The devastating story of war through the eyes of a child soldier. Beah tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and became a soldier.

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.” 

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. 

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. 

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

"Provides important insider information concerning Sierra Leone's recent war... and builds on [the author's] established reputation as an insightful and courageous journalist." --William Reno, Northwestern University

A Dirty War in West Africa recounts Lansana Gberie's harrowing experiences as a journalist during the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone. Since 1991, this West African nation has been brought to its knees by a series of coups, violent conflicts, and finally, outright war. The war has ended today, but it is clear that things are hardly settled. Focusing on the group spearheading the violence, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Gberie exposes the corruption and appalling use of rape and mutilation as tactics to overthrow the former government. Gberie looks closely at the rise of the RUF and its ruthless leader, Foday Sankoh, as he seeks to understand the personalities and parties involved in the war. This sobering and powerful account reveals the domestic and international consequences of the Sierra Leone conflict.

A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone

Primary English for Sierra Leone

This book is a historical narrative covering various periods in Sierra Leone s history from the fifteenth century to the end of its civil war in 2002. It entails the history of Sierra Leone from its days as a slave harbor through to its founding as a home for free slaves, and toward its political independence and civil war. In 1462, the country was discovered by a Portuguese explorer, Pedro de Sintra, who named it Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains). Sierra Leone later became a lucrative hub for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. At the end of slavery in England, Freetown was selected as a home for the Black Poor, free slaves in England after the Somerset ruling. The Black Poor were joined by the Nova Scotians, American slaves who supported or fought with the British during the American Revolution. The Maroons, rebellious slaves from Jamaica, arrived in 1800. The Recaptives, freed in enforcement of British antislavery laws, were also taken to Freetown. Freetown became a British colony in 1808 and Sierra Leone obtained political independence from Britain in 1961. The development of the country was derailed by the death of its first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, and thirty years after independence the country collapsed into a brutal civil war.









"

Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War

Praised as “a shining example of what autobiography can be: harrowing, illuminating and thoughtful” (USA Today), Aminatta Forna’s intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood which became the stuff of nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness or exile in Britain and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny.

Mohamed Forna was a man of unimpeachable integrity and enchanting charisma. As Sierra Leone faced its future as a fledgling democracy, he was a new star in the political firmament, a man who had been one of the first black students to come to Britain after the war. He stole the heart of Aminatta’s mother to the dismay of her Presbyterian parents and returned with her to Sierra Leone. But as Aminatta Forna shows with compelling clarity, the old Africa was torn apart by new ways of western parliamentary democracy, which gave birth only to dictatorships and corruption of hitherto undreamed-of magnitude. It was not long before Mohamed Forna languished in jail as a prisoner of conscience, and worse to follow.

Aminatta’s search for the truth that shaped both her childhood and the nation’s destiny began among the country’s elite and took her into the heart of rebel territory. Determined to break the silence surrounding her father’s fate, she ultimately uncovered a conspiracy that penetrated the highest reaches of government and forced the nation’s politicians and judiciary to confront their guilt. The Devil that Danced on the Water is a book of pain and anger and sorrow, written with tremendous dignity and beautiful precision: a remarkable, and important, story of Africa.


The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest

In the mangroves of Sierra Leone, two strangers, raised a world apart, find themselves inextricably connected. They can run from their pasts, but they can’t run from each other. Passion erupts between a relief worker and an arms dealer as they play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a man set on vengeance. "Seduction in Sierra Leone" is a fast-paced, action-filled novel of murder, lust, and revenge from romance author Olivia Night. 
 
Aislinn Salameh, an American relief worker, is searching for purpose in her self-imposed lonely world. The stranger who enters her village on a blistering hot day seems more animal than human. She knows she should stay far away but can’t stop herself from being drawn to the mysterious man. 
 
Brandt Fairlane is haunted by the sins of his past. Detached from others, Brandt has spent his life alone. His line of work is too dangerous for the luxuries of love and family. 
 
When Brandt sees Aislinn and her haunting eyes, he knows he must possess her. But when Brandt’s past comes back from the dead and Aislinn is caught in the crossfire, it is up to him to keep her safe. In order to survive, they must learn to rely on one another. As they run for their lives, the heat between them becomes undeniable. 
 
Now, Brandt must not only protect Aislinn from a madman committed to stealing her away, but he also must protect her from himself. Because if Brandt steals her body and her heart, he’ll never let her go. 
 
Content Notes: Hot, Non-Sexual Graphic Violence, Non-Sexual Physical Assault, Contemporary, Action, Adventure, Suspense

Seduction in Sierra Leone (The Men of FTI #1)

Sierra Leone Junior Secondary Social Studies/Population Education

Esther Megill had an extraordinary life experience in Sierra Leone as a medical technologist-extraordinary in the work she did, in the work she helped others to do, and in the legacy of good will she left behind at the time of her "retirement." Her book, Sierra Leone Remembered, reads like an adventure novel. Written in an easy conversational style, it is a true story whose "characters" draw you into their world. There are surprises at every turn and some will make you laugh along with Esther and her friends. Some will make you weep as she wept for the sick, displaced and those who lost their lives. This author was there and she takes you with her. Her stories have an unmistakable ring of essential truth. Other authors may have given us history lessons, descriptive passages, testamonials of faith, or glimpses into the culture and everyday lives of people. Esther Megill gives all that and more. Her feast of photographs tell thousands more stories at a glance. Pull up a chair, open Sierra Leone Remembered, and you will see and hear Esther tell her story in her own voice. Her story inspires one to look for the best in the human spirit despite circumstances. One sees that dedication to serve others with compassion, courage and faith, and medicine blessed with God's love, can make a difference. -Sylvia Smyth

Sierra Leone Remembered

How is the slave trade remembered in West Africa? In a work that challenges recurring claims that Africans felt (and still feel) no sense of moral responsibility concerning the sale of slaves, Rosalind Shaw traces memories of the slave trade in Temne-speaking communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is rarely remembered in explicit verbal accounts, it is often made vividly present in such forms as rogue spirits, ritual specialists' visions, and the imagery of divination techniques.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, Shaw argues that memories of the slave trade have shaped (and been reshaped by) experiences of colonialism, postcolonialism, and the country's ten-year rebel war. Thus money and commodities, for instance, are often linked to an invisible city of witches whose affluence was built on the theft of human lives. These ritual and visionary memories make hitherto invisible realities manifest, forming a prism through which past and present mutually configure each other.


Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone

Brutally honest and devoid of hyperbole, this is Roelf van Heerden's Executive Outcomes. / Unapologetic, unassuming and forthright, the combat exploits of Executive Outcomes (EO) in Angola and Sierra Leone are recounted for the first time by a battlefield commander who was physically on the ground during all their major combat operations. From fighting UNITA for the critical oil installations and diamond fields of Angola to the offensive against the RUF in Sierra Leone to capture the Kono diamond fields and the palace coup which ousted Captain Valentine Strasser, van Heerden was at the forefront. He tells of the tragedy of child soldiers, illegal diamond mining and the curse of government soldiers who turn on their own people; he tells of RUF atrocities, the harrowing attempt to rescue a downed EO pilot and the poignant efforts to recover the remains of EO soldiers killed in action. Coupled with van Heerden's gripping exposé, hitherto unpublished photographs, order of battle charts and battle maps offer unprecedented access to the major actions as they took place on the ground during the heydays of EO.

Four Ball, One Tracer: Commanding Executive Outcomes in Angola and Sierra Leone

In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies a dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. 

As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, these men are drawn unwittingly closer by a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories. 

A work of breathtaking writing and rare wisdom, "The Memory of Love" seamlessly weaves together two generations of African life to create a story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, in the end, the very nature of love.

The Memory of Love

This book chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets - an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed. "Operation Certain Death" is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy. A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.

Operation Certain Death

During the war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), members of various rebel movements kidnapped thousands of girls and women, some of whom came to take an active part in the armed conflict alongside the rebels. In a stunning look at the life of women in wartime, Chris Coulter draws on interviews with more than a hundred women to bring us inside the rebel camps in Sierra Leone. When these girls and women returned to their home villages after the cessation of hostilities, their families and peers viewed them with skepticism and fear, while humanitarian organizations saw them primarily as victims. Neither view was particularly helpful in helping them resume normal lives after the war.

Offering lessons for policymakers, practitioners, and activists, Coulter shows how prevailing notions of gender, both in home communities and among NGO workers, led, for instance, to women who had taken part in armed conflict being bypassed in the demilitarization and demobilization processes carried out by the international community in the wake of the war. Many of these women found it extremely difficult to return to their families, and, without institutional support, some were forced to turn to prostitution to eke out a living. Coulter weaves several themes through the work, including the nature of gender roles in war, livelihood options in war and peace, and how war and postwar experiences affect social and kinship relations.

Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women's Lives Through War and Peace in Sierra Leone

In a British colony in West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious and righteous man of modest means enlisted with securing borders. But when he’s passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out.
 
Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides against his better judgment to accept a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise’s passage. It’s just a single indiscretion, yet for Henry it precipitates a rapid fall from grace as one moral compromise after another leads him into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. And for a devout man like Henry, there may be nothing left but damnation.

The Heart of the Matter

A haunting, beautiful first novel by the bestselling author of "
  A Long Way Gone
"

When Ishmael Beah’s "A Long Way Gone" was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the fate of child soldiers that “everyone in the world should read” ("The Washington Post"). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called “arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature,” has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone.

At the center of "Radiance of Tomorrow" are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town’s water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they’re forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike.

With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, "Radiance of Tomorrow" is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.

Radiance of Tomorrow

As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown. As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and Mariatu's eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope.

The Bite of the Mango

In "The War Machines", Danny Hoffman considers how young men are made available for violent labor both on the battlefields and in the diamond mines, rubber plantations, and other unregulated industries of West Africa. Based on his ethnographic research with militia groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia during those countries’ recent civil wars, Hoffman traces the path of young fighters who moved from grassroots community-defense organizations in Sierra Leone during the mid-1990s into a large pool of mercenary labor. Hoffman argues that in contemporary West Africa, space, sociality, and life itself are organized around making young men available for all manner of dangerous work. Drawing on his ethnographic research over the past nine years, as well as the anthropology of violence, interdisciplinary security studies, and contemporary critical theory, he maintains that the mobilization of West African men exemplifies a global trend in the outsourcing of warfare and security operations. A similar dynamic underlies the political economy of violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a growing number of postcolonial spaces. An experienced photojournalist, Hoffman integrates more than fifty of his photographs of young West Africans into "The War Machines".

The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Captain T.K. Reaper only cares about his men; until he ends up falling for the one woman who can rescue his team.

Reaper has lived his entire life without love. Living on the edge with no fear, Reaper and his team volunteered for Project Mayhem — a top-secret experiment that uses a serum to enhance physical abilities in order to fight terrorism. Reaper believed the experiment would help save lives, but the serum only ends up taking them. Forced to go on the run, Reaper escapes the lab with his men, only to realize that they need the serum to survive. He has only one choice; return to the lab, and steal the source of the serum.

Caroline Cotter used to be a spoiled Senator’s daughter; now, she’s a victim. Kidnapped and held against her will to make the serum used for Project Mayhem, Caroline gives up hope of ever being free again… until Reaper enters, and frees her from her dark prison.

Yet the jungle outside is full of terrors, and government officials are hot on their tail. Reaper plans to keep the relationship between him and Caroline platonic, but undeniable attraction and explosive desire, coupled with Caroline’s adoration that he saved her from certain death, make it hard to resist the love story blossoming between them.

What will Reaper choose? His romance with Caroline, or the sacred vow he’s made to the brothers willing to die by his side?

Thrills and action are on every turn of the page in the first book of the "Operation Mayhem" series. Packed with adventure, heat, and a slight paranormal twist, "Mayhem’s Warrior" is a dark romantic suspense novel readers will delightfully devour.

Mayhem's Warrior (Operation Mayhem, #1)

Do small wars in Africa manifest a 'new barbarism'? What appears as random, anarchic violence is no such thing. The terrifying military methods of of Sierra Leone's soldiers may not fir conventional western models of warfare, but they are rational and effective nonetheless. The war must be understood partly as a 'performance', in which techniques of terror compensate for lack of equipment.BR&gt; PAUL RICHARDS is Professor of Technology and Agrarian Development, Wageningen University Published in association with the International African Institute

Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone

Kathleen Martin spent several weeks in the tiny village of Kamakwie in the interior of Sierra Leone, where she worked with a Canadian medical team. Staying in the grounds of the community hospital, Kathleen had the opportunity to meet with the people of the village. The experience was a revelation. Her mission was to talk to people about their lives, aspirations and their memories of the civil war. She also had a camera though which she developed a visual chronicle. Above all, she was struck by the children. Their resilience, their hopes, their enjoyment of the moments when they could gather and sing and play soccer. Initially, the writer is an observer, but it is not long before the observer is passionately involved. In this vivid and moving account of her time in Kamakwie, Kathleen Martin provides a window into a world far from the comfortable lives of most Americans - a world that through this book will become a colorful, sometimes horrifying, sometimes beautiful reality.

Kamakwie: Finding Peace, Love, and Injustice in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone: Inside the War: History and Narratives

From Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin’, comes the first in a two-book origin story of Faith, a groundbreaking, plus-sized superhero from the Valiant Entertainment comics.

Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove.

So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly….

When the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her.

But her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school.

But when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gifts—risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.

Faith: Taking Flight (Faith Herbert Origin Story, #1)

In West Africa's War-Ravaged Sierra Leone No On e Was Getting Out Alive. 

It Took the Courage of One Man to Change the Odds.

By 1990, Sierra Leone, once hailed as the 'Athens of West Africa', had degenerated into a savage battlefield, overtaken by rebel forces in a devastating civil war. Assigned to spearhead the mission as UN peacekeeper was Major Phil Ashby. But by 2000, the rebel occupation he had worked so diligently to disarm rose again to control an astounding two-thirds of the country. The enemy's mission: get rid of the outside opposition first. A number of Ashby's colleagues were tortured and finally butchered, and more than 500 were taken as hostages. Among the hostages was Phil Ashby. Miles from civilization, with no rescue in sight, Ashby and three of his men knew that their fate was up to them alone. Lost deep inside the rebels' heartland, unarmed, and outnumbered 20-to-1, Ashby devised a plan to escape from the hostile jungles that would test fate and challenge all reason. They should have been doomed.

"Against All Odds "is the incredible true story of that escape-and of the heart-pounding courage of Major Phil Ashby who defeated the rebel forces of Sierra Leone and became a living testament to the power of the human spirit and the sheer determination to survive.


Against All Odds: Escape from Sierra Leone

Long after Fina has left Sierra Leone for America, memories of a broken initiation still haunt her. She longs to return, to find her grandmother and right the path that has been set for young girls centuries past. 

Her journey from the streets of Freetown to Washington echo with the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the diaspora. Fina's inner turmoil and feelings of 'otherness', persist as she travels further from home. 

Ultimately, the broken path of her childhood brings Fina back to Sierra Leone, to a life she had never imagined for herself.

So the Path Does Not Die is a tender and gently observed novel exploring attitudes towards female circumcision, and a beautifully rendered novel, rom an exciting new voice in African literature.

So the Path Does Not Die

Denis Johnson's "The Laughing Monsters "is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game.
 Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. 
 Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago.
 Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

The Laughing Monsters

The Palm Oil Stain is a brutal tale of a woman's journey of love and survival. Set against the backdrop of the Rebel War in Sierra Leone, Shalimar escapes an attack on her village assisted by a South African mercenary the locals call Chameleon. Displaced in Freetown, Shalimar devises a plan to return home to locate her family while forging an unlikely relationship with Chameleon whose alcoholic abuse has left him bereft of any emotion. Shalimar soon learns her predicament was brought about by the betrayal of those close to her. Shalimar's decision to risk the wrath of the Rebels in the abandoned villages in order to find her family changes the course of her and Chameleon's life forever. The Palm Oil Stain is a deeply moving love story that relays the harsh reality of war, betrayal and redemption.

The Palm Oil Stain

There is a Canadian myth about the Loyalists who left the United States after the American Revolution for Canada. The myth says they were white, upper-class citizens devoted to British ideals, transplanting the best of colonial American society to British North America. In reality, more than 10 per cent of the Loyalists who came to the Maritime provinces were black and had been slaves. The Black Loyalists tells the story of one such group who came to Nova Scotia, but didn't stay. James Walker documents their experience in Canada, following them across the Atlantic as they became part of a unique colonial experiment in Sierra Leone.

The Black Loyalists: The Search For A Promised Land In Nova Scotia And Sierra Leone 1783 1870

In this vivid memoir, Harry Mitchell gives a vivid account of the British Colonial administration in Sierra Leone in the twilight of empire. Covering such topics as civil war, United Nations occupation, and British control of the diamond trade, Mitchell covers a comprehensive recent history of a country in chaos. Mitchell fears the fate of Sierra Leone as an independent nation despite the stability and calm and independence.


Remote Corners: A Sierra Leone Memoir

In "Along the Peal of Drums" Ambrose Massaquoi demonstrates why he's been a dominant voice across the landscape of Sierra Leonean poetry since the early 1990s. This is his oeuvre-an inventively crafted repertoire of poems evocative of the lived days and nights within the kaleidoscope of his country's story. Throughout these diverse range of poems, Massaquoi originates images and rhythms in ways that will drive his readers everywhere to wonder and dance.

Along the Peal of Drums: Collected Poems (1990-2015)

Manners Maketh Man : The Complete Book of Business Etiquette and Good Manners (With Illustrations)

The Amistad: The Slave Revolt and Legal Case that Changed the World

In September 2000, eleven British soldiers were captured by a notorious militia gang in Sierra Leone. Originally deployed to fulfill peace-keeping duties in a country ravaged by civil war, the soldiers had been kidnapped by the so-called 'West Side Boys' who had already subjected the region to a reign of terror, murder and mutilation. 

When negotiations stalled, the British government decided to launch Operation Barras as a joint rescue operation by D Squadron 22 SAS and A Company 1 Para. Two four-man SAS reconnaissance patrols were inserted by boat into the villages where they provided key information about the location of the hostages and the routines, if any, of the frequently stoned and extremely volatile West Side Boys. Then, just before dawn on Sunday, September 20 2004, three Chinooks supported by two army Lynx helicopters lifted the Paras and SAS into the two villages that straddled Rokel Creek. The Lynx helicopter attacked a heavy machinegun in the southern village of Magbeni as the SAS fire teams and a hostage rescue team fast roped down from the two Chinooks. The hostages were quickly located and evacuated to safety. The SAS endured a sustained firefight with the West Side Boys, killing some and capturing their leader, "Brigadier" Foday Kallay, a 24-year-old former sergeant in the Sierra Leone Army. 

To the south of the village, the Paras fought through the village of Magbeni driving off the remaining gang members and recovering the Royal Irish Land Rovers that had been abandoned by the kidnapped soldiers. The operation was over by late morning and the Paras completed the mission by destroying any vehicles, ammunition or equipment that had been abandoned by the gang. In the words of one SAS veteran, "This was not a clinical, black balaclava, Princess Gate-type operation: it was a very grubby, green operation with lots of potential for things to go wrong." 

For the first time, this daring raid is brought to life with specially commissioned artwork, detailed maps and overhead shots to recreate one of the greatest hostage-rescue success stories in recent history.

Certain Death in Sierra Leone: The SAS and Operation Barras 2000

This work looks at Sierra Leone, its people and history. Other subjects are also covered to provide a general introduction to the country. It is not intended for academic specialists, and it is not an in-depth study of the country. It is written from the perspective of a layman or general reader who simply wants to know some important things about this West African country. Sierra Leone is one of the oldest countries in Africa. And before it won independence in 1961, it was also one of the oldest colonies on the continent. Only two African countries won independence in 1961, both from the same colonial power, Great Britain. They were Sierra Leone, on 27 April, and Tanganyika on 9 December. The history of Sierra Leone is also one of the most tragic. But Sierra Leone still is one of the most fascinating countries on the continent in spite of the horrendous tragedy it went through during the civil war in the 1990s. The fact that it emerged intact from that brutal conflict is strong testimony to the resilience of the Sierra Leonean people against overwhelming odds which could have broken weaker souls.

Sierra Leone: The Land, Its People and History

Raechel's Eyes Unveiled: Final Details Concerning A True Case of a Human-Alien Hybrid (Rachel's Eyes Book 2)

This eBook collection has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices.
Content:
The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)
The Holy Night (Selma Lagerlöf)
A Merry Christmas &amp; Other Christmas Stories (Louisa May Alcott)
A Letter from Santa Claus (Mark Twain)
Silent Night
The Night After Christmas
The Child Born at Bethlehem
The Adoration of the Shepherds
The Visit of the Wise Men
As Joseph Was A-Walking
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter)
Where Love Is, God Is (Leo Tolstoy)
The Three Kings (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
A Christmas Carol (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (L. Frank Baum)
Christmas At Sea (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Savior Must Have Been A Docile Gentleman (Emily Dickinson)
The Heavenly Christmas Tree (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
The Little City of Hope (F. Marion Crawford)
The First Christmas Of New England (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Christmas in the Olden Time (Walter Scott)
Christmas In India (Rudyard Kipling)
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
The Twelve Days of Christmas
The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (L. Frank Baum)
Ring Out, Wild Bells (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)
The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton)
Granny's Wonderful Chair (Frances Browne)
The Romance of a Christmas Card (Kate Douglas Wiggin)
Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
The Wonderful Life - Story of the life and death of our Lord (Hesba Stretton)
The Christmas Angel (A. Brown)
Christmas at Thompson Hall (Anthony Trollope)
Christmas Every Day (William Dean Howells)
The Lost Word (Henry van Dyke)
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (E. T. A. Hoffmann)
The Little Match Girl
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Mother Holle
The Star Talers
Snow-White…

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A Hanging Is Announced

Climbing Lilies is the story of a young Creole woman who fell in love with a 'Country Man' in sixties and seventies Sierra Leone. The protagonist presents the issues that contact between Creole and Provincial cultures generated, especially those affecting courtship and marriage across that divide. Her narrative shows how she and her boyfriend weathered the storms in their romance, the threats from their respective families, and the harmony between their two families that their marriage eventually fostered. The novel concludes the Gomna series that began with Gomna's Children and added A Corner of Time, and Manners Maketh Man. In this new novel, Modupe, Bandami's wife, tells her own story about the family. Once again, history and culture provide rich tapestries for this intriguing narrative.

Climbing Lilies

WINNER, 2017 RACHEL CARSON PRIZE, SOCIETY FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE

 In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decadelong civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low prevalence of HIV. However, like most African countries, it stood to benefit from a large influx of foreign funds specifically targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

What Adia Benton chronicles in this ethnographically rich and often moving book is how one war-ravaged nation reoriented itself as a country suffering from HIV at the expense of other, more pressing health concerns. During her fieldwork in the capital, Freetown, a city of one million people, at least thirty NGOs administered internationally funded programs that included HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Benton probes why HIV exceptionalism—the idea that HIV is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response—continues to guide approaches to the epidemic worldwide and especially in Africa, even in low-prevalence settings.

In the fourth decade since the emergence of HIV/AIDS, many today are questioning whether the effort and money spent on this health crisis has in fact helped or exacerbated the problem. "HIV Exceptionalism" does this and more, asking, what are the unanticipated consequences that HIV/AIDS development programs engender?

HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone

Gomna's Children is a story set in nascent colonial Sierra Leone. When the Paramount Chief of Yawei orders each of the chiefs in his chiefdom to send their children to school for 'formal education', Gomna as chief of Mano, a small town in Sierra Leone's hinterland, reluctantly obeys these orders and this transforms his life and that of his family forever. Take a walk through the history of Sierra Leone through the eyes of Gomna and his children.

Gomna's Children

Nineteenth-century Sierra Leone presented a unique situation historically as the focal point of early abolitionist efforts, settlement within West Africa by westernized Africans, and a rapid demographic increase through the judicial emancipation of Liberated Africans. Within this complex and often volatile environment, the voices and experiences of children have been difficult to trace and to follow. Enslaved children historically are a challenging narrative to highlight due to their comparative vulnerability. This book offers newly transcribed data and fills in a lacuna in the scholarship of early Sierra Leone and the Atlantic world. It presents a narrative of children as they experienced a set of circumstances which were unique and important to abolitionist historiography, and demonstrates how each element of that situation arose by analyzing the rich documentary evidence. By presenting the data as well as the individuals whose lives were affected by the mission schools (both as teacher or pupil) this study has sought to be as complete as possible. Underlying the more academic tone is a recognition of the individual humanity of both teachers and students whose lives together shaped this early phase in the history of Sierra Leone. The missionaries who created the documents from which this study arises all died in Sierra Leone after having profound impacts on the lives of many hundreds of pupils. Their students went on to become important historical figures both locally and throughout West Africa. Not all rose to prominence, and the book reconstructs the lives of pupils who became local tradespeople in addition to those who had a greater social stature. This book attempts to offer analysis without forgetting the fundamental human trajectories which this material encompasses.

Children, Education and Empire in Early Sierra Leone: Left in Our Hands

Utilizing narratives of seven different people—soldier, rebel, student, trader, evangelist, father, and politician—"I Did it To Save My Life" provides fresh insight into how ordinary Sierra Leoneans survived the war that devastated their country for a decade. Individuals in the town of Makeni narrate survival through the rubric of love, and by telling their stories and bringing memory into the present, create for themselves a powerful basis on which to reaffirm the rightness of their choices and orient themselves to a livable everyday. The book illuminates a social world based on love, a deep, compassionate relationship based on material exchange and nurturing, that transcends romance and binds people together across space and through time. In situating their wartime lives firmly in this social world, they call into question the government’s own narrative that Makeni residents openly collaborated with the rebel RUF during its three-year occupation of the town. Residents argue instead that it was the government’s disloyalty to its people, rather than rebel invasion and occupation, which destroyed the town and forced uneasy co-existence between civilians and militants.

I Did It to Save My Life: Love and Survival in Sierra Leone

Much of the research and study of the formation of Sierra Leone focuses almost exclusively on the role of the so-called Creoles, or descendants of ex-slaves from Europe, North America, Jamaica, and Africa living in the colony. In this book, Joseph J. Bangura cuts through this typical narrative surrounding the making of the British colony, and instead offers a fresh look at the role of the often overlooked indigenous Temne-speakers. Bangura explores, however, the socio-economic formation, establishment, and evolution of Freetown, from the perspective of different Temne-speaking groups, including market women, religious figures, and community leaders and the complex relationships developed in the process. Examining key issues, such as the politics of belonging, African agency, and the creation of national identities, Bangura offers an account of Sierra Leone that sheds new perspectives on the social history of the colony.

Sierra Leone

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone

Lansana Gberie

Primary English for Sierra Leone

G. Hedd

Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War

Joseph Kaifala

The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest

Aminatta Forna

Seduction in Sierra Leone (The Men of FTI #1)

Olivia Night

Sierra Leone Junior Secondary Social Studies/Population Education

Joe A.D. Alie

Sierra Leone Remembered

Esther, L. Megill

Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone

Rosalind Shaw

Four Ball, One Tracer: Commanding Executive Outcomes in Angola and Sierra Leone

Roelf Van Heerden

The Memory of Love

Aminatta Forna

Operation Certain Death

Damien Lewis

Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women's Lives Through War and Peace in Sierra Leone

Chris Coulter

The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene

Radiance of Tomorrow

Ishmael Beah

The Bite of the Mango

Mariatu Kamara

The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Danny Hoffman

Mayhem's Warrior (Operation Mayhem, #1)

Lindsay Cross

Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone

Paul Richards

Kamakwie: Finding Peace, Love, and Injustice in Sierra Leone

Kathleen Martin

Sierra Leone: Inside the War: History and Narratives

James Higbie

Faith: Taking Flight (Faith Herbert Origin Story, #1)

Julie Murphy

Against All Odds: Escape from Sierra Leone

Phil Ashby

So the Path Does Not Die

Pede Hollist

The Laughing Monsters

Denis Johnson

The Palm Oil Stain

NADIA MADDY

The Black Loyalists: The Search For A Promised Land In Nova Scotia And Sierra Leone 1783 1870

James W. St. G. Walker

Remote Corners: A Sierra Leone Memoir

Harry Mitchell

Along the Peal of Drums: Collected Poems (1990-2015)

Ambrose Massaquoi

Manners Maketh Man : The Complete Book of Business Etiquette and Good Manners (With Illustrations)

Nella Henney

The Amistad: The Slave Revolt and Legal Case that Changed the World

Charles River Editors

Certain Death in Sierra Leone: The SAS and Operation Barras 2000

Will Fowler

Sierra Leone: The Land, Its People and History

Bankole Kamara Taylor

Raechel's Eyes Unveiled: Final Details Concerning A True Case of a Human-Alien Hybrid (Rachel's Eyes Book 2)

Helen Littrell

Santa's Library: 400+ Christmas Novels, Stories, Poems, Carols & Legends: The Gift of the Magi, A Christmas Carol, Silent Night, The Three Kings, Little ... Little Women, The Tale of Peter Rabbit…

O. Henry

A Hanging Is Announced

Eustace Palmer

Climbing Lilies

Siaka Kroma

HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone

Adia Benton

Gomna's Children

Siaka Kroma

Children, Education and Empire in Early Sierra Leone: Left in Our Hands