Savvy Summers and the Smothered Chicken Scandal

The next delectable mystery featuring quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, a soul food chef in Chicago.

After closing her cafe and transforming Essie’s Place into a full-time catering company, chef Savvy Summers is ready to hit the ground running in her new state-of-the-art kitchen. She’s making the place feel like home by whipping together batches of buttery biscuits, indulgent smothered chicken over rice, and fried maitake mushrooms with her classic flair.

But Savvy’s reopening plans screech to a halt when a family crisis comes knocking on her door. Her daughter-in-law, Netanya, has left Savvy’s son, Malik. With their preteen son in tow, Netanya has returned to Chicago and is lobbying to move into Savvy’s spacious rented digs. Netanya is suspiciously tight-lipped about what led to the marital breakup, but what’s a mother to do? Leave her daughter-in-law and grandson to Chicago’s mean streets? Not on Savvy’s watch!

Things only grow messier when one of Savvy’s recent headaches—a catering competitor who she suspects has been plagiarizing recipes—is found dead in Savvy’s very own storage locker. When word gets out that Netanya had been growing close to the victim before his untimely death, even the help of Savvy's ex-husband and newly minted Homicide Detective, Fanon Franklin, might not be enough to clear her family’s name. Will Savvy be able to find the killer before her beloved Essie’s Place once again takes the fall? Or will Savvy's new business venture—and possibly her life—be over before it even really started?

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of the award-winning novel, The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him, an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. She also coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works are widely published and produced in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, Another Chicago Magazine, storySouth, Lifeline Theatre, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others. Professional recognition includes a Plentitudes Journal Prize, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, a City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a Globe Soup Story Award, the Joan Perry Barnes Fellow in Crime Writing at Storyknife Writers Retreat and a Pushcart Prize nomination.

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
  
• Publish Date: August 24, 2027
  
• Pages: 304
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardcover
  
• EAN/UPC: 9781250484925
  
• Dimensions: 8.3 in H | 5.4 in W | 1 in T | 1 lb Wt
  
• BISAC: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Culinary
  Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
  Fiction / African American & Black / Mystery & Detective