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.

Toni Jensen grew up around guns. As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of indigenous women, on indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten. In CARRY, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America.

On her own since the age of 18, Cass Macklin dated brilliant, troubled Ben McGreavy. They partied their way through their 20s, slowly descending into a bleak world of binge-drinking and broken promises. Now Ben is dead, and Cass is broke, homeless, scared…and pregnant. Determined to have a healthy pregnancy and raise Ben’s baby, Cass has to find a way to stop drinking and build a stable life for herself and her child. But with no money, skills, or sober friends or family, the task seems insurmountable. At wit’s end, Cass turns to the only person with the means to help her: Ben’s brother Scott, third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, a man with a temper and problems of his own. The two make a deal that neither one of them is sure they can live up to.

Kidnapped in Venice by a Russian defector, Kate Henderson knows she's in trouble. But when he offers her conclusive evidence that the British Prime Minister is a live agent working for Moscow, Kate’s holiday quickly becomes the start of her next mission. The defector has proof of the PM involved in a sordid scandal --- a video supposedly used to blackmail him into Russian service decades prior --- and a financial paper trail that undeniably links him to the Russians, but his motives are anything but clear. Riddled with doubt that the evidence she is presented with may not in fact be as bulletproof as it seems, Kate reopens the investigation into the PM. As she works through the case, Kate runs up against key people at the heart of the British Establishment who refuse to acknowledge the reality in front of them.

As a child, Natsuki doesn't fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents' ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can't seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the "baby factory" of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe.

When a scream shatters the summer night outside their country house in the Hudson Valley, reformed literary forger Will and his wife Meghan find their daughter Maisie shaken and bloodied, holding a parcel her attacker demanded she present to her father. Inside is a literary rarity the likes of which few have ever handled, and a letter laying out impossible demands regarding its future. After 20 years of living life on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself drawn back to forgery, ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s first, TAMERLANE, of which only a dozen copies are known to have survived. Until now.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side by side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath --- but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her. Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: Is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

Liam O’Connor unknowingly changed the course of destiny when he fell in love with Cora McLeod over a century ago. Their passion was intense, brief and tragic. And the angels have been trying to restore the balance of fate ever since. Now police officers in Providence Falls, North Carolina, Liam and Cora are partners on a murder investigation. The intensity of the case has drawn them closer together --- exactly what Liam is supposed to avoid. The angels have made it clear that Cora must be with Finley Walsh. But headstrong Cora makes her own decisions, and she’s starting to have feelings for Liam --- the only thing he’s ever really wanted. Liam knows this is the last chance to save his soul. But does he love Cora enough to let her go?

Recovering from a terrible auto accident just before the turn of the millennium, college dropout and hobbyist computer-game programmer Lucien Swenson becomes the caretaker of a house in northern Minnesota. Shortly after moving in, Lucien sets out to find a woman with whom he had an affair, who vanished along with money stolen from the bank where they had worked together. His search will take him to Rose of Sharon, a white supremacist church deep in the wilderness, where a cabal of outcasts await the end of the world at a place they call The Land. Lucien is visited at the house by a mysterious guest, who may not be who she claims, as well as a vast flock of violent ravens out of an apocalyptic vision.

With the Beatles, John Lennon surpasses his youthful dreams, achieving a level of superstardom that defies classification. Mark David Chapman once worshipped his idols from afar but now harbors grudges against those, like Lennon, whom he feels betrayed him. He is convinced that Lennon has misled fans with his message of hope and peace --- and he is not staying away any longer. Enriched by exclusive interviews with Lennon’s friends and associates, including Paul McCartney, THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON is the thrilling true story of two men who changed history: one whose indelible songs enliven our world to this day, and the other who ended the beautiful music with five pulls of a trigger.

Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.

Madame Burova --- beloved Tarot reader, palmist and clairvoyant --- is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront. After a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, she is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do --- to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them. In London, it is time for another woman to make a fresh start. Billie has lost her university job, her marriage and her place in the world when a sudden and unlikely discovery leaves her very identity in question. Determined to find answers, she must follow a trail…which leads to Brighton, the pier and directly to Madame Burova’s door.

One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer's Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.

A survivor of two attempts on his life by a deranged killer, psychologist Daniel Rinaldi counsels trauma patients in his private practice, and contracts with the Pittsburgh Police to help victims of violent crime cope with their experience. When a sports mascot is gunned down by a sniper at a college football game he attends, Rinaldi becomes an accidental yet integral part of the investigation. To begin with, the victim in the costume is not the person who was supposed to be wearing it. When the actual "Teasdale Tiger" hears the news, he suffers a crippling panic attack and calls on Rinaldi to talk him through it. From there, Rinaldi seems to be in all the wrong places at all the wrong times, as the sniper continues his killing spree.

It’s been 14 years since Detective Inspector Embla Nyström’s best friend disappeared from a nightclub in Gothenburg. So she is stunned when she recognizes her voice on the phone before the call abruptly disconnects. Then she learns that a man has been found shot dead in one of the guest houses that he and his wife manage in rural Sweden. When Embla arrives on the scene, she receives another shock. The dead man is Milo Stavic, a well-known gang member and one of the last people seen with Lollo. The same night that Milo was shot in the guest house, his brother Luca was also killed. Why, after all these years, is someone targeting the Stavic brothers, and where is the third brother?

Bard and fighter Liobhan is always ready for a challenge. So when news arrives at Swan Island that the prince of Dalriada has gone missing after an assault by both masked men and the sinister Crow Folk, she's eager to act. While Liobhan and her fellow Swan Island warriors seek answers to the prince's disappearance, the bard Brocc, Liobhan's brother, finds himself in dire trouble. His attempts to communicate with the Crow Folk have led him down a perilous path. When Liobhan and her comrades are sent to the rescue, it becomes clear that the two missions are connected --- and a great mystery unfolds. What brought the Crow Folk to Erin? And who seeks to use them in an unscrupulous bid for power?

Penelope Cox barely has her life together when the past comes knocking at her door. Willa Blaine, her old roommate, needs her help: refuge from an abusive husband. Twenty years earlier, Penelope, Willa and three friends lived together in a converted church and formed their own dysfunctional family; they called themselves “the Spires.” But nights of wild parties gave way to a darker undercurrent: jealousy, resentment, unrequited love and obsession. Tensions boiled over during a night of debauchery that ended in a deadly fire, leaving the Spires scattered and forever changed. Willa is the perfect houseguest, but Penelope can’t help but feel the cracks in her life widen as she begins to question Willa’s motives.

From a small expanse of land on the North American continent came four of the nation's first five presidents --- a geographic dynasty whose members led a revolution, created a nation and ultimately changed the world. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe were born, grew to manhood, and made their homes within a 60-mile circle east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Friends and rivals, they led in securing independence, hammering out the United States Constitution and building a working republic. Acting together, they doubled the territory of the United States. From their disputes came American political parties and the weaponizing of newspapers, the media of the day.