My Sister, the Serial Killer

(Doubleday, $23)

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut is “a showstopper in many ways,” said

in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Unlike much of the highminded African literature that reaches these shores, the novel is a page-turner with a wicked sense of humor. Instead of mining Nigeria’s largest city for insights on poverty or civil strife, “it concerns itself mainly with the comfy lives of two sisters, Korede and Ayoola, one of whom is undeniably gorgeous and has a pesky habit of killing her boyfriends.” Braithwaite indulges in “a few tiresome genre tropes,” said

in The New York Times. “But this book is built to hurtle forward —and it does so, dizzyingly”—even as Braithwaite is artfully detailing the ambient corruption and violence of the culture that produced the monstrous Ayoola and her dutiful accomplice. Eventually, Korede is asked by a boyfriend to explain why she continues to abet Ayoola’s crimes. “This scorpiontailed little thriller leaves a response, and a sting, you will remember.”