Publishers Weekly
★ 04/03/2023
In this superb thriller from Anthony Award winner Cosby (Razorblade Tears), Titus Crown, the first Black sheriff of Charon County, Va., is investigating a high school shooting that leaves a history teacher and his killer dead. Before long, Titus uncovers evidence that both men participated in the ritualistic killings of seven Black children who had disappeared from the area over the past several years. Recovered video of the children’s murders reveals the involvement of a third party and presumed ringleader: a mysterious figure hidden behind a wolf mask. As Titus and his deputies set out to find the third man, the investigation narrows onto both a local church run by a white racist and on one of the county’s most powerful families, and more murders stack up. The hard-edged storytelling is supplemented by richly developed characters, especially Titus and his family, and Cosby elegantly layers his narrative over Virginia’s racial history, giving the proceedings uncommon emotional depth. This is easily the author’s strongest work to date. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary. (June)
From the Publisher
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • USA Today Bestseller • Washington Post’s The Twelve Best Thrillers of the Year • TIME’s 100 Must Read Books of the Year • Goodreads Choice Award Nominee • USA Today’s Best Reviewed Books of the Year • BookPage's Best Mystery of the Year • Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year • New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Cover of the New York Times Book Review • Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List • The Financial Times’s Best Crime Books of the Year • ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Longlist • SIBA’s 2024 Southern Book Prize Finalist • Starred Publishers Weekly • Starred Library Journal • Starred BookPage • Starred Booklist
“The body count is high and the action pretty much nonstop. . . A crackling good police procedural. . . Cosby delivers a fine climax. Then, in an epilogue, he serves up a final treat that’s worth the whole trip. . . Fresh and exhilarating.”
—New York Times Book Review, Stephen King
“S. A. Cosby’s novels always hit the grand slam of crime fiction; unstoppable momentum, gripping intrigue and deep character with a hard and telling look at culture and society. I hesitate to call All The Sinners Bleed his masterpiece because he has many more books to write and they only get better and better. Cosby no doubt carries the mantle of Faulkner with him as he uses the crime story to show us where we are and how far we still need to go. Sheriff Titus Crown lives in these pages and your heart. He's a character for the ages.”
—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Desert Star
“Riveting. . . What elevates this book is how Cosby weaves politically charged salient issues — race, religion, policing — through the prism of a serial murder investigation and the perspective of one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary crime fiction. . . Deeply moving and memorable.”
—Washington Post
“On the basis of four novels, each better than the last (and All the Sinners Bleed the best of them all), it’s fairly easy to say that American crime fiction has found its future and his name is S.A. Cosby.”
—Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Small Mercies
“Cosby vaults his own high bar. . .His most deeply resonant, timely and timeless novel to date.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Dark, wildly entertaining. . . All the Sinners Bleed is rough, smart, gritty, intricate, and Southern to the core.”
—NPR, Gabino Iglesias
“Superb…A thoughtfully plotted, unflinching look at Cosby’s familiar themes with precise character studies, crackling dialogue and the backdrop of a small town in Virginia.”
—South Florida Sun Sentinel
“Compelling characters, dark plot twists, mordant humor and ruthless violence. . . He’s a master of building a sense of creeping dread that explodes into hair-raising action. He’s also deft at bringing complex characters to life, and at pointed humor. . . Riveting ride.”
—Tampa Bay Times
“A rural, hair-raising crime story.”
—The New York Times, 9 New Books Coming in June
“An atmospheric pressure cooker.”
—People
“Breakneck noir crime thriller.”
—TIME
“An excellent, gritty novel about how eventually, all sins must be reckoned with...The action is nonstop and Titus has real depth...Layered. Dark. True.”
—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author
“A bold, raw new voice in the thriller landscape. All the Sinners Bleed has a dark, raw, Southern gothic/noir feeling combined with a hard-edged look at the dark places in our past. Really enjoyed it.”
—Kristin Hannah, #1 bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds
"A chilling, terrifying serial killer hunt.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“A taut and riveting whodunit.”
—Garden & Gun
“Superb…The hard-edged storytelling is supplemented by richly developed characters, especially Titus and his family, and Cosby elegantly layers his narrative over Virginia’s racial history, giving the proceedings uncommon emotional depth. This is easily the author’s strongest work to date.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Cosby’s literary skills are exceptional. His characters feel so real, his dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the story...is of such moral complexity it wholly commands the reader’s close attention. This is a crime novel to savor and ponder.”
—Booklist, starred review
“At once a gripping character study and a darkly compelling example of Southern noir...All the Sinners Bleed is a nerve-jangling, thought-provoking, often heartbreaking read, but also one that reminds readers 'there was beauty in the world . . . if you knew where to look.'"
—BookPage, starred review
“Cosby, the multi-award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, has a unique, powerful voice for social justice and racism. His compelling writing will have readers rooting for his latest unforgettable, flawed hero.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“All The Sinners Bleed further cements S.A. Cosby's place as one of the most important new voices in crime fiction. Uncompromising, poignant and compelling, it seamlessly merges an action-packed mystery with thoughtful commentary on what it’s like to live in America right now. I won’t read a better book this year. Incredible.”
—M. W. Craven, bestselling author of Fearless
“All The Sinners Bleed is another banger from S. A. Cosby. Titus Crown is one of the most compelling characters I've read in a long time.”
—Steve Cavanagh, bestselling author of Thirteen
“Only S.A. Cosby could bring poetry to the darkness. A dark, disturbing and gripping masterpiece that reaches into the depths of your soul.”
—Nadine Matheson, bestselling author of The Jigsaw Man
“With the release of All The Sinners Bleed, S. A. Cosby further cements the arrival of a great American author. Although the story is cleverly veiled as an engaging suspense/mystery, he manages to deftly examine issues of race, class and religion with impressive effectiveness. Loved the ride.”
— Eriq La Salle, Actor/Director/Producer and author of Laws of Wrath
“S. A. Cosby does Thomas Harris!! And proves that the serial killer novel is back with his cleverly plotted and socially relevant take on the hunt for a monstrous killer…A fast-paced book that will also have you asking deep questions about the nature of faith, All the Sinners Bleed is bound to be one of my favorite books of the year."
—Lithub
“S. A. Cosby is a proven master of crime fiction, and All the Sinners Bleed continues his hot streak….This socially conscious southern noir is about as violent and grizzly as novels get — a heavy but necessary read for those sultry nights steeped in moonlight and moonshine where the ugly truth gets the justice and the reckoning it deserves.”
—Vulture
“Cosby’s growing body of work represents a muscular take on race relations in America. In All The Sinners Bleed, he again forces the reader to dwell on how prejudice lingers and shapes contemporary society, particularly in America’s south. A powerful crime thriller that pulls no punches.”
—Vaseem Khan, bestselling author of the Baby Ganesh Agency series and the Malabar series
“An uncompromising, blistering Southern Gothic with a compelling, beautifully drawn protagonist in Titus Crown. Cosby's writing sings.”
—Mason Cross, author of the Carter Blake series
“A gripping cat-and-mouse game...Readers will cheer at Titus’ brutal screeds against those who push him past the point of patience....Another provocative and page-turning entry in the Southern noir genre.”
—Kirkus
Library Journal
★ 05/01/2023
When he left the FBI under a cloud, Titus Crown returned home to Charon, VA, where he was elected the first Black sheriff in the town's history. It begins to feel like less of an honor when there's a report of an active shooter at the high school. When everything is over, there are two dead men: a beloved teacher, Jeff Steadman, and the shooter, Latrell Macdonald. Before he died, Latrell's comments were strange. Crown follows up, searching cell phones and computers, where videos of young Black people being sexually abused and killed are a sickening sight he'll never forget. But Steadman and Latrell were only two out of three figures on those clips. Now Crown's small team must find the third killer from the videos, who wore a wolf mask, while also trying to juggle the community's uneasiness, more murders, and the upcoming march by white men who want to keep their Confederate statue in town. First, he has to find the religious, bigoted killer of Black children who is hiding in plain sight in Charon. VERDICT Cosby, the multi-award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, has a unique, powerful voice for social justice and racism. His compelling writing will have readers rooting for his latest unforgettable, flawed hero.—Lesa Holstine
MAY 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Adam Lazarre-White draws listeners into the thought-provoking story of Titus Crowne, the first Black sheriff in the small Virginia county of Charon. As listeners enter Titus's world, he is faced with a shooter at the high school, a neo-Confederate group on the march, and a serial killer terrifying the town. Lazarre-White masterfully portrays people of multiple races, old and young. He also delivers Cosby's reflections on family, grief, and faith with genuine introspection and without distracting from the tense plotlines. When the final battle between good and evil leaves Titus's larynx damaged, Lazarre-White seamlessly conveys the changed man's new voice. This is a gripping, timely tale--beautifully told. E.Q. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-28
A gripping cat-and-mouse game between a twisted White religious killer and the first Black sheriff of a small Virginia community.
Welcome to Charon County, a “teardrop-shaped peninsula” on the Chesapeake Bay with a cursed name and a blood-soaked history, where “equality’s surest foothold was found on the autopsy table.” The latest tragedy is a school shooting, terrible enough on its own but only the beginning of the fresh hell descending on Charon: Both the shooter and the lone victim are connected to a string of unthinkable abuses targeting Black children. And there is a mysterious killer still at large, his gruesome crimes steeped in Scripture and religious iconography. Recently elected Sheriff Titus Crown—organized, decisive, and conflicted between justice and vengeance—is on the case, using his FBI training to profile a madman. As in any good noir, everyone is an enemy and a suspect; Titus is hounded by bigots of all stripes: biased officers, casually racist locals, and venom-spitting White supremacists. Titus is basically the only three-dimensional character, though this isn’t a major hindrance. The novel crackles along with each new clue and obstacle; scenes and dozens of characters are sketched with efficiency. The diffuse subjects of Titus’ wrath are treated solemnly if unsubtly—institutional Christianity in particular takes it in the teeth. Tight pacing mostly keeps the contrivances at bay, though there may be the occasional eye roll at Titus’ pithy True Detective–style platitudes about how broken the world is. Nevertheless, readers will cheer at Titus’ brutal screeds against those who push him past the point of patience. “Evil is rarely complicated,” Titus explains. “It’s just fucking bold.” Cosby’s previous works, Blacktop Wasteland (2020) and Razorblade Tears (2021), have both been optioned for film adaptations, and his latest seems destined for the same treatment.
Another provocative and page-turning entry in the Southern noir genre.
