Western Africa

As a young woman growing up in Africa, 17-year-old Leymah Gbowee was crushed by a savage war when violence reached her native Monrovia, depriving her of the education she yearned for and claiming the lives of relatives and friends. As war continued to ravage Liberia, Gbowee’s bitterness turned to rage-fueled action as she realized that women bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts.

In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side.

In 1980, I was thirty years old, and my son, ten, when we traveled to Guinea, then a closed country in West Africa. My fiancé was a geologist working in a diamond exploration camp in Baoule Valley, near Kérouané. During my time there I kept a diary. Once back in the United States, I wrapped the diary in a silk scarf and tucked it away. I had had planned to return to Guinea and the diamond camp, but life took me in a different direction. I didn't open and read the diary until autumn of 2023, forty-four years later.

Brimming with rich, electrifying tales of the precious dye and its ancient heritage, Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan; Jewish "rag traders"; a Massachusetts textile factory owner; and African slaves - her ancestors were traded along the same Saharan routes as indigo, where a length of blue cotton could purchase human life.

Clayton County by Earth to West is a powerful memoir that traces the author’s journey through childhood and adolescence as a young black male growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. This gripping narrative explores the impact of parental divorce, the struggles of early jobs, and the weight of long-buried family secrets, all while navigating the realities of identity and survival. Clayton County vividly captures the highs and lows of young love, the risks of growing up in dangerous environments, and the lessons learned through hardship. Through every challenge, Clayton County reveals how ...

From about the ninth to fifth centuries BCE, the population of Greece grew unprecedentedly large, expanding from about 800,000 people to as many as 13 million. About a quarter million of these lived in Athens. The average size of urban households during this period grew considerably, a fact that suggests that food was suddenly available in excesses sufficient to keep larger families healthy and alive much more effectively than just a millennium earlier. Bigger families meant bigger armies and larger communities that would eventually grow into the metropolises of Classical Greece.

What are Myth and Culture and what is their importance for understanding the development of societies, human evolution and the search for meaning? What is the purpose of culture and how do cultures evolve? What are the elements of a culture and how can those elements be broken down and the constituent parts of a culture understood and compared? How do cultures interact? How does enculturation occur and how do people interact with other cultures? How do the processes of acculturation and cooptation occur and what does this mean for the development of a society? How can the study of myths and...

With the new Administration and the changing paradigm in the Federal Government, a newly appointed investigator, Sophia Reed finds herself in the Chicago office of the FBI, looking at concerning discrepancies in the financial logs. Stonewalled and threatened by the FBI hierarchy and the old guard, she is forced to seek help outside the Bureau, from Jet Rider. This investigation takes Jet far beyond the familiar streets of Ashwood and into the unpredictable landscapes of West Africa. With every lead, the case deepens into an international mystery that spans continents, challenging loyalties ...

Known in the Dominican Republic and Togo as Vodu, in Benin as Vodún, and in Haiti as Vodou, West African religion has, for hundreds of years, served as a repository of sacred knowledge while simultaneously evolving in response to human experience and globalization. Spirit Service: Vodún and Vodou in the African Atlantic World explores this dynamic religion, its mobility, and its place in the modern world.

An Agatha Christie style mystery meets Isabel Allende. 1846. In the heat of West Africa, the French navy uncovers the corpses of two French soldiers. Inspector Maurice Leroux arrives at the island of Gorée. It seems death has come to this small colonial outpost off the Senegal coast, home to the prosperous mixed-blood women known as the signares. The navy suspects that the Bambara people, emboldened by approaching emancipation, may be out for blood. While confronted by the locals’ strange magical beliefs, Maurice remains skeptical. Does malevolence play a part, or are these deaths ...

Pecola Peters found herself standing in a courtroom before a judge in the middle of nowhere Montana getting married to a burly rancher with kind eyes and thick black hair - because of two ugly women. Hideous would be a correct term for how the two women looked in appearance but not in temperament, yet they had gotten married – to two good men. Good looking men of means. For a decent looking woman like Pecola with a horrible dating history, combined with the recent reality of two men physically running away from her, such an imbalance in the fairy tale is what pushed her to this ending. ...

Cows wandering on roads are an everyday hazard in rural South Africa. They appear suddenly, and their movements are unpredictable. Hitting them can have dire consequences. Dodging Cows is one man's journey from carefree childhood to lazy student to conscripted soldier to passionate farmer, buffeted by the fault lines in South Africa’s history. Gritty and uncompromisingly authentic, this thought provoking novel stirs all the emotions. Part One Follow the adventures of a young boy, Luke Ayres growing up on a farm in southern Natal barely aware of a country divided along racial lines. Part ...

From Stranded in the Heart of Darkness... "Red-shirted man speaks once more. In turn, I gaze at the interpreter, await his translation. “You have fought and killed many men?” he hesitantly asks. I shake my head. “No,” I say, taken aback. “I have never killed anyone.” “In the voodoo culture,” the translator goes on, “men who are able to wear such a band are considered to be powerful fighters.” Now gesturing towards the red-shirted man. “This man here envies you for your power.” _________________ In 2009, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Vincent Zandri ...

Digging up the past can be deadly… ...Especially when others have gone to great lengths to cover it up. Central Ghana, under the largest manmade lake in the world, there’s a secret. And rumors of this secret are starting to spread. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Erin Reed has left journalism. Her mother, a journalist, died a quarter of a century before, while working on a story about corruption. Then, nearly a decade ago, Erin was nearly killed trying to finish that same story. But now, when these rumors begin to surface, the details sound an awful lot like the circumstances...

Just when it appears that all her hard work on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is about to pay off with a White House job, 35-year-old Ida B. Wells Dunbar finds herself on Washington, DC’s post-election sidelines even as her 20something counterparts overrun the West Wing. Adding to her woes, her father, the Reverend Horace A. Dunbar, Atlanta civil rights icon, is notoriously featured on an endlessly replayed YouTube clip in which his pronouncements don’t exactly jibe with the new era in American politics.

Whilst it’s impossible to capture the essence of Nigeria in one story, its writers have given listeners the opportunity to experience the many different parts that make up Africa’s most populous nation. In Of This Our Country, acclaimed and award-winning Nigerian writers go a step further and describe their Nigeria, sharing personal essays about a country that holds so much more than any one perspective could. Through the words of these writers, a living portrait of Nigeria is woven, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

French Senegal: The History of the French Colony and Senegal’s Transition to Independence examines how France established the colony, and how that colony affected events in the 20th century before Senegal became a modern nation.

Urban Books' popular Around the Way Girls series is back, bringing readers more dramatic tales about the lives of some tough, resourceful women who can hold their own when things get rough on the streets. Growing up poor and biracial, Shannon never quite fit in. Not truly accepted by either side of her family, the confused teenager turns to the one thing that loves her back unconditionally - the streets. With a bottle of liquor at her side and a worthless mentality in tow, Shannon allows the local strip club and the pole to become her new family.

Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure’s father died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a man who promises to change their fortunes, but his feet are hovering just a few inches above the ground. He’s a spirit, and he says he can bring Treasure’s beloved father back to life if she’ll do one terrible thing for him first.

A couple of weeks have passed since Leah had her incredible encounter with an impressive African tribesman and she's starting to crave more. Her husband and she have agreed to stay in separate rooms and occasionally have dinner until Leah can feel he's paid his due for cheating on her with a coworker. Their driver, Alhaadi, has been unavailable and Leah has no choice but to stay near the hotel. She catches a handsome looking black man in a suit while eating dinner but isn't able to talk with him. After she heads back to her room, she tries frantically to please herself but nothing compares ...