Colson Whitehead

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad and two-time Pulitzer winner comes Cool Machine, a novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the final volume of his Harlem Trilogy.

New York City is beginning to emerge from financial decline, energized by real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. In Harlem, business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his wife a loan for her new travel agency, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with Pepper, a legendary criminal mastermind.

Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city, but it will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right. Cool Machine roves all over a city in transition, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.

This program will be a 30-minute lecture by the author, followed by 30 minutes of pre-collected audience questions.

with Politics and Prose Bookstore

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