Fiction

John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke, is marooned on the west coast of Africa as an infant, and is adopted by a tribe of apes. A feral child, he matures into Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, with the ability to climb, jump, and swing from vines, while maintaining flawless ethics and judgment whenever he is thrust back into the bonds of society. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stories of this preternatural hero will inspire readers to examine their own morality and their relationship with the great outdoors.

Annie Tripp has everything she needs–Italian sweaters, vintage chandelier earrings, and elite ice skating lessons–but all that changes when her father is accused of scamming hundreds of people out of their investments. Annie knows her dad wasn’t at fault, but she and her brother are exiled to their estranged aunt and uncle’s house in a run-down part of Breckenridge–until the trial blows over.

Life with her new family isn’t quite up to Annie’s usual standard of living, but surprisingly, pretending to be someone else offers a freedom she’s never known. As Annie starts to make real friends for the first time, she realizes she has more in common with her aunt and uncle than she ever wanted to know. As the family’s lies begin to crumble and truths demand consequences, Annie must decide which secrets need to see the light of day . . . and which are worth keeping.

Chinua Achebe is considered the father of modern African literature, the writer who “opened the magic casements of African fiction.” The African Trilogy–comprised of Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and No Longer at Ease–is his magnum opus. In these masterly novels, Achebe brilliantly imagines the lives of three generations of an African community as their world is upended by the forces of colonialism from the first arrival of the British to the waning days of empire.

The trilogy opens with the groundbreaking Things Fall Apart, the tale of Okonkwo, a hero in his village, whose clashes with missionaries–coupled with his own tragic pride–lead to his fall from grace. Arrow of God takes up the ongoing conflict between continuity and change as Ezeulu, the headstrong chief priest, finds his authority is under threat from rivals and colonial functionaries. But he believes himself to be untouchable and is determined to lead his people, even if it is towards their own destruction. Finally, in No Longer at Ease, Okonkwo’s grandson, educated in England, returns to a civil-service job in Lagos, only to see his morality erode as he clings to his membership in the ruling elite.

Drawing on the traditional Igbo tales of Achebe’s youth, The African Trilogy is a literary landmark, a mythic and universal tale of modern Africa. As Toni Morrison wrote, “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe. For passion, intellect and crystalline prose, he is unsurpassed.”