COOL MACHINE

From the 1 New York Times bestselling author and two time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings 1980s New York to vivid unforgettable life 1981 New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan era predatory capitalism Up in Harlem successful business owner master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture s Dealer of the Month When the banks won t give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency however Carney gambles on one last heist and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind 1983 To some Carney s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone cold sociopath To others a top thief with questionable people skills Either way he s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth he s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene Luckily for him whether you re uptown or down everyone speaks the same language of violence Pepper is a native speaker 1986 Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie Now twenty years after F