AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY d’Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

A searingly honest and resonant debut from a Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist, exploring what love and freedom cost in a society steeped in homophobia.

AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY
by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, June 2023

 

August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. He carries the weight of their lofty expectations, the shame of facing himself, and the haunting memory of a mother he never knew. It’s his first semester and pressures aside, August is making friends, doing well in his classes. He even almost has a girlfriend. There’s only one problem: he can’t stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé. Segun carries his own burdens and has been wounded in too many ways. When he meets August, their connection is undeniable, but Segun is reluctant to open himself up to August. He wants to love and be loved by a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who will see and hold and love Segun, exactly as he is.
Despite their differences, August and Segun forge a tender intimacy that defies the violence around them. But there is only so long Segun can stand being loved behind closed doors, while August lives a life beyond the world they’ve created together. And when a new, sweeping anti-gay law is passed, August and Segun must find a way for their love to survive in a Nigeria that was always determined to eradicate them. A tale of rare bravery and profound beauty, AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is an extraordinary debut that marks Ani as a voice to watch.

Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance, and liberation. His writings have appeared in literary magazines across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

 

WHEN STARS COME OUT de Scarlett St. Clair

From the brilliant mind of A Touch of Darkness‘s bestselling author Scarlett St. Clair comes a YA crossover in a darkly unique fantasy world.

WHEN STARS COME OUT
by Scarlett St. Clair
‎ Sourcebooks, July 2022

Anora Silby can see the dead and turn spirits into gold coins, two things she would prefer to keep secret as she tries to lead a normal life at her new school. After all, she didn’t change her identity for nothing. Hiding her weirdness is just one of many challenges. By the end of her first day, she’s claimed the soul of a dead girl on campus and lost the coin. Turns out, the coin gives others the ability to steal souls, and when a classmate ends up dead, there’s no mistaking the murder weapon. Navigating the loss of her Poppa, the mistrust of her mother, the attention of gorgeous and enigmatic Shy, and Roundtable, an anonymous student gossip app threatening to expose her, are hard enough. Now she must find the person who stole her coin before more lives are lost, but that means making herself a target for the Order, an organization that governs the dead on Earth―and they want Anora and her powers for themselves.

Scarlett St. Clair is the bestselling author of the Hades x Persephone saga, the Hades saga, and King of Battle and Blood. She has a Master’s degree in Library Science and Information Studies and a Bachelors in English Writing. She is obsessed with Greek Mythology, murder mysteries, and the afterlife.

THE WAYS WE HIDE de Kristina McMorris

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold On A Monday―over a million copies sold!―comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.

THE WAYS WE HIDE
by Kristina McMorris
Sourcebooks, September 2022

As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan’s Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she’s the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.
Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn’t foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one’s past.
Inspired by stunning true accounts, THE WAYS WE HIDE is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight―on the battlefields and within ourselves―and the courage found in unexpected places.

Kristina McMorris is a New York Times bestselling author of two novellas and six novels, including the runaway bestseller Sold on a Monday. Initially inspired by her grandparents’ WWII courtship letters, her works of fiction have garnered more than twenty national literary awards. Prior to her writing career, she owned a wedding-and-event planning company until she had far surpassed her limit of YMCA and chicken dances. She also worked as a weekly TV-show host for Warner Bros. and an ABC affiliate, beginning at age nine with an Emmy Award-winning program. A graduate of Pepperdine University, she lives near Portland, Oregon, where (ironically) she’s entirely deficient of a green thumb and doesn’t own a single umbrella.

POSSIBLE de William Ury

According to the Pew Research Center, in the US alone, the share of Americans who say having conversations with those they disagree with politically is “stressful and frustrating” has increased dramatically in recent years. POSSIBLE is for all of us who feel that frustration and seek to uncover new possibilities for the challenges in which we find ourselves. It offers a way out of the seemingly impossible, no-win conflicts of our time, a creative and collaborative method that can transform even our toughest conflicts.

POSSIBLE:
Transforming Our Toughest Conflicts
by William Ury
‎ HarperBusiness, Fall 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

According to the Pew Research Center, in the US alone, the share of Americans who say having conversations with those they disagree with politically is “stressful and frustrating” has increased dramatically in recent years. As individuals, we are finding it increasingly hard to engage in civil discourse to negotiate our struggles and conflicts. We are stuck in difficult, intractable challenges and conflicts – with the characteristic fear and anger, entrenched positions, and destructive fighting – in all aspects of our lives.
POSSIBLE is for all of us who feel that frustration and seek to uncover new possibilities for the challenges in which we find ourselves. Based on four and a half decades of real-life experiences grappling with the world’s toughest conflicts — from wildcat strikes to family feuds, boardroom battles to civil wars – William Ury, co-author of Getting to YES, the world’s all-time bestselling book on negotiation, offers a way out of the seemingly impossible, no-win conflicts of our time, a creative and collaborative method that can transform even our toughest conflicts.
In POSSIBLE, Ury invites readers to become possibilists. Possibilists aren’t optimists or pessimists, but rather believers in our human potential to transform our conflicts and relationships. Possibilists see, create, and act on new possibilities to deal with our deepest differences. They are willing to engage any conflict, no matter how heated, in order to explore possible openings. In their minds, conflict isn’t bad. In fact, it is natural and even necessary.
Transforming a conflict is not the same as resolving it, which may be impossible right now and sometimes not even desirable. We don’t always need to agree. A possibilist aims to change the conflict’s fundamental form from destructive fighting into creative negotiation and constructive coexistence so that we can begin to open up new possibilities for mutual satisfaction. Then, over time, conflicts can be more easily resolved or just remain creative tensions.
Ury’s triple-win method works even if the other side at first does not go along. Just as it takes two to tango, it takes two to fight. And it only takes one to stop. It is your choice. There is a switch, and you can decide to pull it whenever you like. This book will show you how.

William Ury, cofounder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, is one of the world’s best-known and most influential experts on negotiation. He has served as a mediator in boardroom battles, labor conflicts, and civil wars around the world. Ury is the coauthor of Getting to Yes, the bestselling negotiation book in the world, and seven other books, including the New York Times bestsellers Getting Past No and The Power of a Positive No. An avid hiker, he lives with his family in Colorado.

THE SECOND VERSE de Onke Mazibuko

THE SECOND VERSE
by Onke Mazibuko
Penguin South Africa, June 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

The second verse of any song always has to be more killer than the first. Always. The rhythm has to slap. The lyrics must be on point. The feeling intense. And the impact mad definitive. It’s just the way it is. In the same way, if you do well once in life, then you always have to be better from that point onwards. No doubt.
Bokang Damane is a dreamer and an outsider with mad problems in this African CATCHER IN THE RYE. Things go from bad to mad dicey when everyone thinks he wants to off himself just because he wrote an essay on suicide. Really? Talk about D.R.A.M.A. Life at the moment is just a sorry son-of-a-checklist of insolvable problems. Problem #1: Not black enough for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Yep. That’s what happens when you attend a mad pompous all boys’ college and live in the burbs. Problem #2: Family finances are a joke – they can’t even afford Bokang’s initiation. Now he can’t get props like any decent Xhosa man. Problem #3: An alcoholic, gambling attorney for a father who expects the world to bend to his will. What’s a man gotta do? Apart from freak the hell out? Bokang just wants to rap, sketch, and be left alone. Everyone keeps yacking on about Bokang reaching his true potential and then getting in the way. So what happens? Boy meets girl. It wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.

Onke Mazibuko is a psychologist working in private practice. He also dabbles in astrology, palmistry and tarot. He loves learning from young people and does a little writing to secretly fuel his dreams. He is working towards a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Pretoria.