Nightcrawling

Leila Mottley wrote this acclaimed debut as a teenager. It follows Kiara Johnson, seventeen and struggling to survive in East Oakland after her mother is jailed and her brother chases a music dream. To keep a roof over their heads, Kiara drifts into sex work, then becomes the key witness in a police-corruption scandal. Lyrical and unsparing, the novel gives voice to a young woman fighting to endure.