Fire Rush

He takes my hand, pulls me to him. 'This is our dancing time.' Love changes everything in Fire Rush, the unforgettable novel about Black womanhood from Jacqueline Crooks, chosen as a top 10 debut novel in 2023 by the Observer 'Wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence.' Caleb Azumah Nelson Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London where she was born and raised. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide - a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry. But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape. When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her first to Bristol - where she is caught up in a criminal gang and the police riots sweeping the country - and then to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences. 'I was blown away by Fire Rush ... Mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory.' Bernardine Evaristo 5* READER REVIEWS- 'I will be recommending it to everyone' 'A phenomenal debut novel' 'Yamaye is a fantastic central protagonist ... This novel takes you on an emotional and unforgettable journey' 'This book has it all ... You're immersed into something really special' 'A stunning debut novel... as relevant to today's racial climate as the 1970s... it felt musical, with dub music almost a secondary character in the novel'