Walter Mosley

"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."-- Martin, his...

"MERGE Raleigh Redman loved Nicci Charbon until she left him heartbroken. Then he hit the lotto for $26 million, quit his minimum wage job and set his sights on one goal: reading the entire collection of lectures in the Popular Educator Library, the only thing his father left behind after he died. As Raleigh is trudging through the eighth volume, he notices something in his apartment that at first seems ordinary but quickly reveals itself to be from...

Private detective Easy Rawlins looks for a gangster's girlfriend in 1940s L.A.

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...

A novel exploring the early years of Easy Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, protagonists in a current black PI series. The setting is Texas, the time is 1939, and the two embark on a car ride which will engulf them in the bayou world of voodoo, sex and murder.

The time is 1956 and, things being what they are, no one in official Los Angeles is much bothered as a serial killer proceeds to murder three black bar girls, leaving a distinctive mark each time. But when a white stripper, Cyndi Starr, aka "The White Butterfly" on stage, is similarly murdered - and she turns out to be a UCLA coed and the daughter of a politically powerful prosecutor - all hell breaks loose. The heat is finally on to find the killer....

A collection of six interconnected Easy Rawlins short mysteries.

Just after devastating riots tear through Los Angeles in 1965 -- when anger is high and fear still smolders everywhere -- the police turn up at Easy Rawlins' doorstep. He expects the worst, as usual. But they've come to ask for his help.

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...

A beautiful young woman walks into PI Leonid McGill's office with a stack of cash. She's an artist, she tells Leonid, who's escaped poverty via marriage to a rich collector. A rich collector with two ex-wives whose deaths are shrouded in mystery. She says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid's help. Will sorting out the woman's crooked tale bring Leonid straight to death's door?