Death Waits at the Hotel Olga

For readers of Nekesia Afia, Jacqueline Winspear, Avery Cunningham’s The Mayor of Maxwell Street, a thrilling, Harlem Renaissance-set mystery featuring a liberated, educated, Black woman in Jazz Age New York…and the Prohibition-era gangsters and dangerous rivals she must confront.

Harriet is settling into her new life in Harlem since her inheritance of her late cousin’s brownstone-turned-boarding house. She has also found a new boarder, Ida Coles, who is becoming a mentor for Lovey, Harriet’s bi-racial adopted sister. Harriet has earned her private investigator’s license, a rare feat for a woman of any color. Her first clients are Porter Grant and Mildred Webster, a wealthy brother and sister from Philadelphia staying at the Hotel Olga, a fancy hotel for Harlem luminaries.

The couple are searching for Millicent Webster, Mildred’s daughter, who has disappeared into Harlem with a friend of dubious character. They claim “little Millie” is in danger, but their behavior is suspicious, and before Harriet knows it, she is caught in a web of family dysfunction, deadly corruption, and threatening characters whose lives are marked by murder and money.

When a killer viciously strikes twice, Harriet knows she’s entered a dangerous world in which “little Millie” could be either perpetrator or killer—and where she herself could end up the victim.

Valerie Wilson Wesley is the award-winning author of the Blackboard bestselling Tamara Hayle Mystery Series and the Odessa Jones Mysteries, as well as adult fiction, children’s books, and paranormal romance (under the name Savanna Welles). She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Excellence in Adult Fiction Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, the National Association of Black Journalists Griot Award, the Amigirls Book Club Author of the Year and the Literary Beacon Award from the national Go On Girls Book Club. A former executive editor of Essence® Magazine and Sisters in Crime board member, she is currently an artist-in-residence at the Cicely Tyson School of Performing Arts in East Orange, New Jersey. Wesley is a graduate of Howard University and holds master’s degrees from the Bank Street College of Education and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is married to noted screenwriter and playwright Richard Wesley and has two adult daughters. She can be found online at ValerieWilsonWesley.com.

• Publisher: Kensington
  
• Publish Date: January 26, 2027
  
• Pages: 336
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardcover
  
• EAN/UPC: 9781496752529
  
• Dimensions: 8.3 X 5.5 X 0.0 inches | 1.3 pounds
  
• BISAC: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Historical
  Fiction / African American & Black / Mystery & Detective
  Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths