From #1 New York Times bestselling author Victor Ostrovsky comes a gripping thriller in which the oldest of enemies becomes the newest of threats… They are known as the Black Ghosts. Relics of the cold war, they were elite KGB operatives placed in strategic positions throughout the Russian government in case of an attempted coup. Their ominous threat was broken when their commander, the cunning General Peter Rogov, was arrested and imprisoned. Now, Rogov has returned. Reactivating his shadowy network of spies, assassins, and nearly-forgotten sleeper agents in the West, his aim is to overthrow the powers-that-be and restore the sleeping bear of Russia to her former glory. And he will declare his might to the world by doing the impossible.

The 1619 Project illuminated the ways in which every aspect of life in the United States was and is shaped by the existence of slavery. Black Ghost of Empire focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial caste system--instead of obliterating it. To understand why the shadow of slavery still haunts society today, we must not only look at what slavery was, but also the unfinished way it ended. One may think of "emancipation" as a finale, leading to a new age of human rights and universal freedoms. But in reality, emancipations everywhere were incomplete. In Black Ghost of Empire, acclaimed historian and professor Kris Manjapra identifies five types of emancipation--explaining them in chronological order--along with the lasting impact these transitions had on formerly enslaved groups around the Atlantic. Beginning in 1770s and concluding in 1880s, different kinds of emancipation processes took place across the Atlantic world. These included the Gradual Emancipations of North America, the Revolutionary Emancipation of Haiti, the Compensated Emancipations of European overseas empires, the War Emancipation of the American South, and the Conquest Emancipations that swept across Sub-Saharan Africa. Tragically, despite a century of abolitions and emancipations, systems of social bondage persisted and reconfigured. We still live with these unfinished endings today. In practice, all the slavery emancipations that have ever taken place reenacted racial violence against Black communities, and reaffirmed commitment to white supremacy. The devil lurked in the details of the five emancipation processes, none of which required atonement for wrongs committed, or restorative justice for the people harmed. Manjapra shows how, amidst this unfinished history, grassroots Black organizers and activists have become custodians of collective recovery and remedy; not only for our present, but also for our relationship with the past. Timely, lucid, and crucial to our understanding of the ongoing "anti-mattering" of Black people, Black Ghost of Empire shines a light into the deep gap between the idea of slavery's end and its actual perpetuation in various forms--exposing the shadows that linger to this day.

Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. While stoically dealing with racial abuse in a country where Africans are known as black ghosts, he is too timid to engage in the money-making schemes available to students. Yet he remains haunted by the weight of his mother’s expectations, encapsulated by the image of the African fish eagle. But the best he can do is a safe job in a bar run by the enigmatic Wang. Things take a dramatic turn when Chinese students pour into the streets in an orgy of violence to drive Africans out of town. Dan’s first impulse is to escape to Zimbabwe but the pressure from his family and the love for his girlfriend Lai Ying force him to stay put. In the aftermath of the riots, tight rules force the foreign students to create innovative ways to see their girlfriends, and in the midst of all this, Lai Ying gets pregnant and secretly procures an abortion. Nothing will ever be the same again.

ONCE A PERSON LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN, THEY NEVER COME BACK, NOT REALLY. THEY’RE LOST FOREVER. Nellie Clay married Hobbs Pritchard without even noticing he was a spell conjured into a man, a walking, talking ghost story. But her mama knew. She saw it in her tea leaves: death. Folks told Nellie to get off the mountain while she could, to go back home before it was too late. Hobbs wasn’t nothing but trouble. He’d even killed a man. No telling what else. That mountain was haunted, and soon enough, Nellie would feel it too. One way or another, Hobbs would get what was coming to him. The ghosts would see to that. . . . Told in the stunning voices of five women whose lives are inextricably bound when a murder takes place in rural Depression-era North Carolina, Ann Hite’s unforgettable debut spans generations and conjures the best of Southern folk-lore—mystery, spirits, hoodoo, and the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian landscape.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023: TRAVEL China today is a land of opportunity for African people blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America. It is also an intersection of racism and prejudice. Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China’s ‘Black Ghosts’, African economic migrants in the People's Republic. Living in clustered communities, they are key to the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents. This is a story of intersecting cultures told with candour and compassion, focusing on the shared humanity between the sojourner and their hosts.

Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. While stoically dealing with racial abuse in a country where Africans are known as black ghosts, he is too timid to engage in the money-making schemes available to students. Yet he remains haunted by the weight of his mother's expectations, encapsulated by the image of the African fish eagle. But the best he can do is a safe job in a bar run by the enigmatic Wang. Things take a dramatic turn when Chinese students pour into the streets in an orgy of violence to drive Africans out of town. Dan's first impulse is to escape to Zimbabwe but the pressure from his family and the love for his girlfriend Lai Ying force him to stay put. In the aftermath of the riots, tight rules force the foreign students to create innovative ways to see their girlfriends, and in the midst of all this, Lai Ying gets pregnant and secretly procures an abortion. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves his native Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. Learning to take racial abuse in his stride, he dates a fellow student, Lai Ying, who is attracted to his easy-going manner. He remains haunted by the weight of his mothers expectations, encapsulated by the image of the African fish eagle. Things take a dramatic turn when Chinese students pour into the streets in an orgy of violence to drive Africans out of town. The situation in Nanjing only stabilises when attention turns to the mayhem that is unraveling in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. But that is only the beginning of Dans troubles with the Campus Gestapo, loan sharks in Hong Kong, and the shock of his family getting caught up in the violence by Mugabes war vets. Black Ghosts was inspired by stories of Africans living in China in the 1980s and, in particular, by the little known incident in Nanjing, where African and Chinese students engaged each other in a violent battle just months before the Tiananmen Square massacre.