Roger Mais, Brother Man (1954) — Set in a Kingston yard in the Rastafarian milieu of the early independence era. One of the finest novels in Caribbean literature, and the most vivid fictional portrait of Kingston's inner-city communities.
V.S. Reid, New Day (1949) — The panoramic Jamaican novel, tracing three generations of a Jamaican family from the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 to the eve of independence. Reid was the first Jamaican to write a major novel in a distinctly Jamaican voice.
Colin Channer, Waiting in Vain (1998) — A contemporary Kingston novel of love and music, capturing the city's uptown creative world in the 1990s with the kind of insider detail only a native Kingstonian could provide.
Clinton Hutton and Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King (2000) — The definitive history of Jamaican popular music from its roots in mento and American R&B through the peak years of roots reggae. More thorough and less hagiographic than most reggae histories.
Diana McCaulay, Huracan (2012) — A historical novel set during the 1692 earthquake that destroyed Port Royal, written by one of Jamaica's most significant contemporary novelists. Vivid and researched.