2020 Kansas Notable Book
STARRED REVIEW! "The historic town of Nicodemus, Kansas, springs to life through expressive artwork done in softly fluid lines and hues, conveying all of the hope and joy of the movement."—Foreword Review
A family leaves behind sharecropping to settle the frontier and find a new kind of freedom.
When Dede sees a notice offering land to black people in Kansas, her family decides

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"This astonishing, devastating debut novel, riven through with mystery and magic, tells the story of a lonely girl living in a small African town and her struggle to free herself from her mercurial, charming mother. Ayosa is a wandering spirit- joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother's crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself: the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who...

The thirty-nine stories in Asleep Awake Asleep can be read as a hand-drawn narrative map, charting the course of a country's turbulent history. Together they tell a coming of age and a coming to consciousness story, as Rip - child, adult, journalist, partner, mother - revisits milestones marked and signposts ignored or unseen. Set in the suburbs and newsrooms of South African towns and cities and their wilder surrounds, there are vignettes of relationships;...

Fear and grief alter those who experience them. Trauma teaches lessons we never anticipated and imparts wisdoms for which we never prepared. The characters in The Storyteller embark on the most vital adventure of their lives – the one deep into their minds and most profound heartaches. They battle curses and hardships to survive, fighting fang and witch's nail to break free. Set in the small South African town of Klerksdorp, we follow a group...

"Pearl has always felt more comfortable in the sea than surrounded by the people in her sleepy South African town who always seem to let her down. But when a new friend from below the surface is taken by poachers, Pearl may need a little help after all. Since her mother left, Pearl has spent more and more time in the ocean, fishing to help her father pay the bills. But when she gets mixed up with a group of illegal abalone poachers and starts diving...

The Stargazer's Servant Essay Chapter I 1056 ad, Western outskirts of modern Mauritania. Caliph Abdullah Ibn Yasin won another victory over the army of the Empire of Ghana. Capturing the city of Aoudaghost, he greatly expanded the borders of the Caliphate and had plans for further military campaigns. Making fateful decisions of national importance, the Caliph Abdullah always listened to the advice of his astrologer and soothsayer. Thanks to extensive...

Kind, quiet Tannie Maria isn't a woman who draws much notice. She leads a solitary life, writing recipes for the local gazette, cooking with ingredients from her garden, and chatting with her pet chicken, Morag. When Maria becomes the newspaper's advice columnist, she peppers her responses with delectable recipes to help people fix their problems. But after a woman who wrote to her turns up dead, Maria and her colleague, rookie journalist Jessie,...

"A tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback."--Cover, p.4

"Ephram Jenkins has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at," is already quite damaged, but Ephram is forcibly drawn to her. As soon as she becomes a young woman and has any power of her own, Ruby flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York City. Years later, when a funeral forces her to return...