1
of
1
The Essential Harlem Detectives
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 32 ratings, 8 reviews)
Brief Description
The Essential Harlem Detectives is a one-volume selection of four scintillating stories from the legendary Harlem Detectives series. This blistering, ground-breaking satire of Harlem's criminal underworld is penned by master crime-writer Chester Himes. A friend and contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin—and every bit their...
Read More
Format: Hardback
$5000
Unit price
/
Unavailable
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
The Essential Harlem Detectives
$5000
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
The Essential Harlem Detectives is a one-volume selection of four scintillating stories from the legendary Harlem Detectives series. This blistering, ground-breaking satire of Harlem's criminal underworld is penned by master crime-writer Chester Himes.
A friend and contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin—and every bit their equal—Chester Himes was the acclaimed author of literary novels, stories, and essays. He is best known for the classic crime fiction series featuring detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.
Himes wrote nine novels in the Harlem Detectives series. In these four popular, accomplished instalments, his cold, wise-cracking sleuths are thrust into a brutal, murderous world inhabited by conniving con men, gun-toting gangsters, and opium-smoking preachers. Himes's vision of Harlem's criminal underground, enriched by deft plotting and scintillating dialogue, offers both riotous entertainment and a penetrating enquiry into the fraught tensions of race in postwar America.
Series: Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics
View all-
All Quiet on the Western Front
As the centenary of the 1918 Armistice approaches, a hardcover edition of the most famous novel to come out of World War I, drawing on the author's personal experience of trench warfare as a young conscript in the German army. In 1914, Paul Bäumer and his classmates are marched to the local recruiting office by a sentimentally patriotic form-master. On...Hardback$3500Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The White Guard
As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, this is a highly topical reprint of Bulgakov's classic novel. Set in his native Kyiv in 1918, it vividly dramatizes a critical and contested period in the history of both countries, in which nationalists and Bolsheviks—amongst others—struggle for ascendancy. Kiev—Kyiv—is in chaos. Russia has withdrawn from World War I, but the Germans have set...Hardback$3500Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Waiting
A 25th anniversary hardcover edition of the award-winning, bestselling novel about a man living in two worlds and struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women. The demands of human longing contend with the weight of centuries of custom in acclaimed author Ha Jin's Waiting, a novel of unexpected richness and universal resonance. Every summer, Lin Kong, a...Hardback$4000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Essential Harlem Detectives
The Essential Harlem Detectives is a one-volume selection of four scintillating stories from the legendary Harlem Detectives series. This blistering, ground-breaking satire of Harlem's criminal underworld is penned by master crime-writer Chester Himes. A friend and contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin—and every bit their equal—Chester Himes was the acclaimed author of literary novels, stories, and essays. He is...Hardback$5000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Fire Next Time; Nobody Knows My Name ; No Name In The Street; The Devil Finds Work
A major hardcover compendium of nonfiction by one of America's most brilliant essayists, timed to the celebration of his centenary. Novelist, essayist, and public intellectual—James Baldwin is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. This Everyman's Library collection includes his bestselling, galvanising essay The Fire Next Time—which gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement...Hardback$4100Elsewhere:$4500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
I Write to Find Out What I am Thinking
The perfect book for all the new readers brought to Didion through her bestselling The Year of Magical Thinking. This hardcover omnibus edition of Didion's collected nonfiction contains her final four books: Blue Nights, South and West, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and her bestselling and most famous work, The Year of Magical Thinking. In her essay Why...Hardback$4500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Bridge on the Drina
In this masterpiece of historical fiction by the Nobel Prize-winning Yugoslavian author, a stone bridge in a small Bosnian town bears silent witness to three centuries of conflict. Introduction by Misha Glenny, an award-winning British journalist who specialises in central and eastern Europe, global organised crime, and cybersecurity. He covered the Balkan Wars during the 1990s and is the author...Hardback$3600Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Intuitionist
The 25th anniversary hardback edition of the stylish debut novel by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad that wowed critics and readers and marked the emergence of an important American writer. 'A thrilling blend of noir and fantasy.' - Guardian. In an unnamed city—a hardboiled pre-Civil Rights New York sort of city—heroine Lila Mae has succeeded in...Hardback$3600Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Orlando
In the court of Queen Elizabeth I, the young nobleman Orlando begins his search for identity as he embarks on one of the greatest adventures in all of literature. An Everyman Classics hardback edition of Virginia Woolf's fantastical novel about a young Elizabethan nobleman whose life spans four centuries – and who transitions into a woman. History, fun, and gender...Hardback$3500Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Famously the subject of a court case, Lawrence's final novel is one of the most notorious and passionate love stories in literature. In the bleak aftermath of World War I, Constance, Lady Chatterley, is a young woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralysed. With her husband's encouragement, she enters into a...Hardback$3500Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Brave New World
Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece. Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing, and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone, harbouring an ill-defined longing...Hardback$3500Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Atonement
Atonement, a Booker Shortlisted bestseller, is now available in a beautiful hardback edition with a silk ribbon and sewn binding—an ideal gift. On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an unsettling scene: her sister Cecilia stripping off her clothes and plunging into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is...Hardback$2700Elsewhere:$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781841594170
Publisher: Everyman
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 04 January 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Everyman's Library
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 37.0mm
Width: 135.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 736g
Pages: 712
About the Author
Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and grew up in Cleveland. Aged 19 he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 20 to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire. Upon release he took a variety of jobs from working in a California shipyard to journalism to script-writing while continuing to write fiction. He later moved to Paris where he was commissioned by La Serie Noire to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, La reine des pommes/A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.
Also by Chester himes
View all-
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Scams, heists, and murders abound in a high-energy caper. A preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope — the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds and send one man to the morgue, the con is up. Now Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed,...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
If He Hollers Let Him Go
Robert Jones is a crew leader in a naval shipyard in Los Angeles in the 1940s. He should have a lot going for him, being educated, with a steady job and a steady relationship. But in the four days covered in this novel, the impossibility of life as a black man in a white world is made devastatingly clear. Jones...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
If He Hollers, Let Him Go
The searing debut novel by Chester Himes, written with youthful panache and a bellyful of anger (Observer). Robert 'Bob' Jones—crew leader, shipyard worker, educated, employed—is finding life impossible. Though he has recently been promoted to supervisor at the Los Angeles shipyard where he works, he is disrespected and resented by white colleagues; and despite his relationship with the high-class Alice,...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Blind Man with a Pistol
The final novel in the trailblazing Harlem Detective series, set in a New York City at boiling point. Bawdy and tough-talking, wickedly funny and wantonly sensual, Blind Man with a Pistol is a surreal joyride through Harlem in a heatwave. Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are side-tracked from investigating a series of organised race riots when a...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
All God's Chillun Got Pride
90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Best known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time for armed robbery. Selected here are some of his best stories—from a satirical tale about a student bet that purportedly...Paperback$1799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Crazy Kill
The Crazy Kill is a classic thriller from the Harlem Detective series, where love, jealousy, and many-peopled mayhem abound. Big Joe Pullen is dead, and his wake is becoming increasingly boozy. During the wake, the opium-addicted Reverend Short falls out of a window while trying to see a thief fleeing the robbed store opposite. Remarkably, his life is saved when...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Big Gold Dream
Fast-paced and hard-boiled, this Harlem Detectives novel follows a pile of stolen money—or it would if anyone could find it... Alberta Wright drops dead on the street during a sermon by the charismatic con man Sweet Prophet. Her partner rushes home to avoid the cops, only to find her apartment looted by someone looking for her stash of cash. But...Paperback$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Yesterday Will Make You Cry
A masterful novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it, by the author of the acclaimed Harlem Detective series. Thrill-seeking white teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men isolated from...Paperback$2800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
A Rage in Harlem
'The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' — Sunday Times Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money—a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle. The...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
All Shot Up
A gritty, hilarious detective novel from Harlem's master crime writer. A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma—and...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Real Cool Killers
One of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. - Henry Louis Gates, Jr The night's over for Ulysses Galen. It started going bad for the big Greek when a knife was drawn, then there was an axe, then he was being chased and shot at. Now Galen is lying dead in the middle of a Harlem street. But...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Cotton Comes to Harlem
He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition. - Will Self A preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope — the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds — and send one man to...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
More from Crime & Thriller
View all-
New ReleaseIt Could Have Been Her
PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release26 Beauties
The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseThe Secrets We Hide
The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Hope Rises
'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Slash
A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseA River Red With Blood
The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Shadow Step
The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists. The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ('in the shadow') Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid August -
New ReleaseSome Sort of Justice
The first time in print for the million-copy-selling crime writer. This time, a cast of good coppers, a wily ex-detective and a shadowy, well-connected operative are brought together by an aristocratic fatality. Only there's no body, no forensics—and enemies in the highest places. When Caroline Thorpe succeeded in casting doubt on the verdict of the inquest into her brother's death,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Ending Writes Itself
Secrets don't stay secret for long in publishing Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives. ‘This is a house of novelists, not murderers. You dream up crimes. You don’t commit them.’ ‘But a writer has. And so, who better than a writer to catch them?’ World famous author Arthur Fletch is...Paperback$2800Elsewhere:$3499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseNeighbourhood Watch
Neighbourhood Watch is a sharp, stylish thriller with a killer opening hook, a generous dose of dark humour, and a truly distinctive voice. ― Christian White The annual Curlew Street scarecrow competition is back, and the residents of Melbourne’s inner north have never seen an entry like it. Shirt bloody, head and arms slumped over a scarecrow crucifix: Victoria’s most...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
For All the Dead Girls
Tough and gutsy PI Lou Alcott returns with a terrifyingly gritty new case that takes her deep into the dark web. Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Bublitz and Jane Caro. While juggling a missing person case with unexpected ties close to home and saving an innocent woman and her child from a dangerous domestic situation, Lou ends up in the...Paperback$2899Elsewhere:$3499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Don’t Let Him In
Prepare to be hooked—the no. 1 Sunday Times and multi-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new, spine-tingling thriller. He's the perfect man. He says he loves you. You think he might even be made for you. Before long he's moved into your house—and into your heart. And then he leaves for days at a time. You don't know where...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 80,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
Crime & Thriller lists from the team
Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!
