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House
Markus Redmond
Markus Redmond is an actor, director, screenwriter, and author. Known for his roles on Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue, Murder One, Mad About You, Angel, and Fight Club, he wrote and starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Stone in the indie film If I Had Known I Was a Genius. He wrote, directed, and starred in the Amazon Prime thriller The 6th Degree, and has multiple screenplays in development. He lives in Los Angeles, and Blood Slaves is his first novel.
Blood Slaves
For fans of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, this ingenious reimagining of the vampire origin story set during the early days of American slavery blends alternate history with supernatural horror, as the last surviving member of an ancient African vampire tribe meets a slave desperate for freedom, and together, they lead an army of enslaved people in a cinematically blood-soaked battle for freedom and revenge.
What if nobody ever freed the slaves…because they freed themselves – 150 years before the Civil War?
In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation.
Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire tribe rendered nearly extinct by plague. Rafazi has roamed the world for centuries with an undying desire to replenish the power that once defined his heritage. In Willie, Rafazi has found his first biddable subject to be turned and to help in a hungry revolt. And Willie desires nothing more than to free his people from malicious bondage. Whatever it takes.
One by one, as an army of blood slaves thirsting for revenge is gathered, the headstrong Gertie fears that no good can come from the vampiric legacy that courses through Rafazi’s veins. Willie knows that only evil can fight evil. And when the woman he loves stands between the reemergence of the Ramanga and the justified slaughter of the oppressors, Willie must make an irreversible decision. Only one thing is certain: on the Barrow plantation, and beyond, blood will spill.
Part historical drama, part supernatural horror, and part alternate history, Blood Slaves is an ingenuous and defiant new creation myth of the vampire, one rooted in both justice and the sometimes-violent means necessary to achieve it.
Displaced by Patrick Ochieng
Publisher: CarolRhoda Books/Lerner Publishers
Date: August 5, 2025
Genre: Fiction, children’s book (10 and above)
Language: English
Where to find: Lerner Publishers
Patrick Ochieng
Patrick Ochieng is a lawyer and author who was shortlisted for the 2010 Golden Baobab Prize. He has been published in Kikwetu, Munyori, Brittle Paper, and other literary publications. He lives in Kisumu, Kenya, with his family.
Displaced
Fourteen-year-old Kimathi has a comfortable life in the suburbs of western Kenya―until a contentious election explodes into violence.
His father is killed, his house is destroyed, and he and his mother and sister must flee. They find themselves in a camp for internally displaced persons, who’ve been driven from their homes but haven’t left their country.
Kim struggles to adapt to his new reality: living in a tent, facing prejudice at the local school, and struggling to get basic supplies. His family even has to buy water by the jug, paying high prices controlled by a ruthless gang of water sellers.
Gradually, Kim makes friends at the camp and starts to rebuild his life. Together, he and the other kids hatch a plan to get the camp a reliable water supply―along with some hope.
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