Books by Authors of Nigerian Descent Coming Out in 2026

One Leg On Earth by Pemi Aguda

Yosoye, a 23-year-old starting a promising new life at a slick architectural firm, is initially captivated by Lagos’s glamour and opportunity. But as unsettling stories of pregnant women walking into and drowning in the city’s open waters spread, her optimism fades.

When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she finds herself entangled with a strange and deadly force, forcing her to confront the sinister undercurrents beneath the city’s rapid progress. I enjoyed reading Pemi’s other work, Ghostroots, so I’m looking forward to this one.

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Season of the Serpent by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

The final book in the Nameless Republic fantasy series. The old wall has fallen, the islands have sunk, and the empire of Bassa is no more. Both heroes and villains must rise to face an impending Third Great War.

Peace won’t come easy. Long-lost family will fight to reach Danso before war erases him forever. Lilong has survived the island catastrophe but lost her power, and will do anything to get it back, and the fate of the fallen queen Esheme hangs in the balance.

Leave Your Mess At Home by Tolani Akinola

The Longe siblings are really botching their parents’ American Dream. Sola, the eldest daughter and recently disgraced influencer, secretly returns to Chicago to rebuild her life. Anjola is dealing with heartbreak over her best friend’s engagement. Karen wrestles with her sexuality and self-image. Ola, the seemingly perfect son, questions his marriage and impending fatherhood.

When they all show up for Thanksgiving at their parents’ house, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.

A Dance of Burning Blades by M. H. Ayinde

In the second instalment of The Invoker Trilogy, tension simmers across the Nine Lands as rebellion brews and old wounds deepen following a devastating attack in the capital.

Clan Adatali is in open rebellion against the king, and as war in the Feverlands rages on, a humble tree feller, who looks a lot like a missing invoker, has not forgotten the promise he made to avenge his brother. Meanwhile, Princess Lyela continues to move her pieces across the board. Can the people of the Nine Lands reclaim their stolen history and unlock the secrets that have been kept from them for centuries?.

Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think by Ainehi Edoro

Spanning indigenous African narratives and contemporary science fiction, this book traces the lineage of forest worlds in African literature: Chinua Achebe’s evil forest, the cosmic forest in Wọle Ṣóyínká’s mythic imagination, Thomas Mofolo’s forest of imperial dreams, Amos Tutuola’s endless fractal forest, and Nnedi Okorafor’s aquatic forest of new ecological futures.

This book rethinks African literary history by showing how African writers draw on the forest, and the wealth of Indigenous ideas about time, space, and storytelling it conjures, to transform the novel’s aesthetic, political, and philosophical horizons.

Time & Ash Duology by Rosemary Okafor

A sweeping political romantic thriller set in the crucible of modern Nigeria, where love is tested by ambition, and power leaves nothing untouched. Umendiego vowed to become a doctor and return to make Chiagozie his wife. But the harsh reality turns him into a man feared and hated by many.

By the time he comes back for her, Chiagozie is no longer the girl who once believed in fairy tales. She is a woman suffocating in an unhappy marriage. As corruption threatens Nigeria’s future and the darkest men fight for the nation’s crown, he must decide how far he will go to protect the power he has bled for. And Chiagozie must make the most radical choice a woman like her can make: to live, and to love, on her own terms

Whyteface by Igoni Barret

Four years after mysteriously transforming into a white man, Furo Wariboko, now living as Frank Whyte in Abuja, embarks on his first trip outside Nigeria. As he travels, he finds himself, for the first time in years, blending in.

In Amsterdam, he befriends his well-meaning but occasionally misguided Airbnb host, and meets a Nigerian expat living in America. In Oslo, he intervenes when a Kenyan writer is the victim of a racist taxi driver. In Milan, he comes upon a woman who might be a distant relative who has survived a treacherous journey of migration. He quickly realises that he feels most Nigerian when he is outside of Nigeria, and he begins to wonder what it might take to be treated, simply, as human.

The Inventory For Lost Things by Abubakar Ibrahim

This collection of poems is a lyrical meditation on memory, grief, exile, and the ways we rebuild ourselves after loss.

The poems traverse intimate and public landscapes, from the quiet ache of familial absence and the ghost of a mother’s voice, to the smouldering ruins of war-torn geographies like Gaza and Khartoum, to the elegies of drowned men and vanished homelands.

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It Comes In Waves by Rukky Brume

In her debut novel, Rukky gives us an honest exploration of grief and a captivating story of the lives we lead and leave behind. When Onome receives news that her father has died, she isn’t sure how to act or grieve.

She returns to Nigeria for the funeral, where she has to deal with uncomfortable customs, meddling religious figures and both unfamiliar and familiar faces. As she struggles to accept the reality of her father’s death, secrets about her family surface as she realises that a man can be more than one thing, and the man in question may be her father.

The Comfort of Distant Stars by I. O. Echeruo

Ezeani is no ordinary child. He sees things others don’t. Despite the burden of these visions, his precocious nature blossoms into genius, and Ezeani grows up to be a gifted mathematician and physicist.

When he leaves Nigeria to study at Cornell in the US, he remains haunted by his most persistent vision, Anyanwu, the Sun God. While Ezeani is adjusting to his new life in America, Anyanwu’s presence takes on an increasingly sinister and malevolent form, and chaos reigns.

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Talk of The Party by Foluso Agbaje

The Obaniles’ picture-perfect life is the envy of all Lagos society, and everyone wants a piece. So, when renowned matriarch Bukola’s birthday approaches, there are no expenses spared. Five hundred guests are invited, and her four children are all in attendance. Everything will be perfect, just as planned.

Except living the dream comes at a price and, as the party draws closer, each of the Obanile children find themselves embroiled in scandals that could shatter the flawless reputation their mother has carefully built.

Three Is A Crowd by Chinasa Anaele

Cheta is a woman with a plan—steady job, loving boyfriend, and a future that looks, at least on paper, perfectly sound. But when she unexpectedly finds herself drawn to Kasie, the older brother of the man she’s supposed to marry, everything begins to unravel.

Torn between loyalty, guilt, and the stirrings of something dangerously real, she must decide whether to protect the life she’s built or risk everything for the truth.

The Daughter Who Remains by Nnnedi Okorafor

Nnedi is back with more Africanfuturistic goodness in this conclusion to the She Who Knows trilogy. Najeeba has something terrible to kill. A fully trained, mature, and sharply focused sorcerer (don’t call her sorceress),

Najeeba has left the comfort and security of her town with two companions, the glass maker Dedan and the old camel MorningStar. This journey takes her back to where it all began. And despite the fact that her training with the sorcerer Aro forced her to face her deepest fears, she hasn’t seen anything close to what she’s about to see.

Kill The Poet, Save The World by Abdulkareem Baba-Aminu

This poetry collection is a daring, incandescent plunge into the futures Africa is already dreaming. Abdulkareem Baba-Aminu’s poems, electric with Africanfuturist vision, move deftly through circuitry, spirit, memory, and mutation, to confront the fractures of our age with both tenderness, and audacity. At its heart, this is a collection rooted in survival: of art, of identity, of memory. It is a reminder that the future is never neutral, and that raw, unruly, and uncolonized imagination is its most powerful architect.

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Fever Bridge by Akpoebi Nora Ojeke

When a public bus stalls in the choking heat of Lagos’s Third Mainland Bridge, what begins as an ordinary traffic jam descends into a nightmare. A strange sickness grips the passengers until bodies start to drop.

As panic spreads and the bridge is locked down by military forces, survivors are forced to confront a new kind of terror: the infected are fast, violent, and no longer human. Among the trapped are a virologist with a buried secret, a journalist chasing more than a headline, and a boy whose silence may be the key to it all.

Kiss Marry Kill by Yemi Dipeolu

It’s Ife’s dream wedding until her new husband, Ade, is arrested for murder. His ex has been found dead on the Dorset coast, and he’s a suspect. But did Ade kiss, marry, and kill? One person hopes the truth never comes out.

Boys Will Be Boys by Miracle Emeka-Nkwor

When Chisom transfers to Bethlehem Glorious High School, all she wants is to start over, blend in, keep her head down, and focus on finishing strong. But from her very first day, she crosses paths with the Notorious Five, a group of popular, untouchable boys whose cruel games leave scars no one sees. When the boys begin to die, one after another, Chisom finds herself at the centre of suspicion, drawn into a mystery she never asked to solve.

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The Finest Things by Deborah Kira

When Adunni Ojo arrives at a poolside bar one Saturday evening for a date, her life is in order. She’s in her final year of uni with a thriving food business and a long-term boyfriend. Then she meets Rotimi Badmus. Their connection is disruptive and impossible to ignore.

As Adunni begins to confront the cracks in her picture-perfect life and Rotimi unearths long-buried family secrets, both must face the painful legacies they’ve inherited and the choices that could set them free.

A Siege of Owls by Uchenna Awoke

Ekwe grows up haunted by owls, myths, and the boundaries of a world too small to contain his restless spirit. Taken in by Danjuma, a gentle Fulani cowherd, he enters the world of cowherding and migration. When insurgents tear through northern towns and tribal wars erupt in the Middle Belt, he leads his family on a journey to safety. Back in his village, his sister resists a forced marriage, one which Ekwe think will improve their lives. As tensions between herders and farmers threaten to ignite, Ekwe is forced to confront the truth of where he belongs.

A Dying Giant in the Palm of Your Hand by Adelehin Ijasan

In a coastal town scarred by oil, secrecy, and silence, ten-year-old Nimi is forced to grow up far too quickly. When his fisherman father hauls a mysterious, silver-scaled being from the sea—Angele, a merman from a forgotten world—Nimi’s life and the fate of Ikanre shift irreversibly.

As whispers of ‘mamiwota’ spread, what begins as wonder curdles into fear, greed, and bloodlust. The villagers’ hunger spirals into a violent reckoning, echoing centuries of betrayal and desecration.

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The Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi

When an alien spacecraft appears above Earth, sparking global tension, Tope, a skilled Nigerian assassin working for a mysterious witch doctor, finds his routine shattered after a mission goes wrong, pulling him into a dangerous struggle over humanity’s future.

Teaming up with Itumeleng, a South African astronomer haunted by strange dreams, they must find a way to survive, navigate their complicated pasts, and come to understand how they, and all of humanity, are connected to the alien craft before it lands and the world changes forever.

You Know You Belong by Erhu Kome

After her grandmother’s death, sixteen-year-old Zenobia is shipped to Lagos to live with her parents who feel more like strangers, especially her cold mother. Feeling unwanted, she shuts herself off emotionally.

Seeking escape, she travels to her maternal grandmother’s quiet island village, where she meets Raluki. Through him and his friends, Zenobia begins to experience friendship and belonging for the first time.

But when she discovers that Raluki’s family is believed to be cursed, she must choose between protecting herself as she always has or risking everything to let him into her life.