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The Ones We Find
Age Range: 15+ years
Available from 11th October, 2023
Something Happened Last Night…
Five years ago, a chance meeting with Femi Uzoechi changed Marilyn’s life. Except for the part she keeps under lock and key in her house of cards. The line between her past and the one she wanted was long drawn in the sand. But all that changed on the eve of her wedding.
When an urgent call drags Marilyn to work on her day off, a cryptic conversation with Femi leaves her with unanswered questions. ‘Something happened last night,’ he says.
Hours later, Femi is dead.
An accident? Suicide? Murder? The police see no foul play. Neither does Femi’s TV-famous widow. But Marilyn can’t shake off those haunting words. As she digs up the graves of Femi’s past in pursuit of the truth, the cracks in her own life begin to surface, threatening to send everything she’s built crumbling down. Every thread she unravels takes her a step closer to the scattered pieces of the girl she left behind, a crossroads she can no longer evade, and a killer with nothing to lose.₵100.00The Ones We Find
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Saro
On a visit to the coast of Marina, Lagos, Siwoolu and his young family are lured by a traitor to a grand merchant ship where they are captured by slaveholders masquerading as traders. On the way to the new world, they are rescued by abolitionists on a British naval ship and sent to Freetown, a haven for freed slaves.
They settle in their new home, grow their family, and become successful merchants, trading goods between Freetown and Eko. Dotunu, Siwoolu’s wife, falls in love with another man and is caught in a love triangle. But their lives are upended again when they hear that the kingdom has selected the traitor as king. Siwoolu, content with his new life, yet fearful of a curse that lurks in the shadows, refuses to return, but Dotunu is determined to keep the traitor from the throne. She turns to their son, Oșolu, who is running from his own demons, to seize the throne that is rightfully theirs.
Saro is a multigenerational tale of betrayal and restitution, love and war, inspired by true events that will take the reader from the rocky terrain of Abeokuta and the burgeoning city of Lagos to the lion mountains of Freetown and Hastings of Sierra Leone from the 1830s to the 1850s.
₵110.00Saro
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The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
For a polygamist like Baba Segi, his collection of wives and a gaggle of children are the symbol of prosperity, success and validation of his manhood. Everything runs reasonably smoothly in the patriarchal home, until wife number four intrudes on this family romance. Bolanle, a graduate amongst the semi-literate wives, is hated from the start. Baba Segi’s glee at bagging a graduate doesn’t help matters. Worse, Bolanle’s arrival threatens to do more than simply ruffle feathers. She’s unwittingly set to expose a secret that her co-wives intend to protect, at all costs.
Lola Shoneyin’s light and ironic touch exposes not only the rotten innards of Baba Segi’s polygamous household in this cleverly plotted story; it also shows how women not educated or semi-literate, women in contemporary Nigeria can be as restricted, controlled and damaged by men – be they fathers, husbands, uncles, rapists – as they’ve never been.
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A Possible Future: An Anthology of the Best Nigerian Writing (1789 – 2018)
Spanning two hundred years and multiple genres, A Possible Future uses gorgeous excerpts from over eighty literary works to showcase the inventiveness in Nigerian letters and the various zeitgeists—colonialism, despotism, Afropolitanism, postcolonialism, race and sexuality—that have defined it throughout the country’s history. The writers whose works are represented here—A. Igoni Barrett, Taiye Selasi, Gbenga Adesina, Helen Oyeyemi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Niyi Osundare, and many more—remind the world of our fraught yet rich literary backstory and point towards the immense possibilities awaiting us in its future.
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The Year of Return
In December 2019, as Ghana’s vibrant streets buzz with the climax of the “Year of Return,” an initiative marking 400 years since the first enslaved Africans were forcibly taken to Virginia, Adwapa, a Ghanaian journalist living in the U.S., decides to journey back to her homeland. Accompanied by friends, she seeks to reconnect with his roots during this historic commemoration, unaware that the trip will lead them into the heart of a mystery that transcends time and reality.
When the celebrations reach their zenith, the Atlantic Ocean, witness to untold horrors of the past, begins to stir with an ancient and restless energy. From its depths emerge the spirits of the enslaved, those who perished in the harrowing Middle Passage, returning not in peace but in turmoil. Their emergence sends shockwaves around the globe, transforming the “Year of Return” into a haunting spectacle of reawakened histories and unresolved grievances.
As the line between the living and the dead blurs, Adwapa finds herself caught in a whirlwind of supernatural events and historical reckonings. With each passing day, the ghosts grow more powerful, their centuries-old sorrows manifesting in a series of chilling, vengeful acts that threaten to unravel the very fabric of the present.
₵120.00The Year of Return
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Màmá, It’s a Girl
Available from 4th September, 2023
For years, the people of KAMINWANAGA have lived by specific rules and traditions, but the birth of a feisty, determined and resilient young girl would shake up the whole village.
Her curiosity about the world beyond KAMINWANAGA and determination not to be a statistic leads to a series of life-altering events that causes her to grow into the woman who would change the course of history for her people.
₵125.00Màmá, It’s a Girl
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Travellers
Shortlisted for the 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Modern Europe is a melting pot of migrating souls: among them a Nigerian American couple on a prestigious arts fellowship, a transgender film student seeking the freedom of authenticity, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and child in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper trying to save his young daughter from forced marriage. And, though the divide between the self-chosen exiles and those who are forced to leave home may feel solid, in reality such boundaries are endlessly shifting and frighteningly soluble.
Moving from a Berlin nightclub to a Sicilian refugee camp to the London apartment of a Malawian poet, Helon Habila evokes a rich mosaic of migrant experiences. And through his characters’ interconnecting fates, he traces the extraordinary pilgrimages we all might make in pursuit of home.
₵135.00Travellers
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A Good Name
Twelve years in America and Eziafa Okereke has nothing to show for it. Desperate to re-write his story, Eziafa returns to Nigeria to find a woman he can mold to his taste. Eighteen-year-old Zina has big dreams. An arranged marriage to a much older man isn’t one of them. Trapped by family expectations, Zina marries Eziafa, moves to Houston, and trains as a nurse. Buffeted by a series of disillusions, the couple stagger through a turbulent marriage until Zina decides to change the rules of engagement.
₵135.00A Good Name
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His Only Wife
A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020
One of BuzzFeed’s “29 Books We Couldn’t Put Down This Year”A Must-Read Novel: The New York Times Book Review * BuzzFeed * Marie Claire * Parade * Travel + Leisure * Ms. Magazine * Bustle * The Millions * Book Riot * Christian Science Monitor * HelloGiggles
“[A] mesmerizing debut novel.”
—The New York Times Book Review“A story that kept me tied to the page, told in masterful, seamless prose.”
—BuzzFeed“I love this book so much I turned the pages so fast . . . It’s all about the search for independence and being true to yourself and who you really are.”
—Reese WitherspoonAfi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. She is smart; she is pretty; and she has been convinced by her mother to marry a man she does not know. Afi knows who he is, of course—Elikem is a wealthy businessman whose mother has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from his relationship with a woman his family claims is inappropriate. But Afi is not prepared for the shift her life takes when she is moved from her small hometown of Ho to live in Accra, Ghana’s gleaming capital, a place of wealth and sophistication where she has days of nothing to do but cook meals for a man who may or may not show up to eat them. She has agreed to this marriage in order to give her mother the financial security she desperately needs, and so she must see it through. Or maybe not?
His Only Wife is a witty, smart, and moving debut novel about a brave young woman traversing the minefield of modern life with its taboos and injustices, living in a world of men who want their wives to be beautiful, to be good cooks and mothers, to be women who respect their husbands and grant them forbearance. And in Afi, Peace Medie has created a delightfully spunky and relatable heroine who just may break all the rules.
₵145.00His Only Wife
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Swallow
It is the early 1830s, the countries of the global north are mired in internecine wars and poverty. The British Empire has set themselves up as the world power through the trans-atlantic slave trade and has started its long-term goal of sequestering and colonising the West Coast of Africa ahead of Germany and France. In their designs for Oduduwa nations, independent city-states in the south-west, they had factored in greed and the use of force, but what they hadn’t bargained for was resistance from the powerful women living in these areas.
These women with intertwined lives will learn of love and betrayal in the fight for survival. Efunsetan Aniwura fights to keep her family’s power. Efunporonye craves a place for herself in a world that is unforgiving to timid women. In trying to make their mark in a society dominated by men and their wars, these women will rise up against the incursions of The British Empire.
Swallow is a vivid reimagining of ancient Yoruba history that tells a sweeping tale of tradition and culture, family, legacy and love.
₵150.00Swallow
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Rose and the Burma Sky
A gripping and intimate historical novel of a black soldier’s experience in the Second World War – a rare and moving tale of love and sacrifice.
One war, one soldier, one enduring love
1939: In a village in south-east Nigeria on the brink of the Second World War, young Obi watches from a mango tree as a colonial army jeep speeds by, filled with soldiers laughing and shouting, their buttons shining in the sun. To Obi, their promise of a smart uniform and regular wages is hard to resist, especially as he has his sweetheart Rose to impress and a family to support.
Years later, when Rose falls pregnant to another man, his heart is shattered. As the Burma Campaign mounts, and Obi is shipped out to fight, he is haunted by the mystery of Rose’s lover. When his identity comes to light, Obi’s devastation leads to a tragic chain of unexpected events.
In Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka weaves together the realities of war, the pain of first love and how following your heart might not always be the best course of action. Its gritty boy’s-eye view brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.
₵150.00Rose and the Burma Sky
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When the Person Who is Called COVID Came
For two years and beyond, the 21st century world experienced a near-apocalypse through the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Millions of innocent people have died at the hands of an invisible, merciless plague of a killer.
How have those of us, who have been left behind, coped? How do we even have the space to grieve? How did we adjust to the clichéd ‘New Normal’? How did our lives change? – Our love lives, our family lives, our work lives, our social lives, our faith, our health, our philosophies… How have we changed? How have Ghanaians changed?
By experiencing this encapsulating Poetry Chapbook, you too can relate to the phenomena of COVID and the [Ghanaian] Woman, The COVID News of Emotions that we Haven’t Reported and The Universal Human COVID Experience, all through Apiorkor’s razor-sharp Verse Journalism and poetic spirit, in over twenty pieces of poignant poetry.
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Pleasantview
Winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Winner of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction. Shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize 2022
Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these and other sunny images are all they know about life in the Caribbean. However, if you want to learn how the locals truly live and experience the dark and often harrowing truths that lurk behind the idyllic imagery of Caribbean culture, then come visit the town of Pleasantview.
Come during election season, and see how one candidate sets out to slaughter endangered turtles- just for fun. Or come on the day the other candidate beats his outside woman,’ so badly she ends up losing their baby. Then come on the night of the political rally, where this grieving woman exacts very public revenge. Stay a while, and see how this single event has a trajectory far beyond the lives of the immediate actors, with often tragic and heartbreaking consequences.
Written in a remarkable combination of Standard English and Trinidad Creole. Pleasantview showcases the entrenched political, racial, patriarchal, and class dichotomies of life in Trinidad.
₵150.00Pleasantview
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Americanah: Tenth Anniversary Edition
This special edition of the groundbreaking novel by internationally acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie commemorates a decade of literary excellence and cultural impact, reaffirming Americanah’s place as a modern classic. Featuring a new introduction from the author, this edition is beautifully presented, designed to captivate both loyal fans and new readers alike.
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post 9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face? Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalised world.
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When We Returned: From Chains to Crowns
Generations scattered by the horrors of the slave trade yearn for a return. Now, a cosmic event beckons the African diaspora back to Ghana, the heart of the continent.
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