People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn’t there…
We’re thrilled to share the new cover of Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom—the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award finalist and Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award-winning excavation of Lovecraftian mythos—given new life in a brand-new hardcover edition forthcoming from Tordotcom Publishing in September 2022.
“Full of rage and passion.” —The New York Times
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?
Featuring a new afterword by the author
Buy the Book
The Ballad of Black Tom
Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Changeling, and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the creator and writer of two comic books, Victor LaValle’s Destroyer and Eve.
LaValle has been the recipient of numerous awards including the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Shirley Jackson Award, American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens.
He was raised in Queens, New York. He now lives in Washington Heights with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.
