African Magic Fiction

Do you believe in magic? Vanessa thought it could solve her problem, up until her miracle turned into a nightmare.

Gabrielle LeRoux was just like any other girl, focused on her academics and other normal teenage angst. That is, until her 18th birthday, where she inherits her powers and finds out she's a witch! She discovers that she is part of a long line of witches that descended from West Africa. They have the power to control the elements at will, breathe life into anything they wish, as well as take it away. The source of their magic comes from the melanin only their kind possess in their skin, absorbed from the sun and radiating through their bodies.

In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. A searing meditation on grief, female strength, and self‑discovery, Nobody's Magic is a testament to the power of family—the ones you're born into and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.

Black Girl Magic continues and deepens the work of the first BreakBeat Poets anthology by focusing on some of the most exciting Black women writing today. This anthology breaks up the myth of hip-hop as a boys’ club and asserts the truth that the cypher is a feminine form.

When the windshield of his Chevy Impala shatters in a dark diner parking lot in Alabama, Melvin moves without thinking. A split-second reaction marrows in his bones from the days of war, but this time it is the safety of his fiancé, Bernadette, at stake. Impulse keeps them alive, and yet they flee with blood on their hands. What is life like now that they are fugitives? Pack passports. Empty bank accounts. Set their old life on fire. The couple disguise themselves as a pastor and a reluctant pastor’s wife who’s hiding a secret from her fiancé.

Everyone’s favorite fifteen-year-old ghostalker, Ropa, arrives at the worldwide Society of Skeptical Enquirers’ biennial conference just in time to be tied into a mystery—a locked room mystery, if an entire creepy haunted castle on lockdown counts. One of the magical attendees has stolen a valuable magical scroll. Caught between Qozmos, the high wizard of Ethiopian magic; the larger-than-life Lord Sashvindu Samarasinghe; England’s Sorcerer Royal; and Scotland’s own Edmund MacLeod, it’s up to Ropa to sort through the dangerous secret politics and alliances to figure out what really happened.

Salo is dead—and the world he left behind is at war. In the midst of their grief, Salo’s closest clan members begin to experience strange phenomena: visions visit one, while seizures plague another. The clan’s new mystic divines that an arcane signal from the far west is calling, so they set out toward the desert—and encounter a caravan of travelers following the same mysterious call.

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

Nnamdi's father was a good chief of police, perhaps the best Kalaria had ever had. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people believed the Chief of Chiefs, most powerful of the criminals, was responsible. Nnamdi has vowed to avenge his father, but he wonders what a 12-year-old boy can do. Until a mysterious nighttime meeting, the gift of a magical object that enables super powers, and a charge to use those powers for good changes his life forever.

Sabiduría familiar sigue a las Marte a través de este período liminal, mientras se preparan para el velorio de Flor y lo que vendrá después. Con excepcional maestría, y su inconfundible y deslumbrante voz poética, Elizabeth Acevedo teje la epopeya de las Marte: una familia sinigual que, como cualquier otra, deberá romper el conjuro del silencio para empezar a escribir su futuro.

Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won’t stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store. Then, one evening, the Jamaican water deity River Mumma appears to Alicia, telling her that she has twenty-four hours to scour the city for her missing comb. Alicia doesn’t understand why River Mumma would choose her. She can’t remember all the legends her relatives told her, unlike her retail co-worker Heaven, who can reel off Jamaican folklore by heart.

"We'd had to be cut free of our mother's womb. Abby and I were fused, you see. But here's the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn't." Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father. Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life.

J. Sutter is a bonafide junketeer - a freelance writer, travelling from city to city, hungry for free meals and the discarded sales receipts of others to claim on his expense account. Travelling into the backwoods of West Virginia to write a piece on the unveiling of the new John Henry postage stamp and the ensuing John Henry Days festival, J. continues his nearly record-setting, three-month junket binge.

Sunny Nwazue vive en Nigeria, pero nacio´ en Nueva York. Sus facciones son corrientes, pero es albina. Se le dan muy bien los deportes, pero no puede practicarlos bajo el sol. En resumen, no parece encajar en ningu´n sitio... Hasta que un di´a sucede algo increi´ble: ve el fin del mundo en la llama de una vela. Lo que pareci´a ser una alucinacio´n es lo que la acaba uniendo a otros tres chicos en su misma situacio´n: tiene habilidades ma´gicas.

On the day of the Harvest Festival, the old woman who lives in the forest appears in Abeni's village with a terrible message: You ignored my warnings. It’s too late to run. They are coming. Warriors with burning blades storm the village. A man with a cursed flute plays an impossibly alluring song. And everyone Abeni has ever known and loved is captured and marched toward far-off ghost ships set for even more distant lands. But not Abeni. Abeni is magically whisked away by the old woman.

How far will a mother go to turn Christmas joy into back-to-school readiness? And what happens when her solution risks taking away the very thing that makes her child feel special? Kemunto is no stranger to tough decisions. As a hardworking mother in a rural African village, she’s mastered the art of stretching every coin just to get by. But when her son Mogaka’s beloved gray Christmas shoes—his pride, his confidence, his magic—don’t meet the school’s strict uniform rules, Kemunto is faced with a new kind of dilemma. To Mogaka, those shoes help him run faster, dream bigger, and ...

Gone Like Yesterday follows two Black women—Zahra, a listless college prep coach, and Sammie, a teenage girl and budding activist soon off to college—who are drawn to each other through the songs of gypsy moths. Gypsy moths have been singing the songs of Zahra’s ancestors to her for years, so when Zahra realizes that Sammie might be a moth person too, their paths become intertwined. Then, the unthinkable happens: Zahra’s brother, Derrick, goes missing.

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 teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner of a café no one ever visits. Unexpectedly, miraculously, one day Ayosa finds a friend.

Now a guardian in training, Maya spends her days patching up veils with her father and cleaning up near-disasters like baby wormholes that her erratic powers create. But when Maya and her friends discover that something went terribly wrong during their journey to bring her father back to the human world, they are forced to return to The Dark and restore what they left behind, the one thing keeping the veil from falling: her father’s soul.

For centuries, the Chieftain of Wakana (the Black Panther) has gained his powers through the juices of the Heart Shaped Herb. Indeed, even Shuri herself has gained powers from this mythical herb, which grows only in Wakanda. Much like Vibranium, the Heart Shaped Herb is essential to the survival and prosperity of Wakanda. But something is wrong. The plants are no longer growing.