told in half biography, half story telling this is a historic account of the infamous Stephanie St Clair or most known as Madame Queen
one of the only black female crime bosses and self made business woman of the 1920s
immigrating from West Indies, Madame Queen goes on to run on of the largest Policy Banking Rings of 1923 including but not limited too; loaning, book taking, gambling houses, competing, battling and winning in a male dominated Harlem mobster scene, always remembering to take care of her loved ones, community and the people of misjustice, speaking on racial issues and police brutality and corruption within a broken system

Madam Queen by Mary Kay McBrayer is a creative biography of Harlem numbers boss Stephanie St. Clair. St. Clair built her empire in a world run by bullets, bribes, and boys' clubs—and she did it all in pearls and with perfect posture.

McBrayer tells the story with a voice that's part historian, part Southern bestie on a true crime binge. While the vibe is undeniably fun, the book sometimes veers off the factual path. I didn’t love the creative license taken to imagine conversations and inner thoughts—it’s marketed as creative nonfiction, but at times it feels more creative than nonfiction. I'm here for the drama, but I'd prefer my receipts with the tea.

3.75 stars – A glitzy, gutsy tribute with a bit too much improv for my taste. Still, Madam St. Clair remains a queen worth reading about—even if some of her lines came from the author's imagination.

Grateful that people write books about those historic figures lost in the mix. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of Madame Queen and to think she acted, well was, a mob boss of sorts who was a woman and a black woman at that! To achieve financial success and independent as such and how is jaw dropping.

I was truly impressed with the author and how she filled in necessary blanks, making the reader aware but sticking to a probable and thoughtful circumstance.

Hearing Madame’s story from her early days to present really gave her so much more depth and a will for readers to want to know more about this one of a kind, intelligent, independent woman WAY ahead of her time.

This true crime biography offers a compelling look at the life of Stephanie St. Clair, a figure far too often overlooked in history. The subject matter is fascinating and important, and McBrayer’s enthusiasm for St. Clair’s legacy is clear. That said, the narrative pacing was occasionally uneven, and the audiobook’s tone sometimes veered more casual than I expected for the gravity of the topic. A worthy listen for true crime buffs and fans of forgotten women in history. Thank you to NetGalley for sending this audio arc for review.

Madame Queen by Mary Kay McBrayer (book cover is in image) tells the story of how Stephanie St. Clair became Madame Queen. Migrating from Guadalupe in 1911 and making her way to NYC, we are taken through her journey as an indentured servant to female gangster.

As an intelligent woman with an exceptional mathematical aptitude she earned the initial investment/seed money for her business through gambling, and used it to fund her legal and illegal businesses.

Eventually, by reinvesting her gains back into the people of Harlem, and and through other philanthropy, Madame Queen gained a reputation as a philanthropist and the loyalty of those she lived with and partnered with.

Not afraid to challenge the norms of society and the criminal world, Madame Queen forged a place in the world for herself that women of the time rarely were able to attain.

I had the great fortune of being able to read the book and listen to the audio. The narration by Janina Edwards was excellent, delivered with a soothing and engaging voice. Even though this is labeled as nonfiction, she a unique voice to the characters that had dialogue in this biography. In addition, I was able to move between book and audio with ease. I strongly recommend this book for those who enjoyed The Queen of all Mayhem by Dane Huckelbridge.

Rating: 5 Stars
Pub Date: Jun 03 2025

Thank you Harlequin Trade Publishing | Park Row, Harlequin Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC and Listen to this ALC. All opinions are my own.

#HarlequinTradePublishing
#ParkRow
#HarlequinAudio
#MadameQueen
#MaryKayMcBrayer
#JaninaEdwards
#Biography
#Crime
#Harlem
#yarisbooknook
#NetGalley

Madame Stephanie St. Clair was a Boss B!tch before the term was coined. This book gives a great look into the development of how and why Madame became a criminal, activist, and legend. The author put together both the informative and speculative to present a comprehensive look into Madame's life. The narrator gave a great performace with just the right amount of personality to each voice without over-acting or distracting with too much flourish. This book is exactly why I love books - I would probably never have known of the existance of Madame St. Clair had this book not been written!

As I prefaced in my Instagram initial post (pre-reading), this might seem like an odd book for my review purposes, however I love to learn about history and historical figures (famous or otherwise)!

What appealed to me when I first seen this book cover (I got the audiobook via NetGalley) I was immediately drawn to it. What I found most fascinating is that the crime scene in Madame Queen’s era was dominated vastly by white men, and is today as well. For a woman of French-Caribbean descent who immigrated to the USA to become what’s quite possibly known as the first female crime boss in the USA is beyond remarkable.

I cannot imagine the mental and physical taxation Madame Queen’s roommate suffered through like many other people her age: being born into slavery, emancipated from slavery as a minor, and then forced into sharecropping. She was just a mere 3 years younger than I am now.

The fact that Queenie was able to immigrate, courtesy of her mother, shows how wealthy her family was. Being able to immigrate to the USA was extremely costly, and very few were able to do so. She was put into indentured servitude via the Caribbean Domestic Scheme which targeted people like Stephanie St. Clair. She was placed into indentured servitude for 1-2 years while being paid $5 month! Although wages and the economy were/are vastly different this sounds more like the pay prison institutions offer their inmates in the present time. Essentially shifting from slave labor to corrupt employment practices excuses away by the fine people in power!

St. Clair, while this novel doesn’t specifically state it, was a savant. She excelled with math and numbers, but also could immediately pick up on new skills after the initial training.

Other items not necessarily important, but fascinating and informative for myself was that of Chapter 5 was the detailed description of the game of dice. Madame Queen’s supreme skill with numbers and probabilities made her a master of this famous gambling game. Additionally, was the explanation of Black Tuesday. I was educated on the Stock Market crash of the Depression but never heard it called Black Tuesday before.

I would like to acknowledge that the narrator was very eloquent in telling the history of Queenie.

I would like to thank NetGalley for the e-ARC audiobook.

This is just a personal preference, but I would have rated this book higher if it stuck just to the non-fiction aspect, and skipped all of the individual people’s dialogue (both invented and factual) featured in this book.

Biographies about women who paved the way for themselves to be strong independent women is my favorite kind of non-fiction. Madame Queen is about Stephanie St. Claire, who not only ran a successful numbers racket, paving the way for other gangsters like Bumpy Johnston, but was also a civil rights activist in the 1920s and 30s. This makes me so excited for the women of our nations history to know that their stories are not forgotten. Though I do wish we knew more about St. Clair so that Mary Kay McBrayer didn't have to take too much liberty in what may have been said how how things may have played out based limited information. Regardless, this was a fantastic read and Janina Edwards did a wonderful job with her narration.

I'd recommend this to anyone who has an interest in true crime, civil rights, and women's history!

Thanks to NetGalley, Harlequin Audio, and Park Row Publishing for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I’m so glad that for the past 15 years or so, there have been many books written about the unsung American women and minorities. Many times though, there is hardly a paper trail to follow. That’s the case with Madame Queen.

This book is what I call a docudrama. The author provides an intimate look at a time of United States history and centered on Stephanie St. Clair, an immigrant from the West Indies. She became a powerful and influential Black woman in Harlem, holding down a respectable job all while running an underground gambling operation.

The problem is that there are whole chapters of speculation, made up scenarios and conversations. Combining the known facts with the above makes a crummy biography. Because of this, the author should have probably written an historical fiction novel, which is what half of this book is.

When sticking with the facts, Madame Queen focuses on Black history and systemic corruption with a fresh cultural depth. I really didn’t care to read so much about the mechanics of organized crime, though. I did appreciate that an underrepresented story expanded my historical knowledge beyond the always mentioned leaders to marginalized figures reshaping power.

The audiobook was narrated by the incomparable Janina Edwards, whose voice is just wonderful to listen to.

OK, well, this is a DNF, unfortunately.

I listened to nearly half of it. How is this labeled as nonfiction/biography? I was pretty over it by the tenth time I heard "I like to imagine it went something like this..." followed by some anecdote that's impossible to tell if it's factual. What is the point of that?

If this had been labeled historical fiction and then written in that manner about Stephanie St. Clair, I'm sure it could have made for an exciting book. She sounded brilliant, and I wanted to learn more about her. But if you're just going to make stuff up, that's not a biography

The narrator is fantastic, but I don't want to listen to a fabricated biography.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Audio for the ALC.

What a fascinating woman! This Audiobook introduced me to Stephanie St. Clair, an important history. Although it felt mixed with an odd amount of fictional stories in the mix. For those who enjoy a conversational style and love hearing all the juicy details, I’m sure this would be the best read! This woman deserves to be known. Being from New York and never learning of this Madame till adulthood was odd. Thank you to Harlequin Audio and NetGalley for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

DNFed. The voice is great. The story is interesting. But the pattern of stating things as if they are facts and then backtracking to say that they aren't confirmed details wasn't for me. I don't mind the speculation, I think, but would strongly prefer to know ahead of time what is speculation instead of finding out that something stated confidently is actually speculation after the fact.

Sorry I’m posting this late!

I really enjoyed this. It was interesting and fun and I would definitely recommend it to non fic lovers.

Thanks to Netgalley and the author for the e copy

I didn't enjoy this book. I love learning about people that I don't know about especially women of color. I haven't read a nonfiction book that so openly says they are making liberties and just making assumptions. Does it happen? I'm sure it does but I was really put off by the constant "I am making assumptions about their clothes or conversations." I'd love to try this book again without the extra commentary.

I was really optimistic for this book, both for Janina Edwards's narration and the subject matter. I really enjoy a history of a lesser known figure, particularly overlooked stories of women and people of color. I was also intrigued by the true crime/1920s underground element. Unfortunately, this book does run into a major/common challenge of these types of histories: limited historical sources indicating significant gaps in the archives. The author responds by pulling in more secondary/contextual research to help round out the narrative, which is fine, if not what I was hoping for. I have more of an issue with the pivot into creative nonfiction to fill in gaps of the portrait of Stephanie St. Clair. The imagined situations of what she felt or how conversations might've gone are not the sort of storytelling I want in my history or biography nonfiction reads.

As someone who loves to find hidden gems, especially about women in history who have been overlooked, I was very excited to find this book about the enterprising businesswoman and crime boss Stephanie St. Clair, also known as Madame Queen.

The biography of St. Clair is fascinating and I enjoyed learning the truth of her life and the history and culture during this time period. Where the book fell short for me was the very frequent references from the author about what she imagined to have happened, what she imagined to have been said, as with each reference it diminished what was to come. I appreciate from the author's foreword that it was difficult to find concrete information about St. Clair, but then I think if that's the case this would have been far better written as a historical fiction book where she'd have had the luxury of weaving in her suppositions more adeptly.

Having said that, the parts that were good, were very, very good, and I wouldn't have learned about the indomitable Madame Queen, her strength, her individualism, and her passion for fighting the injustices committed by the corrupt cops of this time without this book.

This audiobook had the benefit of the extremely talented and expressive Janina Edwards as narrator, and she definitely hit this out of the park with different vocal techniques for the various characters, in addition to different French dialects (!!). Incredible!

I thank NetGalley, Harlequin Audio, and the author Mary Kay McBrayer for this ARC audiobook in exchange for my honest review of Madame Queen.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an audio copy of this book. I was excited to learn about Madame Sinclair’s life after hearing of her recently. This book was an interesting premise, but I couldn’t get into it as much as I had hoped I would. I think I would’ve preferred either an entirely fictionalized story based on her life, or an entirely non-fiction biography of her life, but somewhere in the middle just didn’t work for me unfortunately and it was hard to follow.

Curiously formatted book about a historical figure who deserves more attention. This is basically annotated narrative nonfiction, though (keeping in mind that I listened to the audiobook) I think it's not so much annotated as interspersed with nonfiction paragraphs. This wasn't really a problem for me, I enjoy both regular nonfiction and narrative nonfiction. But I did occasionally find myself thinking the author really needed to pick a style. If you don't like narrative nonfiction, I wouldn't recommend this book. if you do like narrative nonfiction, give it a read (and imagine the writer is a character who is telling you the story, because her voice is most definately there.) Also I would have really appreciated a bibliography.

As somebody whose family has lived in Hells Kitchen since the 1800s: What on earth did the author mean by a "sophisticated Manhattan accent"? I get that she doesn't live near the city (it comes up early in the book) but her editor should have asked her to clarify the neighborhood. The audiobook reader gave the lawyer in question a kind of "mid-Atlantic" accent, which is not a Manhattan accent. I don't blame the reader, but there were times throughout the book when I was reminded that the author isn't that familiar with the city. That's just the only instance which stuck in my head until the end.

𝑴𝑨𝑫𝑨𝑴𝑬 𝑸𝑼𝑬𝑬𝑵 𝒃𝒚 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝑲𝒂𝒚 𝑴𝒄𝑩𝒓𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒓 𝑵𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝑱𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒂 𝑬𝒅𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔 was a @netgalley pick from @htpbooks_audio that called out to me and is coming out June 3rd!

I loved the idea of learning more about the racketeering Harlem Crime Boss, Stephanie St. Clair. I had not, like most of you probably, heard of this woman, and found the idea of a Strong Black Brilliant Woman lost to history not surprising and in need of remedy.

Unfortunately, the structure of this book left me struggling to engage. I was fascinated by the biographical sections, but then it went into an imagined dialog and filling in of blank scenarios with the author saying it was imagined every time. I think it was meant to be conversational, but it felt like an odd mix of storytelling. I wish it had been a straight narrative nonfiction or even a historical fiction. In fact, I do think this would be a great resource for anyone wanting to write a historical fiction of this woman! I think that would be more up my alley.

If you enjoy biographies and a bit of conversational side imaginings, this will be a fantastic story! This woman deserves to be known and I appreciate the research the author did in sharing her life. The narration was also smooth and easy to follow, so any format would be good.