The Shadow King The Death of Vivek Oji His Only Wife By Maaza Mengiste By Akwaeke Emezi By Peace Adzo Medie FIC MEN FIC EME FIC MED In 1935, orphaned servant Hirut What does it mean for a family to An intelligent and funny debut struggles to adapt to her new lose a child they never really about a relatable, indomitable household as Ethiopia faces knew? One afternoon, in a town heroine: a young seamstress in Mussolini's looming invasion. As in southeastern Nigeria, a mother Ghana who agrees to an the battles begin in earnest, Hirut opens her front door to discover arranged marriage, only to and other women must care for her son’s body, wrapped in realize that some compromises the wounded. But when Emperor colorful fabric, at her feet. A are too extreme to accept, Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia is about to story of one family’s struggle to understand a child illuminating what it means to be a woman in a lose hope, Hirut helps to disguise a gentle peasant as whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. rapidly changing world . the emperor to keep the fight alive. She becomes his guard, inspiring women to join the war against fascism. A Girl is a Body of Water Addis Ababa Noir By Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Ed. by Maaza Mengiste FIC MAK MYS ADD At Night All Blood is Black Set in 1970s Uganda, this In this collection of stories, By David Diop bewitching coming-of-age novel Addis Ababa is a sprawling FIC DIO introduces readers to a smart, melting pot of cultures where Diop's harrowing, nimbly feisty heroine, Kirabo Nnamiiro, rich and poor live side by side in translated English-language and her complicated extended relative harmony -- until they debut takes the form of a 20- family. Though deeply loved by don't. year-old Senegalese soldier's the grandparents who are raising confession of his experience her, Kirabo yearns for knowledge of the woman who fighting for the French in the abandoned her at birth. trenches during WWI. This Mournable Body By Tsitsi Dangarembga The Dragons, The Giant, the Transcendent Kingdom FIC DAN Women By Yaa Gyasi FIC GYA Anxious about her prospects By Wayétu Moore after leaving a stagnant job, ANF 813.6 MOO A novel about faith, science, Tambudzai finds herself living in A memoir full of for suspense and religion, and family that tells the a run-down youth hostel in emotional depth that spans deeply moving portrait of a downtown Harare, then to a Moore’s harrowing early family of Ghanaian immigrants widow’s boarding house and childhood, her years adjusting to ravaged by depression and eventually finds work as a life in Texas as a Black woman addiction and grief, narrated by a biology teacher. But at every and an immigrant, and her fifth year candidate in attempt to make a life, she is faced with a fresh eventual return to Liberia. This is a deeply moving neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine humiliation, until the contrast between the future story of the search for home in the midst of studying the neural circuits of reward seeking she imagined and her daily reality drives her to a upheaval. behavior in mice. breaking point.

Afterland New Daughters of Africa: An By Lauren Beukes International Anthology of FIC BEU Writing by Women of African Imagine a world without men in Descent this eerie near-future dystopia. Ed. Margaret Busby Cole Brody and her son Miles are ANF 808.899287 NEW on the run. An oncovirus, which 'New Daughters of Africa' is a causes a deadly form of prostate major international collection that cancer, has decimated the brings together the work of more world's population. Miles is one than 200 women writers of African of the last remaining biological males. After being descent, celebrating their artistry and showcasing their detained in a U.S. government research center, Cole contributions to modern literature and international is desperate to get back to their native South Africa. culture.

The Old Drift By Namwali Serpell The Wife’s Tale: A Personal FIC SER History It’s 1904. On the banks of the By Aida Edemarian Zambezi River is a colonial ANF 963.05092 AID settlement called The Old Drift. Edemariam's grandmother An Old Drifter, foggy with fever, Yetemegnu married a poet-priest, makes a mistake that sets off a at age eight, and experienced cycle of unwitting retribution crises and changes in Ethiopia. between three Zambian families Edemariam paints a rich portrait (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge of her grandmother's full life, over the course of the century. telling her stories through lyrical prose interspersed with poetry, prayers, and legends.

My Sister, The Serial Killer By Oyinkan Braithwaite The Girl With the Louding FIC BRA Voice Satire meets slasher in this short, By Abi Daré darkly funny hand grenade of a FIC DAR novel about a Nigerian woman Adunni is a 14-year-old Nigerian whose younger sister has a very girl who knows what she wants: an inconvenient habit of killing her education. This, her mother has boyfriends. Murders litter the told her, is the only way to get a novel, but it is less about crime "louding voice"-the ability to speak than about the complexities of sibling bonds, as well for herself and decide her own future. As a yielding as the way two sisters manage to survive in a daughter, subservient wife, and powerless slave, corrupt city that suffocates women at every turn. As Adunni is told she is nothing. But while misfortunes fun as it is frightening! might muffle her voice, they cannot mute it.