Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places . . . including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of...

"Centers on Abel and Vera Paisley, a working-class Jamaican couple striving to build a better life for their children. Abel travels to London in the early 1960s in search of fortune. Instead, he sees an opportunity to escape the drudgery of his life by faking his death and assuming a new identity. Vera, now a widow, is racked with guilt over her husband's "death" and takes out her grief on her children, Irene and Vincent. The effects of Abel's decision...

Adamine Bustamante is born in Jamaica, inside one of the islands last leper colonies. When she goes to a Revivalist Church, she discovers her gift of warning. But no one has bothered to warn Adamine that when she migrates to England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will no longer be respected. People will think she is crazy and lock her away in a mental hospital. Now, an old woman, Adamine wants to tell her own story but she must compete...

"Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she goes raving with her friends, the "Tombstone Estate gyals," at The Crypt, an underground dub reggae club in their industrial town on the outskirts of London. Raised by her distant father after her mother's disappearance when she was a girl, Yamaye...

Now a major film directed by Idris Elba, Yardie by Victor Headley shines a light on the brutal underworld of 90s London gang culture.

At Heathrow Airport's busy immigration desk, a newly arrived Jamaican strolls through with a kilo of top-grade cocaine strapped to his body. And keeps on walking . . .
By the time the syndicate get to hear about the missing consignment, D is in business – for himself – as

...

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie...

"London, 1950. With the war over and London still rebuilding, jazz musician Lawrie Matthews has answered England's call for labour. Arriving from Jamaica aboard the Empire Windrush, he's rented a tiny room in south London and fallen in love with the girl next door. Playing in Soho's jazz clubs by night and pacing the streets as a postman by day, Lawrie has poured his heart into his new home -- and it's alive with possibility. Until one morning, while...

"Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing--and for her compassion--became almost legendary. Popularly known as 'Mother Seacole', she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation--an extraordinary achievement...

"An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing"--