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18 Brilliant Books for Fall: John Woman

John WomanJohn Woman
By Walter Mosley
320 pages; Atlantic Monthly Press
Available at:

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble |iBooks | IndieBound
After murdering a man, 17-year-old Cornelius flees New York, adopts a new name, and gains fame for the provocative ideas he’s borrowed from his dead father. An intellectual romp by the renowned mystery writer.
— Hamilton Cain

(via oprah.com)

John Woman

John Woman

AmazonB&NYour local bookstore Available: Sept 4, 2018

A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor―while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows.

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 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.

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.

Get2Know: Walter Mosley (The Tea)

Walter Mosley talks about Down the River Unto the Sea with The Tea.

(via Youtube)

WPKN Community Radio Interview with Novelist Walter Mosley

Kevin Gallagher: My guest on this segment is one of my favorite authors Walter Mosley creator of the Easy Rawlins Detective series. Some of you may only know of his work through the movie Devil with the Blue Dress, with Denzel Washington, but he is much more than that. Walter Mosley is here on the occasion of the publishing of his latest novel “Down the River Unto the Sea” which features yet another new memorable fictional Detective “Joe King Oliver”.

Interview on SoundCloud

The Tea May Book Selection: Down The River Unto The Sea

The Tea reviews “Down The River Unto The Sea” as part of their May Book Selection.

Down the River unto the Sea

Down the River unto the SeaIntroducing King Oliver

AmazonB&NYour local bookstore Available: February 20, 2018

On February 20th, Mulholland Books will publish a new novel from Walter Mosley titled Down the River Unto the Sea. In this book a former NYPD cop once imprisoned for a crime he did not commit must solve two cases: that of a man wrongly condemned to die, and his own.

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 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.

Running in parallel with King’s own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Joined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King’s client’s, and King’s own.

 

Mystery Writers of America Interview

Laurie R. King in conversation with Walter Mosley, June 3, 2017. Sponsored by Mystery Writers of America, NorCal chapter, and by the Bay Area Book Fest.

Light the Dark

Light the DarkLIGHT THE DARK, a new collection of 46 acclaimed authors writing about their creative process and what inspires them, is now available from Penguin Books. The collection includes Walter Mosley’s essay titled “How I Awoke” on how discovering Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye at the age of fourteen changed his life. “For the first time I understood the power of language to reach beyond the real and into the metaphysical and metaphor…It was a step beyond the limitations of the physical world and into a realm where a thing and its opposite could meet and magically become something else.”

The People, The Press & The President

The government is declaring war on the press and the press is fighting to uphold the journalistic freedom necessary for democracy to function. Genuine news media outlets are discredited at every turn while fake news — the real fake news — gains influence. It’s no wonder that public trust in the media is at an unprecedented low. Read the rest of this entry »

Author Walter Mosley talks about creating, killing and reviving Easy Rawlins

Walter MosleySOUTH BEND — At the end of the novel “Blonde Faith,” Walter Mosley decided that Easy Rawlins, his most famous character, had to die.

So after 11 Easy Rawlins novels since “Devil in a Blue Dress” debuted in 1990, Mosley decided to allow Rawlins to have a fatal accident at the end of “Blonde Faith” in 2007.

Mosley told an audience at the St. Joseph County Public Library that he didn’t know where to take Rawlins, the black World War II veteran private eye whom the world first met in “Devil in a Blue Dress.”

“‘Blonde Faith’ was a very romantic novel in a way and I really liked that,” he said. “I enjoyed it, but I felt that I was repeating myself.” Read the rest of this entry »