Amari and the Great Game is the second installment in B. B. Alston’s Supernatural Investigations series, which opens with Amari and the Night Brothers, published in 2021. Speaking about the inspiration for the series, Alston explains:

I was watching Men in Black one time […] and I wondered, What if it wasn’t just aliens? What if there was an agency that handled all the myths and legends, and how would it be different? [One] day, Amari popped into my head. She was a kid from my kind of background, a Black girl from modest means, and I knew how she talked and thought. I just ran with it. There weren’t a lot of fantasy books for kids with Black characters, and I was excited to write someone like that (Jones, Michael M. “Spring 2021 Flying Starts: B. B. Alston.” Publishers Weekly, 25 Jun. 2021).

Originally planned as a trilogy, the series is currently set to comprise five books in total. Amari and the Great Game (2022) is the second installment, followed by Amari and the Despicable Wonders (2024), as well as two other yet unpublished titles.

In Amari and the Night Brothers, Amari is a Black girl who lives in housing projects in Atlanta, Georgia, with her mother and her older brother Quinton, who has mysteriously disappeared.