A Rage in Harlem
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Vintage Books
Date Published:  December 1989
Format:  Trade Paper

Originally published as For Love of Imabelle; first in the Gravedigger and Coffin Ed series

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For the love of fine and wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson loses his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds and steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a crap table. Luckily for him, Jackson has a savvy twin brother, Goldy, who, disguised as a Sister of Mercy, earns a living by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. Now for the big payback...

The Real Cool Killers
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Random House, Incorporated
Date Published:  December 1988
Format:  Trade Paper

Many people had reasons for killing Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls. But there are complications--like a drug addict, a disappearing suspect, and the fact that Coffin Ed's daughter is up to her neck in the whole explosive business.

The Big Gold Dream
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Thunders Mouth's Press
Date Published:  March 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

Best known for his Harlem Detective series which was the basis of films like Cotton Comes to Harlem, Himes began writing while serving a prison term for jewel theft in the 1920s.

All Shot Up
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Author: Chester Himes
Publisher:  Thunders Mouth's Press
Date Published:  March 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

The Heat's On
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Vintage Books
Date Published:  December 1988
Format:  Trade Paper

From the start, nothing goes fright for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem--three million dollars' worth of heroine and a simple albino called Pinky.

Cotton Comes to Harlem
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Vintage Books
Date Published:  December 1988
Format:  Trade Paper

Black flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets working the scam of a lifetime. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement he's counting on the big Harlem rally to produce a big collection--for his own private charity. But the take ($87,000) is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. With Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones on everyone's trail and piecing together the complexity of the scheme, Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of Himes's hardest-hitting and most entertaining thrillers.

Run Man Run
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Carroll & Graf Publishers
Date Published:  June 1995
Format:  Trade Paper

Blind Man with a Pistol
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Author:  Chester Himes
Publisher:  Vintage Books
Date Published:  December 1989
Format:  Trade Paper

New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is dose to the boiling point. To Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, at times it seems as if the whole world has gone mad. Trying, as always, to keep some kind of peace-their legendary nickel-plated Colts very much in evidence-Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find themselves pursuing two completely different cases through a maze of knifings, beatings, and riots that threaten to tear Harlem apart.

Plan B
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Author:  Chester Himes, Michel Fabre (Editor), Robert E. Skinner (Editor)
Publisher:  University Press of Mississippi
Date Published:  June 1994
Format:  Trade Paper

This unfinished novel by the author of Cotton Comes to Harlem (BRD 1965) and If He Hollers Let Him Go (BRD 1945) was first published in a French translation in 1983. "The novel describes a plot by one Tomsson Black to instigate racial turmoil in America by supplying arms to blacks." (Times Lit Suppl)

Tomsson Black, political visionary, business genius, and underground revolutionary, plots to avenge injustice by instigating racial turmoil. The roots of racism extend far back into his ancestry, and persecution and suffering have affected many generations of his family. Tomsson's own misfortunes are the impetus for him to found a criminal underworld whose ultimate purpose is the overflow of white society. This novel, the history of Tomsson Black and an indictment of racism in America, ends in apocalypse. It is Chester Himes's ultimate statement about the destructive power of racism and his own personal fantasy of how the American Negro, through calculated acts of violence and martyrdom, could destroy the unequal system pervading American life. However, after reaching an ideological impasse, Himes, one of the angriest writers in the black protest movement, left this novel unfinished. After his death in Spain in 1984, a rumor persisted that he had left a final, unfinished Harlem story, in which he literally destroys both his Harlem backdrop and his heroes in a violent racial cataclysm. The manuscript, entitled Plan B, is that novel. It was edited and published in France, where it was widely hailed as an unfinished masterpiece by readers and critics alike. This new edition, appearing for the first time in the United States, includes an introduction by Michel Fabre (The Sorbonne) and Robert E. Skinner (Xavier University), who have prepared Plan B for publication.