Jacaranda – serie

Simon Weekes becomes an overnight celebrity after his heroics during the 7/7 Bombings. But Simon can't afford the newfound fame and attention - he has too much to lose.July 7, 2005. Simon Weekes is travelling on the London Underground when his tube carriage is wrecked by a bomb blast. Virtually everyone is killed and almost all the survivors are severely injured. Except for Simon.Having quickly and calmly organised the small band of survivors out of the wreckage and to safety, word of Simon's heroics get out in the days following the bombing. Now under the full glare of the media spotlight, he becomes an overnight celebrity, hounded for interviews and regularly approached in the street by autograph hunters.The only thing is, he doesn't want all the attention. He can't afford it. He has too much to lose.

Set in rural Jamaica, Swimming With Fishes evokes the pain of a love affair between a London-born businessman and a native Jamaican and how that affair grows beyond either of their expectations...Sickle cell anaemia sufferer Kat wants a baby more than life itself. When the town herbalist foretells of a man from across the ocean who will father her child, Kat's hopes intensify into a dream that must come true.Her encounter with Londoner Ben years later edges the prediction toward reality. Their friendship develops into an all-consuming love to which they both surrender. Unknown to Ben, however, Kat is a sickle cell sufferer; and unknown to Kat, Ben is already married.

Set during Carnival in Haiti 1938, a young and beautiful woman named Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion on her wedding day and collapses at the altar. She is buried and later resurrected by an evil sorcerer and, as a zombie, enters the collective memory of her town of Jacmel. Hadriana's conversion serves as the inciting incident into an exploration of the strange and esoteric on the island, where Voodoo and Catholicism keep a symbiotic relationship, young women turn into zombies, young men turn into lascivious butterflies and nothing is quite what it seems. Hadriana in All my Dreams is a frolic through mystery and eroticism that reveals vital truths about the nature of humanity.

"It is rare to say about a book that you have never read anything like it, and this is one such case." Elle"A pure diamond, a magnificent event. A mind-blowing debut novel." Le PointEel is a 17-year-old girl who leaves her rock on the archipelago of Comoros to lose herself at sea. She drifts between two states of mind and between two islands 'in a hollow maze', evoking her memories so as to forget nothing and so as to delay the inevitable outcome.Confronted with the pressing immediacy of imminent death, Eel recounts the story of her whole life in one long, sustained breath, in a series of brief couplets.A story told in a single sentence, A Girl Called Eel is a memorial, a reckoning, and a powerful narrative imbued with a prevailing sense of urgency.

Courage and outrage inform 13 essays about black womanhood.Searing in its emotional honesty, Womanish is an essay collection by award-winning author Kim McLarin that explores what it means to be a Black woman in today’s turbulent times. Writing with candor, wit and vulnerability on topics including dating after divorce, depression, parenting older children, the Obamas, and the often fraught relations between white and black women, McLarin unveils herself at the crossroads of being black, female, middle-aged and, ultimately, American. Powerful and timely, McLarin not only draws upon a lifetime of experiences to paint an intimate portrait of a Black woman trying to come to terms with the world around her, but also exposes a society trying to come to terms with Black women.

Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born to a Jamaican mother in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia.In this honest and gripping memoir, Stanley reflects on a childhood and adolescence torn apart by mental disorder. Because of it, he adopts the mantle of 'man of the house' as he is forced to scavenge for food and miss school, with his two sisters, to care for his baby brother. His life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system and Stanley must face the reality of being separated from his siblings.An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender's institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around.Set against a backdrop of 1970s poverty, racism and hardship, Little Big Man is a powerful story of generational trauma and one man's determination to heal the wounds of the past. Most of all, it is a book about the universal desire for love, belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery.