Title – Binti (Binti #1)

Author – Nnedi Okorafor 

Publication – September 22nd, 2015.

Publisher – Tor

Genre – Science-Fiction, Novella & Fantasy 

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself – but first she has to make it there, alive.

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Title – Seafire (Seafire #1)

Author – Natalie C. Parker

Publication – August 28th, 2018.

Publisher – Razorbill

Genre – Adventure & Young Adult 

After her family is killed by corrupt warlord Aric Athair and his bloodthirsty army of Bullets, Caledonia Styx is left to chart her own course on the dangerous and deadly seas. She captains her ship, the Mors Navis, with a crew of girls and women just like her, who have lost their families and homes because of Aric and his men. The crew has one mission: stay alive, and take down Aric’s armed and armored fleet.

But when Caledonia’s best friend and second-in-command barely survives an attack thanks to help from a Bullet looking to defect, Caledonia finds herself questioning whether to let him join their crew. Is this boy the key to taking down Aric Athair once and for all . . . or will he threaten everything the women of the Mors Navis have worked for?

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Title – Shango

Author – James Roberto Curtis

Publication – January 1st 1996

Publisher – Arte Publico Press / Abantu Audio

Genre – Adult, Fiction, Mystery.

Miguel is Cuban American, with the accent on American. But beneath the surface of his sun-drenched Miami lifestyle lurks an evil that threatens to destroy him. The chance reading of a newspaper article reporting a stolen skull and the ritualistic murder of a petty drug dealer pitches Miguel into battle with an underworld dominated by santeria in this spell-binding and engrossing novel.

Shangó is the Yoruba deity of fire, thunder and lightning. He was the fourth king of the ancient Oyo Empire, the West African center of culture and politics for the Yoruba people. Shangó was a feared and respected warrior; strong and powerful, dreadful and magnificent, he is the personification of masculinity. Notorious for his great sexual philandering, Shangó not only is passionate in love, but also is famous for his sudden changes in temper and potential for violent behavior. When a subordinate chief challenged his rule, many townspeople were impressed by the chief’s feats of magic and deserted Shangó. Defeated in the eyes of the majority of his subjects, Shangó left Oyo and committed suicide by hanging himself in the forest. His faithful followers, however, claimed that he really ascended to the heavens on a chain. They claimed that his disappearance was not death but merely the occasion of his transformation into an orisha or “black saint”.

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