My name is Nola Jackson. I’m twenty years old, and I live in Agate, Illinois with my Aunt Sarah. My aunt is over seventy, with skin the color of mahogany and a wispy halo of white hair. You’d never guess it to look at her, but my aunt is a master of Hoodoo Conjure, the powerful magic our ancestors brought with them from Africa. Aunt Sarah can read your past and see into your future. She knows how to cure an illness, fix your love life, or, if needed, stop an enemy dead in their tracks. Bit by bit, she’s teaching me to develop my own psychic abilities. I’m still a raw beginner, of course, but she insists that I am making progress.

My typical day begins with a hearty breakfast – two scrambled eggs, three pieces of bacon and a thick slice of Aunt Sarah’s homemade corn bread. After breakfast, I help my aunt prepare the candles, powders and potions she uses in her healing work.

Later in the day, I’ll change into my uniform and head downtown to my job at the DeLuxe Catering Company. Despite the fact that this is 1922, more than two decades into the Twentieth Century, DeLuxe Catering is the only Negro-owned caterer in Southern Illinois. Negroes and whites live in separate worlds here. They rarely mix. It says a lot about the extraordinary culinary talent of my boss, Minty Layton, that DeLuxe Catering has clients on both sides of the color line.

A fourteen-year-old girl has gone missing from the Wheatley Institute For Colored Girls. My former high school principal wants me to find her. The girl was last seen jitterbugging to hot jazz down at the Wham Bam Club, which already spells trouble. That gin joint is a magnet for hustlers of all kinds, from pimps and gangsters to local politicians.

It doesn’t take a master fortune teller to see this girl’s got danger in her future. If I don’t find her soon, there’s no telling what may happen. There’s a black cloud hanging over her aura, and it’s growing bigger every day.

Murder at the Wham Bam Club – A Psychics and Soul Food Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Historical Mystery
Release: July 2025
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

As Prohibition era speakeasies and Jazz Age excitement reign supreme throughout a deeply divided country at the height of the Roaring 20s, a young psychic in small town Illinois helps the Black community fight crime and corruption in this thrilling historical mystery written by a real-life psychic medium and jazz pianist.

After the death of her brave Harlem Hellfighter husband during the First World War, young widow Nola Ann Jackson returned to her hometown of Agate, Illinois, to live with her Aunt Sarah, a known local psychic. Under her aunt’s care and tutelage, Nola has been learning how to tap into her own intuitive gifts and communicate with the spirits. And she will rely on their insightful guidance when she’s asked to help investigate a woman’s disappearance.

Lilly Davidson, the missing woman, was living at the Phyllis Wheatley Institute for Colored Girls where young ladies are educated and prepared to follow bright futures. But she vanished after a night at the Wham Bam Club where jazz music swings, prohibition is defied, and other vices are encouraged. Lilly was seen fraternizing with Eddie Smooth, trumpeter and leader of the St. Louis Stompers—and a notorious pimp. Nola finds Lilly at the club alive and well, supposedly engaged to Eddie. That same night, the Wham Bam is set afire and Eddie is killed by gunfire, leaving Lilly on the run, a suspected murderer.

Eddie Smooth had shady dealings with Agate’s wealthy elite, Black and white, making plenty of enemies with motives for wanting him dead. He was also a notorious womanizer who left several broken hearts in his wake. To prove Lilly’s innocence, Nola must listen to her spiritual instincts to unravel political schemes and personal vendettas to find a killer desperate to cover up a scandalous conspiracy . . .

About the author
Carolyn Marie Wilkins is the author of Murder At The Wham Bam Club, the first in the Psychics and Soul Food Mystery Series. Her other books include Death at a Séance, Melody for Murder and Mojo for Murder. Carolyn’s stories have appeared in Festive Mayhem and Wolfsbane: Best New England Short Stories of 2023.

She is a Professor at Berklee College of Music Online and has represented her country as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department. An initiated priestess of Yemaya, the African goddess of motherhood, Carolyn is also a psychic medium and Reiki Master. For more about Carolyn, visit her web page at www.CarolynWilkins.com.