Walter Mosley

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Walter Mosley's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    62 Books (5 Series)
  • First Book:
    June 1990
  • Latest Book:
    June 2024
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Full Series List in Order

An Easy Rawlins Mystery

1 - Devil in a Blue Dress (Jun-1990)
2 - A Red Death (Jul-1991)
3 - White Butterfly (Jul-1992)
4 - Black Betty (Jun-1994)
5 - A Little Yellow Dog (Jun-1996)
6 - Gone Fishin' (Jan-1997)
7 - Bad Boy Brawly Brown (Jul-2002)
8 - Six Easy Pieces (Jan-2003)
9 - Little Scarlet (Jul-2004)
10 - Cinnamon Kiss (Sep-2005)
11 - Blonde Faith (Oct-2007)
12 - Little Green (May-2013)
13 - Rose Gold (Sep-2014)
14 - Charcoal Joe (Jun-2016)
15 - Blood Grove (Feb-2021)

Fearless Jones

1 - Fearless Jones (Jun-2001)
2 - Fear Itself (Jul-2003)
3 - Fear of the Dark (Sep-2006)

A King Oliver Novel

1 - Down the River Unto the Sea (Feb-2018)
2 - Every Man a King (Feb-2023)

A Leonid McGill Mystery

1 - The Long Fall (Apr-2009)
2 - Known to Evil (Apr-2010)
3 - When the Thrill Is Gone (Mar-2011)
4 - All I Did Was Shoot My Man (Feb-2012)
5 - And Sometimes I Wonder about You (May-2015)
6 - Trouble Is What I Do (Feb-2020)

Socrates Fortlow

1 - Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Nov-1997)
2 - Walkin' the Dog (Jan-1999)
3 - The Right Mistake (Oct-2008)

Book List in Order: 62 titles

  • Devil in a Blue Dress

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 1

    Los Angeles, 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 ...

  • A Red Death

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 2

    It's 1953 in Red-baiting, blacklisting Los Angeles, a moral tar-pit ready to swallow Easy Rawlins. Easy is out of "the hurting business" and into the housing (and the favor) business when a racist IRS agent nails him for tax evasion. Special Agent Da...

  • White Butterfly

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 3

    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 preci...

  • Black Betty

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 4

    1961: Los Angeles' mean streets were never meaner ... or more deadly... .For most black Americans, these were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins the present looked bleak, the future worse. Ordinarily, he'd have thrown the two bills in the sl...

  • R.L.'s Dream

    It’s 1939 and Easy and Mouse are young men just setting out in life -- Easy has yet to develop his skill for unraveling the secrets of others, and Mouse has yet to kill his first man. But all that will soon change.Soupspoon Wise is dying on the unf...

  • A Little Yellow Dog

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 5

    November 1963: Easy's settled into a steady gig as a school custodian. It's a quiet, simple existence--but a few moments of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that. When the lady vanishes, Easy's stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops on h...

  • Gone Fishin'

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 6

    In the beginning, there was Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander--two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a "borrowed" Ford headed for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he ...

  • Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

    Socrates Fortlow - 1

    New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley introduces an "astonishing character" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) in this acclaimed collection of entwined tales. Meet Socrates Fortlow, a tough ex-con seeking truth and redemption in South Central ...

  • Thick-Headed

    in The Plot Thickens

    Joining together for a good cause brings out the best in today's top mystery and suspense writers! For this marvelously entertaining anthology, these outstanding contributors rose to a unique literary challenge: each penned a tale that ingeniously fe...



  • Blue Light

    San Francisco in the sixties is already crazy when mysterious shafts of blue light touch the lives of random strangers: Chance, a suicidal grad student who needs a history to chronicle ...Orde, a scam artist turned prophet ...Claudia Heart, housewife...

  • Walkin' the Dog

    Socrates Fortlow - 2

    Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict forced to define his own morality in a lawless world, confronts wrongs that most people would rather ignore and comes face-to-face with the most dangerous emotion: hope. It has been nine years since his release from pr...

  • The Greatest

    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 but...

  • Whispers in the Dark

    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 ...

  • Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Projecting a near-future United States in which justice is blind in at least one eye and the ranks of the disenchanted have swollen to dangerous levels, Mosely offers nine interconnected stories whose characters appear and reappear in each others' li...

  • Fearless Jones

    Fearless Jones - 1

    Bookshop owner Paris Minton is minding his own business when a brief encounter with a beautiful stranger gets him beaten, shot at, robbed, and then burned out of the store and home. Paris needs help but his secret weapon -- brave, reckless WWII hero ...

  • Bad Boy Brawly Brown

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 7

    EASY RAWLINS IS BACK From master storyteller Walter Mosley, author of the New York Times bestsellers Devil with a Blue Dress and Little Yellow Dog, comes the eagerly anticipated return of private eye Easy Rawlins, in a dazzling new novel of passio...

  • Six Easy Pieces

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 8

    The beloved Ezekiel Rawlins now has a steady job as senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth High School, a nice house with a garden, a loving woman, and children. He counts the blessings of leading a law-abiding life, but is "nowhere near happy." Ea...

  • Fear Itself

    Fearless Jones - 2

    Mild-mannered Paris Minton is delivered a pile of trouble when Fearless Jones shows up with a simple request: help find a beautiful woman's husband. Lending a hand gets him hit upside the head, hogtied, kidnapped, and threatened with a gun the size o...

  • The Man in My Basement

    This masterpiece by celebrated New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley is the mysterious story of a young Black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations. The man at Charles Blakey's...



  • Little Scarlet

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 9

    Easy Rawlins returns to solve a mystery set amid the flames of the hottest summer L.A. has ever seen. Just after devastating riots tear through Los Angeles in 1965 - when anger is high and fear still smolders everywhere - the police turn up at Eas...

  • 47

    Master storyteller Walter Mosley deftly mixes speculative and historical fiction in this daring New York Times bestselling novel, reminiscent of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. 47 is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a ...

  • Cinnamon Kiss

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 10

    In this thrilling mystery, Easy Rawlins takes a job to find a missing attorney and his beautiful assistant -- and faces danger around every corner. It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outsid...

  • The Wave

    Errol Porter is awakened by a strange prank caller, one who asks for him by name and claims to be his father. But Errol's father has been dead for years. Late one night, curious and a little unnerved, Errol sneaks into the graveyard where his father ...

  • Fortunate Son

    In spite of remarkable differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as brothers. Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune. Tommy is a lame black boy, cursed with health problems, yet he remains optimistic and strong....

  • Fear of the Dark

    Fearless Jones - 3

    When his cousin Ulysses S. Grant IV comes knocking, Paris Minton would rather keep the door shut, because "Useless" is a snake who brings bad luck wherever he goes. But trouble always finds an open window, and soon there's a man murdered on his books...

  • Killing Johnny Fry

  • Blonde Faith

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 11

    Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend Chrismas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. Easter...

  • Diablerie

    With the same erotic force as Killing Johnny Fry, this time with a far darker plot and damning view of human nature, Diablerie is a transfixing novel from a writer who is a master in any genre....

  • The Tempest Tales

    From the acclaimed bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins series who has been deemed “one of America’s best mystery writers” (The New York Times Book Review) comes a tale about a murdered man who does not want to go to h...



  • The Right Mistake

    Socrates Fortlow - 3

    From New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley, the third collection of Socrates Fortlow tales, "a thought-provoking exploration of wickedness -- and what's to be done about it" (Seattle Times). Living in south central L.A., Socrates Fortl...

  • The Long Fall

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 1

    Leonid McGill is an ex-boxer, a hard drinker, and not one to turn down a shady job for a quick buck. He's an old-school PI working a New York City that's gotten fancy all around him. Meanwhile, he's just trying to get by -- at least for his wife and ...

  • Known to Evil

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 2

    When New York private eye Leonid McGill is hired to check up on a vulnerable young woman, all he discovers is a bloody crime scene-and the woman gone missing. His client doesn't want her found. The reason will put everything McGill cherishes in harm'...

  • The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

    Marooned in an apartment that overflows with mementos from the past, 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey is all but forgotten by his family and the world. But when an unexpected opportunity arrives, everything changes for Ptolemy in ways as shocking and unantic...

  • Karma

    When Walter Mosley published the first Leonid McGill novel, The Long Fall -- the acclaimed New York Times bestseller that is now being developed as a series for HBO -- it was clear that this new hero was a man with a past. He was a private investigat...

  • When the Thrill Is Gone

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 3

    Leonid McGill can't say no to the beautiful woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash and a story. She's married to a rich art collector. Now she fears for her life. Leonid knows better than to believe her, but he can't afford to turn her ...

  • All I Did Was Shoot My Man

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 4

    In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present. Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed...

  • The Gift of Fire

    New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley delivers two speculative tales, in one volume, of everyday people exposed to life-altering truths. The Gift of Fire In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing ...

  • The Gift of Fire // On the Head of a Pin

    New York Times bestselling authorWalter Mosley delivers two speculative tales, in one volume, of everyday people exposed to life-altering truths. The Gift of Fire In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing m...

  • On the Head of a Pin

    In Walter Mosley's On the Head of a Pin, Joshua Winterland and Ana Fried are working at Jennings-Tremont Enterprises when they make the most important discovery in the history of this world -- or possibly the next. JTE is developing advanced animatro...



  • Merge // Disciple

    Merge: Releigh 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 ...

  • Disciple

    Hogarth “Trent” Tryman is a forty-two-year-old man working a dead-end data entry job. Though he lives alone and has no real friends besides his mother, he’s grown quite content in his quiet life, burning away time with television, the internet,...

  • Parishioner

    A brand-new, eBook original crime novel from bestselling author Walter Mosley, "Parishioner" is a portrait of a hardened criminal who regrets his past, but whose only hope for redemption is to sin again. In a small town situated between Los Ange...

  • Stepping Stone // The Love Machine

    Stepping Stone: Truman Pope has spent his whole life watching the world go by. A gentle, unassuming soul, he has worked in the mailroom of a large corporation for decades without making waves, until the day he spots a mysterious woman in yellow. A wo...

  • Little Green

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 12

    When Walter Mosley burst onto the literary scene in 1990 with his first Easy Rawlins mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress -- a combustible mixture of Raymond Chandler and Richard Wright -- he captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of readers (incl...

  • Odyssey

    In this gripping and provocative eBook original novel celebrated bestselling author Walter Mosley explores the mind of an African-American man who is forced to re-examine his most closely held beliefs about race and about himself. Sovereign Jame...

  • Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

    In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry aft...

  • Jack Strong

    In a Las Vegas hotel room, a man awakes to confront his destinyDreaming, 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 lu...

  • Rose Gold

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 13

    Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, has been kidnapped by a black revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth. Their leader, Uhuru Nolica, is holding her for ransom and if he doesn’t receive the money, weapons, and apology he d...

  • The Further Tales of Tempest Landry

    A VINTAGE eBOOK ORIGINAL   Bestselling author Walter Mosley blends philosophy and humor in this thought-provoking exploration of race, sin, and salvation. It is the story of two men -- one human and one angel -- who have the power to topple heav...



  • Inside a Silver Box

    In INSIDE A SILVER BOX, 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 S...

  • And Sometimes I Wonder about You

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 5

    Leonid finds himself in an unusual pickle of trying to balance his cases with his chaotic personal life. Leonid's father is still out there somewhere, and his wife is in an uptown sanitarium trying to recover from the deep depression that led to her ...

  • Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large

    A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   Young journalism student Felix Orlean is in over his head. Against his better judgment, he is temporarily under the employ of the mad yet charismatic anarchist detective Archibald Lawless, a witne...

  • Charcoal Joe

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 14

    In this latest installment of the Easy Rawlins series from beloved and bestselling author Walter Mosley, the L.A. private eye has his hands full with the investigation of a racially charged murder. Easy Rawlins has started a new detective agency w...

  • Down the River Unto the Sea

    A King Oliver Novel - 1

    From trailblazing novelist Walter Mosley: 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,...

  • John Woman

    The New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels delivers “a taut, riveting, and artfully edgy saga” of one man’s self-transformation (Kirkus). At twelve years old, Cornelius Jones, the son of an Italian-American woman and a bla...

  • Trouble Is What I Do

    A Leonid McGill Mystery - 6

    Morally ambiguous P.I. Leonid McGill is back -- and investigating crimes against society's most downtrodden -- in this installment of the beloved detective series from an Edgar Award-winning and bestselling crime novelist. Leonid McGill's ...

  • The Awkward Black Man: Stories

    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 show...

  • Blood Grove

    An Easy Rawlins Mystery - 15

    It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. The young man co...

  • The Thing: The Next Big Thing

    Collects The Thing (2021) #1-6. Renowned storyteller Walter Mosley brings his signature style to Yancy Street's favorite son! This sweeping saga of the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing will range from the urban sprawl of Manhattan's back alleys to the far...

  • Every Man a King

    A King Oliver Novel - 2

    In this highly anticipated sequel to Edgar award-winning DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA, Joe King Oliver is tested when he's asked to investigate whether a White nationalist is being unjustly set up    When friend of the family and multi-billi...

  • Touched

    Intergalactic visions, deadly threats, and explosive standoffs between mostly good and nearly completely evil converge in an alternative fiction novel that could only be conceived by the inimitable Walter Mosley, one of the country’s most beloved a...

  • Farewell, Amethystine

    Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia, blinding him to reason and risk, from “master of the genre,” (Washington Post) Walter Mosley. January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detec...

Award-Winning Books by Walter Mosley

Devil in a Blue Dress
1990 Shamus Award -- First P.I. Novel
Down the River Unto the Sea
2019 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Novel
Fear Itself
2004 Nero Wolfe Award -- Novel
R.L.'s Dream
1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award -- Fiction


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Walter Mosley has published 62 books.

The next book by Walter Mosley, Farewell, Amethystine, will be published in June 2024.

The first book by Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress, was published in June 1990.

Yes. Walter Mosley has 5 series.
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