Agent: Jennie Goloboy, Donald Maass Agency. Glover's worldbuilding, characters, and attention to historical detail create a delightfully genre-bending debut - Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner, author of Ghost Summer. Readers will be surprised but gratified by an ending that shows just how past actions inform the present in unexpected ways. A seamless blending of magic, mystery, and history. Frequent flashbacks to Hetty and Benjy’s thrilling exploits as conductors on the Underground Railroad reveal how Hetty’s tough choices during the Civil War led to her life today. Set in Reconstruction-era Philadelphia, the titular Conductors are Hetty and her husband Benjy, who had once worked on the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves to freedom. The pace is relaxed but the tension steadily builds as Glover weaves each detail into a satisfying mystery. Glover spins the plates of historical fiction, spec fiction, mystery and even a smidge of romance and somehow makes it look easy. But when one of their friends turns up dead and their suspicions fall close to home, they’ll need to work out who in their community is not who they say they are. Now, Hetty and Benjy use their magical and analytical skills as detectives, dealing with missing person cases, murders, and other crimes the white police force chooses to overlook. Stories of their trips into the South are legendary in their Philadelphia community even a decade after the Civil War. Two months later came the news that Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment and the Jim Henson Company were planning a feature film adaptation. Henrietta “Hetty” and Benjamin “Benjy” Rhodes-both adept at sigil magic that draws on the constellations-are famed conductors for the Vigilance Society, which shepherded enslaved Black people to freedom along the Underground Railroad. When Nicole Glover’s debut historical fantasy The Conductors was released in March 2021, it was greeted by a starred review from Publishers Weekly and glowing praise from NPR. This is no doubt the first of many brilliant books to come. The Conductors is a wholly original and thoroughly riveting story.

Inventively mixing mystery, magic, and alternate history, Glover’s nail-biting debut takes readers to Reconstruction era Philadelphia. 'Nicole Glover blends historical detail and magical elements into an unforgettable debut.

The conductors nicole glover