I know I say this every year but 2024 will be amazing year for persons who Read Caribbean. Some amazing debut Caribbean Authors will be hitting the shelves in 2024 and I am here to let you know about all of them!
We will be reading novels, books from authors we haven’t read in a while. I am really excited to hear more from debut Caribbean authors as they add their perspective and writing to an already establish diverse cannon. While I love a great debut novel, I am super excited for the works of our favorite authors. Yes! 2024 is gonna be an amazing year for Caribbean Literature and you won’t want to miss out! Here are a few books to look forward to.
JANUARY
Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke
At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach. Tired of not having a place to land, twenty-year-old Akúa flies from Canada to her native Jamaica to reconnect with her estranged sister Tamika. Their younger brother Bryson has recently passed from sickle cell anemia—the same disease that took their mother ten years prior—and Akúa carries his remains in a small wooden box with the hope of reassembling her family. Over the span of two fateful weeks, Akúa and Tamika visit significant places from their childhood, but time spent with her sister only clarifies how different they are, and how years of living abroad have distanced Akúa from her home culture. “Am I Jamaican?” she asks herself again and again.
The House of Plain Truth by Donna Hemans
A lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home. With news of her father’s passing, Pearline abruptly leaves her daughter and grandchildren behind in Brooklyn to return to her childhood home in Jamaica. But Pearline isn’t prepared for her father’s puzzling deathbed wish that she find her siblings―whom she hasn’t seen in 60 years―and discover the secret that tore her family apart. Moving through time and place, from Cuba to Montego Bay and from Brooklyn to Havana, The House of Plain Truth traces Pearline’s reconciliation of what she thought she knew about her family and the truth of their origin.
APRIL
Village Weavers by Myriam J Chancy
From award-winning author Myriam J.A. Chancy, comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families—forever joined by blood, by country, and by long held secrets—and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier’s rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Haitian family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the strange truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and—perhaps—forgive the past.
One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole
Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity. Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect. Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.
Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson
Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam so she can attend school there. But when Pumkin’s grandmother dies, she’s left alone with her volatile mother, and as soon as her estranged father turns up—as lazy and conniving as ever—the household’s fortunes take a turn for the worse. Pumkin must somehow find a way to raise the money for her French exam, so she can free herself from her household and reunite with her beloved aunt in France. Sweetness in the Skin is a funny and heartbreaking story about a young girl figuring out who she is, what she is capable of—and where she truly belongs .
Where Was Goodbye? by Janice Lynn Mather
A teen girl searches for closure after her brother dies by suicide in this breathtaking novel from the author of Learning to Breathe and Facing the Sun. Karmen is about to start her last year of high school, but it’s only been six weeks since her brother, Julian, died by suicide. How is she supposed to focus on school when huge questions Why is Julian gone? How could she have missed seeing his pain? Could she have helped him? When a blowup at school gets Karmen sent home for a few weeks, life gets more things between her parents are tenser than ever, her best friend’s acting like a stranger, and her search to understand why Julian died keeps coming up empty. New friend Pru both baffles and comforts Karmen, and there might finally be something happening with her crush, Isaiah, but does she have time for either, or are they just more distractions? Will she ever understand Julian’s struggle and tragedy? If not, can she love—and live—again?
The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh by Ingrid Persaud
This is the tale of four brilliant, vulnerable and stuck. She’s determined to free herself from the traps of her past.Mana a devoted mother – her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them close.For Doris, well he’s glorious and once she’s licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder. She’s heard the awful stories, but she’s sure they won’t be hers.Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store.Four lives, connected and controlled by one the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.
MAY
It Waits in the Forest by Sarah Dass
Unlike the other residents of the small Caribbean Island of St. Virgil, Selina DaSilva does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving the island to study Pharmacology—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma. Now her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to conning gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be there is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel, newly employed at the local newspaper and eager to put his investigative skills to use.
JUNE
For Such A Time As This – Shani Akilah
Gabby and Jonathan cross paths at the wedding of a mutual friend. They both wonder if this could be the start of something, but fate has other ideas. When Niah tries to call out her employer for their empty words about diversity and inclusion, she comes face to face with racism reaching right to the very top. Sharna is holding onto her own secret when she sets out for Jamaica to visit her grandfather, on a trip that throws fresh light onto the family history she has always taken for granted. Shani Akilah’s stunning collection brings to life the stories of Black-British Londoners as they explore friendship and romance, community and independence, and navigate their way through the relationships that make them who they are.
JULY
No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald
SEPTEMBER
The Wickedest by Caleb Femi
Upcoming release
The Dating Countdown by N.G. Peltier
The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine by R.S.A. Garcia
