​Publishing 9th June 2022
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Hiya! Alison Hammond here! I love getting to know all about different people and I'll tell you a secret ... Sometimes people we don't know much about are the most interesting of all! Which is really what this book is all about.

Let me ask you a question: How many Black people can you name from our history? Mary Seacole? Ira Aldridge? George Bridgetower? Pablo Fanque? Walter Tull? Have you heard of these people?

Yes? That's great! But if you haven't, don't worry, you're not alone, which is why I'm so excited to tell you all about them. Because the people in this book should be totally famous given the AMAZING things they've done! And we're not going to stop in the past, I'll introduce you to people making waves right here and now!

From sportspeople to scientists, activists to musicians, politicians to writers, we're going to meet a whole bunch of AWESOME people who have helped shape the world we live in. So, are you ready for a journey Black in time?? Course you are, let's go!

Join Alison Hammond on a journey throughout history as she delves into the lives of influential Black British figures with the help of Emma Norry. Through an informative and entertaining combination of fact files, narrative stories and interviews, Alison explores their impact on our society to show young readers how Black History is British history.

Featuring people from the world of science, sports, the arts, politics and more, readers will meet a host of exciting Black Britons – all who have done incredible things yet remain largely unknown. The book also features interviews with Black Britons of today, with the likes of Nicola Adams and Malorie Blackman sharing views on Black British history and what we can learn from it.

About Alison Hammond


Known for her quick wit, outrageous presenting style and infectious laugh, Alison Hammond has been a much-loved fixture on British television for two decades. She joined This Morning in 2002 and has since secured some of the most watched - and loved - celebrity interviews ever. She's tap- danced with Renée Zellweger, rapped with Will Smith, jammed with Russell Crowe, and been serenaded by Hugh Jackman.

In 2021, she became one of This Morning's main hosts, alongside Dermot O'Leary, and appeared on a new BBC Saturday-night primetime entertainment show, I Can See Your Voice, alongside fellow judges Amanda Holden and Jimmy Carr, and host Paddy McGuinness.

From her rise to fame on Channel 4's Big Brother in 2002, to her appearances on I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, Strictly
Come Dancing and Celebrity Great British Bake Off, Alison's warmth, honesty and joy have made her one of the most popular presenters on TV today.

Moved by the murder of George Floyd and the rise of #BLM protests around the world, Alison used her platform on This Morning to speak openly about her experiences of racism and marginalisation of Black people in the UK. She then went on to present Alison Hammond: Back to School, a primetime documentary on ITV exploring important Black British figures who have been ignored by history curriculum in the UK.

About Emma Norry:

Emma Norry is an author who writes fiction and non-fiction for children. She is passionate about equal representation and diversity. Her first book, Son of the Circus, is part of a series that shows readers that Black and brown people have always been a part of British history. Son of the Circus, set in Victorian times, blended fact and fiction by using Pablo Fanque (the first Black circus owner) and his son Ted as inspiration. Emma has also written Amber Undercover - a fun action-adventure spy story for ages 10+. She has many short stories in anthologies: Happy Here, The Place for Me: Stories from the Windrush and The Very Merry Murder Club. Emma’s non-fiction includes biographies of Lionel Messi and Nelson Mandela. A two-book middle-grade fantasy series launches in 2023.

Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul...

“There is something universal about food memories – they linger somewhere hidden in your soul. Just as the sounds of raindrops, the lyrics of a song, or the feel of a fabric can transport you to another world, so with food. The memories flood back. They take you home.”
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Asma Khan’s new book, Ammu is a delicious collection of childhood recipes that celebrates the power of home cooking and the inextricable link between food and love. Asma is a firm believer in the healing power of food. Like many of us, for the last two years she has been unable to go home to see her family, thousands of miles away in India. She began to turn more often to the food of her childhood, her Ammu’s cooking, and through this she found comfort and felt connected to loved ones far away. 
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In Ammu, Asma shares the dishes that have nourished her life and family, with over 100 recipes to bring warmth and joy to your kitchen, whatever the occasion. From the simple comfort food of her childhood in Calcutta, including Ammu’s Chicken Biryani, and Sikandari Raan, a spiced leg of lamb her Ammu fed her before her wedding day, to Chapatis and Ma’s Prawns, dishes she craved and learned to cook when she first moved to the UK and was uprooted from her family. There are recipes for special occasions - Nine Jewel Korma and Zarda – traditional recipes passed through generations of Asma’s Rajput and Bengali families with long, rich histories and slow-cooking methods to match; and the quick recipes Asma cooks every day, now she is Ammu, Buttermilk Chicken Pakoras and Bhuna Niramish which combine seasonal British ingredients and the flavours of home. 

This book is not only a celebration of the food Asma loves to cook but of the woman who nurtured her and taught her to cook. Throughout the book Asma shares personal memories and reflections on her life in food and of her Ammu.
  
"In this book, I celebrate a woman who was fiercely independent in her thinking, a woman ahead of her time, who managed to gently shake the patriarchy and was unafraid to be different from those around her, becoming a female founder of a food business. Ammu’s footprints are too big for me to match them, but I am following her path and using food to celebrate my family’s culinary heritage and culture. I also use food to change the narrative of how women cooks are perceived at home and in restaurant kitchens."

Asma Khan is the chef and owner of Darjeeling Express. She moved to Cambridge from Calcutta in 1991. Now residing in London with her husband and two boys, she comes from a royal background – Rajput on her father’s side and Bengali on her mother’s. After studying law, Asma went on to do a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King's College London.

Cooking was always her passion and she began her food career in 2012 as a supper club in her home. In 2015, she opened a pop-up in a Soho pub to much acclaim, and Darjeeling Express the restaurant opened its doors in June 2017. A year later, her debut cookbook Asma’s Indian Kitchen was published. The book was the winner in the U.K. category for food publishing in Indian cuisine at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
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Asma is the first British chef to feature in Netflix's Emmy nominated Chef's Table. Her episode also received a 2020 James Beard Award nomination. Business Insider named her number 1 on their list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink", and The Evening Standard listed her in The Progress 1000 as one of London’s most influential people 2019. She has been included in the eighth edition of the GG2 Power List – profiling Britain’s 101 most influential Asians and she is now the first chef to be featured on Vogue's list of 25 most influential women of the year for 2020.
In 2021 Asma was shortlisted by GQ Food & Drink Awards in the Veuve Clicquot Innovator category.

‘Rich and powerful’
- O, The Oprah Magazine


Beasts of Prey is the highly acclaimed debut from exciting new talent Ayana Gray who is taking the world, and TikTok, by storm. Spotlighted as one to watch in The New York Times, United by Pop, Bustle, Buzzfeed and POPSUGAR, it has been heralded by critics as ‘the next big thing in YA Fantasy’. Beasts of Prey has secured the coveted title of a New York Times bestseller and is soon to be adapted as a major film by Netflix.

An extraordinary adventure inspired by Pan-African mythology and the first in a standout new fantasy trilogy weaving monsters, mythos and magic in one unforgettable adventure.

In the broken city of Lkossa sixteen-year-old Koffi, a beast-keeper in a magical zoo, is kept against her will desperately seeking freedom.

Ekon, son of a decorated hero, is a warrior in training desperately seeking honour.

One night their paths cross in an unexpected way and they find themselves in the Greater Jungle, a world steeped in wild magic and untold dangers, the tentative alliance between them is tested to the extreme.

The hunt begins - but are they the hunters or the hunted?

Beasts of Prey will be published under the Penguin imprint.

Ayana Gray is a lover of all things monsters and magic. Originally an Atlanta native, she now lives in sunny Florida where she writes fantastical stories, follows Formula One racing, and worries over her adopted baby rhino, Apollo.

TikTok  @ayanagray 
Twitter @AyanaGray 
Instagram @ayanagray_ ​

‘I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good.’
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‘(An) intense, unputdownable debut that will doubtless spark conversation about what makes a good or bad mother.’ Oprah Daily
 
Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy.
She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They'd been up since four am.
 
Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she'd left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour? She was so sure it would be okay. Now, the state has decided that Frida is not fit to care for her daughter. That she must be re-trained. Soon, mothers everywhere will be re-educated. Will their mistakes cost them everything?
 
Acquired at a major auction this is a searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by   both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness    of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic. For fans of Margaret Atwood and Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age.
 
Jessamine Chan holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded a teaching fellowship. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House and Epoch. Her work has also received support from Bread Loaf, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. Prior to moving to Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and daughter, she worked as a nonfiction reviews editor at Publishers Weekly.
 
Hollywood star Jessica Chastain has optioned The School for Good Mothers through her production company Freckle Films and will be adapting it for the small screen alongside Taiwanese-born American director and writer Jude Weng (Blackish, The Good Place and Young Sheldon)

‘THE BEST MEMOIR I’VE EVER READ… it’s so honest and packed with so many wonderful life lessons and aha moments’
 - Oprah Winfrey



The brave, inspiring and wildly entertaining memoir full of self-help lessons for readers, from one of the world's most charismatic and
 much-loved actors
​

​One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had.

Will Smith's transformation from a fearful child in a tense West Philadelphia home to one of the biggest rap stars of his era and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, with a string of box office successes that will likely never be broken, is an epic tale of inner transformation and outer triumph, and Will tells it astonishingly well. But it's only half the story.
 
Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over.
 
This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one exceptional man mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.



FURTHER PRAISE FOR WILL 

‘If you read one book this year make sure it’s WILL…The gift of therapy, coaching and comedy ALL in one place. It will make you cry, it will make you laugh and it will make you change the way you think about life. If you want to transform your mindset and be entertained in the process this book will be a phenomenal guide. Read it, discuss it, dissect it. It’s going to change lives’ Jay Shetty
 

‘Buy And Read Dis Dope Book’ Spike Lee
 
‘A wild ride’ New York Times
 
‘Will Smith isn’t holding back in his bravely inspiring new memoir…Will provides a humane glimpse of the man behind the actor, producer and musician, as her bares all his insecurities and trauma’ USA Today
 
‘Raw, comedic, inspirational’ GQ


"Brilliant and bonkers in equal measure." Daily Telegraph

A celebratory collection of iconic British figures chosen by Stormzy and the #Merky Books team, featuring Mo Gilligan, Candice Carty-Williams, Ian Wright, Jourdan Dunn, Riz Ahmed, Dina Asher-Smith and more

In a fully illustrated, comic book style children’s book, performance poet Sophia Thakur has profiled over fifty modern day heroes from across the worlds of art, activism, sport, food, science and more. Each individual has harnessed their unique talent, passion and skill and turned it into their own superhero power, such as:
 
·         Princess K, who went from tapping her foot under the desk at school, to dancing centre stage at Glastonbury;
·         Dina Asher-Smith, who started out crawling at lightning speed and became the fastest British woman in history;
·         Reggie Yates, who used his power of empathy to connect instantly both in person and through the TV;
·         Riz Ahmed, whose ability to code-switch between cultures and creative outlets let him excel as a scholar, actor, activist and rapper;
·         Liam Charles, who followed his childhood passion in the kitchen to become a Bake Off master.

Both entertaining and empowering, Superheroes will showcase the importance of positive representation in children’s books and inspire the next generation to follow and achieve their dreams.

8% of the proceeds for Superheroes will be donated to the #Merky Foundation.

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is an award-winning journalist, editor, features writer, columnist. She is currently a Senior Staff Editor at the New York Times and was formerly editor-in-chief of gal-dem weekend editor and writer at Dazed. She is the editor of Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children, longlisted for the 2019 Jhalak Prize. 


Timi Sotire is a freelance journalist and editor, whose work is focused on music and culture. With bylines in The Guardian, gal-dem, NME and others, she's written profiles on upcoming artists like Bree Runway and Tiana Major9, as well the industry greats Jazmine Sullivan and Dua Lipa. ​