Marlon James is a New York Times-bestselling author. His novels have won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Minnesota Book Award. 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf was named a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019 and has been named a best book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: “He has a nose,” people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy’s scent–from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers–he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. ​

If this sounds like something you'd like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store or online with a 15% discount through the end of March. Remember, you can have it shipped directly to you or come pick it up in store!

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"Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a Beast of a Book" -- NPR
"A Fantasy Set in Africa by Way of Hieronymus Bosch, Garcia Marquez, and Marvel Comics" -- The NY TIMES
"Black Leopard, Red Wolf" -- The Guardian
"Interview with Marlon James" -- The Nerd Daily​

We'll meet at Foggy Pine Books on Thursday, March 26th at 6:30pm. There will be free wine and snacks for book club members to share.  Bring a friend and come discuss the book with us, even if you weren't able to completely finish it or if you didn't like it. You can see the Facebook event & RSVP here​. See you there!

This month, we are diving into rising science fiction and fantasy star P. Djeli Clark's The Black God's Drums. P. (the P stands for Phenderson) Djeli Clark is the award winning and Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy nominated author of the novellas The Black God’s Drums and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including, Griots, Hidden Youth and Clockwork Cairo. He is a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons. When not writing speculative fiction, P. Djèlí Clark works as an academic historian whose research spans comparative slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World. He melds this interest in history and the social world with speculative fiction.

The Black God's Drums reflects the marriage of these interests as it brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life. In Clark's New Orleans, caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air--in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums. But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.
Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.

"Interview: P. Djeli Clark" -- Lightspeed
"Q&A With P. Djeli Clark" -- The Nerd Daily
"Interview with P. Djeli Clark" -- The Hub
"Review: The Black God's Drums" -- Locus Magazine
“'The Black God’s Drums' Is A High Stakes Novella That Will Take You to the Skies" -- Black Nerd Problems
"The Black God’s Drums: We Really Hope This Begins A Series" -- Fantasy Literature

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, this month we are meeting on November 21st at 7:30pm. There will be free wine and snacks for book club members to share.  Bring a friend and come discuss the book with us, even if you weren't able to completely finish it or if you didn't like it. You can see the Facebook event & RSVP here.