Archives de catégorie : London 2024 Fiction

THE ONES WE LOVED de Tarisai Ngangura

An aching love story and literary debut for readers of Britt Bennett, NoViolet Bulawayo and Yaa Ghasi.

THE ONES WE LOVED
by Tarisai Ngangura
HarperCollins Canada, Winter 2025

On a bus moving across a rural landscape, town to dusty town, two young people are escaping with their lives. She has committed a crime for which there will be retribution. He is staggering from a sudden loss.

These two will find each other and attempt a new way forward. But the talons of the past have dug deep and the wounds have not yet healed. Moving back and forth in time, from the fragile bonds of this new relationship to the lives they lived before, THE ONES WE LOVED tenderly weaves both myth and memory. It’s a story about generational living written in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced by Zimbabwe’s Shona ethnic group, where the soundscape of a ngano (story)— its melodies, pauses, lifts and stops—are a call and response with the listener.

The novel also pulls from literary stewards of Black Americana such as Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, shaping characters whose way of loving is inherited and channeled into the lands they inhabit, the people they care for and the present they cling to.

Tarisai Ngangura’s photography, essays and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Style Magazine, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, New York magazine, The Globe and Mail, VICE, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Jezebel, The New Republic and Lapham’s Quarterly. She was formerly a writer and social manager at Vanity Fair and a Senior Content Strategist at The Atlantic. She currently freelances and reviews music at Pitchfork and NPR.

THE IMMORTALITES de Claire Robertson

In frontier country, travelling in a van containing a mysterious diva, a young woman must find her feet.

THE IMMORTALITES
by Claire Robertson
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

By the winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Ellen Kent has been called several things in her short life: orphan, governess, harlot. None is accurate, but here she is, a problem to be solved by her party of English settlers on an African shore in the year 1834. She is placed in the care of a retired cavalryman, and together they become the custodians of a van, a white horse and a silent, abundant woman – a grubby goddess and a thorough mystery. They travel through the war-struck frontier lands; Ellen is protector and handmaiden as the questions grow in her: how to find accommodation with this uncanny place of enchantment and death. How to find a way to stay.

For 30 years, award-winning journalist Claire Robertson has reported from South Africa, the US and the USSR. She has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Her debut novel, The Spiral House, won South Africa’s most important literary award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, as well as a South African Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. She is the author of three more novels: The Magistrate of Gower, Under Glass, both shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and ISLE. She lives in Sydney.

FALLS THE SHADOW de Mike Nicol

An edgy new detective series from master of noir Mike Nicol.

FALLS THE SHADOW
by Mike Nicol
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A cop in a quiet rural town kills his family and then turns the gun on himself. In his shed is a cache of weapons: Russian automatics, handguns, 9mils, .38s. You don’t need forensics to work out what’s going on. This is a cop with a side racket. Which gets the attention of Captain Zara Dewane of the Internal Crime Unit. A single mom, known among cops as the Jackal, what she uncovers about the family murder puts her in the firing line. There are cops running guns stolen from the police armoury. There are cops selling guns to gangsters. Thing is, the money chain goes deep into the police hierarchy. Even fingers the political bosses. Close her down, comes the order from on high. Kill her, in other words. Making Zara and her family targets. With only one way out.

Mike Nicol is the author of twenty-four books. He has written novels, works of non-fiction and poetry. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA, and have been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French and German. His long list of accolades starts in 1979, with his debut poetry collection receiving the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His Revenge Trilogy featured in the KrimiZeit Top 10 list in Germany, as did Of Coprs and Robberts and Power Play, while Payback was shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SCNF Du Polar 2016 in France. He lives in Cape Town.

THE ENGLISH PROBLEM de Beena Kamlani

A lyrical and ambitious debut that is set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement that looks at the insidiousness of colonialism and one young man’s sexual awakening.

THE ENGLISH PROBLEM
by Beena Kamlani
Crown, February 2025

In 1931, a young man from India arrives in London. Ten years later he will be on a ship bound for India, in a coma, accompanied by a nurse. But that is a decade away. For now, he is not dressed for the British rain, and shivering, rings the doorbell of the people who have agreed to host him during his stay in this strange land. He finds that his hosts are having a party and warmly welcome him in. He is the only Brown person in the room. It is the first time for what will become an everyday experience.

Shiv Advani is eighteen years old. He has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their rules of law, and then return home and help drive the British out of India using their own laws against them. Before he leaves his family insists he fulfill his arranged marriage and is hastily betrothed.

Shiv thinks he knows his duty: come to London, become a barrister, figure out how to overcome these oppressors, return home, and help his people. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell you, The English Problem is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of the sun never sets and seeps into everything—not just landed territories, but territories of the mind: literature, religion, sex, self-identity. As Shiv sets out to beat the English at their own game, he will also learn how colonialism is insidious, and how the people he sought to be liberated from are now the people he desperately wants to be a part of.

Beena Kamlani was a senior editor for the Penguin Group. She taught book editing at New York University for nearly two decades. Kamlani is also a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer whose work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Identity Lessons: Learning to be American, Growing Up Ethnic in America, The Lifted Brow, World Literature Today, and other publications. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ledig House, Hawthornden Castle, Jentel Arts, and Hedgebrook. The English Problem is her first novel, and it is based on the life of her uncle. She lives in New York.

LEGENDS & LATTES: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL de Travis Baldree

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

LEGENDS & LATTES: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
by Travis Baldree
Ten Speed Graphic, September 2025

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first-ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success―not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won’t be able to go it alone. After all, true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

This full color graphic novel adaptation brings the high fantasy and low stakes of this beloved story to vibrant life as its never been seen before.

Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his very patient family and their small, nervous dog.