Fires to Come

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Abandoned as an infant and raised by protective, if secretive, Italian parents, Carlotta has never quite fit in her own life as the only Black person in her neighborhood. Even when she ventures to Harlem, where jazz, community, and a man’s love await her, she doesn’t feel fully at home. But when the dynamics in her adoptive family shift, and her role grows more tenuous, Carlotta has to decide where she belongs - no matter the threats or the price that must be paid.

Part of the Blaze Collection - Unstoppable women igniting change.
Spanning decades, these indelible women broke through barriers in disparate worlds of art, war, science, love, and injustice and paved the way for other women to follow.

Other books in this series:
The June Paintings by Maggie Shipstead
Amelia's Shadow by Marie Benedict
The Forgotten Chapter by Pam Jenoff
Tune in Tomorrow by Melanie Benjamin
Fallen Grace by Sadeqa Johnson
Barriers to Entry by Ariel Lawhon

The Wildest Sun

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When tragedy sends Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed finding the father she has never known. But her quest is complicated by the fact that she believes her father to be a famed literary icon, Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the answer to who she's truly meant to be. But what will happen if she is wrong, or if her real story falls outside of the legend of her parentage that she’s revered all her life? The answer takes her from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West, as Delphine fights to find her own triumphant place in the world and within herself, outside of the shadow of the myths she’s forged so strongly into her identity. Epically rendered as only Asha Lemmie’s vivid and lyrical voice can, The Wildest Sun is a dazzling and unexpected coming-of-age story about an unforgettable young woman who must come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be.

Fifty Words for Rain

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From debut author Asha Lemmie, a sweeping, heartrending coming-of-age novel about a young woman's quest for acceptance in post–World War II Japan. Kyoto, Japan, 1948. "If a woman knows nothing else, she should know how to be silent. . . . Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist." Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her shameful skin. The illegitimate child of a Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Though her grandparents take her in, they do so only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life for what it is, despite her natural intellect and nagging curiosity about what lies outside the attic's walls. But when chance brings her legitimate older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him the first person who will allow her to question, and the siblings form an unlikely but powerful bond - a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it - a battle that just might cost her everything. Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to try to break free.