Set in Manhattan’s fabled Jazz Age, Passing Fancies delves beneath the era’s glittering surface to reveal fissures and frictions still raw today. In 1925, elegant young bibliophile Julia Kydd settles in New York City, eager to join its lively literary scene. Julia is befriended by Black singer Eva Pruitt, author of a manuscript rumored to reveal secrets of the glamorous Harlem nightclub where she works, which caters to fashionable white-only audiences. Publishers are competing for Eva’s novel, keen to exploit fascination with “New Negro” exoticism. When the club’s owner is found shot to death and the police brutally question Eva, Julia realizes her friend has already been judged guilty. Shaken and ashamed at her own naÞivetÔe about American justice, Julia vows to find the murderer before the police can hunt down the fugitive Eva. Julia’s search draws her into Eva’s world, where she must confront the privileges and blindspots of her race and social class even as she pursues a wily killer.