Feminism, Anglo-Saxon peasants and boxing – a surprisingly winning combination!
Fleur leads a relatively tame life where her only excitement is dressing as an Anglo-Saxon peasant at the weekends. Her days are filled with avoiding sporty school bully Bonita and enduring her over-protective mother, with the occasional date with her nice/dull boyfriend George.
Mafalda is a nine-year-old girl suffering from Stargardt disease, which causes gradual vision loss and eventual blindness. With the doctors estimating that she has only six months before her vision fails completely, Mafalda begins to write a list of all the things she loves and won’t be able to do any more.
Leonor has been chosen as one of twelve young astronauts to take part in the Genesis programme. There are six girls and six boys, in two separate bays of a single spaceship, journeying on a one-way trip to Mars. They are also contenders in a televised space speed-dating show, which aims to create the first human colony on the red planet. The astronauts have six minutes each week to find their perfect partner for a lifetime together on Mars. But what seems to be a dream could easily turn into a nightmare.
In Jordan Ifueko’s début African-fantasy novel, a young girl, Tarisai of Swana, spends her early life preparing for a mammoth task: to become a member of the Crown Prince’s Council of Eleven – a council bound together by the power of the Ray. A second task, bestowed by magic on Tarisai by her mysterious mother, requires her to kill the prince.
Raybearer is the first instalment in a sweeping epic that encompasses tribalism, mysticism, magic and political machinations, with over-arching themes of belonging, identity and loyalty.
Witches Steeped in Gold is an astonishing female led fantasy novel that is rich in Jamaican myths and folklore with a vibrant magic system that leaps off the page. The plot centres on Iraya and Jazmyne, both on opposites sides of an ancient feud between tribes. They are sworn enemies but with a common goal – to kill Jazmyne’s mother, the Doyenne or Queen, who took the throne by killing Iraya’s family in cold blood.
This may be one of the most affecting books that I have ever read. And one of the most beautiful. The tragedy that was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is rarely spoken of today. It is barely remembered by those old enough to do so and totally unknown to many young people. The Last Paper Crane by Kerry Drewery is about remembering. Remembering people, places and promises. Illustrated with great sensitivity by Natsko Seki, it is remarkable for its restraint, its sparse eloquence and its compassion.
Sixteen stories of Black girl magic, hope and resistance have been gathered together by Patrice Caldwell into this unique collection. The tales are from bestselling and award-winning authors who explore the Black female experience through fantasy, science-fiction and magic.
Living in Georgian England, Mim and Alex have grown up as misfits in Grainger’s traveling circus. Mim, whose mother was an English Duchess and whose father was a slave, has always been an outsider due to the colour of her skin. The only bright spot in her life is her friendship with Alex, a boy with one arm intent on teaching her to walk on a tightrope.
17-year-old Maya is struggling to find a way to tell her strict Indian parents that she wants to go to school in New York to study film, rather than go to a college close to home and study law. As she says, ‘My parents are frozen in the past, in the India of their youth.’ At the same time, the boy who she’s known and had a crush on since grad school has finally seemed to notice she’s alive. Could this be her chance for a boyfriend, despite her parents’ rules?
Have you heard the one about the couple jump off a tall building but no bodies hit the ground? Jazmin Little has and unfortunately for her, she is about to be embroiled in a mystery of paranormal conspiracy theories, secret agents and teenagers with publishing contracts.
