Motherland and Other StoriesWandeka Gayles mostly young black women protagonists win our hearts as risk taking, adventurous explorers of the white world, away from home, which at some point has been Jamaica. They include Roxanne who starts work in a care home in London, who strikes up a rapport with a depressed old man who used to be a writer; Ayo who heads to college in Louisiana, and fights off the internalised voice of her godly, tambourine beating aunt to begin an affair

Common Cause is a ‘history of the defeated’

are drawn together

Four Mansi songs

Along with everything else

Stephen Brown

intelligence and wit

almost on a whim

Elastic is a novel about being a woman

the confusion of adolescent love

This is a beautiful book

‘melodious offal

Peter Mortimer directs a theatre company and is the editor at Iron Press