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Rail Car 9: Book 1: Invasive Species
Paperback
Series: Rail Car 9, Book 1
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 26 2026
Pages: 210
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.48 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
River City doesn't forgive. It remembers.
Nine Black men arrived by rail more than a century ago. They built families, businesses, institutions-and systems of power that still shape the city today.
Now Jackson Odessa has come home.
After ten years away, Jackson returns to Washington Heights and takes the helm of the Carolina Rose, hoping to rebuild a life in the neighborhood that raised him. But River City has rules, and some of them were written long before Jackson was born.
When he refuses to play by those rules, he attracts the attention of people who have spent generations deciding who prospers, who disappears, and who gets to call River City home.
And Jackson isn't the only one disturbing the balance.
Across the city, old alliances are fracturing. Street organizations are testing boundaries. Political families are maneuvering behind closed doors. Men carrying secrets from the past are preparing for wars no one else knows have already begun.
At the center of it all lies a question River City has spent more than a century avoiding:
What happens when the people who inherited the city finally meet the people determined to change it?
Rail Car 9 - Book 1: Invasive Species is a character-driven urban mystery and neo-noir crime thriller about inherited power, political ambition, loyalty, violence, and the hidden machinery that determines who really controls a city.
Perfect for readers who enjoy the layered institutions and moral complexity of The Wire, the escalating street politics of Snowfall and Power, and the generational maneuvering of The Godfather.
A dark, layered world of inherited power and consequence.
- Amelia, Goodreads Reviewer
Every street corner holds a century of secrets.
- Karunesh, Founder, Readers Wave
Following an independent evaluation of Rail Car 9 - Book 1: Invasive Species, W. DeLance Lewis was named a Distinguished Author by the International Impact Book Awards, recognizing work demonstrating meaningful impact on readers and communities.
This is only the beginning.
Invasive Species opens the door to the larger Rail Car 9 saga-an interconnected world of recurring characters, expanding mysteries, competing bloodlines, political conspiracies, criminal empires, and consequences that unfold across generations.
The deeper you travel into River City, the more its history begins to matter.
Start with Book One.
Meet the people fighting for River City.
Then discover why the city remembers everything.
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