Working Day and Night: Amateur Sleuths in the Spotlight

From suburban soccer fields to Atlanta strip clubs, Black women sleuths take center stage in these thrilling mysteries. Elise Bryant’s The Game is Afoot follows a mom-turned-amateur detective whose search for answers forces her to confront her own unraveling sense of self. Meanwhile, Nic Stone’s Boom Town plunges readers into the heart of Atlanta nightlife, where a missing dancer and the legacy of vanished women expose the city’s dangerous intersections of race, gender, and privilege. Join Bryant and Stone for a conversation about writing sharp, complex Black women protagonists in genre fiction that can both entertain and reflect deeper truths.