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Walter Mosley

Biography

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the National Book Award’s 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars and several NAACP Image Awards. His work is translated into 25 languages. He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s “Snowfall.”

Walter Mosley

Books by Walter Mosley

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

When friend of the family and multi-billionaire Roger Ferris comes to Joe King Oliver with an assignment, he has no choice but to accept. White nationalist Alfred Xavier Quiller has been accused of murder and the sale of sensitive information to the Russians. Ferris has reason to believe that Quiller has been set up, and he needs King to see if the charges hold. This linear assignment becomes a winding quest to uncover the extent of Quiller’s dealings, understand Ferris’ skin in the game, and get to the bottom of who is working for whom. Even with the help of bodyguard and mercenary Oliya Ruez, the machine King is up against proves relentless and unsparing. As King gets closer to exposing the truth, he and his loved ones barrel towards grave danger.

by Walter Mosley - Adventure, Dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction

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. Think Octavia Butler meets Jeff VanderMeer meets Jordan Peele.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. He and his lover were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences. Meanwhile, Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Short Stories

Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, with both his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. THE AWKWARD BLACK MAN collects 17 of his most accomplished short stories to showcase 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 and, on the whole, odd. He overturns the stereotypes that corral black male characters and paints a subtle, powerful portrait of each of these unique individuals.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

Leonid McGill has spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking. Phillip "Catfish" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret.

by Walter Mosley - Nonfiction, Reference, Writing

In his essential writing guide, THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow-up, he guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. In a series of instructive and conversational chapters, Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction's most essential elements: character and character development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting and rewriting again.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction

At 12 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, following his father’s death and his mother’s disappearance, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself --- as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman’s teachings into the classrooms of his 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.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

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 that 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 are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of --- and why.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

Easy Rawlins has started a new detective agency with two trusted partners and has a diamond ring in his pocket for his longtime girlfriend, Bonnie Shay. His life finally seems to be heading towards something that looks like normalcy, but, inevitably, a case gets in the way. Easy's friend Mouse calls in a favor --- he wants Easy to meet with Rufus Tyler, an aging convict whom everyone calls Charcoal Joe. Joe's friend's son, Seymour, has been charged with the murder of two white men. Joe is convinced the young man is innocent and wants Easy to prove it no matter what the cost. But seeing as how Seymour was found standing over the dead bodies, and considering the racially charged nature of the crime, that will surely prove to be a tall order.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

P.I. Leonid McGill isn’t usually one to refuse a case. But when Hiram Stent, a man down on his luck, begs him to find a cousin who is about to inherit millions of dollars, he senses something fishy. His instincts prove right: The night after he turns Hiram away, Hiram is found dead and Leonid’s office is broken into. Feeling partly responsible for this bizarre turn of events, Leonid is forced to open an investigation that will pull him into the lurid history of an old-money New York family.

by Walter Mosley

Two people brought together by a horrific act are united in a common cause by the powers of the Silver Box. They 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.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

A black ex-boxer self-named Uhuru Nolica, the leader of a revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth, has kidnapped Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, from her dorm at UC Santa Barbara. If they don't receive the money, weapons and apology they demand, "Rose Gold" will die --- horribly and publicly. So the FBI, the State Department and the LAPD turn to Easy Rawlins, the one man who can cross the necessary borders to resolve this dangerous standoff.

by Walter Mosley - Mystery

A black ex-boxer self-named Uhuru Nolica, the leader of a revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth, has kidnapped Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, from her dorm at UC Santa Barbara. If they don't receive the money, weapons and apology they demand, "Rose Gold" will die --- horribly and publicly. So the FBI, the State Department and the LAPD turn to Easy Rawlins, the one man who can cross the necessary borders to resolve this dangerous standoff.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Literary, Literary Fiction

When famed black porn queen Debbie Dare comes home to her insatiable former porn star and "film producer" husband, Theon Pinkney, she discovers he has died in a case of hot tub electrocution while "auditioning" an aspiring "starlet." Burdened with his remaining debts, Debbie must reckon with her life spent in porn, her estrangement from her family, and the child she had to give up. She is done with porn, but now must figure out what comes next.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

Private eye Easy Rawlins and his murderous sidekick, Mouse, are looking for a young black man, Evander “Little Green” Noon, 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 and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

As his own life unravels, Leonid McGill investigates a complex case. Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man in bed with her friend. Zella didn't remember shooting him, but she didn't deny it either. And the police found $80,000 from a recent heist hidden in her storage space.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction, Mystery

Leonid McGill can't say no to the beautiful woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash and a wild story. Leonid knows better than to believe her, but he can't afford to turn her away, even if he knows the woman's tale will bring him straight to death's door.

by Walter Mosley - Fiction

 

Ninety-one-year-old Ptolemy has sunk into a lonely dementia. But when a doctor offers him a new drug that guarantees he won’t live to see 92, but that he’ll spend his last days in total mental clarity, Ptolemy discovers a shocking and unexpected past.

by Walter Mosley - Literary Fiction, Mystery

 

In Los Angeles, during the year 1948, Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs....