The New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels delivers “a taut, riveting, and artfully edgy saga” of one man’s self-transformation (Kirkus). At twelve years old, Cornelius Jones, the son of an Italian-American woman and a black man from Mississippi, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village—until the innocent scheme goes tragically wrong. Years later, his dying father imparts this piece of wisdom to Cornelius: The person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself—becoming Professor John Woman, a man who will spread his father’s teachings through the classrooms of an unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past. Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world

A new collection of short fiction from the Edgar Award-winning author of Devil in a Blue Dress and Trouble is What I Do. With his extraordinary fiction and gripping television writing, Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley’s most accomplished short stories to showcase the full range of his remarkable talent. Touching, contemplative, and always surprising, these stories introduce an array of imperfect characters—awkward, self-defeating, elf-involved, or just plain odd. In The Awkward Black Man, Mosley overturns the stereotypes that corral black male characters and paints subtle, powerful portraits of unique individuals. In "The Good News Is," a man’s insecurity about his weight gives way to illness and a loneliness so intense that he’d do anything for a little human comfort. "Pet Fly," previously published in the New Yorker, follows a man working as a mailroom clerk—a solitary job for which he is overqualified—and the unforeseen repercussions he endures when he attempts to forge a new connection. And "Almost Alyce" chronicles failed loves, family loss, alcoholism, and a Zen approach to the art of begging that proves surprisingly effective.

Interviews with the creator of the Easy Rawlins detective series and the Socrates Fortlow series of crime novels

Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator turned hard-boiled detective always willing to do what it takes to get things done in the racially charged, dark underbelly of Los Angeles. But when Easy is approached by a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran- a young white man who claims to have gotten into a fight protecting a white woman from a black man- he knows he shouldn't take the case. Though he sees nothing but trouble in the brooding ex-soldier's eyes, Easy, a vet himself, feels a kinship form between them. 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. Set against the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s, BLOOD GROVE is ultimately a story about survival, not only of the body but also the soul. Widely hailed as "incomparable" (Chicago Tribune) and "dazzling" (Tampa Bay Times), Walter Mosley proves that he's at the top of his game in this bold return to the endlessly entertaining series that has kept fans on their toes for years.

Annotation 'Conversations with Walter Mosley' covers the breadth of Mosley's career & explores many of the influences on his work, including Camus, Shakespeare & Dickens, as well as speculative fiction & the hard-boiled noir of the detective tradition.

Millions of men and (no doubt many) women have watched famed black porn queen Debbie Dare—she of the blond wig and blue contacts—“do it” on television and computer screens in every combination of partners and positions imaginable. But after an unexpected and thunderous on-set orgasm catches her unawares, Debbie returns home to find her porn-producer husband dead, electrocuted in their hot tub in the midst of “auditioning” an aspiring young starlet. Burdened with massive debt—incurred by her husband, and which various L.A. heavies want to collect on—Debbie must find a way to extricate herself from the peculiar subculture of the porn industry and reconcile herself to sacrifices she’s made along the way. In Debbie Doesn’t Do it Anymore, the creator of the Easy Rawlins series has painted a moving portrait of a resilient soul in search of salvation and a cure for grief.

Walter Mosley is one of America’s bestselling novelists, known for his critically acclaimed series of mysteries featuring private investigator Easy Rawlins. His writing is hard-hitting, often limned with a political subtext, and aimed at a broad audience. Years ago, when Mosley was working on a doctorate in political theory, he envisioned writing very different kinds of books from those for which he has become celebrated. But once you’ve been tagged as a novelist, and in Mosley’s case, a genre writer, even a bestselling one, it is hard to get an airing for ideas that cross those boundaries. Folding the Red into the Black has grown out of Mosley’s public talks, which have gotten both enthusiastic and agitated responses, making him feel the ideas in those talks should be explored in greater depth. Mosley’s is an elastic mind, and in this short polemic he frees himself to explore some novel ideas. He draws on personal experiences and insights as an African-American, a Jew, and one of our great writers to present an alternative manifesto of sorts: “We need to throw off the unbearable weight of bureaucratic capitalist and socialist demands; demands that exist to perpetuate these systems, not to praise and raise humanity to its full promise. And so I propose the word, the term Untopia.”