Here are some best sellers from 2021 that you should add to your reading list!
The Fortune Men: Nadifa Mohamed £14.99 (Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio Download)
Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men re-creates the life of a man wrongfully convicted of murder.
A sobering examination of prejudice, justice and the dispensability of truth, The Fortune Men tells the story of Mahmood, a chancer and petty criminal who finds himself wrongfully charged for murder in 1950s Cardiff…
Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer.
So, when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn’t too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served.
It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life – against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman’s noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.
Published: 27/05/2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Number of pages: 384
For more information click here
Open Water: Caleb Azumah Nelson £12.99 (Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio Download)
A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black British artists falling in and out of love.
He’s a photographer and she’s a dancer who connect over their shared experiences and fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. Beautifully crafted with stunning prose, Open Water explores Blackness and trauma in a world that defines you by the colour of your skin and the love that struggles amidst the pain.
Two young people meet at a pub in Southeast London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists – he a photographer, she a dancer – trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.
For more info visit @penguinukbooks
Published: 04/02/2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Number of pages: 160
For more information click here
Black Girl Finance: Selina Flavius £12.99 (Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio Download)
In a pandemic that seen Black people and POC hit disproportionately financially, this genuinely useful guide couldn’t be timelier. Forget stuffy finance guides, this accessible and non-preachy guide is the first to tackle the real issues at hand including the pay gap disparities Black and WoC face. Written in a warm and encouraging tone, the founder of digital coaching platform Black Girl Finance takes the reader from baby steps to larger goals such as changing the money mindset you’ve inherited from your parents.
We don’t like getting real about money, do we? We think maths, we think spreadsheets, we think boring. But Selina Flavius, founder of Black Girl Finance, wants to show that there can be another, better way. A way to start making our hard-earned money work even harder for us.
Selina Flavius created Black Girl Finance to address the unique difficulties Black women face due to the gender and ethnicity pay gaps. Since we literally can’t afford to wait for change, we need to start changing things up for ourselves. From challenging money mindsets to teaching key skills, such as how to set up an emergency fund and where to start with budgeting, investing and saving, Black Girl Finance provides a safe space for a community of unapologetic, ambitious, money-minded women to get real about their finances.
Kick-start your financial journey with Black Girl Finance – the first financial guide of its kind. Packed with tips, tricks and tools, as well as statistics, personal stories, goal-setting exercises and straight-talking advice, this will be your go-to helping hand when it comes to making your financial goals a reality.
Published: 21/01/2021
GENRE: Health & Personal Development / Self-help & Personal Development
For more info visit @blackgirlfinanceuk @quercusbooks
For more information click here
The Other Black Girl: Zakiya Dalila Harris £14.99 (Hardback)
Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of book publishing.
26-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is exhausted at being the only Black employee at Wagner, the prestigious NYC publishing house. So, when another young Black woman is hired in the cubicle next to her, she’s thrilled. That is, until anonymous notes pleading Nella to leave Wagner begin to appear on Nella’s desk and Nells hears about other Black employees who disappeared at the height of their career. Who’s behind the notes?
A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
Published: 01/06/2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Number of pages: 368
For more information click here
Luster: Raven Leilani £14.99 (Hardback)
This debut about a black millennial woman who becomes entangled into a suburban white couple’s life has already made waves in the US.
No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties — sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsy’s wife who has agreed to an open marriage — with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home — though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life — her hunger, her anger — in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
Published: 21/01/2021
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Number of pages: 240
For more information click here
