Showing results by narrator "Nene Nwoko" in All Categories

One day in Lagos, young dancer Ikemefuna is put on a plane to Houston to meet her new husband, Nna. Promises are made to her – about her education, about the man she will marry, about her freedom. None of them are kept. A few months later, self-professed feminist Nna finds a beautiful woman cooking in his parents’ kitchen. They tell him Ikemefuna is his wife, there to give them the grandson they’ve been waiting for. She appears obedient, malleable. But she is no ordinary wife.

Yarima Lalo believes he has been murdered twice before. The cause? Love. To make sense of these vivid memories he cannot shake, he travels from Abuja to Kano with his new friend and love interest Aziza to meet an old woman who he might have known in a past life. She is skeptical at first - and hesitant to revisit painful memories of her own - but together, they dig deeper and deeper into the past, piecing together a shared history with ripple effects that could shape Lalo’s future.

Chasing Whispers is a unique Afro-irrealist collection of Black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, longing, hybridity, unlimited futures, a collision of worlds, and folklore. It contains thirteen stories, eleven of which are original, with a commanding introduction by D. Harlan Wilson. The collection is aligned with the themes of Eugen Bacon's other fiction, and her recognition in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for "doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction."

In the Nigerian city of Enugu, young Nwabulu, a housemaid since the age of ten, dreams of becoming a typist as she endures her employers' endless chores. She is tall and beautiful and in love with a rich man's son. Educated and privileged, Julie is a modern woman. Living on her own, she is happy to collect the gold jewelry lovestruck Eugene brings her, but has no intention of becoming his second wife. When a kidnapping forces Nwabulu and Julie into a dank room years later, the two women relate the stories of their lives as they await their fate.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse's debut novel follows three generations torn apart by the genocide against the Tutsis, as they try to reconnect with one another, rebuild broken relationships, and find their place in today's world. Blanche returns to Rwanda after building a life in Bordeaux with her husband and young son, Stokely. Reuniting with her mother Immaculata, old wounds are reopened for both mother and daughter while Stokely, caught between two countries, tries to understand where he comes from and where he belongs.

Colm Reid, a disillusioned journalist in Dublin, is invited by Norwegian conservationist Kennet Haven to cover a story in the remote Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Colm joins Kennet, Kennet’s sister Jane, Belgian journalist Fatou Ba, and the rangers of Garamba on an expedition into the park to look for the last surviving wild northern white rhinos on the planet. Kennet neglected to mention one thing: the park is in the middle of a war zone.

Eat. Dance. Fight. This is the life of the girls who compete in the Isle’s elite, all-female fighting sport of Bowing. But it isn’t really Dirt’s life anymore. At sixteen, she is old and has retired from competition. Instead, she spends her days coaching the younger sisters of the Mud Fam and dreading her fast-approaching birthday, when she’ll have to leave her sisters to fulfill whatever destiny the Gods choose for her.

Barrow Boy is an enchanting tale of a young lad's quest to find the secrets of becoming a great man. Despite the odds, young Ladi's mother, Nana is determined to help her son succeed and learn the secrets of becoming a great man like his father was. Unable to take on the task of instructing her son, she leads him to the door steps of an old wise tutor who ushers him into a whole new world. The story emphasizes four basic success nuggets: Desire, determination, discipline, and dance, explained in a comical manner that gently penetrates the mind of a young listener.

God of Mercy is set in Ichulu, an Igbo village where the people's worship of their gods is absolute. Their adherence to tradition has allowed them to evade the influences of colonialism and globalization. But the village is reckoning with changes, including a war between gods signaled by Ijeoma, a girl who can fly.

The sun has set and the moon is rising, and that means it’s bedtime. But not if Lala has a say—because she’s not ready to go to sleep! First she needs to say good night to the cat. And the goat. And the chickens. And, and, and . . . Lala’s adorable stalling strategy will ring true for all parents whose little ones aren’t ready to say goodbye to the day—and all will appreciate the wonderful culmination to the bedtime ritual.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama, aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered.

A murderer returns to Africa, seeking atonement for killing an innocent. Now that Carlos has emptied out his life, his past torments him. He can't go forward until he goes back - to Ghana - to own up to crimes he committed as a young man. A woman escapes poverty in Africa, but is trapped in a life supporting those she left behind. Liz left Ghana and is now a successful career woman in the USA. Freed from the daily oppression of scarcity, she remains under the vice-grip power of her hoarding mother and needy siblings. Their lives cross...

Gods and Heroes is the first volume of the Itan - Legends of the Golden Age trilogy about the thousand-year story of the Yoruba people. It starts with the establishment of Ile-Ife by Oduduwa and the great sacrifice of the heroine Moremi. The ancient gods of Yorubaland, Obatala, Orunmila, Ogun, and Olokun all play their part, as well as the great heroes and heroines of antiquity. The author uses the genre of the historical novel in a refreshing and imaginative fashion to present the whole tableau of Yoruba history.

In 1789, Mo’destee Vert was a Senegambia teenager in love and happier than ever as she prepard to become an adult. Everything changed when white strangers speaking a foreign language attacked her village. After a grueling voyage across the ocean, she found herself labeled Modesty Greene, slave. She became the property of Robert Banks, a plantation owner in Dorchester County, Maryland. At night, she dreamed of her home in Africa. She longed to see her brother and parents, but mostly, she missed the man that never became her husband.

A ghost decides to help the shy young woman living in her former house. Kyra dreams of becoming an artist, and she flourishes under the guidance of her ghostly mentor. This short, supernatural tale will appeal to fans of friendly ghost stories and family reconciliation.

Once a member of the world’s first all-female special forces unit, the Norwegian Hunter Troop, Jane Haven is now helping her brother Kennet protect some of the world's most endangered animals at his Kenyan Wildlife Conservancy. Drawn away from her vigil protecting Douglas, the world's last remaining male Northern White rhino, Jane returns to find a scene of devastation and murder. Everything and everyone Jane cares for is affected. But before she can track down the killers, Jane finds that she's the one being hunted...

I Touched the Moon—a metaphor for the extraordinary place where a young trafficked Nigerian girl finds herself as she struggles to reclaim her freedom and life after being raped, kidnapped, and forced into years of prostitution. Asha’s experiences and her indomitable drive to live and thrive unfold in unexpected ways as we enter her world. The tale is a blend of fact and fiction inspired by the horrific attack on a village in Zamfara, Nigeria—an actual event in 2011. But no matter how far Asha travels, and no matter how remarkable her journey, the weight of her past is both heavy and surreal.