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The Ballad of Black Tom

Victor LaValle

Ages 16+

Readers rate it 3.7 (314 on Hardcover)

93 pages · Released Feb 16, 2016

Content report card

The Ballad of Black Tom parent’s guide: what’s inside

High confidence

LGBTQ+ themes

What it offers

Educational value

A note for parents

This is a dark, adult-oriented horror novella set in Jazz Age Harlem that confronts racism, police brutality, and cosmic horror directly. While the page count is short, the content is mature and thematically heavy, dealing with systemic oppression and violence. It is not appropriate for younger teens and is best suited for older readers comfortable with literary horror and racial violence.

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From the publisher

One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Ch... One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break? "LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do." — Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All "[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction." — Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days “LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft’s Dagon... [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending.” – Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Shelved under

  • Fiction
  • Diverse Characters
  • Unloveable Characters
  • Weak Character Development
  • Strong Character Development
  • A mix driven
  • Plot driven
  • Character driven
  • Loveable Characters
  • Not Diverse Characters
  • Calibre Import
  • dark

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ISBN 9780765386618 · Tordotcom

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