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The Ballad of Black Tom
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.
About The Ballad of Black Tom
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 black skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their trained cops. But when he delivers an occult page 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? “LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft’s Dagon… [ The Ballad of Black Tom ] has a satisfying slingshot ending.” – Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction "[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction." --Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days
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The Ballad of Black Tom — frequently asked
- Is The Ballad of Black Tom on Spotify?
- Yes — we've confirmed The Ballad of Black Tom as an audiobook on Spotify. Open it from the links on this page.
- Is The Ballad of Black Tom on Apple Books?
- Yes — The Ballad of Black Tom is available as an audiobook on Apple Books.
- Who wrote The Ballad of Black Tom?
- The Ballad of Black Tom is by Victor LaValle.
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- Audible and Amazon both carry audiobooks; use the retailer links on this page to go straight to The Ballad of Black Tom. For print copies, compare Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million.
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