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THE TREES

One of our recommended books is The Trees by Percival Everett

An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

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THE HOUSE OF RUST

One of our recommended books is The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

The first Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize winner, a story of a girl’s fantastical sea voyage to rescue her father

The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa,

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IN THE FACE OF THE SUN

One of our recommended books is IN THE FACE OF THE SUN by DENNY S. BRYCE

At the height of the Civil Rights Movement amidst an America convulsed by the 1960s, a pregnant young woman and her brash, profane aunt embark upon an audacious road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles to confront a decades-old mystery from 1920’s Black Hollywood in this haunting novel of historical fiction from the author of Wild Women and the Blues.

A lime-gold Ford Mustang is parked outside my building. Unmistakable. My Aunt Daisy, the driver, is an audacious woman that no one in our family actually speaks to. They only speak about her—and not glowingly.

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THE SPANISH DAUGHTER

One of our recommended THE SPANISH DAUGHTER by LORENA HUGHES books is

Set against the lush backdrop of early twentieth century Ecuador and inspired by the real-life history of the coastal town known as the birthplace of cacao, this captivating #OwnVoices novel from the award-winning author of The Sisters of Alameda Street tells the story of a resourceful young chocolatier who must impersonate a man in order to survive…

As a child in Spain, Puri always knew her passion for chocolate was inherited from her father. But it’s not until his death that she learns of something else she’s inherited—a cocoa plantation in Vinces, Ecuador, a town nicknamed “París Chiquito.” Eager to claim her birthright and filled with hope for a new life after the devastation of WWI,

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THE SAINTS OF SWALLOW HILL

One of our recommended books is THE SAINTS OF SWALLOW HILL by DONNA EVERHART

Where the Crawdads Sing meets The Four Winds as award-winning author Donna Everhart immerses readers in a unique setting – a turpentine camp buried deep in the vast pine forests of Georgia during the Great Depression—for a captivating story of friendship, survival, and three vagabonds’ intersecting lives…


During the Great Depression, wretched labor camps crop up in remote areas of the expansive pine forests throughout the American South. Destitute workers live and toil under terrible conditions to harvest pine gum, hacking into tree trunks, drawing out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname,

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WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS

One of our recommended books is Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti

A “boisterous and high-spirited debut” (Kirkus starred review)“that enthralls the reader through their every twist and turn” (Publishers Weekly starred review)

In her powerful debut story collection, Nana Nkweti’s virtuosity is on full display as she mixes deft realism with clever inversions of genre. In the Caine Prize finalist story “It Takes a Village, Some Say,” she skewers racial prejudice and the practice of international adoption, delivering a sly tale about a teenage girl who leverages her adoptive parents to fast-track her fortunes. In “The Devil Is a Liar” a pregnant pastor’s wife struggles with the collision of Western Christianity and her mother’s traditional Cameroonian belief system as she worries about her unborn child.

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