Bookends is always on the lookout for exciting titles, whether from new or established authors. Today, we share six that have been released in the past few months, with five fresh, new voices and a pair of veterans.How To Love A Jamaican: Stories, by Alexia Arthurs         Heads of the Coloured People: Stories, by Nafissa Thompson-Spires    

This title made it a no-brainer because, let’s face it we Jamaicans love to see ourselves in print. Well, sometimes. This is one of the times when we actually do. And before you even think it: no, it’s not a self-help manual. Arthurs, who was born in Jamaica, not only has us down pat (our language, demeanour, idiosyncrasies), but the woman can actually write the heck out of a story. She has stellar literary credentials (what with being an alum of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and all that). These 11 stories run the gamut of setting, from small close-knit island communities to the streets of New York and Midwestern university towns are about Jamaican immigrants and the loved ones they leave behind. This collection is Arthurs’s debut, but, around these parts, we’re pretty sure we’re going to hear a whole lot more from her.

The writer of this compelling short-story collection about black identity, timely no doubt in its arrival in this so-called post-racial era, is drawing comparisons to writers like Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz. The stories, vignettes, really, are compelling and boundary-pushing, shining a light on the state of affairs regarding black citizenship and are, by turns, satirical, funny, poignant, captivating, wholly original and totally engaging in their ongoing race and identity politics, never, ever losing sight of the vulnerability of the black body.Small Fry, by Lisa Brennan-Jobs         When Giving Up Was Not Enough, by Sonia Thomas   The President is Missing, by Bill Clinton & James Patterson An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones    

All the world loves a tell-all, and this is exactly what Brennan-Jobs has done in this devastating memoir that helps readers realise just how much of a not-nice man her late father, Apple honcho Steve Jobs, was. Oh, and isn’t it a doozy. Despite Jobs telling her when she was a little girl that the Apple Lisa was not named after her (he was teaching her not to ride on his coattails), or refusing to instal heat in her bedroom (he was instilling in her a “value system”), or even when her dying father told her she smelled like a toilet (he was teaching her a lesson about honesty), Brennan-Jobs — the daughter, incidentally, he fathered at 23 and refused to acknowledge for a long time even after a DNA test was administered — has forgiven him. Well, that’s as maybe. But if you just want to peep behind the velvet curtain (who doesn’t?) to see the hot mess this titan was in his personal life, you need this book in your life.

Jamaican Thomas has over the years endeared herself to Kingstonians as a restaurateur (her Sonia’s Homestyle Cooking & Natural Juices have legion of fans). She notably started her business from a sky juice cart that but, never one to rest on her laurels, she has evolved over two decades to become a purveyor of home-style local products with a much-adored restaurant that is synonymous with authentic Jamaican acknowledged by the Jamaica Observer’s Table Talk Food Awards.

But the story is inspirational one and examines Thomas’s roots and early life of hardship that preceded everything that this daughter of the soil has today accomplished. She bares her soul with candour in this personal account of the poverty, abuse and degradation that could have blighted a distinguished life now dedicated to the service of her lord and saviour Jesus Christ.

Word recently came that this novel, released at the beginning of summer by former President Clinton and best-selling author Patterson, is now a million seller. Bookends, never one to feign indifference to a good thriller, is completely here for it. Especially one c0-written by our favourite American mystery novelist and one of our favourite presidents. The President Is Missing confronts a threat so huge that it jeopardises not just Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street, but all of America. So this is it in broad strokes: Uncertainty and fear grip the nation. There are whispers of cyberterror and espionage and a traitor in the Cabinet. Even the president himself becomes a suspect, and then he disappears from public view. Set over the course of three days, The President Is Missing sheds a stunning light upon the inner workings and vulnerabilities of the United States of America. (Very timely, indeed!) Filled with information that only a former Commander-in-Chief could know, this book has been labelled “the most authentic, terrifying novel to come along in many years”. This one’s already in our check-out basket on Amazon!

We around these parts think Tayari Jones, who was here for this year’s Calabash Literary Festival, can do no wrong. With this one, her latest, we are pleased to say, Jones once again hits it out the park. It is a multiple-narrated work and an Oprah Book Club Selection earlier this year, about a marriage whose very foundation is rocked by an unspeakable scandal.

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her centre. But then, after only five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. You know what they say about the best-laid plans…