Hurricane Summer by Asha BromfieldYA fantasy novel set across SCOTLAND
Ten great books set in JAMAICA
7th March 2026
Ten great books set in Jamaica. Jamaica is an exotic Caribbean island nation known for its lush topography of mountains, rainforests, and reef-lined beaches. Originally inhabited by the Taíno people, who called it Xaymaca (‘Land of Wood and Water’), it later became a Spanish and then British colony before gaining independence in 1962.
Culturally, Jamaica is a global superpower, gifting the world reggae music and the legendary Bob Marley. Its cuisine is world famous.
Guided by the motto Out of Many, One People Jamaica’s rich heritage blends African, European, and Asian influences into a unique, spirited identity.
Here are ten of our favourite books set in this great country.
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015
JAMAICA, 1976
Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught.
From the acclaimed author of The Book of Night Women comes a dazzling display of masterful storytelling exploring this near-mythic event. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists, and even the CIA. Gripping and inventive, ambitious and mesmerising, A Brief History of Seven Killings is one of the most remarkable and extraordinary novels of the twenty-first century.
A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay
When the stones of her home begin to rattle and call out to her in the quiet of the night, Pauline Sinclair knows she will not live to see her 100th birthday.
From educating herself through stolen books to becoming one of the most successful ganja farmers in the area and raising a family, Pauline has lived a life on her own terms in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village.
Yet these whispering walls promise to topple the foundations of her security and exhume Pauline’s many buried secrets, including the mysterious disappearance of the man who came to claim the very land on which she built her home, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation.
Compelled to make peace before she dies, Pauline decides to leave the only home she has ever known on a final, desperate mission to uncover truths she could never have imagined . . .
What A Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You by Sharma Taylor
At eighteen years old, Dinah gave away her baby son to the rich couple she worked for before they left Jamaica. They never returned. She never forgot him.
Eighteen years later, a young man comes from the US to Kingston. From the moment she sees him, Dinah never doubts – this is her son.
What happens next will make everyone question what they know and where they belong.
A powerful story of belonging, identity and inheritance, What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You brings together a blazing chorus of voices to evoke Jamaica’s ghetto, dance halls, criminal underworld and corrupt politics, at the beating heart of which is a mother’s unshakeable love for her son.
Lover’s Leap by Horane Smith
Jerome is a slave. He must wake every morning to the knowledge that he is a piece of property belonging to Alfred Campbell, a plantation owner. But things are changing. There are rumblings in the slave community about abolition and Jerome begins to look forward to the day when he will be a free man. That day cannot come too soon as he has fallen in love with Anita, Alfred’s daughter. Their love cannot remain a secret forever and is under increasing pressure from Jerome’s relationship with Alice, another slave. As the drama moves to its inexorable conclusion, Jerome is faced with a host of choices: will he choose Alice or Anita, poverty or wealth, slavery or freedom. Only Jerome can decide.
Show Me A Mountain by Kerry Young
A story of revolution and oppression, privilege and poverty, love and betrayal from the Costa and Commonwealth-shortlisted author of Pao
Fay Wong is a woman caught between worlds. Her father is a Chinese immigrant who conjured a fortune out of nothing; her African heritage mother grew up on a plantation and now reigns over their mansion in Lady Musgrave Road.
But the Chinatown haunts where her father spends his time are out of bounds to Fay, and the airy rooms of Lady Musgrave Road are filled with her mother’s long kept secrets and uncontrollable rages – rages against which Fay rebels as she grows from a girl into a beautiful, headstrong woman.
For hers is a country where even the smallest difference in skin colour can mark the boundary between the promise of a future and the burden of the past, where the struggle for power is played out not only in government buildings, but also on the manicured lawns of the schools for Kingston’s elite.
As she tries to escape the restraints of her privileged upbringing, striving for independence in a homeland that is trying to do the same, Fay’s eyes are opened to a Jamaica she was never meant to see. And when her mother decides that she must marry the racketeer Yang Pao, she finds herself on a journey that leads to sacrifice and profound betrayals.
When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Getten
Nothing much happens in Sycamore, the small village where Clara lives – at least, that’s how it seems. She loves eating ripe mangoes fallen from trees, running outside in the rainy season and escaping to her secret hideout with her best friend Gaynah. There’s only one problem: she can’t remember anything about the previous summer.
When a quirky girl called Rudy arrives from England, everything starts to change. Gaynah stops acting like a best friend, while Rudy and Clara roam across the island and uncover an old family secret. As the summer reaches its peak and the island storms begin, Clara’s memory starts to return and she must finally face the truth of what happened last year.
Good Scammer by Guy Keenaway
Good Scammer tells the story of Clive ‘Bangaz’ Thompson, an orphan born in west Jamaica raised with no love, education, or prospects of ever getting a decent job. He designs an ingenious business model that brings millions of dollars annually to the little villages around the sandy inlets of the Jamaican coast, making himself a vast personal fortune and a hero to his community. He achieves all of this without using a knife or a gun or even the threat of violence.
Many people see scammers as simple criminals.
But Bangaz’s life, when seen from his perspective as a victim of the theft and duplicity of slavery and colonialism, tells a different, more complex human story. Through his eyes, our sympathy and smiles justifiably remain with him and his righteous band of reparation bredren.
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.
July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July’s mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides – far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse.
Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss. Come, let them just read it for themselves.
Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle
Nobody free till everybody free.
Moa is fourteen. The only life he has ever known is toiling on the Frontier sugar cane plantation for endless hot days, fearing the vicious whips of the overseers. Then one night he learns of an uprising, led by the charismatic Tacky. Moa is to be a cane warrior, and fight for the freedom of all the enslaved people in the nearby plantations. But before they can escape, Moa and his friend Keverton must face their first great task: to kill their overseer, Misser Donaldson. Time is ticking, and the day of the uprising approaches . . .
Irresistible, gripping and unforgettable, Cane Warriors follows the true story of Tacky’s War in Jamaica, 1760.
Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield
In this sweeping debut, Asha Bromfield takes readers to the heart of Jamaica, and into the soul of a girl coming to terms with her family, and herself, set against the backdrop of a hurricane.
Tilla has spent her entire life trying to make her father love her. But every six months, he leaves their family and returns to his true home: the island of Jamaica.
When Tilla’s mother tells her she’ll be spending the summer on the island, Tilla dreads the idea of seeing him again, but longs to discover what life in Jamaica has always held for him.
In an unexpected turn of events, Tilla is forced to face the storm that unravels in her own life as she learns about the dark secrets that lie beyond the veil of paradise–all in the midst of an impending hurricane.
Hurricane Summer is a powerful coming of age story that deals with colorism, classism, young love, the father-daughter dynamic–and what it means to discover your own voice in the center of complete destruction.
Enjoy our selection of great books set in Jamaica!
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