Walter Mosley
1) John Woman
Author
Language
English
Description
At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"New York City-based private eye Leonid McGill finds himself in the unusual pickle of trying to balance his cases with his chaotic personal life"-- Provided by publisher.
Investigating the murder of a client he initially refused to help, Leonid navigates difficult personal elements in his own life while uncovering dark secrets about the victim's old-money family and its missing heiress.
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, tries to put his past life behind him. But it's not that easy when someone like Tony "The Suit" Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Leonid McGill's spent a lifetime building his reputation as a private investigator in New York. His seemingly infallible instincts and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip "Catfish" Worry comes knocking. Catfish is a ninety-four-year-old Mississippi blues-man who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. The opportunity...
5) Fear itself
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Knowing a missing man to be innocent of the murder charge levied against him, Paris Minton hires former sheriff Jefferson Hill to investigate, but when the sheriff goes missing as well, Minton enlists Fearless Jones for the case. Set in 1950s Los Angeles.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"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 low-life cousin Ulysses S. Grant, Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses - "Useless" to everyone except his mother - who needs enemies?" "But trouble always finds an open window, and when Useless's mother, Three Hearts, shows up from Louisiana to look for her son, Paris...
Author
Language
English
Description
In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never-less-than-moving literary novel from Walter Mosley, acclaimed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult-entertainment industy. Millions of men (and, no doubt, many women) have watched the famed black porn queen-she of the blond wig and blue contact lenses-'do it' on television and computer screens every wich way and with every combination...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools and practical advice needed to write a novel in a single year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the reader through the fundamental building blocks of fiction to deliver a master class on the writer's craft. In a series of conversational and instructive chapters, Mosley breaks down the art of fiction to its most...
10) Walkin' the dog
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Socrates Fortlow, 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, Socrates turns vigilante.
11) Black Betty
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 4
Language
English
Description
"For most Black Americans, the 1960s were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins, Los Angeles's mean streets were never meaner—or more deadly. Racial tensions are high—Black folks avoid even stepping foot in white neighborhoods. Despite the ongoing civil rights movement, racism still rules the streets and police officers are no exception. So when a white man approaches Easy with a wad of cash to find a missing person, Easy would is tempted...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Black Authors - Fiction
Black History Month 2026: Adults
Celebrate Short Fiction Day
Short Story Collections
Black History Month 2026: Adults
Celebrate Short Fiction Day
Short Story Collections
Description
"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,...
14) White butterfly
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 3
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
The police don't show up on Easy Rawlins's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956, and it takes more than one murdered black girl before the cops get interested. Now they need Easy. As he says: " I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto." But Easy turns them down. He's married now, a father - and his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same brutal death, and the...
Author
Language
English
Description
When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the act that he witnesses seems to dissolve all the boundaries he knows. 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. It marks new territory for the bestselling author of Devil in a Blue Dress and countless other books; it will surprise,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Ptolemy Bent—"Popo"—is different. At an age when most babies are cooing "Mama, " Popo was speaking in complete sentences. He was reading college textbooks when he was still too young for nursery school. Popo may just be the smartest human being on Earth. And he spends all his time listening to the radio . . . to white noise that comes drifting down from the sky like stardust.
Chill Bent is a two-time loser with a hair-trigger temper. After...
Chill Bent is a two-time loser with a hair-trigger temper. After...
17) The Greatest
Author
Language
English
Description
It was never proven that Fera Jones was the product of SepFem-G, the outlawed genetics program that came out of the feminist studies program at Smith College. But one thing was absolutely certain: When it came to boxing, Fera Jones floated like a butterfly and stung like a B-1 Bomber. . .
But would her incomparable skills in the ring withstand an onslaught from the outside world? Her father and trainer, Leon, is addicted to Pulse—a gene drug...
But would her incomparable skills in the ring withstand an onslaught from the outside world? Her father and trainer, Leon, is addicted to Pulse—a gene drug...
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 5
Language
English
Description
1964: Easy has given up the street life and has taken on a job as a supervising custodian at Sojourner Truth High School. But his newly found carefree lifestyle is threatened when two corpses are discovered at the school and the police think Easy is involved.
Author
Language
English
Description
The citizenry of America struggles for survival in a dangerous, twisted futureIn Whispers in the Dark, an ex-con sells his organs to ensure his brilliant nephew's future. The boy will grow up to have the highest IQ ever recorded, but the uncle, who sold his eyes, won't be able to see it. In Voices, a history professor becomes addicted to a drug called pulse, which gives him access to a world of vivid fantasy while tearing his brain to shreds. By
...



