Harlem Shuffle A Novel

A New York Times Bestseller from Colson Whitehead, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. Pull up a chair. This one’s a joy.

Meet Ray Carney. To his neighbors on 125th Street, he’s an upstanding furniture salesman, doing his honest best for his wife and growing family. But Ray comes from a long line of uptown hoods, and that respectable façade? It’s got a few cracks in it. Cracks that keep getting wider.

When his cousin Freddie drops off the occasional ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask questions. Then Freddie pulls him into a scheme to rob the Hotel Theresa, the “Waldorf of Harlem.” The heist goes sideways, as they tend to do, and suddenly Ray finds himself tangled up with shady cops, ruthless gangsters, and assorted Harlem lowlifes.

What follows is a glorious tug-of-war between Ray the striver and Ray the crook, all set against a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s.

The San Francisco Chronicle called it “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny… about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel.” It’s a family saga wearing the coat of a heist story. A hilarious morality play. A love letter to Harlem.

This is the kind of book we love to press into a reader’s hands. Settle in by the window with the sea air drifting through, and let Whitehead’s storytelling sweep you off to a different shore entirely.

A genuine treat. Come find it on our shelves.

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