Chester Himes

Cotton Comes to Harlem is a hardboiled crime fiction novel written by Chester Himes in 1965. It is the sixth and best known of the Grave Digger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson Mysteries. It was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1970 starring Redd Foxx. The novel plays with thoughts of Blaxploitation and is a …

A Rage in Harlem is a ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, patrolling New York City’s roughest streets in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning …

This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is …