Walter Mosley Profile and Books

Walter Mosley was born in 1952 in California. His mother Ella was Jewish with Russian ancestry and his father Leroy was an African-American born in Louisiana. When his parents tried to marry in 1951, the marriage was legal in California but no one would grant them a marriage licence. Walter was an only child.

Mosley developed an interest in politics and earned a political science degree. He worked as a computer programmer until taking a writing course. He started writing at the age of 34.

He is most famous for his Easy Rawlins mysteries but he has also written literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs and young adult fiction. Much of his work contains themes of racial inequality in the USA.

Mosley currently lives in New York. He is a prolific novelist often producing more than one novel per year.

Works by Walter Mosley:

Easy Rawlins mysteries

  • Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
  • A Red Death (1991)
  • White Butterfly (1992)
  • Black Betty (1994)
  • A Little Yellow Dog (1996)
  • Gone Fishin’ (1997)
  • Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002)
  • Six Easy Pieces (2003)
  • Little Scarlet (2004)
  • Cinnamon Kiss (2005)
  • Blonde Faith (2007)
  • Little Green (2013)
  • Rose Gold (2014)
  • Charcoal Joe (2016)

Fearless Jones mysteries

  • Fearless Jones (2001)
  • Fear Itself (2003)
  • Fear of the Dark (2006)

Leonid McGill mysteries

Science fiction

  • Blue Light (1998)
  • Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001)
  • The Wave (2005)
  • 47 (2005)

Socrates Fortlow books

  • Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997)
  • Walkin’ the Dog (1999)
  • The Right Mistake (2008)

For young adults

  • 47 (2005)

Other novels

  • RL’s Dream (1995)
  • The Man in My Basement (2004)
  • Walking the Line (2005), a novella in the Transgressions series
  • Fortunate Son (2006)
  • The Tempest Tales (2008)
  • The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2010)
  • Parishioner (2012)
  • Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore (2014)
  • Inside a Silver Box (2015)

Erotica

  • Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel (2006)
  • Diablerie (2007)

Non-fiction books

  • Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History (2000)
  • What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World Peace (2003)
  • Life Out of Context (2006)
  • This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)
  • Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation (2011)

 

Additionally Mosley has written a number of plays and graphic novels

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