When Rain Clouds Gather
Escaping South Africa and his troubled past, Makehaya crosses the border to Botswana, in the hope of leading a peaceful, purposeful life. In the village of Golema Mmidi he meets Gilbert, a charismatic Englishman who is trying to modernise farming methods to benefit the community. The two outsiders join forces, but their task is fraught with hazards: opposition from the corrupt chief, the pressures of tradition, and the unrelenting climate ever threaten to bring tragedy.

Maru
Margaret, an orphan from a despised tribe, has lived her life under the loving protection of a missionary's wife. She has only to open her mouth to cause confusion, for her education and English accent do not fit her looks. When she accepts her first teaching post, in a remote village, Margaret is befriended by Dikeledi, sister of Maru the chief-in-waiting. Despite making influential friends, Margaret faces prejudice even from the children she teaches, and her presence causes Maru and his best friend - also Dikeledi's lover - to become sworn enemies.

The new novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi.

Oyeyemi treats you to a kaleidoscopic weekend in Prague, as dazzling as it is effortlessly unique. Get lost in the story like you would an unfamiliar city and let it reward you with moments of philosophical clarity, wheelbarrow rides, raw emotion and raw onions.

This novel is a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide. It is a story about the lies behind the lies we tell and a city as a living thing, sustained by the lives of its inhabitants. Suffused with warmth and joy, Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague, and to the art of storytelling.

Whimsical and sinister, each story by Silvina Ocampo is like a knife of spun sugar that can still pierce between your ribs. A thief breaks into the house of a psychic with disastrous results, a bride has her personality subsumed by the previous occupant of her home, and two men switch destinies for a change of pace. The Impostor offers a comprehensive collection from one of the twentieth century's great forgotten woman writers. Here are tales of doubles and living dolls, angels and demons, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, and much else that is mad, sublime, and delicious. With an array spanning the length of Ocampo's career, these haunting stories are among the world's strangest and best.

Mr Fox, by award-winning author Helen Oyeyemi, is an beautiful and immersive exploration of the labyrinthine world of imagination, storytelling and love. It's a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn't seen her in six years. He's unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn't exist. He's infatuated with her. But he also made her up. Will Mr Fox meet his muse's challenge, to stop murdering his heroines and explore something of love? What will his wife Daphne think of this sudden change in her husband? Can there be a happy ending - this time? 'Oyeyemi reveals a twinkling sense of humour . . . A delight' - Independent.

**AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW** 'A writer of sentences so elegant that they gleam.' ALI SMITH 'A writer we should be delirious to have as a contemporary.' INDEPENDENT The new novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi. Oyeyemi treats you to a kaleidoscopic weekend in Prague, as dazzling as it is effortlessly unique. Get lost in the story like you would an unfamiliar city and let it reward you with moments of philosophical clarity, wheelbarrow rides, raw emotion and raw onions. This novel is a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide. It is a story about the lies behind the lies we tell and a city as a living thing, sustained by the lives of its inhabitants. Suffused with warmth and joy, Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague, and to the art of storytelling.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 'Intoxicating.' New York Magazine 'Oyeyemi is a master.' New York Times 'Welcome back to the magical, maddening milieu of Oyeyemi's singular fiction, in which trapdoors spring open and revelations emerge like Russian nesting dolls.' O, the Oprah Magazine Peaces is the story of Otto and Xavier Shin, a couple who embark on a mysterious train journey that takes them far beyond any destination they could have anticipated. As the carriages roll along they discover each is more curious and fascinating than the last, becoming embroiled in this strange train and its intrigue. Who is Ava Kapoor, the sole full-time inhabitant of the train, and what is her relationship to a man named Prem? Are they passengers or prisoners? We discover who orchestrated the journey, hurtling them all into their past for clues.

Jessamy Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of a powerful imagination, she spends hours writing, reading or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the half-and-half child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can't shake off the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and other kids are wary of her terrified fits of screaming. When she is taken to her mother's family compound in Nigeria, she encounters Titiola, a ragged little girl her own age. It seems that at last Jess has found someone who will understand her. TillyTilly knows secrets both big and small. But, as she shows Jess just how easy it is to hurt those around her, Jess begins to realise that she doesn't know who TillyTilly is at all.

The fifth novel from award-winning author Helen Oyeyemi, named one of Granta's best young British novelists. A retelling of the Snow White myth, Boy, Snow, Bird is a deeply moving novel about an unbreakable bond . . . BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. Flax Hill, Massachusetts, isn't exactly a welcoming town, but it does have the virtue of being the last stop on the bus route she took from New York. Flax Hill is also the hometown of Arturo Whitman - craftsman, widower, and father of Snow. SNOW is mild-mannered, radiant and deeply cherished - exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was, and Boy is utterly beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that's simply a characteristic she shares with her father, harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow's sister, Bird. When BIRD is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo's family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart. Sparkling with wit and vibrancy, Boy, Snow, Bird is a novel about three women and the strange connection between them. It confirms Helen Oyeyemi's place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of her generation.

A collection of brand-new short stories written by major international writers and inspired by Kafka - to commemorate one hundred years since his death Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Few writers have inspired as much interpretation, adaptation and imitation as he has - from films to novels to memes - and very few artists in any field have created work that captures so resonantly the fraught peculiarity of our existence. What happens when Kafka's idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of anxiety attacks, these specially commissioned stories speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.

A collection of brand-new short stories written by major international writers and inspired by Kafka - to commemorate one hundred years since his death Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Few writers have inspired as much interpretation, adaptation and imitation as he has - from films to novels to memes - and very few artists in any field have created work that captures so resonantly the fraught peculiarity of our existence. What happens when Kafka's idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of anxiety attacks, these specially commissioned stories speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.

High on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the loss of Lily, mother of twins Eliot and Miranda, and beloved wife of Luc. Miranda misses her with particular intensity. Their mazy, capricious house belonged to her mother's ancestors, and to Miranda, newly attuned to spirits, newly hungry for chalk, it seems they have never left. Forcing apples to grow in winter, revealing and concealing secret floors, the house is fiercely possessive of young Miranda. Joining voices with her brother and her best friend Ore, it tells her story: haunting in every sense, and a spine-tingling tribute to the power of magic, myth and memory. "Miri I conjure you . . ." 'Superbly atmospheric. The dark tones of Poe in her haunting have the elasticity of Haruki Murakami's surreal mental landscapes' "Independent" 'The kind of prose that creeps off the page, crawls up the spine and burrows deep into the reader's paralysed mind' "Daily Mail" 'White is for Witching should establish Oyeyemi as an ambitious voice in modern macabre; master of the light, lyrical touch and dark, half-hinted suggestion' "The Times" 'Entrancing' "TLS" 'Helen Oyeyemi was a literary prodigy. Now, she is ready to make the transition from wunderkind to established author. Remarkable' "Daily Telegraph"

The stories collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked by more than the exquisitely winding prose of their creator: Helen Oyeyemi's ensemble cast of characters slip from the pages of their own stories only to surface in another. The reader is invited into a world of lost libraries and locked gardens, of marshlands where the drowned dead live and a city where all the clocks have stopped; students hone their skills at puppet school, the Homely Wench Society commits a guerrilla book-swap, and lovers exchange books and roses on St Jordi's Day. It is a collection of towering imagination, marked by baroque beauty and a deep sensuousness.

It's an ordinary afternoon in 1938 for the celebrated American novelist St John Fox, hard at work in the study of his suburban home -- until his long-absent muse wanders in. Mary Foxe (beautiful, British and 100% imaginary) is in a playfully combative mood. "You're a villain," she tells him. 'A serial killer ...can you grasp that?" Mr Fox has a predilection for murdering his heroines. Mary is determined to change his ways. And so she challenges him to join her in stories of their own devising, and the result is an exploration of love like no other. It isn't long before Mrs Daphne Fox becomes suspicious, and St John is offered a choice: a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit. Can there be a happy ending this time? Mr Fox is a magical book, as witty as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London, leaving her with one complete memory: a woman singing - in a voice both eerie and enthralling - at their farewell party. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja herself is a singer, pregnant and haunted by what she calls 'her Cuba'.

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award
One of "Granta"'s Best Young British Novelists
From the acclaimed author of "Boy, Snow, Bird"
There's something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it's been home to four generations of Silver women--Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their father converted it to a bed-and-breakfast. The Silver women have always had a strong connection, a pull over one another that reaches across time and space, and when Lily, Miranda's mother, passes away suddenly while on a trip abroad, Miranda begins suffering strange ailments. An eating disorder starves her. She begins hearing voices. When she brings a friend home, Dover's hostility toward outsiders physically manifests within the four walls of the Silver house, and the lives of everyone inside are irrevocably changed. At once an unforgettable mystery and a meditation on race, nationality, and family legacies, "White is for Witching "is a boldly original, terrifying, and elegant novel by a prodigious talent.

The twelfth year of the incredibly successful anthology of the BBC National Short Story Award shortlist. This year, no.1 bestselling author Joanna Trollope will be chairing the judging panel, taking the mantle from Radio 4's 'Women's Hour' presenter Jenny Murray. Trollope, known as one of the most insightful chroniclers and social commentators writing today is also a long-time short story writer. Trollope is joined by an esteemed panel of award-winning writers and literary specialists: Baileys Prize winner, Eimear McBride (Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction), Jon McGregor (IMPAC Award, short story writer and academic), Sunjeev Sahota (Encore Award winner), and returning judge Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio. All the judges are eager to read the best, and most innovative, works of short fiction from new and established writers. Last year's winner was K J Orr with her story 'Disappearances'. As always, this book will be strictly embargoed until the announcement of the shortlist on Radio 4's Front Row at 7:15pm on Friday 15th September. The shortlisted stories will be broadcast between Monday 18th - Friday 22nd September accompanied by interviews with the authors from the 15th September. The winner will be announced in a live broadcast from the Award ceremony on BBC Radio 4's Front Row from 7.15pm on Tuesday 3 October 2017. Previous shortlisted authors include Hilary Mantel, David Constantine, Lionel Shriver and Zadie Smith.

‘A writer of sentences so elegant that they gleam’ – Ali Smith, author of How to be Both

Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories - equal parts wholesome and uncanny - beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.

Perdita Lee and her mother Harriet may appear your average schoolgirl and working mother but they are anything but. For one thing, their home is a gold-painted seventh-floor flat with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there's the gingerbread. As we follow the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work and wealth, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that holds a constant value . . .

Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi's inimitable style and imagination, Gingerbread is a true feast for the reader.

""The Icarus Girl is an astonishing achievement." --"Sunday Telegraph (London)

Jessamy "Jess" Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of an extraordinary and powerful imagination, she spends hours writing haiku, reading Shakespeare, or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can't shake off the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and the other kids in her class are wary of her tendency to succumb to terrified fits of screaming. Believing that a change from her English environment might be the perfect antidote to Jess's alarming mood swings, her parents whisk her off to Nigeria for the first time where she meets her mother's family--including her formidable grandfather.
Jess's adjustment to Nigeria is only beginning when she encounters Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged little girl her own age. To Jess, it seems that, at last, she has found someone who will understand her. But gradually, TillyTilly's visits become more disturbing, making Jess start to realize that she doesn't know who TillyTilly is at all.
Lyrical, haunting, and compelling, "The Icarus Girl draws on Nigerian mythology to present a strikingly original variation on a classic literary theme: the existence of "doubles," both real and spiritual, who play havoc with our perceptions and our lives. A story of twins and ghosts, of a little girl growing up between cultures and colors, this book heralds the arrival of a remarkable new talent.

Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction
One of "Granta"'s Best Young British Novelists
From the acclaimed author of "Boy, Snow, Bird"
Fairytale romances end with a wedding. The fairytales that don't get more complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently. Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair, and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox's game. And so Mr. Fox is offered a choice: Will it be a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit?

As seen on the cover of the "New York Times Book Review," where it was described as "gloriously unsettling... evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson," and already one of the year's most widely acclaimed novels:
"Helen Oyeyemi has fully transformed from a literary prodigy into a powerful, distinctive storyteller...Transfixing and surprising."--"Entertainment Weekly" (Grade: A)
"I don't care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest in the land...daring and unnerving... Under Oyeyemi's spell, the fairy-tale conceit makes a brilliant setting in which to explore the alchemy of racism, the weird ways in which identity can be transmuted in an instant -- from beauty to beast or vice versa." - Ron Charles, "The Washington Post"
From the prizewinning author of "Mr. Fox," the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity.
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty--the opposite of the life she's left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman.
A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she'd become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy's daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.
Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving," Boy, Snow, Bird" is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.