Amari and the Night Brothers
Quinton Peters was the golden boy of the Rosewood low-income housing projects, receiving full scholarship offers to two different Ivy League schools. When he mysteriously goes missing, his little sister, 13-year-old Amari Peters, can’t understand why it’s not a bigger deal. Why isn’t his story all over the news? And why do the police automatically assume he was into something illegal?
Then Amari discovers a ticking briefcase in her brother’s old closet. A briefcase meant for her eyes only. There was far more to Quinton, it seems, than she ever knew. He’s left her a nomination for a summer tryout at the secretive Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Amari is certain the answer to finding out what happened to him lies somewhere inside, if only she can get her head around the idea of mermaids, dwarves, yetis and magicians all being real things, something she has to instantly confront when she is given a weredragon as a roommate.
Amari must compete against some of the nation’s wealthiest kids — who’ve known about the supernatural world their whole lives and are able to easily answer questions like which two Great Beasts reside in the Atlantic Ocean and how old is Merlin? Just getting around the Bureau is a lesson alone for Amari with signs like ‘Department of Hidden Places this way, or is it?’ If that all wasn’t enough, every Bureau trainee has a talent enhanced to supernatural levels to help them do their jobs – but Amari is given an illegal ability. As if she needed something else to make her stand out.
With an evil magican threatening the whole supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she is an enemy, Amari has never felt more alone. But if she doesn’t pass the three tryouts, she may never find out what happened to Quinton.
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B. B. Alston
In a quiet corner of South Carolina, where winding country roads stretch toward the horizon and cicadas hum in the summer dusk, B. B. Alston began dreaming up worlds far bigger than his hometown. Long before his debut novel Amari and the Night Brothers catapulted him onto the global literary stage, he was crafting spooky short stories for his middle school classmates—sometimes just to spook them, other times to see if he could.
What sets Alston apart in the crowded landscape of middle-grade fantasy isn’t just his imagination—it’s the urgency in his storytelling. His protagonist, Amari Peters, isn’t just navigating magic; she’s pushing back against every closed door, every voice that says she doesn’t belong. There’s real-world fire beneath the spells and secret societies. His books don’t whisper escapism—they roar with it, yet they always return to themes of identity, injustice, and resilience. In a genre often content to follow formula, Alston reinvents the rules.
Supernatural Investigations
Beneath the polished surface of the everyday world lies something far stranger—a place where elevators open to other dimensions, time twists like fog, and magic isn’t just real, it’s heavily regulated. In the Supernatural Investigations series, the ordinary collides with the extraordinary through the eyes of a girl who was never meant to fit the mold.
Supernatural Investigations consists of four books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Reviews and Comments
Hi! I LOVED it!! This is the most amazing book I’ve read in my life! It’s so well written, it have good characters, everything..
I loved the plot and I think everyone should read it. 10/10!!!!!