This month’s Book with Buzz feature on new publications that are picking up interest but haven’t yet hit the big-time (you heard about them here first, folks!) include a fabulous Caribbean cookbook that’ll refresh and revolutionise your culinary habits, and a dazzling debut that’ll get you thinking about revolution.

Chef Tee's Caribbean Kitchen by Chef Tee

Chef Tee's Caribbean Kitchen

Kicking off with our new favourite cook book, Chef Tee’s Caribbean Kitchen serves an inspirational, easy-to-follow delight of dishes and drinks from across the Caribbean region. 

Covering “Bits and Bites”, zingy salads, jerk and ribs, hearty curries and stews, Chef Tee also shares how to make your own incredible spice rubs and marinades, along with lots of inventive vegetarian and vegan dishes, and to-die-for cocktails.

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

Fire Rush

One of our personal favourites — a Star Book, no less — Fire Rush will be relished by readers who love novels with bite, heart, and a whole lot of soul. Set in the late 1970s, and moving from an underground club in London, to crime gangs in Bristol, to Cockpit Country, Jamaica, it tells a page-turning tale of personal and political revolution, all the while pulsating with rhythms of music and the heart. 

But don’t just take our word for it — The Guardian described Fire Rush as a “startling debut novel… Jacqueline Crooks has crafted a richly textured world, artfully drawing on her youthful experience of raves and gangs in 1970s west London, as well as supernatural beliefs in Obeah”.

What July Knew? by Emily Koch

What July Knew

With an incredible, unforgettable voice courtesy of its ten-year-old lead character, What July Knew? is one of those novels you’ll be recommending to all your nearest and dearest. Written as a page-turning mystery, it unveils family tragedy, domestic abuse and community cover-ups as July tries to find out what happened to the mother she believed was killed in a car accident. 

Utterly compelling, and written with heart-wrenching honesty, the Sunday Times described it as “Touchingly effective in conveying a childhood loved in fear”, and we rate it as one of our top 2023 reads.

Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns

Your Driver Is Waiting

Fresh, funny and brilliantly of-the-moment Your Driver is Waiting follows an underpaid driver’s experience of life, lust, love and inequity in a US city that’s ablaze with protests and demos. 

Exposing the gaping chasm between the have-it-alls and the have-nots and vital truths about racism and the treatment of immigrants, the Guardian described it as “a blazing debut…the brazenness and forthrightness of her prose puts Guns in a space of her own”.