A flood brings not only rising waters but the full force of a brutal, racist worldWith the Mississippi flooding, a Black farmer struggles to get his pregnant wife to safety. In the chaos, a single desperate decision sets off a chain of events that cannot be undone. Down By the Riverside is Richard Wright’s unflinching novella of race, power and consequence. Starkly told and painfully resonant, it captures how quickly the world can turn – and who is forced ...

Savage Holiday, first published in 1954 by noted American author Richard Wright, is a tense, well-written psychological thriller about Erskine Fowler, an insurance executive forced into early retirement, who, over the course of a bizarre weekend, is responsible for the accidental death of his neighbor's young son. Tragic consequences follow as Fowler attempts to redeem himself and is forced to question his own life, as events spiral out-of-control to their inevitable concl...

The fight to survive is all in the mind.There is nothing exceptional about Greg Summers, until the day he returns home to discover that his wife no longer recognises him and is married to a stranger using his name.Perhaps it is an elaborate hoax, yet that wouldn’t explain his vivid flashbacks to childhood, or the violent eruptions of blood that accompany them. Nor does it explain the stray memories that seem to belong to an entirely separate man called Richard James...

'Powerful as [Richard Wright] was - is - as a writer, nobody can surpass him in doing certain kinds of writing... He is courageous - he was able to look into areas that nobody at that time was willing to look at' Toni MorrisonCross Damon is disenchanted. At odds with society, and with himself, his idealism and sense of alienation have driven him to drink and incessant reflection. But when Cross is mistakenly reported to have died, he is suddenly free to put his ide...

"Doon the wynds an' up the streets,Where revenants sought souls tae eat,The Butcher called for twitching meatAn' Burke an' Hare did answer."-anon.A year after the Cadaver Riots tore the heart from Edinburgh. Fear still chokes the Old Town, for though the revenants were driven back with shot and steel, they still lurk in the city's shadowed closes. When night falls, they strike.In dissecting room...

"When the Stars threw down their spearsAnd watered Heaven with their tears,Did He smile His work to see?"Did He who made the Lamb make thee?"The game is ancient, the players powerful beyond measure. Champions battle across the globe. The seven billion prizes to be won are the souls of every man, woman, and child on earth. Both sides will stop at nothing to claim them.There are rules of engagement, long established. There are et...

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension.‘A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars’ Daily TelegraphAt four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was ...

The author. The psychic. The vagrant. The hack.An invitation to a crumbling cottage in the lonely wilds. The legend of the witch who haunts it still. A disappearance from a locked room and the rising, ancient power that may be culprit. The hag has waited long for visitors, and guests are encouraged to extend their stay.For whatever remains of their lives.Welcome... to Craven Place..."Part horror, part thriller and part ...

*****AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4's OPEN BOOK***The 'propulsive, haunting' and 'gripping' (Oprah) rediscovered classic that exposes the dark heart of America for an inncocent Black man on the run from the police**Fred Daniels, a black man, is randomly picked up by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago suburb. Taken to the local precinct, he is tortured -- until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit.But when he sees his chance, Fred Daniels, makes a ru...

The end of the world started in Glasgow, with a kiss.Two people - two creatures - fated to be eternal enemies downed their blazing spears and loved. To do so, they broke rules hardwired into the DNA of the universe. The universe noticed.The universe broke.Now Heaven and Hell are hunting them. Nobody on Earth can help them. Worst of all, the fabric of reality is unravelling around them, the Apocalypse has been brought forward a millennium, and it might all b...

It is the 1970s when nineteen-year-old Johnny Marra follows his fathers footsteps and becomes a New York City police officer. As he makes a living chasing bad guys amid the concrete and steel of an urban society, Johnny has no idea his true identity has been chasing himall the way from a South Carolina town during the Civil War.Fifteen-year-old Josh Butler wants nothing more than to be a Confederate soldier. Determined to do the right thing, Josh leaves his idyllic life behind and ...

Bigger Thomas has grown up in Chicago’s slums, reckless, angry and adrift.A respectable job with the affluent Dalton family provides hope but sets him on course for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause célèbre in an ever-narrowing endgame.First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence an...