South African Fiction

Southern Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last of the leaders of the state of Gaza, the second-largest empire led by an African. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village. Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a 15-year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese.

Romaine Wilder, big-city medical examiner with a small-town past, has been downsized and evicted. With few other options, she’s forced to return to her hometown of Roble in East Texas, leaving behind the man she’s dating and the life she’s worked hard to build. Suzanne Babet Derbinay, Romaine’s Auntie Zanne and proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home, has long since traded her French Creole upbringing for Big Texas attitude. She’s a member in a number of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including being in charge of the Tri-County Annual Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. Hanging on to ...

In part 2 of this urban chick trilogy, Yazmeen decided to move forward with her aspirations of building an empire after a significant blow and setback. When an opportunity presents itself to make major money moves, she pounces it on it like the lioness that she is. A new man, new home, and new money threaten the sisterhood she has with Aminah and Tiffani. Will she stay focused on her goals or give up to stand by the ones she loves? Aminah experiences betrayal in the form of a media frenzy while trying to have Yazmeen's back. Tiffani's secret is finally exposed and brought to the forefront. ...

Is anything truly beyond redemption, beyond the hope of repair, restoration, or renewal? Absolutely not! Jacqueline Vance might beg to differ, as her life spirals out of control. In her thirties, navigating the complexities of marriage and the ache of childlessness, she finds herself at the heart of a murder mystery in Southern Hills. Amidst the darkest betrayal, she discovers that no one, not even her occasional ally Yolanda, is beyond God's reach for redemption. Through this ordeal, Jacqueline learns to confront her current struggles with resilience, eyeing the possibility of what lies ...

Imani Jones believed a man was meant to be nurtured into his true self. She often made the common mistake many women made of taking some dirt, adding blood, sweat and tears to turn it to clay, molding it, fashioning it, polishing it up and putting it in the window for display. Then, they went out and found a more refined piece of pottery to match the beauty she had bestowed in them. It was a Catch-22 and she had come to the conclusion that she was meant to be alone… A woman of affairs. Affairs that left a new scent lingering on her skin each night. Until Vincent Garvey entered the picture...

She arrived to claim her inheritance. What she discovered could tip the scales between light and darkness forever. When Amelia Bennett steps off the plane in New Orleans, she believes she’s only there to settle a forgotten estate. But the Creole cottage left behind by her great-great-grandmother is more than just weathered wood and memories—it’s a gateway to a hidden legacy linked to the legendary Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. Haunted by visions and drawn to secrets only the spirits can see, Amelia is pulled back in time to 1893—a year when magic thrived and a silent war was fought ...

***Standalone*** ***Re-release*** When dealin’ with men with illegal dealings, it takes a true ridah to hold their savage down. After all the drama, making Birmingham hot, Elijah “Eli” Barns was more than ready to get the hell out of dodge. Right on time, his cousin Trouble called from Dallas, and said they were looking for someone with his specialty, artillery. Without a second thought, Eli packed up his fiancé Anita and her daughter, and was on the first thing smoking to Texas. Anita Bridges was a Bham chick through and through. She wasn’t feelin’ the move to Dallas, but there ...

On the first episode of Side Piece Chronicles... Sheila Price doesn’t look like what she’s been through. She’s a marketing exec who worked her way up to the top of her field. Her world revolves around her son and her job, and life is good, until she meets Anthony Bailey. Anthony seems to be everything Sheila’s ever wanted in a man. He's a loving, supportive entrepreneur who takes care of his kids. But when Sheila pairs him up on a business venture with her best friend, Delilah, a party girl whose motto is Seize the Day, she’s reminded of the thin line between friends and enemies. ...

Keisha “Bussa” Taylor is happy as hell to be graduating from Miles College. Coming from Tulane Court in Montgomery, she’d moved to Birmingham when her high school sweetheart and then dope boy, Ra’el “Magnum” King, had broken her heart. She found herself stripping to pay her way through school and, on her last night her past comes looking for her. When tragedy strikes at the strip club, Bussa finds herself back in Montgomery looking for work. Taking a chance, she gets accepted into the Police Academy, and may end up going after the one man who once had her heart. Ra’el “...

Although apartheid is typically dated from the late 1940s until its dismantling decades later, segregationist policies had been the norm in South Africa from nearly the moment European explorers sailed to the region and began settling there. Whether it was displacing and fighting indigenous groups like the Khoi and San, or fighting other whites like the Boer, separation between ethnicities was the norm in South Africa for centuries before the election of Malan signaled the true rise of the Afrikaner far right.

In the small college town of Troy, Alabama, amidst the backdrop of 1967, Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia's romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she's chosen.

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

Coming out has led to nothing but problems for Jordin, but it’s nothing she can’t handle… Jordin "Hops" Martinez found a woman who opened her up to her truest self. But when she finds herself kidnapped and stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the woman she thought was all hers pulling the strings, she has to make a decision on which side to choose. Briana Means didn’t intend to betray Hops, but her life was on the line, and it ended up being every woman for herself. She may have chosen the wrong one to cross, however, which she soon sees when Hops lets her savage side free. ...

When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother, Emma Jean, tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain't what you was supposed to be. So from now on, you gon' be a boy. It'll be a little strange at first, but you'll get used to it, and this'll be over after while." From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.

When summoned to Georgetown, South Carolina, sisters Mariah Clark and Sabrina Holland both assume their ailing grandfather's health has gotten worse. Neither expects their grandmother's undeniable request—save the family restaurant. Mariah is at a crossroad in her life. After being dumped by her husband and forced to walk away from their diner that she helped rescue from bankruptcy, bitter feelings consume her. Even though the restaurant has been in the family for eighty-six years, giving her all to another struggling business isn't something she wants to do.

In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

Gracie Hollaman finally decides to follow the voices in her head. She leaves behind her family for the small African-American town of Rockrun to join Mama Toot and Mattie. Together, the three will learn to shed their pasts to begin life anew.

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.

Since childhood, identical twins Leona and Fiona Dunbar have been getting in—and out—of trouble by pretending to be each other. Yet underneath, they couldn’t be more different. Outspoken Leona lives to break rules, have a good time, and scandalize their respectable hometown of Lexington. Fiona is a seemingly demure churchgoing girl who is the apple of her domineering, widowed mother Mavis’s eye. But together, the twins have fooled teachers, boyfriends, bosses, racist police—and most importantly, straitlaced Mavis.

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.