Walter Mosley
Author
Language
English
Description
Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter...
Author
Language
English
Description
Life for Easy Rawlins is surprisingly... easy. He's living off the proceeds of his last case, trying to keep out of trouble. Of course it's not going to last. Because Easy's old friend Mouse knocks on his door. Mouse is one of the deadliest men in America. And Mouse wants a small favour. He wants Easy to help a man he says is wrongly imprisoned, a friend of Charcoal Joe. Charcoal Joe is a mythical figure in the LA underworld - he pulls all the strings...
Author
Language
English
Description
Leonid McGill's spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking. Catfish is a ninety-four-year-old Mississippi blues-man who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: Deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. The opportunity to do a...
4) John Woman
Author
Language
English
Description
At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets...
Author
Language
English
Description
"January 1970 finds Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, LA's premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world... and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
From the acclaimed bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins series, deemed "one of America's best mystery writers" (The New York Times Book Review), comes a tale about a murdered man who does not want to go to heaven or hell—he'd rather have his old life in Harlem.
The police don't show up on Easy's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956 and it takes more than a murdered black girl before the cops get interested....
The police don't show up on Easy's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956 and it takes more than a murdered black girl before the cops get interested....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A "fascinating and vividly rendered" (The Wall Street Journal) mystery featuring one of crime fiction's greatest protagonists—private investigator Easy Rawlins—as he agrees to a dangerous surveillance job.
It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles—a moral tar pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of the hurting business and into the housing (and favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him...
It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles—a moral tar pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of the hurting business and into the housing (and favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him...
12) Blood grove
Author
Language
English
Description
After being approached by a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran who claims to have gotten into a fight protecting a white woman from a black man, Easy embarks on an investigation that takes him from mountaintops to the desert, through South Central and into sex clubs and the homes of the fabulously wealthy, facing hippies, the mob, and old friends perhaps more dangerous than anyone else.
13) 47
Author
Language
English
Description
Number Forty-Seven, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.
Author
Language
English
Description
NOW AN APPLE TV+ SERIES STARRING SAMUEL L. JACKSON
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is a masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the true literary icons of our time.
Marooned in an apartment that overflows with mementos from the past, 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey is all but forgotten by his family and the world. But when an unexpected opportunity arrives, everything changes for Ptolemy in ways as shocking...
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is a masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the true literary icons of our time.
Marooned in an apartment that overflows with mementos from the past, 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey is all but forgotten by his family and the world. But when an unexpected opportunity arrives, everything changes for Ptolemy in ways as shocking...
Author
Language
English
Description
"[T]wo people brought together by a horrific act are united in a common cause by the powers of the Silver Box. The two join to protect humanity from destruction by an alien race, the Laz, hell-bent on regaining control over the Silver Box, the most destructive and powerful tool in the universe. The Silver Box will stop at nothing to prevent its former master from returning to being, even if it means finishing the earth itself" --
Two people struggle...
16) The long fall
Author
Language
English
Description
Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, tries to put his past life behind him, to go "from crooked to slightly bent." But it's not that easy when someone like Tony "The Suit" Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl.
17) Touched: a novel
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And he is the Cure. Martin begins slipping into an alternate consciousness, with new physical strengths, to violently defend his family--the only Black family in their neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles--against pure evil."--
18) Known to evil
Author
Language
English
Description
Alfonse Rinaldo, the mysterious power-behind- the-throne at City Hall, the fixer who seems to control every little thing that happens in New York City, has a problem that even he can't fix--and he's come to Leonid McGill for help. It seems a young woman has disappeared, leaving murder in her wake, and it means everything to Rinaldo to track her down.
Author
Language
English
Description
In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never-less-than-moving literary novel from Walter Mosley, acclaimed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult-entertainment industy. Millions of men (and, no doubt, many women) have watched the famed black porn queen-she of the blond wig and blue contact lenses-'do it' on television and computer screens every wich way and with every combination...