Check & Mate

Mallory Greenleaf, who at eighteen, has sworn off chess the sport she and her father loved. She should be getting ready to go off to college like her best friend. Instead, she's had to take a full-time job to support her family now that her father has died, and her mother struggles with basic tasks many days due to her chronic illness. When her friend ropes her into a fun chess tournament, Mallory beats Nolan Sawyer, the player ranked #1 in the world. Because of this, she is offered a paid job at a chess club in New York, which she takes solely for the money, pretending that chess doesn't matter anymore and that she can compartmentalize it. It's just a job - not the thing she once loved most in the world. Except…she loves it, it's her passion, her everything and she obsesses over it. As Mallory rockets up the ranks, she quickly realizes that games aren't only on the board.