Gus sipped lemongrass tea from a foam cup. It was still dark. His secondhand truck idled outside the market as four men clambered into its tray. This was where he picked up workers for the day—mostly men who came to the island at night in quiet boats. The men clutched grease-stained paper bags and chattered loudly between bites of johnnycakes and various patties. Four men got into the truck’s tray. Gus was expecting five . . .
Eddie had always been a quiet man. Living on the outskirts of the village meant he was always met with a curious but hesitant eye. The village children were always warned to stay away from him . . .
The Woodsman takes a nip of rum and stares out from under the brim of his battered ball cap. “Fucking Green Hell,” he mutters under his breath . . .
The moon rose this night as it had done in the days, months, and years before, as it would tomorrow and the night after that if life remained, but this night was different.
The witch had seen this same look in a mother’s eye before when such a request was made.
Akashic Books is pleased to announce LyricPop, A New Picture Book Series Presenting Your Favorite Song Lyrics, Launching today.
Curdella Forbes’s A Tall History of Sugar, released in October 2019, was selected as an Editors’ Pick for Vanity Fair‘s Best Books of 2019 by Copy Production Director Anderson Tepper. His recommendation reads: “Curdella Forbes’s A Tall History of Sugar is the most recent in an impressive new wave of novels by Jamaican writers—from Marlon James‘s Booker […]
Despite her initial first-generation confusion towards the phrase, it had been embedded in Sonia’s ‘reserved for home’ Guyanese Creole vocabulary.