Update from Kia
Hello,
This month, I’m knuckling down and trying to meet my mid-April deadline for the second draft of Book 5. I had to ask for a two-week extension on the original deadline in March. It’s not like me to miss a deadline, but it took me an age to get started. I have no solid reason, but suspect it’s a mixture of things: a) I’m out of practice, b) the ambient dread of the current news cycle, and c) family commitments eating into my writing time.
I’ll get it done by hook or by crook, but I’ll be on lockdown until then. I’ll have a week of downtime afterwards and then go straight into launching the Quick Reads version of Those People Next Door. For those unfamiliar with this brilliant initiative by The Reading Agency, Quick Reads are short, easy-to-read stories aimed at adults who don’t tend to read.
Reading changed my life and I’m so bloody proud to be part of the 2024 selection alongside Malorie Blackman, Jo Nesbø, Kit de Waal, Karen Swan and Matt Cain. If you know an adult who might benefit, do pick up a copy – available for only £1.
Until next time.
Kia x
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New books by British-Asian authors
1 April 2024
The Promise of Rain
With her thirtieth birthday on the horizon, Anna Kotze has accepted that there are some family secrets she’ll never know. While her mother’s Zimbabwean roots are woven into her life, all her father will say is that he was adopted. But when she finds an engraved necklace hidden among his things, a surprise piece of the puzzle finally falls into place: her father wasn’t just adopted. He was abandoned […]
4 April 2024
The Spy
Detective Kamil Rahman is working for the Met Police when he gets the call from MI5. They’ve received intelligence of a terrorist plot, and it’s Kamil they need. Posing as a disaffected cop and working in his friend Anjoli’s restaurant on Brick Lane, Kamil attempts to infiltrate the cell. What he uncovers leads him halfway across the world to Kashmir, and face to face with an old nemesis […]
4 April 2024
Bringing Back Kay-Kay
When Lena’s beloved older brother goes missing at the end of summer camp, the bottom drops out of Lena’s world. The police dismiss Kay-Kay’s disappearance as that of just another teenage runaway, but Lena knows they are wrong. Tired of not being listened to, powerless to reach her parents through their grief and unable to imagine a future without her brother in it, Lena sets off to find him […]
11 April 2024
The Letter with the Golden Stamp
From Onjali Q. Rauf, author of The Boy at the Back of the Class, comes another story of humour and heart. Touching on the challenges navigated by children caring for loved ones at home, this story brings into focus their hardships and worries, alongside the invisible sources of kindness which can change their lives […]
11 April 2024
Those People Next Door: Quick Reads 2024
Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the safe suburban development to which she and her family have just moved. They are in desperate need of a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like the place to make that happen. Not long after they move in, however, Salma spots her neighbour ripping out the anti-racist banner in her front garden. At first, she chooses not to confront him. It’s a small thing, really […]
16 April 2024
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic event […]
18 April 2024
The Book of Chai: History, stories and more than 60 recipes
The Book of Chai presents 65 delicious recipes for chai, including those using chai spices and dishes to accompany chai. As well as explaining the health benefits and different techniques for making chai, this book contains chais for different seasons, times of day and moods. There are chais to wake you up, chais to soothe you after a stressful day and chais to help you sleep […]
25 April 2024
A Glasgow Girl: A memoir of growing up and finding your voice
A Glasgow Girl is the coming of age story of Aasmah Mir's childhood growing up in 1970s Glasgow. From a vivacious child to a teenage loner, Aasmah candidly shares the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures – trying to fit in at school and retreating to the safe haven of a home inhabited by her precious but distant little brother, and Helen, her family's Glaswegian guardian angel […]
25 April 2024
The Spoiled Heart
Set at the edge of the Peak District, the story of an impossible love, a family's loss, and the desire to make a better world, from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Year of the Runaways. Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town and on his daily run out to the Peaks. She’s come back to the old house at the end of the lane, with her teenaged son, though nobody seems to remember much about her […]
Books out last month
7 March 2024
The Feminist Killjoy Handbook
We have to keep saying it because they keep doing it. Do colleagues roll their eyes in a meeting when you use words like sexism or racism? Do you refuse to laugh at jokes that aren't funny? Have you been called divisive for pointing out a division? Then you are a feminist killjoy, and this handbook is for you. The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery […]
14 March 2024
Death of a Lesser God
Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India? Bombay, 1950. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father, arch-colonialist Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing […]
14 March 2024
Finding Sophie
Sophie King is missing. Her parents, Harry and Zara, are distraught. For the last seventeen years, they've done everything for their only daughter. The police have no leads, and Harry and Zara are growing increasingly frantic – and increasingly obsessed with their highly suspicious neighbour. He won't open the door, he won't answer any questions […]
14 March 2024
I cannot be good until you say it
Intricately weaving Quranic verse, psychology, and the hip-hop soundtrack of their childhood, Sanah Ahsan’s poems traverse emotional and physical landscapes, whiteness, islamophobia, homophobia and intergenerational suffering. In these pages, belief and unbelief, goodness and badness, the material and spiritual are intertwined, reclaiming queer love and desire as holy […]
14 March 2024
Can You Find My Eid Presents?
It’s the evening before Eid, and Hana is helping her mum lay the table. Hana loves the colourful decorations they’ve arranged around the house! But there is still much to do, so when Hana’s mum asks her to get the Eid presents ready to take to Nani’s house the next day, Hana is at the ready to help. There’s just one problem: where are the Eid presents? […]
14 March 2024
Glow Up Your Grades: The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Your English GCSE
From experienced English teacher, presenter and examiner Mehreen Baig, comes a new way to revise for GCSE English. On the page and in her Glow Up Your Grades videos, Mehreen shows you how to navigate the English exams with flair. She’s with you step by step, question by question, squeezing the juice out of all those quotations, and helping to level up your answers to ace your exams […]
14 March 2024
Ballet Besties: Yara's Chance to Dance
When Yara joins Shimmer & Shine, a community dance school, she meets lots of other children her age, who are there to either start their training or just for the fun of it. Soon she has a group of ballet besties she loves to dance with. But then Dame Clougston-Wilmott, their grumpy, dance-hating landlady, threatens to close the studio. Suddenly it’s up to Yara and her new friends to keep Shimmer & Shine open […]
21 March 2024
Hotel Arcadia
A high-octane thriller capturing the extraordinary capacity of humans to retain compassion in extreme circumstances. Sam is a war photographer, famous for her hauntingly beautiful pictures of the dead. After a particularly gruelling assignment she checks into a luxury hotel, hoping to unwind with a few days of solitude. Abhi, the hotel manager, never wanted to be a hero […]
28 March 2024
Power Up: An Engineer’s Adventures into Sustainable Energy
We rarely think about the energy systems that prop up our existence. With hot water, lighting and digital entertainment all available at the flick of a switch, it's easy to underestimate the vast global network that makes these things possible. Growing up in Iraq, Yasmin Ali regularly experienced power cuts – ironic for a country rich in oil and sunshine. Now as an engineer working in energy […]
Editor’s choice
The book I’m most excited about…
I have a confession: I have never read any Salman Rushdie. He’s one of those Important Writers that have been on my TBR forever but who I’m never quite in the mood for.
Non-fiction probably isn’t the best place to start, but I’m intrigued by Knife, Rushdie’s personal account of the brutal attempt on his life.
On the morning of 12 August 2022, Rushdie was onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. In Knife, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey towards healing and finding the strength to stand up again.
Order it now from Amazon, Waterstones or your local independent bookshop.
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