Bøker av Leila Mottley

When Adela Woods tells her parents she's pregnant, they immediately send her a thousand miles away, to stay with her grandmother in Padua Beach: 'the forgotten Panhandle of Florida that was better off being forgotten'. They hope that their sixteen-year-old's situation might end up being forgotten too.In Padua Adela meets Emory, determined to defy the expectations of everyone around her, who comes to high school with her baby strapped to her chest. She also meets Simone, ringleader of 'the Girls,' a group of young mothers (babies havin' babies) who hang out in the back of her red truck-dancing, breastfeeding, watching each other's backs.The town thinks they've lost their way. Really, they are finding it.But as they look for love, make and break friendships, navigate the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood, Adela, Emory and Simone also find themselves on an inescapable collision course with one another.A novel full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex that calls itself, optimistically, the Royal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent--which has now more than doubled--and to keep the 9-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. What begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger one night soon becomes the job Kiara never wanted but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. And her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland police department.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 - THE YOUNGEST EVER BOOKER NOMINEETHE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER_______________'Mottley attempts to do for Oakland something of what The Wire did for Baltimore' THE TIMES'A soul-searching portrait of survival and hope' OPRAH WINFREY_______________We'll laugh because we can, until the sun disintegrates and nighttime threatens to set us free just to capture us again, back into the things we can't escape.Kiara does not know what it is to live as a normal seventeen-year-old. With her mother in a halfway house, she fends for herself - and for nine-year-old Trevor, whose own mother disappears for days at a time. But as the pressures of rent to pay and mouths to feed increase, Kiara finds herself walking the streets after dark, determined to survive in a world that refuses to protect her.Nightcrawling is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising._______________'UNFORGETTABLE' GUARDIAN'A MAGNIFICENT DEBUT' RUTH OZEKI, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022_______________READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF NIGHTCRAWLING'Nightcrawling is a lyrical masterpiece' *****'This book ripped my heart out' *****'Unputdownable . . . From the first page I was hooked' *****'This is a heart-achingly necessary book which will carve a hole in your soul and stay with you forever' ***** 'It is rare to read a first novel so perfectly crafted' *****'This is an absolute must-read. Five stars out of five' *****'Completely gripping . . . This is going to be a huge bestseller' *****