Walter Mosley Books In Order

Devil in a Blue Dress

The time is 1948. The town is Los Angeles. The hero is Easy Rawlins, an out of work black war veteran. The mortgage payment’s coming due, so Easy accepts the assignment of finding Daphne Monet, a blonde torch singer with a penchant for jazz and criminal black consorts. In his search through a sleazy, fearful city, he is lucky to be under the protection of the murderous Mouse who wants a piece of the action. Easy Rawlins is a fascinating creation driving a plot that carries a fine and bitter sting. With this first novel, Walter Mosley made a distinctly confident start to his career as a great and inspirational writer.

A Red Death

It’s 1953, a time when Red baiting was official policy, and racial tensions boiled. Easy Rawlins is in deep trouble. A corrupt, racist IRS agent is breathing down his neck about some unpaid taxes. His only out: cut a deal with the FBI to infiltrate the First African Baptist Church and spy on a former World War II resistance fighter suspected of stealing some top secret government plans. But the IRS isn’t Easy’s only problem. His life becomes even more complicated and dangerous when his old flame EttaMae Harris shows up with her murderous husband, Easy’s best friend, Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, hard on her heels. And then killings begin, and Easy finds himself playing the role of betrayed and betrayer and the prime suspect.

White Butterfly

The time is 1948. The town is Los Angeles. The hero is Easy Rawlins, an out of work black war veteran. The mortgage payment’s coming due, so Easy accepts the assignment of finding Daphne Monet, a blonde torch singer with a penchant for jazz and criminal black consorts. In his search through a sleazy, fearful city, he is lucky to be under the protection of the murderous Mouse who wants a piece of the action. Easy Rawlins is a fascinating creation driving a plot that carries a fine and bitter sting. With this first novel, Walter Mosley made a distinctly confident start to his career as a great and inspirational writer.

Black Betty

Los Angeles, 1961. Kennedy is in the White House and King is marching down South. It’s a new day for many blacks in America but not for Easy Rawlins. Easy’s small real estate empire is in trouble and he is facing bankruptcy when Saul Lynx, an oily white private eye, offers him $200 to track down on Elizabeth Eady, a.k.a. ‘Black Betty.’ The sensuous Betty was a housekeeper for an immensely wealthy Beverly Hills family but now has mysteriously disappeared. Easy takes the job, but he also has to deal with his murderous sidekick Mouse, who’s just been released from Chino prison. Mouse was sent up for manslaughter, and he wants Easy to help him find the ones who gave him up to the police. Finding Betty seems a simple enough task, but nothing about this woman is as simple as it appears to be. Easy soon finds out her trail is paved with blood and he might be the next victim of her deadly charms.

A Little Yellow Dog

November 1963: Easy’s settled into a steady gig as a school custodian. It’s a quiet, simple existence but a few moments of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that. When the lady vanishes, Easy’s stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops on his back, and A Little Yellow Dog who’s nobody’s best friend. With his not so simple past snapping at his heels, and with enemies old and new looking to get even, Easy must kiss his careful little life good bye and step closer to the edge…
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Gone Fishin’

From New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley comes the sexy, corrosively funny, and gritty novel that begins the saga of Easy Rawlins. In the beginning, there was Ezekial ‘Easy’ Rawlins and Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a ‘borrowed’ Ford heading for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae. But on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way out, while Easy’s past liaison with EttaMae floats ominously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams.

Bad Boy Brawly Brown

The long anticipated sixth installment of the Easy Rawlins Mystery SeriesEasy Rawlins is out of the investigation business and as far away from crime as a black man can be in 1960s Los Angeles. But living around desperate men means life gets complicated sometimes. When an old friend gets in enough trouble to ask for Easy’s help, he finds he can t refuse. Young Brawly Brown has traded in his family for The Clan of the First Men, a group rejecting white leadership, history, and laws and they re dangerous. Brown s mom, Alva, needs to know her baby s okay, and Easy promises to find him. His first day on the case, Easy gets harassed by the cops and comes face to face with a corpse. Before he knows it, he s on a short list of murder suspects and in the middle of a frenzied police raid on a Clan of the First Men rally. The only thing he discovers about Brawly Brown is that he s the kind of trouble most folks try to avoid. It takes everything Easy has just to stay alive as he explores a world filled with promises, betrayals, and predators like he never imagined. Bad Boy Brawly Brown is the masterful crime novel that Walter Mosley s legions of fans have been waiting for. Written with the voice and vision that have made Walter Mosley one of the most important writers in America, this audiobook marks the return of a master at the top of his form.

Six Easy Pieces

Walter Mosley’s bestselling and award winning novels from ‘Gone Fishin” to ‘Devil in a Blue Dress,’ named one of the ‘100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century’ by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association have endeared him to legions of readers from a U.S. president to everyday people who can’t get enough of Easy Rawlins. Now from the bestselling and award winning writer comes ‘Six Easy Pieces. ‘The beloved Ezekiel Rawlins now has a steady job as senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth High School, a nice house with a garden, a loving woman, and children. He counts the blessings of leading a law abiding life, but is ‘nowhere near happy.’ Easy mourns the loss of his best friend, Mouse. Though Easy tries to leave the street life behind, he still finds himself trading favors and investigating cases of arson, murder, and missing people. People who can’t depend on the law to solve their problems seek out Easy.A bomb is set in the high school where Easy works. A man’s daughter runs off with his employee. A beautiful woman turns up dead and the man who loved her is wrongly accused. Easy is the man people turn to in search of justice and retribution. He even becomes party to a killing that the police might call murder. Six of the seven stories in ‘Six Easy Pieces‘ were published in reissued Washington Square Press editions of the Easy Rawlins mysteries ‘Gone Fishin’, Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty,’ and ‘A Little Yellow Dog.’ A seventh, ‘Amber Gate,’ is newly published here, making this new Walter Mosley classic a must have for all fans of great fiction.

Little Scarlet

Los Angeles, 1965, right after the Watts Riots, six summer days of racial violence burning, looting, and killing that followed the routine arrest of a black motorist for drunken driving. Although custodian and unlicensed PI Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins stayed safely inside during the turmoil, as an African American male he understands all too well what it was about. ‘It’s hot and people are mad,’ he explains in Walter Mosley’s Little Scarlet. ‘They’ve been mad since they were babies.’ Even with the rioting finally cooled, police remain on edge. So when a mid 30s, redheaded black woman named Nola Payne aka ‘Little Scarlet‘ turns up dead in her apartment, strangled and shot and showing signs of recent sexual contact, the cops are reluctant to storm L.A.’s minority community, looking for her murderer,especially since the culprit may well be an injured white man Payne had sheltered, and who’s now disappeared. Instead, they ask Easy to see what he can find out about this crime. The case forces Rawlins to address the ethnic tribulations of 1960s America, in microcosm, and his own discomfort with discrimination, in particular. I spent my whole early life at the back of buses and in the segregated balconies at theaters. I had been arrested for walking in the wrong part of town and threatened for looking a man in the eye. And when I went to war to fight for freedom, I found myself in a segregated army, treated with less respect than they treated German POWs. I had seen people who looked like me jeered on TV and in the movies. I had had enough and I wasn’t about to turn back, even though I wanted to. But Easy can’t tackle this investigation alone; assisting him are the casually homicidal Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, as well as a dogged white detective and a fetching younger woman, who threatens to overturn the settled life Easy has been working toward all these years. Nor can Rawlins wrap the case up easily. Harassed and attacked for his inquiries, he eventually connects Payne’s slaying to a homeless man, allegedly responsible for killing as many as 21 black women, all of whom had the bad judgment to hook up with white men. Little Scarlet, the eighth Rawlins novel after Bad Boy Brawly Brown, is unusual for Mosley, because it focuses as much on the credible mechanics of crime solving as it does on the exposition of character and the exploration of L.A.’s mid 20th century black culture. Combined with the author’s vigorous prose and prowess with dialogue, Easy’s promotion to serious sleuth promises great things for what was already a standout series. J. Kingston Pierce

Cinnamon Kiss

It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It’s farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend, Mouse, tells him it’s a cinch.
Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers him a job that might solve Easy’s problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. An assistant, of sorts, the beautiful ‘Cinnamon’ Cargill is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told…
Robert Lee, his new employer, is a suspect in the attorney’s disappearance. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.
The New York Times said of Mosley’s bestseller, Little Scarlet, ‘Nobody, but nobody, writes this stuff like Mosley.’

Blonde Faith

Easy Rawlins comes home from work, and finds more trouble on his doorstep in a day than most men encounter in a lifetime.A friend has left his daughter at Easy’s house without so much as a note. Clearly this friend, Christmas Black, a veteran of Vietnam, fears for his life and his daughter’s. Easy’s closest friend, the man known as Mouse, has disappeared too and his wife tells Easy that he is wanted for murder. Mouse has been a thorn in the police’s side for so long that Easy is convinced that this time they will kill him as soon as they find him. Worst of all, Easy’s longtime lover tells him that she plans to marry another man. In a world of hurt, Easy strikes out on his own to try to find one friend, save another, and save himself from the pain that is driving him out of his mind. On his path he meets drug dealers, corrupt officials, every manner of criminal and con and a woman named Faith who may hold the key to more than one life. In his tenth Easy Rawlins novel, Walter Mosley writes with a grace and insight that few writers ever achieve. It is the clearest proof yet that Walter Mosley is ‘one of this nation’s finest writers’ Boston Globe.

The Plot Thickens (With: Janet Evanovich,Lawrence Block,Linda Fairstein,Nelson DeMille,Donald E Westlake,Mary Higgins Clark,Carol Higgins Clark,Nancy Pickard,Edna Buchanan,Ann Rule)

Joining together for a good cause brings out the best in today’s top mystery and suspense writers! For this marvelously entertaining anthology, these outstanding contributors rose to a unique literary challenge: each penned a tale that ingeniously features a thick fog, a thick book, and a thick steak. The result is a collection of wonderfully imaginative tales that both chill the spine and warm the heart: proceeds from The Plot Thickens will help bring the gift of reading to millions of disadvantaged Americans.

Fearless Jones

Penzler Pick, June 2001: Those of us who have been waiting for Walter Mosley to return to mystery writing and there are many of us have cause to rejoice. Not only has Mosley written a mystery, he is introducing a new character who could turn out to be as popular as Easy Rawlins. Fearless Jones has a lot in common with Easy, but he also has some characteristics reminiscent of Socrates Fortlow, the ‘hero’ of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. When the story begins, the reader is transported to the Los Angeles of the 1950s, a dangerous place and time for a black man. But Paris Minton seems to have beaten the odds. He owns a moderately successful and very satisfying business a used book store. He spends the time he’s not in the store scouring libraries for discarded books and selling them in just enough quantity to be independent and happy. Yes, he is visited on a regular basis by members of the LAPD who want him to prove to them that he did not steal the books, but that is a small price to pay for independence. Minton’s peaceful life is interrupted one day when a beautiful woman walks into his store and asks for the Reverend William Grove. In no time flat, Paris has been beaten into unconsciousness by a man following her and has been rewarded by the woman with sex. The lovely Elana Love is obviously trouble, but Paris jumps in feet first and, as a consequence, his store is burned to the ground. It is obviously time to call in Fearless Jones, a man well named. Jones is afraid of nothing, but there is a little matter to be taken care of before he can help. He’s in jail and Paris must raise bail to get him out. Once he does that, the pair embark on a wild ride through Los Angeles on behalf of Elana Love. As always, Mosley depicts the hard boiled L.A. in a powerful and distinctive way, and we can only hope that this is the first of a series. Otto Penzler

Fear Itself

Paris Minton doesn’t want any trouble. He minds his used bookstore and his own business. But in 1950s Los Angeles, sometimes trouble finds him, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it. When the nephew of the wealthiest woman in L.A. is missing and wanted for murder, she has to get involved no matter if she can’t stand him. What will her church think? She hires Jefferson T. Hill, a former sheriff of Dawson, Texas, and a tough customer, to track him down and prove his innocence. When Hill goes missing too, she tricks his friend Fearless Jones and Paris Minton into picking up the case. Paris steps inside the world of the black bourgeoisie, and it turns out to be filled with deceit and corruption. It takes everything he has just to stay alive through a case filled with twists and turns and dead ends like he never imagined. Written with the voice and vision that have made Walter Mosley one of the most entertaining writers in America, Fear Itself marks the return of a master at the top of his form.

Fear of the Dark

Fearless Jones and Paris Minton, stars of the bestsellers Fearless Jones and Fear Itself, return in a fast paced thriller about family and revenge. For Paris Minton, a knock on his door is often the first sign of trouble. So when he finds his lowlife cousin, Ulysses S. Grant, or Useless, on the other side of his front door, Paris keeps it firmly closed. With family like Useless, who needs enemies? Yet trouble always finds an open window, and when Useless’s mother, Three Hearts, shows up to look for her son, Paris has no choice but to track down his wayward cousin. Turns out that Useless is involved in some high stakes blackmailing. Now, he and a briefcase full of money and incriminating photos are missing, and Paris is not the only one looking for him. Paris enlists the help of his invincible friend Fearless Jones, but mysterious women, desperate blackmail victims, and cheating business partners are all they encounter not to mention the dead bodies found along the way. With the sheer nerve plotting and brilliant characterizations that have made him one of the great stars of crime fiction, Fear of the Dark is masterful Mosley.

The Long Fall

A brand new mystery series from one of the country’s best known, best loved writers: a new character, a new city, a new era. A new Walter Mosley. His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL , PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It s a name that takes a little explaining, but he s used to it. Daddy was a communist and great great Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story. Ex boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill s an old school P.I. working a city that s gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side mostly because he s never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, decided to go from crooked to slightly bent. New York City in the twenty first century is a city full of secrets and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. That s exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested. And we learn that with this protagonist, this city, this time, Mosley has tapped a rich new vein that s inspiring his best work since the classic Devil in a Blue Dress.

Known to Evil

The Walter Mosley and his new hero, Leonid McGill, are back in the new New York Times bestselling mystery series that’s already being hailed as a classic of contemporary noir. Leonid McGill the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall, the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists nationwide is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self won’t let him leave his wife but then Aura’s new boyfriend starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top of the skyscraper office space. Meanwhile, one of his sons seems to have found true love but the girl has a shady past that’s all of sudden threatening the whole McGill family and his other son, the charming rogue Twilliam, is doing nothing but enabling the crisis. Most ominously of all, 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 for help. It seems a young woman has disappeared, leaving murder in her wake, and it means everything to Rinaldo to track her down. But he won’t tell McGill his motives, which doesn’t quite square with the new company policy but turning down Rinaldo is almost impossible to even contemplate. Known to Evil delivers on all the promise of the characters and story lines introduced in The Long Fall, and then some. It careens fast and deep into gritty, glittery contemporary Manhattan, making the city pulse in a whole new way, and it firmly establishes Leonid McGill as one of the mystery world’s most iconic, charismatic leading men.

When the Thrill Is Gone

Leonid McGill is back, in the third and most enthralling and ambitious installment in Walter Mosley’s latest New York Times bestselling series. The economy has hit the private investigator business hard, even for the detective designated as ‘a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe’ The Boston Globe and ‘the perfect heir to Easy Rawlins’ Toronto Globe and Mail. Lately, Leonid McGill is getting job offers only from the criminals he’s worked so hard to leave behind. Meanwhile, his life grows ever more complicated: his favorite stepson, Twill, drops out of school for mysteriously lucrative pursuits; his best friend, Gordo, is diagnosed with cancer and is living on Leonid’s couch; his wife takes a new lover, infuriating the old one and endangering the McGill family; and Leonid’s girlfriend, Aura, is back but intent on some serious conversations…
So how can he say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash? She’s an artist, she tells him, who’s escaped from poverty via marriage to a rich collector who keeps her on a stipend. But she says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid’s help. Though Leonid knows better than to believe every word, this isn’t a job he can afford to turn away, even as he senses that if his family’s misadventures don’t kill him first sorting out the woman’s crooked tale will bring him straight to death’s door.

All I Did Was Shoot My Man

In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all too vivid present. Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn’t remember shooting Harry, but she didn’t deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space. For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella’s innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. His wife is drinking more than she should. His oldest son has dropped out of college and moved in with an exprostitute. His youngest son is working for him and trying to stay within the law. And his father, whom he thought was long dead, has turned up under an alias. A gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution, All I Did Was Shoot My Man is also the poignant tale of one man’s attempt to stay connected to his family.

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

From the best selling author of A Little Yellow Dog the eagerly awaited debut of Socrates Fortlow, a bold and original new hero. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned introduces Walter Mosley’s most compelling new character since the debut of his immortal detective Easy Rawlins: one Socrates Fortlow, a tough, brooding ex convict determined to challenge and understand the violence and anarchy in his world and in himself. Three decades ago, the young Socrates had, in a burst of drunken rage, murdered a man and a woman with his huge ‘rock breaking hands.’ Twenty seven years of hard time in an Indiana prison followed. Now Socrates lives in a cramped, two room apartment in an abandoned building in Watts, scavenging bottles and delivering groceries for a supermarket. In each of the stories that comprise this richly brooding novel, Socrates Fortlow, like his namesake, explores philosophical questions of morality in a world beset with crime, poverty, and racism. He is an unforgettable presence and his perceptions cast a glow of somber lyricism upon an often harsh world. Socrates is a creation of stunning originality; the book he inhabits is Walter Mosley’s most powerful and eloquent to date.

Walkin’ the Dog

The introduction of Socrates Fortlow, an ex convict forced to define his own morality in a lawless world, was hailed as astonishing by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. In this second book about the philosopher with rock breaking hands, Socrates confronts wrongs that most people would rather ignore and comes face to face with the most dangerous emotion: hope. Nine years after his release from prison, he is still living in a two room shack in a Watts alley, but he has found a girlfriend, and a steady job, and is even keeping a pet, the two legged dog he calls Killer. Having responsibilities and people he cares about makes finding the right path even harderespecially when the police make him their first suspect in every crime within six blocks. Writing with the same lyricism that earned accolades for Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley has brought us one of the most enduring fictional characters to come along in years. Also available as a Time Warner AudioBook. Mosley has constructed a perfect Socrates for millenniums enda principled man who finds that the highest meaning of life can be attained through self knowledge, and who convinces others of the power and value of looking within. San Francisco Chronicle

The Right Mistake

Living in South Central L.A., Socrates Fortlow is a sixty year old ex convict, still strong enough to kill men with his bare hands. Now freed after serving twenty seven years in prison, he is filled with profound guilt about his own crimes and disheartened by the chaos of the streets. Along with his gambler friend Billy Psalms, Socrates calls together local people of all races from their different social stations lawyers, gangsters, preachers, Buddhists, businessmen to conduct meetings of a Thinkers Club, where all can discuss the unanswerable questions in life.

The street philosopher enjoins his friends to explore even in the knowledge that there’s nothing that they personally can do to change the ways of the world what might be done anyway, what it would take to change themselves. Infiltrated by undercover cops, and threatened by strain from within, tensions rise as hot blooded gangsters and respectable deacons fight over issues of personal and social responsibility. But simply by asking questions about racial authenticity, street justice, infidelity, poverty, and the possibility of mutual understanding, Socrates and his unlikely crew actually begin to make a difference.

In turns outraged and affectionate, The Right Mistake offers a profoundly literary and ultimately redemptive exploration of the possibility of moral action in a violent and fallen world.

RL’s Dream

Soupspoon Wise is dying on the unforgiving streets of New York City, years and worlds away from the Mississippi delta, where he once jammed with blues legend Robert ‘RL’ Johnson. It was an experience that burned indelibly into Soupspoon’s soul never mind that they said RL’s gift came from the Devil himself. Now it’s Soupspoon’s turn to strike a deal with a stranger. An alcoholic angel of mercy, Kiki Waters isn’t much better off than Soupspoon, but she too is a child of the South, and knows its pull. And she is determined to let Soupspoon ride out the final notes of his haunting blues dream, to pour out the remarkable tale of what he’s seen, where he’s been and where he’s going. Winner of the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award in Fiction

Blue Light

San Francisco in the sixties is already crazy when mysterious shafts of Blue Light touch the lives of random strangers: Chance, a suicidal grad student who needs a history to chronicle…
Orde, a scam artist turned prophet…
Claudia Heart, housewife, swinger, and free love goddess…
Winch Fargo, a violent junkie driven mad by truth…
and Alacrity, a little girl growing up very, very fast. They may have come from different places, but now they’re all on the same trip because under Blue Light nothing looks the same…
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The Man in My Baseme*nt

Charles Blakey is a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling. His parents are dead, he can’t find a job, he drinks too much, and his friends have begun to desert him. Worst of all, he’s fallen behind on the mortgage payments for the beautiful home that’s belonged to his family for generations. When a stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to rent out his baseme*nt for the summer, Charles needs the money too badly to say no. He knows that the stranger must want something more than a baseme*nt view. Sure enough, he has a very particular and bizarre set of requirements, and Charles tries to satisfy him without getting lured into the strangeness. But he sees an opportunity to understand secrets of the white world, and his summer with a man in his baseme*nt turns into a journey into inconceivable worlds of power and manipulation, and unimagined realms of humanity. Richly textured and compelling, The Man in My Baseme*nt is a new literary pinnacle from an acknowledged American master.

47

DESCRIPTION: A gripping YA fiction debut by bestselling author Walter Mosley. Walter Mosley is one of the best known writers in America. In his first book for young adults, Mosley deftly weaves historical and speculative fiction into a powerful narrative about the nature of freedom. 47 is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a brutal slave master. His life seems doomed until he meets a mysterious run away slave, Tall John. Then 47 finds himself swept up in a struggle for his own liberation.

The Wave

The New York Times bestselling author returns to science fiction with an eerie, transcendent novel of the near future. Errol’s father has been dead for several years. Yet lately Errol has been awakened in the middle of the night by a caller claiming to be his father. Is it a prank, or a message from the grave? When he hears the unmistakable sound of a handset being put down on a table, he decides to investigate. Curious and not a little unnerved, Errol sneaks into the graveyard where his father is buried. What he finds there changes his life forever. Caught up in a war between a secret government security agency and an alien presence infecting our world, touched by The Wave, he knows that nothing will ever be the same again.

Diablerie

In this icy noir from a master of American fiction, the darkest secrets are the ones we keep hidden from ourselves.

Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college age daughter, and a patient young mistress. Even as he goes through the motions of everyday life, however, inside he feels nothing. The explanation for this emotional void lies in the years he spent as a blacked out drunk before pulling his life together years in which he knows he committed acts he doesn t remember. Then a woman from his past turns up at a gala for his wife’s new gig at a magazine called Diablerie and makes it clear that she remembers something he doesn t. Their encounter sets wheels in motion that will propel Dibbuk toward new knowledge, and perhaps the chance to feel again. With the same erotic force as Killing Johnny Fry, but grounded in a far darker vision of human nature, Diablerie is a transfixing new novel from one of our most powerful writers.

Fortunate Son

Tommy’s nickname is Lucky, but no one would think this crippled boy was blessed. Cursed with health problems and drawn into trouble more often than not, Tommy is the recipient of pity rather than admiration. He is nothing like his stepbrother Eric.

Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune he is charming, a star athlete, and a magnet for anyone in his sphere. Yet in spite of these differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as two humans can be.

After tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the lives of these boys split. In a powerful story of modern day resilience and redemption, Tommy and Eric forge their separate ways in the world, each confronting the challenges of his sphere. For Tommy this means dropping out of school, selling drugs, living on the streets, and somehow creating a family of his own. Motherless, African American, and impoverished, Tommy has nothing but feels lucky every day of his life. For Eric, the golden youth, life means athletics, sexual attraction, excellent grades, prosperity, and the uncertainty that comes with prizes won too easily. Given everything, he trusts nothing.

Eric and Tommy’s parallel lives are an astonishing story of self determination and the true measure of fortune. The ties that bind this Adonis and his sickly counterpart, however, are thicker than blood, and when circumstances reunite Eric and Tommy after years apart, their distinct approaches to life may be the only thing that can save them from forces that threaten to destroy them for good.

Written with unique insight into the hidden currents and deeper realities of modern life, Fortunate Son is a tour de force by the author the Boston Globe calls ‘one of this nation’s finest writers.’

Killing Johnny Fry

This bold new novel from Walter Mosley startles in both its rawness and its honest portrayal of a man on a quest for sexual redemption in midlife. When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the act that he witnesses seems to dissolve all the boundaries he knows. In that instant, the calm existence of this middle aged New York City man becomes something unrecognizable: he wants revenge, but also something more. Killing Johnny Fry is the story of Cordell’s dark, funny, soulful, and outrageously explicit sexual odyssey in search of a new way of life. His guide is a mysterious woman named Sisypha, who leads him deep into the erotic heart of the city. Killing Johnny Fry marks new territory for Walter Mosley, bestselling author of Devil in a Blue Dress and many other books in different genres: sci fi, politics, literary fiction. It will surprise, provoke, inspire, and make you blush. Above all, it is about a man questioning the rules we take for granted and the powerful and sometimes disturbing connections that occur between people when these rules are removed.

The Tempest Tales

Mistaken for another man, wily Tempest is ‘accidentally’ shot by police. Sent to receive the judgment of heaven he discovers that his sins, according to St. Peter, condemn him to hell. Tempest takes exception to the saint’s definition of sin; he refuses to go to hell and explains that he, a poor Black man living in Harlem, did what he did for family, friends, and love.

St. Peter, whose judgment has never been challenged, understands the secret of damnation and heaven’s celestial authority mortals must willingly accept their sins.

Should Tempest continue his refusal, heaven will collapse, thereby allowing hell and its keeper, the fallen angel Satan, to reign supreme. The only solution: send this recalcitrant mortal back to earth with an accounting angel, whose all important mission is to persuade Tempest to accept his sins and St. Peter’s judgment.

In this episodic battle with heaven and hell for his ultimate destiny, Tempest also takes the reader on a philosophic and humorous journey where free will is pitted against class and race and the music of heaven is pitted against the blues.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

A masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the true literary icons of our time. Ptolemy Grey is ninety one years old and has been all but forgotten by his family, his friends, even himself as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand nephew, Ptolemy’s only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece’s seventeen year old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew’s funeral. But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy’s hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won’t live to see age ninety two but that he’ll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand nephew’s death is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley captures the compromised state of his protagonist’s mind with profound sensitivity and insight, and creates an unforgettable pair of characters at the center of a novel that is sure to become a true contemporary classic.

Workin’ on the Chain Gang

A passionate examination of the social and economic injustices that continue to shackle the American people

Praise for Workin on the Chain Gang:

…
bracing and provocative…
.

Publishers Weekly

…
clear sighted…
Mosley offers chain breaking ideas…
.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

A thoroughly potent dismantling of Yanqui capitalism, the media, and the entertainment business, and at the same time a celebration of rebellion, truth as a tool for emancipation, and much else besides…
.

Toronto Globe and Mail

Workin on the Chain Gang excels at expressing feelings of ennui that transcend race…
. beautiful language and penetrating insights into the necessity of confronting the past.

Washington Post

Mosley eloquently examines what liberation from consumer capitalism might look like…
. readers receptive to a progressive critique of the religion of the market will value Mosley’s creative contribution.

Booklist

Walter Mosley s most recent essay collection is Life Out of Context, published in 2006. He is the best selling author of the science fiction novel Blue Light, five critically acclaimed mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins, the blues novel RL s Dream, a finalist for the NAACP Award in Fiction, and winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association s Literary Award. His books have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in New York.

Clyde Taylor is Professor of Africana Studies at NYU s Gallatin School and author of The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract Film and Literature.

What Next

In What Next, Walter Mosley New York Times bestselling author has crafted a deeply personal and political proposal, offering a commonsense approach to the challenge of finding world peace in a post 9/11 world. Mosley recalls his father’s story about not feeling like an American until German soldiers shot at him during World War II. Now the younger Mosley explores what the terrorist attacks meant to him, and challenges African Americans to use their unique position to help create a new kind of peace between the U.S. and the rest of the world. What Next examines this and other questions in a powerful polemic and call to action for African Americans and freedom loving people everywhere.

Life Out of Context

Life Out of Context begins as a powerful, brooding and humorously honest examination of Mosley’s own sense of cultural dislocation as an African American writer. But due to a series of serendipitous events the screening of a documentary about Africa, an encounter with Harry Belafonte and Hugh Masakela Mosley, rather like the protagonist in one of his mystery novels, has a series of epiphanies on the role of a black intellectual in America. He asks: What can we do to fight injustice, poverty, exploitation, and racism? What is globalization doing to us? Through these late night meditations, Mosley attempts to transcend his earlier feelings of living a ‘Life Out of Context‘ and seeks instead to find a political context. He ends with a call to arms, proposing that African Americans have to break their historic ties with the Democrat Party, and form a party of their own

This Year You Write Your Novel

No more excuses. ‘Let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls,’ bestselling novelist Walter Mosley advises. Anyone can write a novel now, and in this essential book of tips, practical advice, and wisdom, Walter Mosley promises that the writer in waiting can finish it in one year. Mosley tells how to:
Create a daily writing regimen to fit any writer’s needs and how to stick to it.
Determine the narrative voice that’s right for every writer’s style.
Get past those first challenging sentences and into the heart of a story.

Intended as both inspiration and instruction, This Year You Write Your Novel provides the tools to turn out a first draft painlessly and then revise it into something finer.

Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation

In his late teens and early twenties, Walter Mosley was addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. Drawing from this intimate knowledge of addiction and recovery, Mosley explores the deviances of contemporary America and describes a society in thrall to its own consumption. Although Americans live in the richest country on earth, many citizens exist on the brink of poverty, and from that profound economic inequality stems self destructive behavior. In Twelve Steps to Political Revelation, Mosley outlines a guide to recovery from oppression. First we must identify the problems that surround us. Next we must actively work together to create a just, more holistic society. And finally, power must be returned to the embrace of the people. Challenging and original, Recovery confronts both self understanding and how we define ourselves in relation to others.

Bronx Noir (By:S J Rozan)

Brand new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace.

S.J. Rozan was born and raised in the Bronx and is a lifelong New Yorker. She’s the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the stand alones Absent Friends and In This Rain forthcoming. Her books have won Edgar, Nero, Macavity, and Shamus awards for best novel. She’s at work on another series novel, Shanghai Moon.

Chicago Noir (By:)

Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America. Nelson Algren and James Farrell would be proud. Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago s noir heart. Aleksandar Hemon, author of Nowhere ManBrand new stories by: Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeff Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer. The city of Chicago has spent much time and money over the last decade marketing itself as a tourist friendly place for the whole family. It’s got a shiny new Millennium Park, a spaceship in the middle of Soldier Field, and thousands of identical faux brick condo buildings that seem to spring from the ground overnight. Chicago’s rough and tumble tough guy reputation has been replaced by a postcard with a lake view. But that city’s not gone. The hard bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory. Chicago Noir is populated by hired killers and jazzmen, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies. It’s the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn’t want you to see, a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. These are stories about blocks that visitors are afraid to walk. They tell of a Chicago beyond Oprah, Michael Jordan, and deep dish pizza. This isn’t someone’s dream of Chicago. It’s not even a nightmare. It’s just the real city, unfiltered. Chicago Noir.

Baltimore Noir (By:Laura Lippman)

Brand new stories by: David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim Co*ckey, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Massey, Jack Bludis, Rafael Alvarez, Marcia Talley, Joseph Wallace, Lisa Respers France, Charlie Stella, Sarah Weinman, Dan Fesperman, Jim Fusilli, and Ben Neihart.

Laura Lippman has lived in Baltimore most of her life and she would have spent even more time there if the editors of the Sun had agreed to hire her earlier. She attended public schools and has lived in several of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, including Dickeyville, Tuscany Canterbury, Evergreen, and South Federal Hill.

Los Angeles Noir (By:Denise Hamilton)

Brand new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Hector Tobar, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, and Denise Hamilton. Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named Last Lullaby a Best Book of 2004, and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award. Her fourth Eve Diamond novel, Savage Garden, is a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Southern California Booksellers Association award for Best Mystery of 2005.

Wall Street Noir (By:Peter Spiegelman)

Brand new stories by: John Burdett, Peter Blauner, Charles Ardai, Henry Blodget, Twist Phelan, Larry Light, James Hime, Jason Starr, Lauren Sanders, Tim Broderick, Reed Farrel Coleman, Jim Fusilli, Mark Haskell Smith, and more.

Peter Spiegelman is the Shamus Award winning author of Black Maps Knopf, 2003, Death’s Little Helpers Knopf, 2005, and Red Cat Knopf, 2007, which feature private detective and Wall Street refugee John March. Spiegelman is a twenty year veteran of the financial services and software industries, and has worked with banks, brokerage houses, and central banks in major markets around the world. He lives in Connecticut.

Mexico City Noir (By:Paco Ignacio Taibo II)

Brand new stories by: Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Eugenio Aguirre, Eduardo Antonia Parra, Bernardo Fern ndez Bef, scar de la Borbolla, Rolo D ez, Victor Luiz Gonz lez, F.G. Haghenbeck, Juan Hern ndez Luna, Myriam Laurini, Eduardo Monteverde, and Julia Rodr guez. Paco Ignacio Taibo II was born in Gij n, Spain, and has lived in Mexico since 1958. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, which have been published in many languages around the world, including a mystery series starring Mexican Private Investigator H ctor Belascoar n Shayne. He is a professor of history at the Metropolitan University of Mexico City.

Haiti Noir (By:Edwidge Danticat)

Includes brand new stories by: Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint Eloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fi vre, Marvin Victor, Yanick Lahens, Louis Philipe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and others. Haiti has a tragic history and continues to be one of the most destitute places on the planet, especially in the aftermath of the earthquake. Here, however, Edwidge Danticat reveals that even while the subject matter remains dark, the caliber of Haitian writing is of the highest order.

The Best American Short Stories 1981

Short Stories by Ann Beattie, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Louis D. Rubin, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Tallent, Hortense Calisher, Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Hardwick, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories 1983

Short Stories by Ann Tyler, Bill Barich, John Updike, Carolyn Chute, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond Carver, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories 1986

Short Stories by Ann Beattie, Ethan Canin, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Alice Munro, Thomas McGuane, Lord Tweedsmuir, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties

The 1980s were one of the most fertile and controversial times for the Amer ican short story. Rich in craft and variety, this collection includes such c lassic and beloved stories as Peter Taylor’s ‘The Old Forest,’ Raymond Carve r’s ‘Cathedral,’ and other works by Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, and a host of exciting, newer talents. Hardcover edition also available. Houghton Mifflin

The Best American Short Stories 1993

The preeminent annual collection of short fiction features the writing of John Updike, Alice Munro, Wendell Berry, Diane Johnson, Lorrie Moore, Stephen Dixon, and Mary Gaitskill.

The Best American Short Stories 1994

These twenty short stories boldly and insightfully explore the extremes of human emotions. In her story ‘Night Talkers,’ Edwidge Danticat reunites a young man and the elderly aunt who raised him in Haiti. Anthony Doerr brings readers a naturalist who discovers the surprising healing powers of a deadly cone snail. Louise Erdrich writes of an Ojibwa fiddler whose music brings him deep and mysterious joy. Here are diverse and intriguing characters a kidnapper, an immigrant nanny, an amputee blues musician who are as surprised as the reader is at what brings them happiness. In his introduction, Walter Mosley explores the definition of a good short story, and writes, ‘The writers represented in this collection have told stories that suggest much larger ideas. I found myself presented with the challenge of simple human love contrasted against structures as large as religion and death. The desire to be loved or to be seen, represented on a canvas so broad that it would take years to explain all the roots that bring us to the resolution.’ Each of these stories bravely evokes worlds brim*ming with desire and loss, humanity and possibility. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy AllisonEdwidge DanticatE. L. DoctorowLouise ErdrichAdam HaslettZZ PackerMona SimpsonMary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 1995

These twenty short stories boldly and insightfully explore the extremes of human emotions. In her story ‘Night Talkers,’ Edwidge Danticat reunites a young man and the elderly aunt who raised him in Haiti. Anthony Doerr brings readers a naturalist who discovers the surprising healing powers of a deadly cone snail. Louise Erdrich writes of an Ojibwa fiddler whose music brings him deep and mysterious joy. Here are diverse and intriguing characters a kidnapper, an immigrant nanny, an amputee blues musician who are as surprised as the reader is at what brings them happiness. In his introduction, Walter Mosley explores the definition of a good short story, and writes, ‘The writers represented in this collection have told stories that suggest much larger ideas. I found myself presented with the challenge of simple human love contrasted against structures as large as religion and death. The desire to be loved or to be seen, represented on a canvas so broad that it would take years to explain all the roots that bring us to the resolution.’ Each of these stories bravely evokes worlds brim*ming with desire and loss, humanity and possibility. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy AllisonEdwidge DanticatE. L. DoctorowLouise ErdrichAdam HaslettZZ PackerMona SimpsonMary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 1996

Each fall, The Best American Short Stories provides a fresh showcase for this rich and unpredictable genre. Selected from an unusually wide variety of publications, the choices for 1996 place stories from esteemed national magazines alongside those from some of the smallest and most innovative literary journals. Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gordon, Robert Olen Butler, Alice Adams, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and an array of stunning new talent.

The Best American Short Stories 1997

The preeminent short fiction series since 1915, The Best American Short Stories is the only annual that offers the finest works chosen by a distinguished best selling guest editor. This year, E. Annie Proulx’s selection includes dazzling stories by Tobias Wolff, Donald Hall, Cynthia Ozick, Robert Stone, Junot D’az, and T. C. Boyle as well as an array of stunning new talent. In her introduction, Proulx writes that beyond their strength and vigor, these stories achieve ‘a certain intangible feel for the depth of human experience, not uncommonly expressed through a kind of dry humor.’ As ever, this year’s volume surprises and rewards.

The Best American Short Stories 1998

Edited by beloved storyteller Garrison Keillor, this year’s volume promises to be full of humor, surprises, and, as always, accomplished writing by new and familiar voices. The preeminent short fiction series since 1915, The Best American Short Stories is the only volume that annually offers the finest works chosen by a distinguished best selling author.

The Best American Short Stories 1999

‘What I look for most in a story,’ writes Amy Tan in her introduction to this year’s volume of The Best American Short Stories, ‘what I crave, what I found in these twenty one, is a distinctive voice that tells a story only that voice can tell.’ Tan found herself drawn to wonderfully original stories that satisfied her appetite for the magic and mystery she loved as a child, when she was addicted to fairy tales. In this vibrant collection, fantasy and truth coexist brilliantly in new works by writers such as Annie Proulx, Lorrie Moore, Nathan Englander, and Pam Houston. ‘The Sun, the Moon, the Stars,’ by Junot Diaz, features a young man trying to stave off heartbreak in a sacred cave in Santo Domingo. In ‘Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,’ by Chitra Divakaruni, a mother moves from India to California to be closer to her son, only to sacrifice something crucial along the way. In Melissa Hardy’s haunting story ‘The Uncharted Heart,’ a geologist unearths a shocking secret in the wilds of northern Ontario. ‘Maybe I’m still that kid who wants to see things I’ve never seen before,’ writes Tan. ‘I like being startled by images I never could have conjured up myself.’ With twenty one tales, each a fabulously rich journey into a different world, The Best American Short Stories 1999 is sure to surprise and delight.

The Best American Short Stories 2000

Still the only anthology shaped each year by a different guest editor always a preeminent master of the form THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES is the essential yearbook of the American literary scene. Here are the most talked about short stories of the year alongside undiscovered gems. In his introduction, guest editor E. L. Doctorow writes, ‘Here is the felt life conferred by the gifted storyteller…
who always raises two voices into the lonely universe, the character’s and the writer’s own.’ Doctorow has chosen a compelling variety of voices to usher in the new millennium, attesting to the astonishing range of human experience our best writers evoke. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content When a great annual collection comes out, it’s hard to know the reason why. Was there a bumper crop of high quality stories, or was this year’s guest editor especially gifted at winnowing out the good ones? Either way, the 2000 edition of The Best American Short Stories is a standout in a series that can be uneven. Its editor, E.L. Doctorow, seems to have a fondness for the ‘what if?’ story, the kind of tale that posits an imagination prodding question and then attempts to answer it. Nathan Englander’s ‘The Gilgul of Park Avenue’ asks: What if a WASPy financial analyst, riding in a cab one day, discovers to his surprise that he is irrevocably Jewish? In ‘The Ordinary Son,’ Ron Carlson asks: What if you are the only average person in a family of certifiable geniuses? And Allan Gurganus’s ‘He’s at the Office’ asks: What if the quintessential postwar American working man were forced to retire? This last story is narrated by the man’s grown son, who at the story’s opening takes his dad for a walk. Though it’s the present day, the father is still dressed in his full 1950s businessman regalia, including camel hair overcoat and felt hat. The two walk by a teenager. ‘The boy smiled. ‘Way bad look on you, guy.”

My father, seeking interpretation, stared at me. I simply shook my head no. I could not explain Dad to himself in terms of tidal fashion trends. All I said was ‘I think he likes you.’

The exchange typifies the writing showcased in this anthology: in these stories, again and again, we find a breakdown of human communication that is sprightly, humorous, and devastatingly complete. A few more of the terrific stories featured herein: Amy Bloom’s ‘The Story,’ a goofy metafiction about a villainous divorcee; Geoffrey Becker’s ‘Black Elvis,’ which tells of, well, a black Elvis; and Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Third and Final Continent,’ a story of an Indian man who moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like the collection itself, Lahiri’s story amas*ses a lovely, funny mood as it goes along. Claire Dederer

The Best American Short Stories of the Century

Since the series’ inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now The Best American Short Stories of the Century brings together the best of the best fifty five extraordinary stories that represent a century’s worth of unsurpassed accomplishments in this quintessentially American literary genre. Here are the stories that have endured the test of time: masterworks by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, and scores of others. These are the writers who have shaped and defined the landscape of the American short story, who have unflinchingly explored all aspects of the human condition, and whose works will continue to speak to us as we enter the next century. Their artistry is represented splendidly in these pages. THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES series has also always been known for making literary discoveries, and discovery proved to be an essential part of selecting the stories for this volume too. Collections from years past yielded a rich harvest of surprises, stories that may have been forgotten but still retain their relevance and luster. The result is a volume that not only gathers some of the most significant stories of our century between two covers but resurrects a handful of lost literary gems as well. Of all the great writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike’s contributions have spanned five consecutive decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his most recent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose stories from each decade that meet his own high standards of literary quality.

The Best American Short Stories 2001

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred and twenty outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.A wonderfully diverse collection, this year’s BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES from Hollywood to Hong Kong, from the Jersey shore to Wales, considering the biggest issues: love, war, health, success. Edited by the critically acclaimed, best selling author Barbara Kingsolver, The Best American Short Stories 2001 includes selections by Rick Bass, Ha Jin, Alice Munro, John Updike, and others. Highlighting exciting new voices as well as established masters of the form, this year’s collection is a testament to the good health of contemporary short fiction in this country.

The Best American Short Stories 2002

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.

This year’s Best American Short Stories features a rich mix of voices, from both intriguing new writers and established masters of the form like Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Ford, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Arthur Miller. The 2002 collection includes stories about everything from illicit love affairs to family, the immigrant experience and badly behaved children stories varied in subject but unified in their power and humanity. In the words of this year’s guest editor, the best selling author Sue Miller, ‘The American short story today is healthy and strong…
These stories arrived in the nick of time…
to teach me once more what we read fiction for.’

The Best American Short Stories 2003

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy Allison Edwidge Danticat E. L. Doctorow Louise Erdrich Adam Haslett ZZ Packer Mona Simpson Mary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 2004

Story for story, readers can’t beat The Best American Short Stories series…
Each year it offers the opportunity to dive into the current trends and fresh voices that define the modern American short story’ Chicago Tribune. This year’s most beloved short fiction anthology is edited by the best selling novelist Sue Miller, author of While I Was Gone, and, most recently, The World Below. The volume includes stories by Edwidge Danticat, Jill McCorkle, E. L. Doctorow, Arthur Miller, and Akhil Sharma, among others. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content In her opening remarks to The Best American Short Stories 2002, guest editor Sue Miller notes the difficulty of reading fiction produced during 2001, the year of the September 11 terrorist attacks. She also remarks that by the time she had finalized her 20 selections, this act of reading had restored her faith both in fiction’s significance and its ability to tap into timeless themes. The 2002 anthology includes stories best described as realist fiction or traditional fiction, many set in contemporary times. The tales range from E.L. Doctorow’s ‘A House on the Plains,’ a murder set at the turn of the century, to pieces with more recent settings, like ‘Puppy’ by Richard Ford, which shows how a New Orleans couple deals or doesn’t deal with the appearance of a stray dog. Both Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Nobody’s Business’ and Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Seven’ deftly portray the disconnection a semi assimilated Indian American and Haitian American couple experience both as partners and as U.S. citizens. Leonard Michael’s ‘Nachman from Los Angeles,’ in contrast, adds some levity to the mix. Miller adds in her preface that maybe next year the tales will depart further from tradition, but judging from this volume no departure is necessary: the selections take the reader on a delightful journey through some of America’s best contemporary writers. Jane Hodges

The Best American Short Stories 2005

The Best American Series First, Best, and Best Selling

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.

The Best American Short Stories 2005 includes

Dennis Lehane Tom Perrotta Alice Munro Edward P. Jones Joy Williams Joyce Carol Oates Thomas McGuane Kelly Link Charles D’Ambrosio Cory Doctorow George Saunders and others

Michael Chabon, guest editor, is the best selling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, A Model World, and, most recently, The Final Solution. His novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.

The Best American Short Stories 2006

While a single short story may have a difficult time raising enough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization, short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees, blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you can think about, writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006.

This vibrant, varied sampler of the American literary scene revels in life’s little absurdities, captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimately shares subtle insight and compassion. In The View from Castle Rock, the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictional account of her Scottish ancestors emigration to Canada in 1818. Nathan Englander s cast of young characters in How We Avenged the Blums confronts a bully dubbed The Anti Semite to both comic and tragic ends. In Refresh, Refresh, Benjamin Percy gives a forceful, heart wrenching look at a young man s choices when his father along with most of the men in his small town is deployed to Iraq. Yiyun Li s After a Life reveals secrets, hidden shame, and cultural change in modern China. And in Tatooizm, Kevin Moffett weaves a story full of humor and humanity about a young couple s relationship that has run its course.

Ann Patchett brought unprecedented enthusiasm and judiciousness to The Best American Short Stories 2006 , writes Katrina Kenison in her foreword, and she is, surely, every story writer s ideal reader, eager to love, slow to fault, exquisitely attentive to the text and all that lies beneath it.

The Best American Short Stories 2007

In his introduction to this volume, Stephen King writes, Talent does more than come out; it bursts out, again and again, doing exuberant cartwheels while the band plays ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’…
Talent can t help itself; it roars along in fair weather or foul, not sparing the fireworks. It gets emotional. It struts its stuff. In fact, that’s its job. Wonderfully eclectic, The Best American Short Stories 2007 collects stories by writers of undeniable talent, both newcomers and favorites. These stories examine the turning points in life when we, as children or parents, lovers or friends or colleagues, must break certain rules in order to remain true to ourselves. In T. C. Boyle s heartbreaking Balto, a thirteen year old girl provides devastating courtroom testimony in her father s trial. Aryn Kyle s charming story Allegiance shows a young girl caught between her despairing British mother and motherly American father. In The Bris, Eileen Pollack brilliantly writes of a son struggling to fulfill his filial obligations, even when they require a breach of morality and religion. Kate Walbert s stunning Do Something portrays one mother s impassioned and revolutionary refusal to accept her son s death. And in Richard Russo s graceful Horseman, an English professor comes to understand that plagiarism reveals more about a student than original work can. New series editor Heidi Pitlor writes, Stephen King s dedication, unflagging hard work, and enthusiasm for excellent writing shone through on nearly a daily basis this past year…
We agreed, disagreed, and in the end very much concurred on the merit of the twenty stories chosen. The result is a vibrant assortment of stories and voices brim*ming with attitude, deep wisdom, and rare compassion.

The Best Short Stories of 1921, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

Edward Joseph Harrington O’Brien 1890 1941 was an American author, poet, editor and anthologist. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Boston College and Harvard University. He was noted for compiling and editing an annual collection of The Best Short Stories by American authors at the beginning of the twentieth century, and also a series of The Best Short Stories by British authors. They proved to be highly influential and popular. He was also a noted author, his works including White Fountains 1917 and The Forgotten Threshold 1918.

The Best American Short Stories 2008

This brilliant collection, edited by the award winning and perennially provocative Salman Rushdie, boasts a magnificent array Library Journal of voices both new and recognized. With Rushdie at the helm, the 2008 edition reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect Publishers Weekly. We all live in and with and by stories, every day, whoever and wherever we are. The freedom to tell each other the stories of ourselves, to retell the stories of our culture and beliefs, is profoundly connected to the larger subject of freedom itself. Salman Rushdie, editorThe Best American Short Stories 2008 includes KEVIN BROCKMEIER ALLEGRA GOODMAN A. M. HOMES NICOLE KRAUSS JONATHAN LETHEM STEVEN MILLHAUSER DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN ALICE MUNRO GEORGE SAUNDERS TOBIAS WOLFF and others

The Best American Short Stories 2009

Edited by critically acclaimed, best selling author Alice Sebold, the stories in this year’s collection serve as a provacative literary ‘antenna for what is going on in the world’ Chicago Tribune. The collection boasts great variety from ‘famous to first timers, sifted from major magazines and little reviews, grand and little worlds’ St. Louis Post Dispatch, ensuring yet another rewarding, eduring edition of the oldest and best selling Best American.

The Best American Short Stories 2010

Edited by the award winning, best selling author Richard Russo, this year’s collection boasts a satisfying chorus of twenty stories that are by turns playful, ironic, somber, and meditative Wall Street Journal. With the masterful Russo picking the best of the best, America s oldest and best selling story anthology is sure to be of enduring quality Chicago Tribune this year.

The Best American Short Stories 2011

With a New AfterwordAs a prizewinning foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Geraldine Brooks spent six years covering the Middle East through wars, insurrections, and the volcanic upheaval of resurgent fundamentalism. Yet for her, headline events were only the backdrop to a less obvious but more enduring drama: the daily life of Muslim women. Nine Parts of Desire is the story of Brooks’ intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. Defying our stereotypes about the Muslim world, Brooks’ acute analysis of the world’s fastest growing religion deftly illustrates how Islam’s holiest texts have been misused to justify repression of women, and how male pride and power have warped the original message of a once liberating faith.

The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

Bestselling writers such as Mary Higgins Clark, Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Jay McInerney, and Donald E. Westlake stand alongside an impressive array of new talent. As guest editor Sue Grafton writes in her Introduction, ‘Nowhere is iniquity, wrongdoing, and reparation more satisfying to behold than in the well crafted yarns spun by the writers represented here’.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

This seventh installment of the premier mystery anthology boasts pulse quickening stories from all reaches of the genre, selected by the world renowned mystery writer Michael Connelly. His choices include a Prohibition era tale of a scorned lover’s revenge, a Sherlock Holmes inspired mystery solved by an actor playing the famous detective onstage, stories of a woman’s near fatal search for self discovery, a bar owner’s gutsy attempt to outwit the mob, and a showdown between double crossing detectives, and a tale of murder by psychology. This year’s edition features mystery favorites Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, James Crumley, Joyce Carol Oates, and Brendan DuBois as well as talented up and comers, for a diverse collection sure to thrill all readers. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Edgar Award winner Michael Connelly has chosen a collection of stellar stories by the genre’s luminaries and by the most promising newer talents in the field. As usual, this year’s Best American Mystery Stories will delight readers with dramatic variety and unsurpassed quality. James CrumleyPete DexterBrendan DuBoisElmore LeonardWalter MosleyJoyce Carol Oates

Dangerous Women

Prepare to meet the most seductively female and the most shockingly fatal of femmes fatales, brought to you by seventeen of today’s finest authors of mystery and suspense fiction. Award winning editor Otto Penzler presents a collection of short and sizzling masterpieces of kisses and kiss offs, gams and gats, published for the first time anywhere. In ‘Third Party,’ Jay McInerney takes you on a wild ride through the Paris night with a party girl built for speed and sin ‘Rendezvous,’ Nelson DeMille’s first short story in twenty five years, plunges you into a Vietnam jungle where the bloodiest scourge of this man’s army is no man at all back in the U.S.A. of ‘Louly and Pretty Boy,’ Elmore Leonard introduces a Depression era teenage gun moll who loves Pretty Boy Floyd more than she likes knocking off filling stations and Michael Connelly’s colorful and ironic ‘Cielo Azul’ shows how a nameless woman left dead on a Los Angeles hillside can be the most lethal prey of all. These and a bevy of other very bad girls cast their criminal spells through the powerful voices of Lorenzo Carcaterra, Joyce Carol Oates, John Connolly, Thomas H. Cook, Jeffery Deaver, J. A. Jance, Andrew Klavan, Laura Lippman, Ed McBain, Walter Mosley, Anne Perry, Ian Rankin, and S. J. Rozan in stories as irresistible as the antihero*ines that blaze through their pages.’I’m not usually given to superlatives, but Dangerous Women may be the best, most varied, and colorful mystery anthology of all time.’ Janet Evanovich’Otto Penzler knows more about crime fiction than most people know about anything, and proves it once more in this brilliant anthology.’ Robert B. Parker’Wow, what memorable dames! What terrific short stories! Dangerous Women is a winning collection.’ Susan Isaacs

Transgressions

Forge Books is proud to present an amazing collection of novellas, compiled by New York Times bestselling author Ed McBain. Transgressions is a quintessential classic of never before published tales from today’s very best novelists. Faeturing: ‘Walking Around Money’ by Donald E. Westlake: The master of the comic mystery is back with an all new novella featuring hapless crook John Dortmunder, who gets involved in a crime that supposedly no one will ever know happened. Naturally, when something it too good to be true, it usually is, and Dortmunder is going to get to the bottom of this caper before he’s left holding the bag.’Hostages’ by Anne Perry: The bestselling historical mystery author has written a tale of beautiful yet still savage Ireland today. In their eternal struggle for freedom, there is about to be a changing of the guard in the Irish Republican Army. Yet for some, old habits and honor still die hard, even at gunpoint.’The Corn Maiden’ by Joyce Carol Oates: When a fourteen year old girl is abducted in a small New York town, the crime starts a spiral of destruction and despair as only this master of psychological suspense could write it.’Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line’ by Walter Mosley: Felix Orlean is a New York City journalism student who needs a job to cover his rent. An ad in the paper leads him to Archibald Lawless, and a descent into a shadow world where no one and nothing is as it first seems.’The Resurrection Man’ by Sharyn McCrumb’: During America’s first century, doctors used any means necessary to advance their craft including dissecting corpses. Sharyn McCrumb brings the South of the 1850s to life in this story of a man who is assigned to dig up bodies to help those that are still alive.’Merely Hate’ by Ed McBain: When a string of Muslim cabdrivers are killed, and the evidence points to another ethnic group, the detectives of the 87th Precinct must hunt down a killer before the city explodes in violence.’The Things They Left Behind’ by Stephen King: In the wake of the worst disaster on American soil, one man is coming to terms with the aftermath of the Twin Towers when he begins finding the things they left behind.’The Ransome Women’ by John Farris: A young and beautiful starving artist is looking to catch a break when her idol, the reclusive portraitist John Ransome offers her a lucrative year long modeling contract. But how long will her excitement last when she discovers the fate shared by all Ransome’s past subjects? ‘Forever’ by Jeffery Deaver: Talbot Simms is an unusual cop he’s a statistician with the Westbrook County Sheriff Department. When two wealthy couples in the county commit suicide one right after the other, he thinks that it isn’t suicide it’s murder, and he’s going to find how who was behind it, and how the did it.’Keller’s Adjustment’ by Lawrence Block: Everyone’s favorite hit man is back in MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block’s novella, where the philosophical Keller deals out philosophy and murder on a meandering road trip from one end of the America to the other.