From Zamfara up north to the Niger delta down south, with a finale in Lagos, this collection of stories and a novella respond to and amplify the newspaper headlines in a range of Nigerian voices. Men, women, and children speak out to us from these stories, from immigration centers and police barracks, from street corners and maternity wards.
Lagos, January 1976, six years after the Nigerian Civil War. A new military regime has been in power for six months, but rumours are spreading that a counter-coup is imminent. At an art exhibition in the affluent Ikoyi neighbourhood, Remi Lawal, a Nigerian woman who runs her own greeting-card shop, meets Frances Cooke, who introduces herself as an American art dealer, in Nigeria to buy rare beads. They become friends and over the next few weeks confide in each other about their aspirations, loyalties, marriage, motherhood – and Nigeria itself, as hospitable Remi welcomes the enigmatic Frances into her world.
Remi’s husband, Tunde, naturally suspects Frances – like any American in Lagos – of gathering intelligence for the CIA, yet she is unconvinced. Cynical about the country’s unending instability, and alienated by the shallowness of the city’s elite, she willingly shares her views with Frances. But the February 13 assassination of General Muhammed prompts Remi to reconsider one particular conversation with her new acquaintance in a different light. Her discouragement overcome by a reawakened sense of patriotism, she begins to doubt that the bead collector is who she claims to be.
With her signature subtlety and wit, Sefi Atta examines a brief but profound friendship, and one Nigerian mother’s yearning – amid legacies of conflict and uncertainty – to help build her country from home.
At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father’s five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities.
Deola’s journey is as much about evading others’ expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola’s urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta’s characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world. This is a novel not to be missed.
Africa is now the land of unicorns, but before unicorns, there were numerous stories that captured the power and pioneering spirit of the continent’s techpreneurs. Enter Olumide Soyombo who discovered the Personal Computer as a teenager and with the nudging of his father, became an entrepreneur. Set against the backdrop of the evolution of Africa’s emergence on the tech scene and the pivotal role and leadership offered by Nigerians and the country’s contemporary culture, Vantage tells the story of Olumide’s pioneering role with candour, grace and humility.
A forbidden love between a Mexican heiress and a shrewd British politician makes for a tantalizing Victorian season.
Ana María Luna Valdés has strived to be the perfect daughter, the perfect niece, and the perfect representative of the powerful Luna family. So when Ana María is secretly sent to London with her sisters to seek refuge from the French occupation of Mexico, she experiences her first taste of freedom far from the judgmental eyes of her domineering father. If only she could ignore the piercing looks she receives across ballroom floors from the austere Mr. Fox.
Gideon Fox elevated himself from the London gutters by chasing his burning desire for more: more opportunities, more choices. For everyone. Now, as a member of Parliament, Gideon is on the cusp of securing the votes he needs to put forth a measure to abolish the Atlantic slave trade once and for all—a cause that is close to his heart as the grandson of a formerly enslaved woman. The charmingly vexing Ana María is a distraction he must ignore.
But when Ana María finds herself in the crosshairs of a nefarious nobleman with his own political agenda, Gideon knows he must offer his hand as protection . . . but will this Mexican heiress win his heart as well?
When it comes to the gender gap, it is not enough to ask women to “lean in” and demand promotions and raises. Organizations have an obligation to level up and provide women with more opportunities for advancement. In this book, leadership and governance expert Carol Geffner makes a strong case that for women to reach their full potential, workplaces and their leaders must take a more proactive role in combating gender discrimination.
Based on over 200 hours of interviews with women leaders in the United States and abroad, Building a New Leadership Ladder demonstrates that even when women are promoted to leadership positions, they are rarely given access to the same support networks as their male colleagues. Covering sectors as diverse as higher education, health care, law enforcement, and the military, the book identifies common strategies that all organizations can use to remove obstacles for women’s advancement.
More than a how-to guide on how women can ascend to the top, Building a New Leadership Ladder is a bold call to action for organizations and their leaders to proactively foster the conditions under which women’s efforts to rise up are consistently recognized and rewarded.
The only complete Sherlock Holmes collection in trade paperback: all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring the world-famous detective (in two volumes).
Volume II contains the fourth of the Sherlock Holmes novels, The Valley of Fear, in which Holmes faces his malignant archenemy, Professor Moriarty. Short stories in this volume include such celebrated gems as “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” and “His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes.” With the stories from the final collection, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1927, this volume carries the venerable detective through to the end of his remarkable four-decade career of crime-solving.
The only complete Sherlock Holmes collection in trade paperback: all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring the world-famous detective (in two volumes).
Volume I includes three of the four Sherlock Holmes novels: A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the eccentric genius and his sidekick Dr. Watson to the world; The Sign of Four, the quintessential locked-room mystery; and The Hound of the Baskervilles, a haunting tale that has rightly earned its reputation as the finest murder mystery ever written. The short stories include “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” and “The Final Problem,” tales that bring to life the horse-drawn cabs and atmospheric fogs of Victorian England and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street where Holmes made his name as the greatest fictional detective of all time.
From the critically acclaimed author of The Kiss Quotient comes a romantic novel about love that crosses international borders and all boundaries of the heart…
Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions–like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better–that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.
As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.
With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.
Ali Wong’s heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters (the two she put to work while they were still in utero) cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad.
In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so heavily that she became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads.
The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal singles life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and disgusting) for all.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
The most celebrated and revered writer of our time gives us a new nonfiction collection: a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on race, society, justice, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
The Source of Self-Regard brims with the elegance, literary prowess, and moral gravitas that are Toni Morrison’s inimitable hallmarks. Its forty-four essays (all previously published) are divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11, the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches collected here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” and human rights.
She illuminates enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, goodness in the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, from painter Romare Bearden and author Toni Cade Bambara to theater director Peter Sellars. Fiercely intelligent, gorgeously written, humbling, and inspiring, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to the Toni Morrison canon.
The 50th anniversary edition of the classic #1 bestselling crime saga–with a new introduction by Francis Ford Coppola.
Fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family–these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.
A sweet and compassionate guide to eliminating toxic relationships from your life, and breaking away from the cycle of hurt forever.
Toxic relationships often come disguised as seemingly normal ones. These subtly destructive relationships are characterized by the slow erosion of self-esteem, a loss of personal identity, or a growing desire to please friends, partners, and family members who are impossible to please.
In this uplifting and informative book, transpersonal psychotherapist Avril Carruthers will take a close look at adult relationships to show why we get involved in toxic relationships in the first place, and instruct the reader on how to recognize if they’re involved in one. Once the toxic relationship is identified, the author shows the reader how to begin their journey toward healing and how to meet the world with a new kind of confidence, so that the cycle of toxic relationships can be broken once and for all.
What Carruthers teaches is just how possible it can be to learn how to recognize the manipulative or sweetly corrosive partner, the family dynamics that make Christmas and other get-togethers seem like hell, or the nightmare boss who causes daily torment–and that we can learn to leave these painful, destructive patterns behind forever.
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries—from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for her namesake, the goddess Pampa, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—literally “victory city”—the wonder of the world.
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry—with Pampa Kampana at its center.
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.
Through a blend of compelling exercises, illustrations, and stories, the bestselling author of Thinking in Bets will train you to combat your own biases, address your weaknesses, and help you become a better and more confident decision-maker.
What do you do when you’re faced with a big decision? If you’re like most people, you probably make a pro and con list, spend a lot of time obsessing about decisions that didn’t work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people’s opinions to find just that little bit of extra information that might make you sure, and finally, go with your gut.
What if there was a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive and be more productive?
Making good decisions doesn’t have to be a series of endless guesswork. Rather, it’s a teachable skill that anyone can sharpen. In How to Decide, bestselling author Annie Duke and former professional poker player lays out a series of tools anyone can use to make better decisions.
