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      • Autobiography: general
        November 2009

        Caribbean Chemistry: Tales from Saint Kitts

        by Christopher Vanier

        In this fascinating picture of life in the West Indies in the 40's and 50's, Christopher Vanier presents a collection of anecdotes from his early childhood on St. Kitts to English-style boarding school on Antigua and his return to St. Kitts where he must prepare to compete for an all-important scholarship that offers the only real chance to leave the islands and obtain a university education. Vanier speaks with both affection and a restless resentment of the encapsulated world of a small island.

      • Children's & YA
        February 2019

        A Tudor Turk - The Chronicles of Will Ryde and Awa Maryam Al-Jameel, Book One

        by Rehan Khan

        ISTANBUL, 1591 - and Sultan Murad III has been robbed! The Staff of Moses, used at the parting of the Red Sea, has been stolen from under his imperial nose. To track down the thieves, an elite band of hand-picked warriors is assembled. Among them are friends Awa and Will. Awa, the studious daughter of a noble family from West Africa, once a slave but now a whirling force with a scimitar, and Will, snatched as a child from his home in London at the age of 5, is now 16 and a galley slave on a Moroccan warship. Escaping that fate to join the Rüzgar turns him into a man. From the roofs of Ottoman Istanbul, along the canals of Venice and all the way to the court of Elizabeth I. The first in a series of three books.

      • Children's & YA
        August 2018

        You're Not Proper

        by Tariq Mehmood

        Karen thinks she's not proper white. Her dad is Pakistani and her mother is white Christian, and somehow she feels as if she doesn't quite fit in... anywhere. So she's made a choice: she's switching sides. Karen's going to convert to Islam to find her true identity. But Shamshad, her Hijab-wearing school mate, isn't making things easy for her. What's her deal, anyway? Is Shamshad really any more proper? Trouble and turmoil await, as school battles are replaced by family troubles, name calling turns to physical confrontation and cataclysmic secrets are unveiled. You're Not Proper shines a light on issues of identity, religion, politics and class affecting young people today.

      • Children's & YA
        September 2018

        Silent Striker

        by Pete Kalu

        A novel about friendship and family, The Silent Striker explores the issue of disability, and deafness, and the different ways in which we can choose to handle it. Marcus is a footballing genius who keeps getting into deep trouble at his school. He is the best player by far at Ducie High, in a tough, ethnically diverse, inner-city area. He's actually so good that there's a very real chance he'll be signed by Manchester United.  But when he discovers he may be losing his hearing, his whole world falls to pieces and he finds himself having to put them back together on his own. But is this feeling of isolation real or just a consequence of his own behaviour? Dealing with deafness, shifting friends, crazy parents and a ‘special measures’ school, he will have to gather all the strength he can find – in others as well as within himself. Marcus gradually understands that accepting the help of others is ultimately an acceptance of self.

      • Children's & YA
        March 2018

        The Ghosts and Jamal

        by Bridget Blankley

        The story of a boy who wasn't born to be a hero. Waking up in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, 13-year-old Jamal tries to piece together what has happened whilst simultaneously trying to evade capture by the attackers. It soon becomes clear that he has been living in a separate outhouse from his family on account of the "bad-spirits" - his epilepsy. Jamal holds up a mirror to violence-driven societies everywhere.

      • Fiction
        April 2020

        The Tainted

        by Cauvery Madhavan

        It's spring 1920 in the small military town of Nandagiri in south-east India. Colonel Aylmer, commander of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers, is in charge. A distance away, decently hidden from view, lies the native part of Nandagiri with its heaving bazaar, reeking streets and brothels. Everyone in Nandagiri knows their place and the part they were born to play – with one exception. The local Anglo-Indians, tainted by their mixed blood, belong . . . nowhere.

      • Fiction
        August 2020

        A Match Made in Heaven

        British Muslim Women Write About Love and Desire

        by Claire Chambers, Nafhesa Ali, Richard Phillips, Ayisha Malik, Shelina Janmohamed

        Star-studded and beautifully written, this collection of diverse stories about love and desire by South Asian-heritage British Muslim women authors, including Ayisha Malik and Shelina Janmohamed.  Although outsiders often expect Muslim women to be timid, conservative, or submissive, the reality is different. While some of these authors express a quiet piety and explore poignant situations, others use black humour and biting satire, or play with possibilities. Still others shade into the territory of a Muslim Fifty Shades of Grey, creating grey areas where the mainstream media sees only black and white. If grooming-gang scandals grab headlines, characters are more scandalized by suitors’ sloppy personal grooming. Finding the right crimson lipstick for a date or the perfect power outfit for meeting a cheating ex-husband are commoner preoccupations than the news.  Stylish but far from shallow, the stories also reflect on migration, racism, arranged marriage, gender differences, lesbian desire, bearding, and many other subjects.

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