Nightcrawling

Kiara is seventeen and living in the Regal-Hi, an East Oakland apartment complex whose name promises more than it delivers. She and her brother Marcus have both left high school, and their family has been split apart by a death and by prison. The rent on their apartment has more than doubled, and Kiara goes looking for work to cover it.

Marcus keeps his hopes pinned on becoming a rapper. Kiara, meanwhile, also looks after the nine-year-old boy next door, whose mother has abandoned him, and she tries to make sure he is safe and fed.

One night a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger leads Kiara into nightcrawling, a job she never pictured wanting and now badly needs. Later her name turns up in an investigation, and she becomes a key witness in a large scandal inside the Oakland Police Department.

This is a literary novel about a young Black woman on the streets of Oakland, and it shows how the city's justice system fails the people it is meant to protect. Expect an intense, raw read, tender in places and hard-edged in others, with money worries and survival driving it from the start. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize.