Brenton Brown is 16 years old. A mixed race youth, Brenton has lived in a children's home all his life. Being reunited with his mother is the best thing that has happened to Brenton. But a strange series of events soon push him to the edge.

In 1936 Gloria Carter at thirteen is torn from her home in Kingston, Jamaica when she is sent to an exclusive girls’ school in England to receive the finest education money can buy. It isn’t long before Gloria learns that she will always need to be twice as good as everyone else in order to be considered half as good. Throwing herself into her studies, Gloria sets her heart on becoming a barrister and wins a place to study Law at Girton College, Cambridge University. Ahead lies struggles and joys as she enters a controversial mixed marriage. However, the hardships she encounters, far from dampening her spirits ignites the fire for her inevitable success.

Popular world-class athlete El Howard is tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs after winning a major international 200 metre race. Deeply distressed and loudly proclaiming her innocence, she turns to Charles Evans, a lawyer well known for his advocacy in hopeless cases, for help. Evans, a charismatic man of the people, looks like her only hope but to someone else it seems has a firm view of the outcome of her trial and when the life of Evans's daughter is threatened if he doesn't throw the case he has to chose between maintaining his integrity or succumbing to lawlessness.

It’s the late eighteenth century. Aboard a slave ship bound from West Africa to Jamaica, a terrified young boy is cared for by Ami, a fellow captive, who becomes his surrogate mother during that nightmare voyage. They are sold to separate owners, but their lives remain curiously intertwined, and the boy, now a man named August, marries Ami’s daughter, Sarah. Ancestors tells the story of their lives, their part in the struggle for emancipation, and the hope and faith that sustain them for emancipation and the hope and faith that sustains them.

The Locust Hunter, set in the humid and turbulent landscape of 1970s Hong Kong, is a coming of age tale that follows the journey of Sundance and his five friends, as they try to avenge the killing of the local 200-year-old pet tortoise, Lord Baltimore. Their village, encamped between the Big Amber (China) and the looming presence of the British Army, teeters precariously between colonial ideals and the teachings of Tao and Chinese customs. At the heart of the story is the contest held every 30 years to find the most proficient locust hunter in Hong Kong. Since time immemorial, the prize has been won by a member of the leading Triad family…who use every dirty trick in the book. Summoning all his young courage and his belief in life, 9-year-old Sundance takes them on – and wins.

The revealing and inspiring stories of ten women who, against backgrounds of war, political upheaval, repression and social deprivation, have fought to improve the lot of their families and communities.

The women are from countries as diverse as the UK, Germany, Poland, Russia and South Africa, and they themselves are equally varied. They are alike only in the courage, determination and humour with which they have confronted their daunting problems, and in that none sees herself as a heroine or as remarkable.

Yet they have overcome difficulties both political and universal - including physical and mental disability, the plight of deprived children, alcoholism and domestic violence. Their stories offer hope and encouragement to us all.

Tensions in an Indian household enthral and unsettle a young girl staying with her aunt and uncle. When the home help, with whom the girl has made friends, commits suicide, the girl discovers more than she wants to know about her relatives

 Winner of Turkey's most prestigious literary prize, The Other Side of the Mountain traces the lives of three generations of a Turkish family, from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the 1990s. Running through the novel is a daughter's journey back to her mother's student days at Cambridge and later struggles to find a place in Ataturk's new social order.

 Paul Dash is one of Britain's leading academics and also a renowned painter. Born in Barbados, he came to Britain with his family at the age of eleven in the 1950s. FOREDAY MORNING is the autobiography of a remarkable man who grew up with influence of these two cultures.

Turning his artist's palette to his text, Dash reconstructs the cultural spaces in which black people lived in a colonial environment and which denigrated African heritages and venerated Western values. He then poignantly depicts the effect of seeing whites as the working class, sometimes living in poverty and ignorance, when he migrated to Britain. He examines the psychological repositioning required and his subsequent years of adjustment.

Dash explores his experiences as artist and educator and examines the lack of representation of Caribbean peoples in the British educational system.

From Kitchen Sink to Board Room Table will empower women to release their potential for corporate success and allow them to build on the skills they develop managing the home and the family. An inspirational book, it demonstrates how women have the power and courage to deal with situations in the face of adversity.

A witty tale of an Asian teenager that has the reader laughing out loud.

Know how to brown your onions; never, ever go blonde; and always expect your mother to think the worst of you.

With rules like these Susham Dillon desperately tries to make some sense of her life and to stop making a fool of herself. Born and bred in Dudley, she stumbles from one social slip to another confounding social expectations of what it means to be a good Indian girl. College is a disaster, not

least because of her annoying bottle blonde cousin Sammy (who is she trying to kid?), while the dashing Arjun complicates matters further. Her homelife is a living nightmare with her sister Kully’s wedding festivities fast approaching.

Her younger sister Kiz is a Bhangra Chick convinced of her imminent stardom in Bollywood, and don’t even mention her brother (rule number 4: never forget you are a lesser human being than your brother.)

In this hugely entertaining guide to life, Susham lays out the rules that make an Indian girl more than just a prospect for another arranged marriage. Struggling with family politics and her own sense of right and wrong, she is a typical teenager – confused, rebellious and going through an identity crisis.

Only one thing is for sure – don’t call her Sushi, she’s not a piece of raw fish!

On the eve of her wedding, Vasti finds her arranged marriage is to the rapist she saw in a sugarcane field years earlier. She can either speak out, defy convention and publicly disgrace her family or succumb to tradition and submit to her fate silently. The conflict rages within her and makes her ill, she collapses unconscious and is transported to the kingdom of Jyotika, two hundred years before where the three widowed queens of King Paresh are expected to climb onto a burning pyre to die with their dead husband to perform the sati or widow burning. Raise the Lanterns High explores such cultural violations with compassion and drama, from the perspective of the women asked to make these impossible sacrifices, and shows the bravery required to accept as well as to reject these traditions. This is the story of female emancipation, the conflict between modernity and long honoured traditions, as harrowing as it is beautiful.

The possibility of change, of starting anew, in this stunningly beautiful and poignant collection of short stories, is at once terrifying and filled with promise. For those Indian-born women living new lives in America, independence is a mixed blessing. It means walking the tightrope between old treasured beliefs and surprising newfound desires, and understanding the emotions which that conflict brings. Together these stories create a tapestry of existence as colourful, as delicate and as enduring as the finest silk sari.