⭐ Reese's Book Club June 2026 Pick ⭐
When Reese Witherspoon announced A Pair of Aces as her June 2026 pick, I was already two-thirds of the way through my advance copy and I was ready. Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray's third co-write (after The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies) is built on the true story of two women I had somehow never heard of: Eunice Carter, the only woman and the only person of color on Thomas Dewey's Crime Commission, and Pearl "Polly" Adler, the legendary madam known as the "Jewish Jezebel." Together they helped bring down Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
Below: the plot, the real history behind both women, my honest take after reading an ARC, book club discussion questions, and what to read next.
A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Book Cover
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Quick Take
- Genre: Historical Fiction
- Setting: 1930s New York City
- Released: June 2, 2026 (Berkley / Penguin Random House)
- Length: 384 pages
- Book Club Pick: Reese's Book Club, June 2026
- Read if you loved: The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies (same duo), historical fiction rooted in real women's history, slow-burn political dramas about justice and ambition
What A Pair of Aces Is About (Spoiler-Free)
The year is 1935. Mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano runs five of New York City's largest organized crime families. Thomas Dewey, the city's special prosecutor, has assembled a twenty-person Crime Commission to take Luciano down and despite her credentials, Eunice Carter, the only woman and only person of color in the room, has been relegated to listening to citizen complaints from neighborhoods. The ones the other prosecutors don't want to be bothered with.
Every other Assistant District Attorney is investigating one of Luciano's traditional revenue streams: bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, drugs, tax evasion. None of it sticks. When the mob murders Dutch Schultz mid-investigation and the Commission's focus pivots to Luciano in earnest. Eunice who had previously worked in the Women's Court, proposes a different angle entirely: prostitution. Dewey dismisses her idea outright.
She builds the case anyway. Quietly.
To pull it off, she needs Pearl "Polly" Adler. Born in Russia, sent to America at thirteen, and by the 1930s the most famous madam in New York. The unlikely alliance between a Black prosecutor and a Jewish madam, two women who under any other circumstance might have been friends, becomes the engine that finally cracks Luciano's empire.
The Real History Behind A Pair of Aces
What makes A Pair of Aces so powerful is that both women are real, and what they accomplished is real. Here's what's documented in historical record.
Eunice Hunton Carter (1899–1970)
Eunice Hunton Carter was the daughter of two prominent civil rights activists. She graduated from Smith College in 1921 with both a bachelor's and a master's degree, then earned her J.D. from Fordham Law School in 1932. She was one of very few Black women in the United States with a law degree at the time.
In 1935, she was hired as Assistant District Attorney by Thomas Dewey, becoming the first Black female prosecutor in New York. She really was relegated to citizen complaints. She really did identify prostitution as the legal vulnerability that could bring Luciano down, against the dismissal of her colleagues. Her investigation led to a 1936 trial in which Luciano was convicted on 62 counts and sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison. At the time it was the most successful prosecution of a major American crime boss in U.S. history.
Carter went on to a long career in international human rights and civil rights work, including serving as a consultant to the United Nations. For decades, her role in the Luciano prosecution was largely written out of the public record.
Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900–1962)
Pearl Adler was born in Yanow, Russia, in 1900 and sent to Massachusetts at thirteen, alone, to live with family friends. She eventually moved to Brooklyn, fell in love with New York City, and by her twenties had become the most well-known madam in Manhattan. Her brothels catered to politicians, mobsters, celebrities, writers, and wealthy businessmen. She was famous (and infamous) for her discretion, her wit, and her refusal to be intimidated by police, mob, or the press.
Adler later wrote a 1953 memoir, A House Is Not a Home, which became a bestseller and was adapted into a 1964 Hollywood film. Her testimony and the inner workings of her business her and it's connections to Luciano's syndicate were central to the case Carter built.
Thomas Dewey and the Crime Commission
Thomas Dewey was appointed Special Prosecutor in 1935 specifically to dismantle organized crime in New York. He went on to become Governor of New York and twice ran for President of the United States (losing famously to Truman in 1948). His Crime Commission's takedown of Luciano was the foundation of his political career but as Carter and her colleagues knew, the Luciano case was built on the work of the only woman in the room.
The Main Characters
Eunice Carter
Eunice is one of the most compelling protagonists in historical fiction in a long time. She is brilliant, careful, and quietly furious at the constant slights and of being the only woman in every room. She handles Dewey's dismissal of her prostitution angle with strategic patience: instead of arguing, she simply starts building the case. Her marriage to Lisle Carter, her relationship with her mother (a civil rights activist in her own right), and her devotion to her young son ground a character who otherwise might be too perfect.
Pearl "Polly" Adler
Polly is the book's other main character. She is bold, funny, exhausted, and operating from the very specific seat of power. She is a woman who has built an empire and isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Her relationship with her live-in confidante "The Lion" is one of the great friendships in the book. Her loyalty to her the women who work for her (her "chosen family") is fierce, as is her commitment to supporting her father and brother in Brooklyn and her mother and siblings back in Russia. She is no saint and the novel doesn't pretend otherwise; but she's a woman whose moral compass turns out to be a lot more reliable than the men running the city.
Supporting cast
Lisle Carter (Eunice's husband, an economist), Eunice's mother (a civil rights leader whose presence in Eunice's life is both inspiration and pressure), the Crime Commission lawyers (some allies, most not), and the women who work for Polly who become characters in their own right, not merely window dressing.
Themes
Women writing themselves into the historical record. Both Eunice Carter and Polly Adler were instrumental to a moment that defined 20th-century American crime history, and both were largely written out of the popular account. A Pair of Aces is, in part, an argument for whose stories get told.
The unlikely alliance. A Black female prosecutor and a Jewish immigrant madam in 1935 New York would have moved in entirely separate worlds. The novel earns the moments where those worlds intersect and never sentimentalizes the alliance into a friendship it couldn't really be.
The path through prostitution. Carter's insight that the mob's most vulnerable revenue stream was the one no one else thought to investigate is both a procedural triumph and a feminist argument: the work women's bodies were doing was holding up the entire criminal enterprise, and no one in power thought to look at it.
Civil rights and the long view. The novel frames Carter's work as one of the earliest threads of what would become the modern civil rights movement. Not by accident, but as part of a deliberate strategy of Black women working from inside institutions designed to exclude them.
My Take on A Pair of Aces
I just finished an early copy of A Pair of Aces during Black History Month and I would have rated it a 6 if Goodreads let me. The writing is exquisite. The dialogue is quick. Tensions run high from the very beginning and don't ease up until the very end.
Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray have, for the third time in a row, taken two extraordinary women whose stories deserve a much larger place in the popular record and rendered them with the kind of care that makes you wonder why you didn't know about them already.
Eunice Carter is, hands down, one of the strongest and most determined women I have ever "met" in a historical novel. Polly Adler is her perfect counterpart. They are different in nearly every, but kindred spirits in the way that genuinely formidable women recognize each other across a crowded room.
Book Club Discussion Questions for A Pair of Aces
- Before reading A Pair of Aces, had you heard of Eunice Carter or Polly Adler? What do you think it says about whose stories get preserved in the historical record?
- Dewey dismisses Eunice's prostitution angle outright. How does Eunice navigate that dismissal, and what does her response tell us about how she's learned to operate in the rooms she's allowed into?
- The novel frames the alliance between Eunice and Polly as the engine of the case. Do you think this is an alliance or a friendship? What's the difference, and does it matter?
- Polly Adler ran a high-class brothel in the 1930s. The novel doesn't moralize about her work but also doesn't romanticize it. How did you find the balance the authors strike?
- Eunice's home life with Lisle, her mother, her son is woven through the novel in deliberate ways. How does her family change how we read the professional choices she makes?
- "The Lion" is one of the most striking secondary characters in the book. What role does she serve in Polly's life, and what does her presence say about chosen family in early 20th-century New York?
- The Crime Commission is composed of twenty people nineteen men and Eunice. Discuss the dynamic at the table as the case progresses.
- The novel positions Carter's work as a thread of the modern civil rights movement. Does that framing land for you? Where does the novel succeed at it, and where does it ask you to take it on faith?
- What did you take away about Russian-Jewish immigration to America in the early 20th century, and how does Polly's family story shape her ambitions?
- If A Pair of Aces becomes an adaptation, who do you cast?
If You Loved A Pair of Aces, Read Next
📚 The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray The duo's first co-write, about Belle da Costa Greene, the Black librarian who built J.P. Morgan's collection while passing as white. If A Pair of Aces is your first read of theirs, this is the natural next one.
📚 The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray Their second co-write, about the real friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist and presidential adviser. Target's Book of the Year for 2023.
📚 Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray Murray's solo novel about Jessie Redmon Fauset, the literary editor of The Crisis magazine who shaped the careers of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer during the Harlem Renaissance.
📚 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke A different decade and a different lane, but Reese's January 2026 pick is in the same family-and-women's-history sensibility. Full Yesteryear guide here.
Where to Buy A Pair of Aces
A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Book Cover
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📚 Want to make your next read (or any future Reese pick) easier on the budget? Join Book of the Month first book just $5, no commitment. It's how I find a lot of my picks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is A Pair of Aces based on a true story?
Yes. Both Eunice Carter and Pearl "Polly" Adler were real historical figures, and both played a role in the 1936 prosecution of mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano. The novel dramatizes their alliance and fills in the personal details, but the core arc Carter identifying prostitution as the legal angle that would bring Luciano down, against the dismissal of her colleagues is documented history.
Is A Pair of Aces a Reese's Book Club pick?
Yes. A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is Reese Witherspoon's June 2026 Reese's Book Club selection.
Who are Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray?
Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray are bestselling co-authors whose previous books together include The Personal Librarian (a Good Morning America Book Club pick) and The First Ladies (Target's 2023 Book of the Year). Both also write solo Murray's most recent solo novel is Harlem Rhapsody.
What happens to Lucky Luciano in real life?
In 1936, Thomas Dewey's prosecutors with Eunice Carter's case as the foundation convicted Charles "Lucky" Luciano on 62 counts and sentenced him to 30 to 50 years in prison. He was paroled and deported to Italy in 1946.
How long is A Pair of Aces?
384 pages.
Is there a content warning for A Pair of Aces?
The novel deals with prostitution, organized crime violence, racism in 1930s America, antisemitism, and police corruption. It does not include on-page sexual assault but discusses sex work as a labor system. For most readers, it reads more as 1930s political drama than as graphic content.
