Walter Mosley
1) John Woman
Author
Summary
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...
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Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 14
Summary
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 favor. 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...
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Series
Summary
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
Pub. Date
2020.
Summary
"Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to display the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories-heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved,...
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 13
Summary
When a boxer-turned-revolutionary kidnaps the daughter of a weapons manufacturer and threatens to publicly execute her in exchange for a lucrative ransom, Easy Rawlins is tapped by the LAPD to make a difficult border crossing to navigate an ensuing standoff.
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 12
Summary
We last saw Easy Rawlins in Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives. Soon, he and his murderous sidekick, Mouse, are cruising the mean streets of L.A. in all their psychedelic 1967 glory to look for a young black man who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator's Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual,...
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Summary
Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days--shortened now by the medical experiment--to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting...
9) Blood grove
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 15
Summary
"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."--Publisher description.
10) Every man a king
Author
Series
King Oliver novel volume 2
Summary
After being asked to investigate the charges against a white nationalist accused of treason and murder, Joe King Oliver, with help from bodyguard and mercenary Oliya Ruez, embarks on a winding quest to expose the truth.
When friend of the family and multi-billionaire Roger Ferris comes to Joe with an assignment, he's got no choice but to accept, even if the case is a tough one to stomach. White nationalist Alfred Xavier Quiller has been accused of...
11) Touched: a novel
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Summary
"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."--
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Summary
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 basement for the summer, Charles needs the money too badly to say no. He knows that the stranger...
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Formats
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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 industry. 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 which way and with every combination...
14) 47
Author
Lexile Measure
860L
Summary
Number 47, 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.
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Series
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Fearless Jones and Paris Minton, stars of the bestsellers Fearless Jones and Fear Itself, return in a high-velocity, larger-than-life thriller about family, betrayal, and revenge.
"I'm in trouble, Paris." Paris Minton has heard these words before. They mean only one thing: that his neck is on the line too. So when they are uttered by his lowlife cousin Ulysses S. Grant, Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses —...
"I'm in trouble, Paris." Paris Minton has heard these words before. They mean only one thing: that his neck is on the line too. So when they are uttered by his lowlife cousin Ulysses S. Grant, Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses —...
16) The wave
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Summary
Errols 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...
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Summary
"Two 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" --
Author
Pub. Date
2014
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Summary
In a Las Vegas hotel room, a man awakes to confront his destiny
Dreaming, Jack hears voices: a frightened child in a hospital, a woman cheating on her husband, a death-row inmate. When he wakes, the voices recede, but they do not vanish. He is in a luxurious hotel room on the Vegas strip, and his body is covered in scars. Jack Strong is a patchwork man, his flesh melded together from dozens of men and women, and his mind is the same way....
Dreaming, Jack hears voices: a frightened child in a hospital, a woman cheating on her husband, a death-row inmate. When he wakes, the voices recede, but they do not vanish. He is in a luxurious hotel room on the Vegas strip, and his body is covered in scars. Jack Strong is a patchwork man, his flesh melded together from dozens of men and women, and his mind is the same way....
20) Walkin' the dog
Author
Lexile Measure
750L
Summary
A former black convict in Watts tries to go straight, holding a steady job, helping the town's youth and philosophizing with friends. But when a policeman starts raping and killing blacks, he turns vigilante.