Black History Month
| Book cover | Book title and author | Book introduction | Websites for more information |
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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo |
Welcome to Newcastle, 1905. Ten-year-old Grace is an orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet. Cornwall, 1953. Winsome is a young bride, recently arrived from Barbados, realising the man she married might be a fool. London, 1980. Amma is the fierce queen of her squatters' palace, ready to Smash The Patriarchy with a new kind of feminist theatre. Oxford, 2008. Carole is rejecting her cultural background (Nigeria by way of Peckham) to blend in at her posh university. Northumberland, 2017. Morgan, who used to be Megan, is visiting Hattie who's in her nineties, who used to be young and strong, who fights to remain independent, and who still misses Slim every day. Welcome to Britain and twelve very different people - mostly women, mostly black - who call it home. Teeming with life and crackling with energy, Girl, Woman, Other follows them across the miles and down the years. |
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Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie |
Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight. Elvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things. Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there's no way out. It's a day like any other, until something extraordinary happens. When the sun sets, Nightingale Point is irrevocably changed and somehow, through the darkness, the residents must find a way back to lightness, and back to each other. |
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Hold by Michael Donker |
‘You have to imagine. That’s how I told myself.’ ‘Imagine what?’ ‘Imagine that you are the kind of girl that can cope with it, even if you are not.’ Belinda knows how to follow the rules. She has learnt the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she came to Kumasi to be a housegirl. Mary is still learning the rules. Eleven years old and irrepressible, the young house girl-in-training is the little sister Belinda never had. Amma has had enough of the rules. A straight-A pupil at her exclusive South-London school, she has always been the pride of her Ghanaian parents. Until now. Watching their once-confident teenager grow sullen and wayward, they decide that sensible Belinda might be just the shining example Amma needs. So Belinda is summoned from Ghana to London, to befriend a troubled girl who shows no desire for her friendship. She encounters a city as bewildering as it is exciting, and as she tries to impose order on her unsettling new world, Belinda’s phone calls back home to Mary become a lifeline. As the Brixton summer turns to autumn, Belinda and Amma are surprised to discover the beginnings of an unexpected kinship. But when the cracks in their defences open up, the secrets they have both been holding tight to threaten to seep out… |
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Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams |
Sometimes I feel frantic. And I feel like everything has just spun out of control, out of my hands? I don’t know. I feel a bit like for a while I have been carrying ten balls of wool. And one ball fell, so I dropped another to catch it, but still didn’t catch it. Then two more started to unravel and in trying to save those I lost another one. Do you know what I mean? Meet Queenie Jenkins: Journalist, catastrophist. Expressive, aggressive. Funny, dramatic. Loved, lonely. Enough. |
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The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson |
As teenagers, Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed 'The Ice Cream Girls' by the press and were dealt with by the courts. Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried - and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again. |
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Ordinary People by Diana Evans |
South London, 2008. Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning, on the brink of acceptance or revolution. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her but, in the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael, growing daily more accustomed to his commute, still loves Melissa but can't get close enough to her to stay faithful. Meanwhile out in the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian's father has thrown him into crisis - or is it something or someone else? Are they all just in the wrong place? Are any of them prepared to take the leap? |
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Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez |
Rainbow Milk is a coming-of-age story told from the point of view of a young black man from a religious background, who identifies several major contradictions between himself, his family life, and his beliefs. Upon rejecting the doctrine, he is shown the need to form a new centre of gravity, and uses his sexuality to explore new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality. |
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The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins |
1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth. For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed. But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? A beautiful and haunting tale about one woman's fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night back alleys, into the enthralling heart of Georgian London. |
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Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell |
Beautiful double room to let to single person. Lisa, a troubled young woman with a past, can’t believe her luck when she finds a beautiful room to rent in a large house. The live-in owners are a kind and welcoming couple. Everything is fine until she finds a suicide note hidden in her room. But when the couple insist this man didn’t exist and that Lisa is their first tenant, Lisa begins to doubt herself. Compelled to uncover the secrets of the man who lived in the room before her, Lisa is alarmed when increasingly disturbing incidents start to happen. Someone doesn’t want Lisa to find out the truth. As the four walls of this house and its secrets begin to close in on Lisa, she descends into a hellish hall of mirrors where she’s not sure what’s real and what’s not as she claws her way towards the truth … This room has already claimed one victim. Is it about to take another? |
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The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward |
This is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward, and all the things that happened. It's about her childhood in the north-west of England with her beautiful, careworn mother Marcia, Linford (the man formerly known as Dad, 'half-fun, half-frightening') and her little brother Roo, who sees things written in the stars. It's about growing up and discovering the power and fear of her own sexuality, of pitch grey days of pills and powder and encounters. It's about damage and pain, but also joy. Told with raw intensity, shocking honesty and the poetry of the darkest of fairy tales, 'The Terrible' is a memoir of going under, losing yourself, and finding your voice. |
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The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah: The Autobiography |
Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life. In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets protesting about unemployment, homelessness and the National Front, Benjamin's poetry could be heard at demonstrations, outside police stations and on the dance floor. His mission was to take poetry everywhere, and to popularise it by reaching people who didn't read books. His poetry was political, musical, radical and relevant. By the early 1990s, Benjamin had performed on every continent in the world and he hasn't stopped performing and touring since. Nelson Mandela, after hearing Benjamin's tribute to him while he was in prison, requested an introduction to the poet that grew into a lifelong relationship, inspiring Benjamin's work with children in South Africa. |
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Eight Pieces of Silva by Patrice Lawrence |
Becks is into girls but didn't come out because she was never in. She lives with her mum, stepdad and 18-year-old Silva, her stepdad's daughter. Becks and Silva are opposites, but bond over their mutual obsession with K-pop. When Becks' mum and stepdad go on honeymoon to Japan, Becks and Silva are left alone. Except, Silva disappears. Becks ventures into the forbidden territory of Silva's room and finds the first of eight clues that help her discover her sister's secret life. Meanwhile, Silva is on a journey. A journey to make someone love her. He says he doesn't, but he's just joking. All she has to do is persuade him otherwise. |
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Oh My Gods by Alexandra Sheppard |
Helen Thomas has just moved in with her dad's family - who happen to be the ancient Greek gods, living incognito in London! Between keeping her family's true identities secret, and dealing with school drama (i.e., boys), is Helen fated for an epic embarrassment? |
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High Rise Mystery by Sharna Jackson |
Summer in London is hot, the hottest on record, and there's been a murder in THE TRI: the high-rise home to resident know-it-alls, Nik and Norva. Who better to solve the case? Armed with curiosity, home-turf knowledge and unlimited time – until the end of the summer holidays anyway. The first whodunnit in a new mystery series by Sharna Jackson. |
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Look Up! by Nathan Bryon, illustrated by Dapo Adeola |
Rocket's going to be the greatest astronaut, star-catcher space-traveller that has ever lived! But first, she needs to convince her big brother Jamal to stop looking down at his phone and start looking up at the stars. Bursting with energy and passion about space and the natural world, this heart-warming picture book will reignite your desire to turn off those screens and switch on to the outside world. |
Black History Month is marked annually every October in the UK. Find out more.