Imagine the thrilling pacing of gripping genre fiction, the socio-political urgency of literary fiction, and the sharp clarity of non-fiction all thrown together to tell a story that has never been told before: the story of Black women in Sweden. Kemi, Brittany-Rae, and Muna experience Stockholm in vastly different ways relative to their Blackness but all three are, fundamentally, devastatingly lonely.

Nanjala Nyabola offers an insightful look from an experienced explorer’s perspective into how travel intersects with topics like migration, identity and the freedom to move. It’s an insightful read for the average traveller who wants a broader perspective on what it’s like to travel in a world that privileges some but restricts many others from moving around. Nyabola goes everywhere, from giving a voice to victims of domestic and sexual abuse in Haiti to exploring academia’s fascination with romanticising trauma rather than studying the complex cultural system that makes up her own hometown of Nairobi, Kenya.

Written by Melissa Cummings-Quarry, Natalie A. Carter, and illustrated by Dorcas Magbadelo, Grown: The Black Girls’ Guide to Glowing Up is a true ode of love to Black girlhood. You may laugh, you may tear up a little, and you just might remember lessons from your younger self that were long forgotten.

Within a swarm of finance books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and How to Get Rich, it’s been difficult to find a beginner-friendly finance book that speaks directly to me. As a 23-year-old woman from a black single-parent household, Black Girl Finance finally made me feel seen.

#BlackInSchool is a loud and fiercely vital document that moves forward the conversation about anti-Blackness in the educational system. Written by Habiba Cooper Diallo during her final two years of high school in Halifax and published by the University of Regina Press, this is a makeshift diary drawn from a wealth of personal journal entries documenting the experience of being Black in a Canadian school.

Home is Not a Country, by award-winning poet Safia Elhillo, is a captivating novel-in-verse about identity and belonging in post-9/11 America. It is told through the eyes of Nima, a Muslim American girl who finds herself longing to be someone else.

Muted is the perfect verse novel for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo. A fast-paced coming-of-age story about music, the loss of innocence, and the dangers lurking in the shadows of the entertainment industry, it is the type of story that feels slightly too real and leaves you thinking long after you’re done reading.

The Fortune Men is a historical fiction set in 1950s Cardiff that explores the real and distressing story of Mahmood Mattan, the last innocent man to be hanged in Wales. A Somali seaman with a taste for gambling and petty theft, Mahmood is focused on reconnecting with his Welsh wife and being a father to their children. But after being accused of murder, Mahmood faces a legal system determined to find him guilty.

Accra Noir is a thrilling addition to the Akashic Noir series, featuring 13 short stories by existing as well as fresh voices in the Ghanaian literary scene. With crime, cunning, and passion at the heart of it, it is being reissued by Cassava Republic.

When No One is Watching is said to conversate with the likes of Get Out. A psychological thriller about gentrification, the comparison is at its strongest once readers understand they’re being asphyxiated in the protagonist’s psyche as forcefully as Black residents are being plucked out of Gifford Place.

Coming of age as a free-born dark-skinned girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson lives in the shadow of her exceptional and exceptionally light-skinned physician mother. But Libertie, who finds freedom in music and motherhood, years for a regular life away from the burden of representation. Libertie is a novel of ideas that grapples with the meaning of freedom in a violently anti-Black and colorist world.

A unique thriller that dives deep into the world of human trafficking and African ritual sacrifices, Deadly Sacrifice is based on the true 2001 news story in which a Black boy’s torso was found in the Thames.

Following The Spider King’s Daughter and Welcome to Lagos, Sankofa marks a departure from Lagosian life and tells the story of a mixed-race British woman’s search for her long-lost West African father.

Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, Alain Mabanckou’s Black Moses zeroes in on corruption in late 1970s Congo-Brazzaville. Straddling an array of themes like orphan suffering, governmental corruption, and mental health in a seedy setting, this tale of endearing novice gangsters and charming sex workers offers a refreshing take on the well-worn tropes of urban fiction.

The Death of Vivek Oji is primarily interested in all the ways that love manifests itself and how limited understandings of sexuality constrain a more expansive understanding of everything love can be. 

The Emperor’s Babe is an irreverent and salacious romp that merges together tradition and contemporaneity in a startlingly unique way. Published almost 20 years before Girl, Woman, Other, The Emperor’s Babe offers a distinctively different Evaristo.

Black Boy Out of Time is an eloquent and enlightening testament to the ways in which Black authors re-craft genre categories that are not truly interested in telling our stories. When Ziyad sat down to write it, that truth became quickly apparent. This memoir is essential because it dares to dream of a future that is not beholden to any of the systems and structures that many of us are afraid to transcend, even imaginatively.

With Afropean, Pitts leads the way in spotlighting the flavour and entangled histories of Europe’s black communities through what may be one of the most transnational studies on the subject to date.

Many know Selenis Leyva from Orange Is the New Black where she plays inmate Gloria Mendoza. Fewer know that she and her trans sister, Marizol, co-authored a powerful and informative memoir released a couple of weeks into the Covid-19 lockdown.

This critically acclaimed epic-like novel offers a wealth of insight into 300 years of transatlantic Black history. What sells many on Homegoing is how Yaa Gyasi insists upon something, palpable and yet elusive, that the ugly circumstances of history cannot lay claim to. Homegoing perfectly anticipates the zeitgeist and speaks perfectly to the idea that we are all, at the end of the day, family.

Clap When You Land tells the story of two unwitting sisters—Camino in the Dominican Republic and Yahaira in New York—who learn of each other’s existence and their father’s secret double life when he dies in a tragic plane crash.

It is always wonderful to see Black love poured into a timeless story of star-crossed love thriving against all odds. In spite of the weighty social issues that come with the territory, Pride is a deeply representative retelling that foregrounds Black people’s right to exist in a canon that has always pretended they do not. From the original’s classism to its silences on slavery, this novel gently gestures to Jane Austen’s prejudices in a fun, fresh way.