Skip to main content
  Log In
Menu
Displaying 1 of 1
King of ashes : a novel
Book
2025
Google Books Preview
Add to My List  
Share
Find It
Syndetics Unbound
Summary

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Propulsive and powerful. . . A gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger." -- New York Times Book Review
"Pick up the novel everyone will be talking about." --The Atlantic
"Dark, riveting, and accomplished. " --Washington Post

Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes , a Godfather -inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father's car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family--and the family business--together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante's recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he's forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.

"[A] sizzling summer read that concludes with a few unexpected twists."
--Atlanta Journal Constitution

Fiction/Biography Profile
Genre
Mystery
Crime
Suspense
Multicultural
Fiction
Trade Reviews
Publishers Weekly Review
A Virginia man is sucked into a brutal drug syndicate in this fitfully inspired crime novel from bestseller Cosby (All the Sinners Bleed). After a long absence, Atlanta finance manager Roman Caruthers returns home to Jefferson Run, Va., where his father is in a coma after a suspicious car accident. When the accident gets linked to his younger brother Dante's drug dealing, Roman offers his financial expertise to the Black Baron Boys, a gang led by brothers Torrent and Tranquil Gilchrist, who are as inclined to murder Dante as to let Roman help settle his several-hundred-thousand-dollar debt. Engaging with criminals sets Roman on a path of escalating violence that builds to a tragic, near-Shakespearean crescendo. Meanwhile, Roman and Dante's sister, Neveah, reinvestigates the still unsolved disappearance of their mother a decade earlier. En route to the novel's tragic finale, Cosby hits some off notes: Roman's passage from rescuer to aspiring kingpin is almost too smooth, his growing appetite for violence is overplayed and undermotivated, and the book's unyielding nihilism can feel more suffocating than powerful. Still, Cosby continues to excel at evocative scene-setting and drawing richly detailed portraits of rural Black family life. This is best suited to the author's devoted fans. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary. (June)
Booklist Review
Roman Carruthers did it. He got out. He left the dying town of Jefferson Run, Virginia, and he built himself a prosperous life making money for other people. When he learns that his father is in a coma after a car accident, he flies home immediately to find a family in disarray: a sister who's become obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of their mother, and a brother who's deep in debt to some very bad people. Can Roman somehow find a way to bring peace to his family, even as his father lies dying? Cosby has published one magnificent crime novel after another, beginning with 2019's My Darkest Prayer, and this new book spotlights the author's gift for building complex characters. It also continues his exploration of the dark places humans keep hidden within us. His dialogue, too, is pitch-perfect: colloquial and idiomatic, reflecting the education and upbringing of his characters--it feels like we're eavesdropping on real people. A stunning novel.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cosby's rural southern noir mysteries have become consistent best-sellers, and this one comes out in time for beach read season.
Kirkus Review
Deadly trouble awaits Roman Carruthers in his corrupt hometown when the Black wealth management whiz attempts to outwit a murderous drug gang threatening his family. The Atlanta-based Roman's weak-willed, strung out younger brother, Dante, and an ill-fated crony have incurred a sizable drug debt by consuming rather than dealing most of the Molly and heroin they obtained from the notorious Black Baron Boys. Led by the ruthless Torrent and his cooler-tempered sibling, Tranquil, the BBB have expressed their displeasure with Dante by running his father, founder of a family-run crematorium, off the road, leaving him in a coma. Having never encountered a situation he couldn't wheel and deal his way out of, the self-regarding Roman offers to cover the debt and much more by reinvesting the BBB's money. Their immediate answer is to knock his teeth out. But with visions of using the crematorium (Dante's inferno?) to burn up their victims, they go along with him--to a point. Roman, like his brother and sister, Neveah, is haunted by the disappearance of their mother when they were teens. To expiate his pain, he visits a dominatrix while Neveah--who increasingly believes rumors that her jealous father did her mother in--sleeps with a crooked cop. In making the transition from slick operator to cold-blooded instigator of violence himself, Roman becomes the latest in a long line of fictional Southerners to strike a deal with the devil (as in the filmSinners, fire plays a big role). The plot sometimes wobbles--Roman pursues an unlikely romance with Torrent's smart and warmly appealing half sister. But Cosby keeps things tense, making great use of the crematorium and freshening the genre with lofty philosophizing: "To Roman, it felt like life, existence, was a stygian wheel that had spun on a bitter axis." Rarely has a crime fiction family been given a more bitter spin than this one. Another strong outing by a modern noir master. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Large Cover Image
Librarian's View
Displaying 1 of 1