Skip content
Give audiobooks, support African American Literature Book Club! Start gifting
Bookseller pick
SLAY by Brittney Morris
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of African American Literature Book Club.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting African American Literature Book Club with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

SLAY

$26.24

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Kiersey Clemons

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 8 hours 26 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019!
“Gripping and timely.” —People
“The YA debut we’re most excited for this year.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of knowledge that’ll keep you down for the count. Prepare to BE slain.” —Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out

Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for Black gamers.

By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.”

But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”

Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?

Brittney Morris is the author of SLAY, The Cost of Knowing, The Jump, and This Book Might Be About Zinnia and has written video game narrative for Insomniac Games’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation 5, Unknown Worlds’s Subnautica: Below Zero, and Soma Games’s The Lost Legends of Redwall. She is the founder and former president of the Boston University Creative Writing Club. She holds a BA in economics. You can find her online at AuthorBrittneyMorris.com and on X (previously known as Twitter) or Instagram @BrittneyMMorris.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of African American Literature Book Club.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting African American Literature Book Club with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

"Narrator Kiersey Clemons portrays high school honor student Kiera, who is the secret developer of SLAY, a popular online role-playing game aimed at celebrating black culture. When a gamer is killed in the real world due to an in-game conflict, SLAY is slammed by the media as racist. Clemons's portrayal of Kiera is youthful and emotional as she struggles with her real-world relationships, and gains ferocity as Kiera stands up for her creation and protects the community she's carved out for black gamers. A few chapters explore the perspectives of other characters, and several narrators are brought in to fully embody the diversity of the gamers who find so much meaning in a world that is unapologetically black." Expand reviews

Want the printed book?

Get the print edition from African American Literature Book Club.

Get the print edition

Powered by Bookstore Link

Give audiobooks, support African American Literature Book Club! Start gifting

African American Literature Book Club is proud to partner with Libro.fm to give you a great audiobook experience.