Take a look at our really helpful reads for the month of November…
This month’s picks span memoir, historical past, fantasy, style, and festive magic. Cynthia Erivo’s Merely Extra provides a heartfelt mix of non-public storytelling and galvanizing classes on development and resilience. Chanté Joseph’s A Fast Ting On: Black British Energy charts the novel roots and cultural influence of Black activism in Britain.
Tigest Girma’s Everlasting Spoil returns to Uxlay College for a gripping story of energy, loyalty, and darkness. Michelle Obama’s The Look takes us behind the scenes of her most iconic style moments, revealing how type can form identification and function. And Serena Holly’s The Different Father Christmas brings a heat, whimsical journey crammed with hope, braveness, and the magic of the season.
Merely Extra by Cynthia Erivo
Half-memoir, part-inspirational handbook for higher dwelling.
Cynthia Erivo realized the music to Depraved a decade earlier than she wanted it, not understanding that those self same lyrics would change her life. Ten years later, she carried out these songs on a world stage, exhibiting us that there’s all the time time to maintain discovering ourselves, and that the journey of changing into just isn’t a finite one.
In Merely Extra, by means of a collection of highly effective, private vignettes, Cynthia displays on the ways in which she has grown as an actor and an individual, shares the teachings she’s realized over years of performing, and reminds us how we’re able to a lot greater than we expect.
On this profoundly sincere and transferring memoir, Cynthia attracts from her experiences working marathons, each actual and metaphorical, on stage and on display, to indicate how every problem can assist us. By private anecdotes, classes and recommendation, she urges readers to lean into the knowledge of their our bodies and to grasp and attempt for a bodily and psychological stability. As a result of after we chase our deepest wishes, every small step leads us nearer to the place we need to go.
Publication date: 18th November 2025
Imprint: Macmillan
Misplaced In City by Danny James King
Meet Johnny Ace—reluctant inheritor to a legendary brewery empire, caught in a world of corruption, betrayal, and rising crime. Set in The Capital, a shadowy underworld impressed by London’s darkest previous, Misplaced in City blends traditional movie noir aesthetics with gritty British gangster storytelling.
Alongside the enigmatic singer Jessica Kelly, Johnny should navigate a ruthless syndicate and select between revenge, redemption, and survival. Each chapter pulls you deeper into the Ace of Hops Brewery universe—the place household legacy, crime, and honor collide.
Obtainable to buy on-line on the Misplaced In City web site.
First Born Of The Son by Marvellous Michael Anson
In Oru L’ore has a secret. She is the one one with out agbára – the power to harness energy from the solar. On ache of demise she should conceal it from everybody. Together with her finest good friend, Alawani.
However when the gods declare Alawani an Àlùfáà – an amazing honour the place he’ll serve the gods and the Kingdom – he have to be stripped of his energy in a brutal trial more likely to kill him. Unwilling to bear his demise, L’ore vows to rescue him.
When she desperately makes an attempt to channel agbára an icy shadow magic as a substitute pours from her fingers; an influence she learns originated from a forbidden, secret land past the six rings of Oru.
One the place she and Alawani should now search sanctuary and uncover a secret that would convey the Kingdom to its knees . . .
‘Completely Radiant’ – Bea Fitzgerald
‘A Dazzling Debut’ Andrea Stewart
‘Enthralling and epic’ Anna Day
‘Readers are going to LOVE THIS BOOK!’ Angela Montoay
Publication date: 4th November 2025
Writer: Michael Joseph
Boy: Whenever you discover the boy you’ll uncover the person by Fredi Nwaka
A real story of affection, loss, survival and discovering your voice.
Earlier than the roads. Earlier than the raves. Earlier than the fame. Earlier than the person.
There was simply the boy. A black youngster raised in a white seaside city, trying to find somewhere-anywhere-to belong.
It is a journey by means of the silence, the secrets and techniques, and the scars.
From fishing journeys and foster care to carnival, sound programs, fistfights, and murders, Boy is a uncooked, unforgettable memoir of identification, abandonment, and the facility of being seen.
Instructed with brutal honesty, surprising humour, and deep reflection, that is greater than a narrative about rising up – it’s about rising up. A reflective remedy for me, the author and an invite for you, the reader, to stroll each step of the journey with me.
It’s about discovering mild the place there was none, and a voice the place there was silence.
Some reminiscences go away bruises whereas some construct armour. Some do each.
Publication date: 1st November 2025
Writer: Nwaka Books
Ever Since We Small By Celeste Mohammed
An intricately woven tapestry of tales the place survival, resilience and self-discovery are handed down by means of generations of an Indo-Trinidadian household.
Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, is a household saga which covers a sweeping panorama from the times of the British Raj in India, to multicultural fashionable Trinidad. Written in a mix of Customary English and several other flavours of Trinidad kriol, the guide follows the bloodline of a younger lady, Jayanti, after her resolution to grow to be a girmitiya, an indentured labourer within the Caribbean.
Jayanti’s grandson, Lall Gopaul, seeks to flee the agricultural village the place he was born, however turns into seduced and corrupted by city life. His son, Shiva, is pressured to take a child-bride, Salma, however by no means recovers from the guilt. Heartache follows for his or her three youngsters – Anand, Nadya and Abby – who should every discover a technique to settle for and but transfer previous their mother and father’ failed instance.
Alongside the journey of those ten interconnected tales, the alchemy obligatory to show the Gopauls’ inheritance of ache right into a “technology of gold” requires intervention by the dwelling and useless, the “actual” and the legendary, the mundane and the magical, the secular and the sacred.
‘Ever Since We Small is a wealthy and fascinating novel-in-stories, with beguiling characters and an emotional pull that made me need to swallow the guide entire. Celeste Mohamed is a sensible and consummate storyteller.‘ – Jendella Benson, creator of Hope&Glory and All That We’ve Bought
Publication date: sixteenth October 2025
Writer: Nwaka Books
A Fast Ting On: Black British Energy By Chanté Joseph
From the Mangrove 9 to Notting Hill Carnival, author and social commentator Chanté Joseph takes us by means of the formative, radical histories of Black British activism.
When the Windrush technology arrived in Britain, the idea of ‘Black Britishness’ or ‘Black British Tradition’ didn’t but exist. Quick ahead to the current day, the place a definite and influential Black British identification exists.
This concise and informative guide traverses the essential matters inside Black British historical past and tradition: exploring group activism, protests, Notting Hill Carnival, the Black BritBritish Panthers, Girls of the motion, the Mangrove 9 and the Black British Arts.
Celebrating and chronicling the fusion of social, political and inventive parts inside Black activism in Britain, A Fast Ting On: British Black Energy supplies an insightful have a look at how the British Black Energy motion first emerged and has developed since.
Publication date: 2nd October 2025
Writer: Jacaranda Books
Everlasting Spoil By Tigest Girma
Kidan Adane has lastly embraced her darkness. She’s killed with out regret, lied, and damaged Uxlay College’s most sacred regulation by inviting elusive rogue vampires, the Nefrasi, into Uxlay.
Trapped with a violently unstable vampire, and reeling from her sister’s return, Kidan wields her anger like a weapon. She vows to grasp her home and defend the sacred artifact hidden inside, even when it means forging an alliance with the wicked chief of the Nefrasi, Samson Sagad–and betraying Susenyos.
A harmful new philosophical textual content appears to carry the solutions and guarantees the very factor Kidan has misplaced: management. Even because the darkish pages eat her, Kidan is aware of no soul at Uxlay is reliable–least of all Susenyos. For Kidan and Susenyos, the traces of loathing and attraction could blur, however the quest for energy guidelines them each. And neither is keen to give up.
As devastating secrets and techniques resurface from the previous, Kidan and her sister, June, should lastly confront one another and take their rightful locations within the looming battle.
Writer: Little Brown Books
Publish Date: 4th November 2025
The way to Love Your Afro: Your Pure Hair Care Companion By Paige Lewin
At fourteen, Paige Lewin begged her mum for her first relaxer – satisfied that straight hair was her ticket to magnificence and acceptance. Years of injury, frustration and disconnect from her pure hair adopted, till she realised she was hiding from her true self. Now, as host of Texture Talks, Paige has reclaimed her Afro hair and uncovered deeper truths about self-worth, identification and therapeutic.
Inside The way to Love Your Afro, Paige will educate you :
- Shift your mindset and language to remodel your relationship together with your hair
- Break away from magnificence requirements and embrace self-acceptance
- Select the very best merchandise, instruments, and methods to nourish your Afro
- Perceive the hyperlink between hair well being, weight loss plan and wellbeing
- Work successfully with hair professionals
With insights from psychotherapist Tasha Bailey, dermatologist Dr. Yvonne Abimbola and Revlon curl specialist Rio Agor Watts, The way to Love Your Afro provides a holistic information to embracing your pure hair – mixing emotional therapeutic with sensible care. For anybody who’s ever doubted their curls or struggled to really feel “sufficient,” that is your empowering companion to self-acceptance and genuine magnificence.
“Empowering and inspirational, everybody ought to learn this guide” Alison Hammond
“The embodied and tender information that each Black lady wants” Kelechi Okafor
“Greater than a hair handbook – it’s a mindset shift” Zeze Millz
Writer: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publish Date: ninth October 2025
The look By Michelle Obama
On this celebration of fashion, from the second she entered the general public eye throughout her husband’s U.S. Senate marketing campaign by means of her time as the primary Black First Woman of the USA and at this time as one of many nation’s most influential figures, Michelle Obama shares how she makes use of the sweetness and intrigue of style to attract consideration to her message.
That includes the voices of Meredith Koop, Obama’s trusted stylist, in addition to her make-up artist Carl Ray, hairstylists Yene Damtew and Njeri Radway, and most of the designers who’ve dressed Obama for notable occasions, The Look brings readers behind the scenes not solely to disclose how her most memorable appears to be like got here collectively but in addition to inform a strong story about how we current ourselves.
Obama’s intimate and candid tales illuminate how her method to dressing has developed all through her life – from the colorful sheath clothes, cardigans, and brooches she wore throughout her time as First Woman to the daring fits, denim, and braids of her post-White Home life and all of the lively appears to be like and exquisite robes in between.
In The Look, Michelle Obama explores the enjoyment and the aim of style and sweetness and the way – when wielded with grace and care – they will uplift and affirm the values one holds most expensive. Confidence, she concludes, can’t be placed on. However whenever you’re sporting one thing that’s intentional or beloved, clothes could make you are feeling like the very best model of your self.
‘A historic doc, capturing a pivotal second within the evolution of the position of first girl when clothes turned a good greater a part of communication. When, in different phrases, costume turned an formally acknowledged a part of the job.’ – Vanessa Friedman, New York TimesUk
Writer: Hachette Publishing
Publish Date: 4th November 2025
The Different Father Christmas By Serena Holly
When ten-year-old Mikey secretly enters his grandad into Santa Search, a magical competitors to seek out the subsequent fatehr christmas, he begins a journey that may change each their lives and show that Christmas magic belongs to everybody.
Earlier than Gran died, Gramps was the beloved Different Father Christmas at the local people centre Grotto – so when Santa Claus declares his retirement, ten-year-old Mikey secretly enters his reluctant Gramps into Santa Search, a magical competitors to seek out the subsequent Father Christmas.
Swept away to Christmasland – a world of gingerbread Escape Rooms and bottomless sizzling chocolate – they have to face enchanted trials, outwit a mysterious saboteur, and rediscover the true that means of the season.
Writer: Storymix
Publish Date: 4th November 2025