Zoe B. Wallbrook
History Lessons
Friday, October 9 – 6:30-8 PM at Book Beat
Nominated for the NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author
Nominated for the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel
Nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
A New York Times Best Mystery Novel of the Year
Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Nominated for the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery
A CrimeReads Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year
A Library Journal Mystery Debut of the Month
An ABA Indie Gift Guide Selection
A mystery about murder, academia, colonial history—and the stories we tell about ourselves.
What makes History Lessons so interesting is that it doesn’t fit neatly into the usual mystery categories. Yes, there is a murder to solve. But Zoe B. Wallbrook uses the mystery to explore something much larger: the complicated, competitive, often absurd world of academia, and the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—ways power gets exercised within it.
At the center of the novel is Daphne Ouverture, a Black history professor whose academic specialty is French colonialism. When a colleague is murdered, Daphne finds herself drawn into an investigation that reaches well beyond the university. The deeper she goes, the more she discovers about the histories, rivalries, ambitions and abuses that surround her.
Wallbrook’s portrayal of academic life is one of the pleasures of the novel. The politics can be petty, the hierarchies can be brutal, and the abuse of power isn’t always obvious from the outside. History Lessons understands the strange combination of intellectual freedom and institutional constraint that can make university life both exhilarating and deeply frustrating.
We are honored and pleased to host Zoe B. Wallbrook at Book Beat on Friday, October 9 from 6:30- 8 PM. Her award-winning debut mystery History Lessons is also a favorite of mystery fan Colleen, co-owner of Book Beat.
“History Lessons brilliantly mixes pointed satire, fabulous characters … and a thoughtful meditation on whose fortunes get to rise, and whose are ground down on the altar of power.”
— Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review
“History Lessons pulled me into a world I could both escape and relate to. I have never before encountered a novel with a lead character as easy to identify with as Daphne when it comes to the ways race and gender have shaped—and messed with—my own academic career.”
— Roxanne Panchasi, The Uncomfortable Lightness of Dark Academia
“I think this dualistic life is what I’ve wanted for some time. I’m grateful for the breaks from academia that my baby author career has given me. And I’m grateful for academia when I begin to start feeling too exposed or too raw or too jarred by this new reality where strangers now know my prose.”
— Zoe B. Wallbrook
Zoe B. Wallbrook is a tenured professor whose idea of a break from academic writing is apparently more writing. History Lessons, her first novel, has been nominated for an Edgar Award, ITW Thriller Award, and NAACP Award, among other distinctions. In her spare time, she and her husband try to convince their dog Sophie to actually listen to them for once. Follow Zoe B. Wallbrook on her substack.