James McBride

The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportscoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church's baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportscoat's best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church. 

Deacon King Kong is a book about a community under threat, about the ways people pull together in an age when the old rules are being rewritten.

An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by a Civil War General now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their messy and hilarious lives.

These stories spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. A collection of surprising, perceptive and evocative short stories from internationally bestselling novelist James McBride, Five Carat Soul is a moving exploration of our human condition.

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856.

When an argument between Henry's master and legendary abolitionist John Brown turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town - along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good luck charm.

An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure story and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

The music of James Brown was almost a genre in its own right, and he was one of the biggest and most influential cultural figures of the twentieth century. But the singer known as the 'Hardest Working Man in Show Business' was also an immensely troubled, misunderstood and complicated man.

Award-winning writer James McBride, himself a professional musician, has undertaken a journey of discovery in search of the 'real' James Brown, delving into the heartbreaking saga of Brown's childhood and destroyed estate, and uncovering the hidden history of Brown's early years.

In Tuscany, four US soldiers rescue an Italian boy from the Nazis. They find refuge in a war-torn village. There the boy reveals that something terrible has happened that will affect them all! Some strong language.

Towards the end of World War Two, four soldiers from the Army's Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit behind enemy lines.

Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less respect than the enemy they're fighting, they discover humanity in the small Tuscan village of St. Anna di Stazzema - in the peasants who shelter them, in the unspoken affection of an orphaned child.

Now a major film directed by Spike Lee, Miracle at St. Anna is an unforgettable tale of courage and redemption set in Second World War Italy, from internationally bestselling novelist James McBride.

In the days before the Civil War, an enslaved woman named Liz Spocott escapes from her captors into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland's eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves and free blacks.

Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with 'the Code' - a fiercely guarded cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run.

Filled with rich, true details, Song Yet Sung is a story of tragic triumph, dreams of tomorrow and unexpected kindness, from the National Book Award-winning novelist James McBride.