**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the two-time Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel
Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is "fast-paced, keen-eyed and
very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised
as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
**
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To
his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding
salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for
himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their
second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him
or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still
home.
Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and
that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks
that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if
his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray
doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown
who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa--the
"Waldorf of Harlem"--and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The
heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new
clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit
pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the
crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually
pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his
cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his
reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture
needs?
*Harlem Shuffle'*s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated
New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a
crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and
power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.
But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer
Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.
