Step back in time about a century, into New York City and the Harlem Renaissance, and you might land at the Zodiac, the cavernous nightclub where Louise Lloyd has washed up in Nekesa Afia’s exuberant debut, DEAD DEAD GIRLS. Louise comes to the Zodiac to lose herself on the dance floor in “a sea of sparkles and skirts and bangles,” trying to forget the events that made her “Harlem’s Hero” in 1916, when she rescued herself, and three other girls, after being kidnapped.
But her painful memories resurface when younger Black women begin to go missing, and then turn up murdered in and around Harlem. After a police detective effectively blackmails Louise into becoming an amateur investigator, what she finds threatens to shatter her carefully calibrated equilibrium. In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist. --New York Times on DEAD DEAD GIRLS
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HARLEM SUNSET
Harlem, 1927
With the horrors of the summer and the Girl Killer behind her, Louise Lloyd is eager to usher in her 28th year with her girlfriend and best friend by her side.
When Nora Davies, one of the girls Louise was kidnapped with, reintroduces herself, Louise is wary to connect. By the next morning, Nora will be dead, Rosa Maria Moreno covered in her blood, and no one can remember what happened.
With Rosa Maria's freedom on the line, Louise must get to the bottom of Nora's death before time runs out.
With the horrors of the summer and the Girl Killer behind her, Louise Lloyd is eager to usher in her 28th year with her girlfriend and best friend by her side.
When Nora Davies, one of the girls Louise was kidnapped with, reintroduces herself, Louise is wary to connect. By the next morning, Nora will be dead, Rosa Maria Moreno covered in her blood, and no one can remember what happened.
With Rosa Maria's freedom on the line, Louise must get to the bottom of Nora's death before time runs out.