'Gorgeous and heartwrenching' CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, bestselling author of Small Worlds and Open Water

'What an electrifying and important debut. Every word is knife sharp, every emotion nuanced and every twist brilliantly turned . . . Should be at the top of everyone's 2026 Must Read list' RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Handmade God

Smallie adj. |smal·lie|
Definition: Caribbean (informal). Describing or relating a person from a small island; a small islander.

In 1961, nineteen-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her sons father, Clarence Braithwaite, who left Barbados to join the British army. But aboard the ship to Southampton she meets a man named Raldo who offers her a glimpse of a new life, a freer life. Bound by the memory of her son waiting at home, she chooses Clarence  realizing too late that war has made a stranger out of him.

Nearly fifty years later, Lucinda receives a letter from the Home Office that threatens to tear her world apart. Her children rally together to prove her legal arrival, and to do so they must track down an elusive man from her past, a man she wanted to love but instead lost, a man who now holds the key to her familys future. Raldo . . .

An exhilarating and expansive tale of a family thrown into collision with the Windrush scandal, Smallie shows just how easily the past can spill into our lives, even when  especially when  we think weve closed the door on it.

***
'Tender, lyrical and strikingly assured, Smallie moves with a propulsive energy, structured around cliffhangers and withheld revelations. In its mosaic of Caribbean immigrant life in London, it echoes the emotional reach of Andrea Levys Small Island. It feels like a novel that will come to sit among the defining literary accounts of this shameful period of British history. Guardian
'An important novel that rises to the challenge of accountability and modern justice. McKenzie-Goddard writes with a commanding style, both measured and flamboyant' DIANA EVANS, author of the Women's Prize for Ficion shortlisted novel Ordinary People

A sharp, tender debut that traverses generations of one family YOMI SODE, award-winning author of Manorism

'Smallie . . . is both historical retrospective of the West Indian experience in Britain during the so-called Windrush era, as well as heartwarming exploration of love of self, family, community and country. It is a brilliant and deeply moving debut' CHERIE JONES, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

The second book in the trilogy which began with the Booker prize-winning The Famished Road.

'A love story and an account of the conflict between the parties of the Rich and Poor... Okri's voice is all his own' Independent

Having outwitted death, Azaro, the spirit child, remains in the land of the Living. Oppression and violence continue to plague the city, and while political factions battle, bar owner Madame Koto backs the 'Party of the Rich' with magical, bewitching force. But for Azaro, his adventure is tied up with his parents, and so his story takes on yet another heroic adventure to save them both from the forces of the world.

'Ben Okri writes beautifully...a triumph of inspiration over the everyday' The Times

THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER & BOOKER PRIZE WINNER

RECIPIENT OF THE WOMENS PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD

*One of Goodreads Most Popular Books of the Past Decade*

This is Britain as you've never read it.
This is Britain as it has never been told.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

'The most absorbing book I read all year' Roxane Gay

'[Bernardine Evaristo] is one of the very best that we have' Nikesh Shukla

'Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity' Nicola Sturgeon

'A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle

'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith

'Exceptional. You have to order it right now' Stylist

Carol Ann Duffy has invited fifty of her peers to choose and respond to a poem from the past. With up-and-coming poets alongside more established names, and original poems alongside the new works they have inspired - Paul Muldoon, Vickie Feaver and U. A. Fanthorpe, for example, engage with classic works by Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti - the result is a collection of voices that speak to one another across the centuries.

Teasing, subverting, arguing, echoing and - ultimately - illuminating, Answering Back is a vibrant, fascinating and timeless anthology, compiled by one of the nation's favourite poets.

'Intriguing . . . Entertaining and stimulating' Good Book Guide

'A starry game of call and answer across poetic generations' FT Magazine

SHORLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS
LONGLISTED FOR THE ONDAATJE PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS

'Dazzling' Cosmopolitan
'I deeply admire This One Sky Day - and also, not so secretly, bitterly envy it...' MARLON JAMES
'Gorgeous' Financial Times
'Haunting' Independent
'Wonderfully fearless' New Statesman
'Stunning' KEI MILLER

Dawn breaks across the archipelago of Popisho. The world is stirring awake again, each resident with their own list of things to do:

A wedding feast to conjure and cook
An infidelity to investigate
A lost soul to set free

As the sun rises two star-crossed lovers try to find their way back to one another across this single day. When night falls, all have been given a gift, and many are no longer the same.

The sky is pink, and some wonder if it will ever be blue again.

What readers are saying
'Brimming with and life and love and just absolutely gorgeous writing. a one-of-a-kind novel.'

'I couldn't put it down and I will be recommending it to everyone.'

'A story luxuriously and confidently told, which is sumptuous from sentence to sentence. There is both literal and literary magic here.'

'This book is bursting at the seams with beauty! Magic! Love! Imagination! It is a burst of colour and flame.'

'It's hard to explain, but if you love getting lost in a story, this could be one for you.'