Release Date: February 2, 2027
Size: 6×9, 300 pages
Paperback ISBN: tbd
eBook ISBN: tbd
Library of Congress Control Number: tbd
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

Synopsis

Can a group of elderly, Black book club ladies cause trouble? When current political trends threaten progress made in their Civil Rights generation, aging well-read women might be more dangerous than we think.

In this American parable, Aurelia Wynter, the house manager for conservative Supreme Court Justice Ellsworth, learns of a plot that challenges everything she stands for and that her people have struggled to achieve: his plan to “erase race” from American jurisprudence. The principled Aurelia Wynter, an HBCU graduate and member of a septuagenarian women’s book club, is uniquely positioned to stop the plan and ensure the president has an opening to appoint a new justice.

Shaped by her Caribbean roots, Aurelia takes matters into her hands to commit a murder that changes the faces on the Supreme Court, reaches directly into the White House, endangers her household—including her estranged son—and entangles the book club ladies in her crime. Recalling a Toni Morrison novel they read “back in the day,” Aurelia tells the book club ladies that sometimes representing the race means acting against everybody’s better judgment, as well as her own. Will they help her?

The Thursday Lady is a morally ambiguous mystery where a good book can be the perfect weapon.

Praise

“A gripping mystery that keeps readers bound to its pages. Readers will come away understanding community and the value of sisterhood. Holloway has once again written a novel that mirrors reality.”

—Dr. Brenda M. Greene, professor and founder and executive director emerita for the Center for Black Literature 

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“Beautifully set inside the flesh and bones of an elderly ladies’ book club. Holloway is a weaver of dreams with a decidedly feminine gaze. Her storytelling is a splendid sistering song that layers literature, political power, race, and terrible trouble—all set in the embrace of sisterhood.” 

—Nnenna Freelon, seven time Grammy nominee, author of Beneath the Skin of Sorrow, and host of the Great Grief podcast 

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“Part political thriller, part spiritual reckoning. A brilliant story about inheritance, memory, power, and the impossible choices that arise when a country refuses to confront its original sin.”

—Bernice L. McFadden, author of Sugar

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“As with the ladies of this captivating novel, its author, Karla Holloway, is a reader. Fortunately for us, she is an extraordinary writer as well. These two skills come together on the pages of The Thursday Lady, a book that will captivate you from the first page; a book steeped in history but speaking most forcefully to our times. With the unexpected energy of a classic thriller, this is a book that asks us to reconsider what we thought we knew about justice, grace, and mercy while reflecting on the power of Black women’s bonds to each other.” 

—Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University professor and author of Read Until You Understand

Meet the Author

Karla FC Holloway, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Duke University, has published ten books spanning academic monographs, life writing, and creative fiction. Her previous novels are Gone Missing in Harlem (2021), with a Publishers Weekly starred review, and A Death in Harlem (2019).