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A NEW YORK TIMES WRITER TO WATCH • A dazzling novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets…
of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system—the debut of a blazingly original voice that &“bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole&” (Tommy Orange, best-selling author of There There ) Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department. Rich with raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.
'Although he writes about queer lives and loves in Nigeria, Arinze Ifeakandu's voice is sensually alert to the human and…
universal in every situation. These quietly transgressive stories are the work of a brilliant new talent'DAMON GALGUT, Booker Prize-winning author of The Promise 'In these gorgeous stories, Ifeakandu takes on big, untidy emotions - love, loneliness, yearning, grief - and writes about them with extraordinary deftness and grace. This is a hugely impressive collection, full of subtlety, wisdom and heart'SARAH WATERS, author of Fingersmith'Magic in motion... Arinze writes like a composer or an orchestral director, bringing notes together to form a staggering, heartshattering show'ELOGHOSA OSUNDE, author of Vagabonds! 'These stories are written with raw tender grace. They dramatize what love is like in a time when love is under siege... It is clear from this book that a serious literary talent has emerged'COLM TÓIBÍN, author of The Magician In this stunning debut from one of Nigeria's most promising young writers, the stakes of love meet a society in flux A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn't understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, where she must face her past - and future -relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself and the man who loves him.Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres, and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer.These nine stories of queer male intimacy brim with simmering secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria. A debut of emotional charge, marking a compassionate, important new voice in fiction.
A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the…
failure of its justice system—a debut that announces a blazingly original voice.Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Royal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the 9-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. And her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland police department. Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.
"A spellbinding book." —Megha Majumdar"Akil Kumarasamy is a singular talent . . . I love this book." —Cathy Park HongWritten…
in vivid and pulsating prose, alternating between the young woman’s present life and passages of the translated manuscript, Akil Kumarasamy’s Meet Us by the Roaring Sea is a remarkable, genre-bending exploration of memory, technology, friendship, love, consciousness, and the costs of caring for others in an age when we are so often lost in the swamps of our own minds.In the near future, a young woman finds her mother’s body starfished on the kitchen floor in Queens and sets on a journey through language, archives, artificial intelligence, and TV for a way back into herself. She begins to translate an old manuscript about a group of female medical students—living through a drought and at the edge of the war—as they create a new way of existence to help the people around them. In the process, the translator’s life and the manuscript begin to become entangled.Along the way, the arrival of a childhood friend, a stranger, and an unusual AI project will force her to question her own moral compass and sense of goodness. How involved are we in the suffering of others? What does real compassion look like? How do you make a better world?
Fathomlessly inventive and original, Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea is a portrait of marriage as we’ve never seen…
it before. “Shocking…Achingly poetic…Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps…Armfield exercises an exquisite—even sadistic—sense of suspense." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post“A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange. I loved this book.” —Sarah Waters“Without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read.” —Kristen ArnettLeah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.
An New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice * An NPR Best Book of the Year * A Padma Lakshmi…
Book Club PickFor fans of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer love in a Muslim-American community“Stunningly beautiful.” —The New York Times Book Review“An unforgettable voice that moves you from the start.” —People MagazineRazia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia’s heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city. When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens. At Stuyvesant, Razia meets Angela and is attracted to her in a way that blossoms into a new understanding. When their relationship is discovered by an Aunty in the community, Razia must choose between her family and her own future. Punctuated by both joy and loss, full of ’80s music and beloved novels, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a new classic: a fiercely compassionate coming-of-age story of a girl struggling to reconcile her heritage and faith with her desire to be true to herself.
MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 by The New York Times, Bustle, Goodreads, The Boston Globe, LitHub, and more! The debut…
novel from television WRITER/PRODUCER OF THE CHI, NARCOS, and BEL-AIR tells a fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young, gay, Black man in 1980s New York City. "Consistently engrossing." —New York Times Book Review“Full of joy and righteous anger, sex and straight talk, brilliant storytelling and humor... A spectacularly researched Dickensian tale with vibrant characters and dozens of famous cameos, it is precisely the book we’ve needed for a long time.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Earl "Trey" Singleton III arrives in New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, at 17, he is ready to leave his overbearing parents and their expectations behind. In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.