The Book Cellar, Virtual Event: Tracy Clark in conversation with Lori Rader-Day, "Runner"

About Tracy Clark: Tracy Clark is the Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author of the highly acclaimed Chicago Mystery Series featuring ex-homicide cop turned PI Cassandra Raines. The protagonist is a hard-driving, Black private investigator who works the streets of the Windy City while dodging cops, cons, and killers.

Tracy received Anthony Award and Lefty Award nominations for her series debut, Broken Places, which was also shortlisted for the American Library Association's RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year. Her second installment in the series, Borrowed Time, was a Lefty Award and Anthony Award finalist as well as the winner of the Sue Grafton Memorial Award at the Edgars.

In addition to her Cass Raines novels, Tracy's short story "For Services Rendered," appears in the anthology Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors. A native of Chicago, she works as an editor in the newspaper industry and roots for the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks equally. She is a board member-at large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland, a member of International Thriller Writers, and a Mystery Writers of America Midwest board member.

About Runner: Chicago in the dead of winter can be brutal, especially when you're scouring the frigid streets for a missing girl. Fifteen-year-old Ramona Titus has run away from her foster home. Her biological mother, Leesa Evans, is a recovering addict who admits she failed Ramona often in the past. But now she's clean. And she's determined to make up for her mistakes--if Cass can only help her find her daughter.

Cass visits Ramona's foster mother, Deloris Poole, who is also desperate to bring the girl home. Ramona came to Deloris six months ago, angry and distrustful, but was slowly opening up. The police are on the search, but Cass has sources closer to the streets, and a network of savvy allies. Yet it seems Ramona doesn't want to be found. And Cass soon begins to understand why.

Ramona is holding secrets dark = enough to kill for, and anyone who helps her may be fair game. And if Ramona can't run fast enough and hide well enough to keep the truth safe, she and Cass may both be out of time.

About Lori Rader-Day: Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar® Award-nominated and Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of Death at Greenway (forthcoming October 2021), The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ conference Murder and Mayhem in Chicago and the immediate past national president of Sisters in Crime.

About Death at Greenway: Bridey Kelly has come to Greenway House-the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie-in disgrace. A terrible mistake at St. Prisca's Hospital in London has led to her dismissal as a nurse trainee, and her only chance for redemption is a position in the countryside caring for children evacuated to safety from the Blitz. Greenway is a beautiful home full of riddles: wondrous curios not to be touched, restrictions on rooms not to be entered, and a generous library, filled with books about murder. The biggest mystery might be the other nurse, Gigi, who is like no one Bridey has ever met. Chasing ten young children through the winding paths of the estate grounds might have soothed Bridey's anxieties and grief-if Greenway were not situated so near the English Channel and the rising aggressions of the war. When a body washes ashore near the estate, Bridey is horrified to realize this is not a victim of war, but of a brutal killing. As the local villagers look among themselves, Bridey and Gigi discover they each harbor dangerous secrets about what has led them to Greenway. With a mystery writer's home as their unsettling backdrop, the young women must unravel the truth before their safe haven becomes a place of death