Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books from TL Huchu, Callie Browning, Theresa Lola, and Mubanga Kalimamukwento.
The Legend of Arniston House by TL Huchu
Publisher: Tor Books
Date: November 12, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Pan Macmillan, Amazon
TL Huchu
T. L. Huchu has been published previously (as Tendai Huchu) in the adult market, but the Edinburgh Nights series is his genre fiction debut. His previous books (The Hairdresser of Harare and The Maestro, The Magistrate and the Mathematician) have been translated into multiple languages and his short fiction has won awards. Tendai grew up in Zimbabwe but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life.
The Legend of Arniston House
The Legacy of Arniston House is the spellbinding fourth installment of the Edinburgh Nights series by T. L. Huchu.
A dangerous cult craves a dark power.
Ropa Moyo is a wannabe magician, can speak to the dead, and has officially given up being an intern. Leaving Scottish magic behind, she now works for the English Sorcerer Royal. But just as she adjusts to working for the English, an old enemy reveals a devastating secret about her Gran, and Ropa’s world falls apart.
Outraged, she rushes home, but finds her grandmother dead – murdered – with no killer in sight. And now she’s the prime suspect. In a quest to find the true murderer, Ropa becomes caught in the dark tendrils of a cult, hell-bent on resurrecting an ancient power. Ropa must use her wits, her magic, and call in all favours to stop the ritual – and clear her name.
Island Christmas by Callie Browning
Publisher: Black Coral Publishing
Date: November 14, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Amazon,
Callie Browning
Night owl, incurable foodie and non-stop meal experimenter, Callie Browning is also the author behind The Girl with the Hazel Eyes, winner of a 2019 NIFCA Silver Medal and finalist in the 2019 JAAWP Writer’s Prize. She was born and raised on the beautiful island of Barbados where she still resides with her family.
Island Christmas
They’ll have a Christmas to remember…but only if the army doesn’t find out. A workplace romance on a Caribbean island between two spies? Christmas just got even hotter. When Annie Jones is recruited as a spy during World War II in Barbados, she is instantly attracted to her supervisor. Alex James is suave and skilled at explosives so sparks fly when he’s training Annie. They both know it’s forbidden but they can’t fight their feelings as things come to head in one of history’s biggest wars.
Ceremony for the Nameless by Theresa Lola
Publisher: Penguin
Date: November 7, 2024
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin
Theresa Lola
Theresa Lola is a British Nigerian poet and writer and was appointed the Young People’s Laureate for London in the year 2019-20. In 2018 she was awarded the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She holds an Mst in Creative Writing from University of Oxford. In 2022 the poem ‘Equilibrium’ from her debut poetry collection, In Search of Equilibrium, was added to OCR’s GCSE English Literature syllabus.
Ceremony for the Nameless
In Yoruba culture, newborn babies are welcomed into the world, and ushered into the social fabric, through naming ceremonies filled with songs of praise. The names bestowed are communicative both of where the baby has come from – the circumstances of its birth, the atmosphere in the home – and of where its future will take it. Both are forms of destiny. Far-reaching and musical, Theresa Lola’s second collection explores the act of naming and its role in shaping our identities, our aspirations, what we carry and how we belong. Lola conjures and questions the realities of her dual Nigerian-British identity; traces the lineages of names; asks why some deserve to be named while others are treated as though invisible; and explores the ways our journey through life might require us to cast off old expectations – both others’ and our own – just as at other times it can bring us back, strangely and unexpectedly, to where we first began.
Obligations to the Wounded by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Date: October 8, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Short Stories
Language: English
Where to find it: University of Pittsburgh Press, Amazon
Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner of the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, the 2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and the 2019 Kalemba Short Story Prize. Her first novel, The Mourning Bird, was listed among the top fifteen debut books of 2019 by Brittle Paper. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in adda, Aster(ix), Overland, the Red Rock Review, Menelique, on Netflix, and elsewhere.
Obligations to the Wounded
In formally adventurous stories rooted in Zambian literary tradition, Obligations to the Wounded explores the expectations and burdens of womanhood in Zambia and for Zambian women living abroad. The collection converses with global social problems through the depiction of games, social media feuds, letters, and folklore to illustrate how girls and women manage religious expectation, migration, loss of language, death, intimate partner violence, and racial discrimination. Although the women and girls inhabiting these pages are separated geographically and by life stage, their shared burdens, culture, and homeland inextricably link them together in struggle and triumph.
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