John Ridley Books In Order

Those Who Walk in Darkness Books In Order

  1. Those Who Walk in Darkness (2003)
  2. What Fire Cannot Burn (2004)

Novels

  1. Stray Dogs (1997)
  2. Love Is a Racket (1998)
  3. Everybody Smokes in Hell (1999)
  4. A Conversation with the Mann (2002)
  5. The Drift (2002)

Graphic Novels

  1. The Authority: Human On the Inside (2004)
  2. The American Way (2007)

Those Who Walk in Darkness Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

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John Ridley Books Overview

Those Who Walk in Darkness

Soledad ‘Bullet’ O’Roark writes her own rules. Usually it gets her in trouble. On her first day with the L.A.P.D.’s elite Mtac squad, Soledad takes down an outlawed super powered freak with a weapon she designed herself a definite violation. Her love life is no less chaotic. It’s hard to find a decent guy with nothing to hide. But there’s not much room in Soledad’s life for romance when a cop killer is on the loose. The ‘baddest’ freak of all, this one can control people’s minds and make them commit anything he wants…
including murder.

What Fire Cannot Burn

The bestselling author of ‘Those Who Walk in Darkness’ delivers the second book of his action packed series, featuring top LAPD mutant hunter Soledad O’Roark, who teams up with rival Eddi Aoki when a vigilante starts killing metanormals without mercy.

Love Is a Racket

In his first novel since Stray Dogs, John Ridley offers up a brilliant noir farce about a small time con man who finally gets it right just before it all goes wrong. Everything’s a racket for Jeffty Kittridge, a thirty seven year old ex wannabe scriptwriter living on the skids in Hollywood the two bit cons he pulls for spending money; the way he convinces himself that he’s not a drunk between every shot of booze he kicks back; the way he tries to assure Dumas, the local shark, that he’s just about to pay off his 15K debt…
Except he’s not good at any of that. He’s been in jail twice and the state’s got a bad attitude about seeing someone the third time; that bug he just felt crawling up his neck is most likely the first installment of the DTs; and Dumas recently delivered a fairly emphatic payment due reminder: a couple of his goons busted two of Jeffty’s fingers. The fact is, Jeffty’s a loser, big as they come, and things aren’t about to change up for him anytime soon: ‘I would’ve felt…
near terminally depressed,’ he tells us as his story begins to unfold, ‘but I was so used to my life all I felt was content.’ Then he stumbles on salvation: a dirt caked, street hardened, exquisitely beautiful young homeless woman named Mona Jeffty prefers to think of her as Angel who inspires both his love and the idea for the perfect con. It’s Jeffty’s chance to hit it big, and to be set for good in his new life with his new love. ‘The thing about love,’ Jeffty declares, ‘is no matter how twisted, or wrong, or evil, it never dies.’ But as the momentum of the con carries him closer and closer to what he imagines will be a moment of blissed out consummation with his angel Mona, Jeffty discovers there are some severe exceptions to his rule. Smart, edgy, caustically funny, Love Is a Racket puts John Ridley in a darkly comic league of his own. From the Hardcover edition.

Everybody Smokes in Hell

John Ridley author of Stray Dogs and Love Is a Racket is back with a brutally funny, outrageous new novel that chronicles the mayhem unleashed by the stumblings of one hapless young man trying to make it in Hollywood. Paris Scott can’t make anything work out. A failed actor, writer, musician a failure, period he works nights at a convenience store, drives a ’76 Gremlin, and was just kicked to the curb by his best girl. But when the last master tape of a freshly suicided rock star and a small fortune in stolen drugs fall into his lap, it’s like he’s stumbled onto the key to his dreams. He might as well have stumbled onto a time bomb. The people who want the stolen dope back get themselves viciously confused with the people who want the stolen tape, but no one is confused about Paris’s being the bull’s eye of the target they’re gunning for. So how’s a guy who’s wanted dead stay alive? ‘Get out of town, get some money, then get more out of town.’ Paris puts his Gremlin in gear, and the resulting chase and chain reaction madness stretches from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, leaving a trail of blood, bodies, and broken hearts in its wake. Dope dealers, Hollywood agents, two bit criminals, three bit criminals, waitresses, psychopaths, rock stars, strippers, beautiful women, not so beautiful women, and desert rednecks no one comes out clean in this raucous romp and stomp. It’s John Ridley at his most devilishly sly, laying out proof that, without a doubt, Everybody Smokes in Hell.

A Conversation with the Mann

An evocative novel of an aspiring black comics rise to near fame and fortune during the Rat Pack era, by the author of Everybody Smokes in Hell and Stray Dogs. What do you want?I want the Ed Sullivan Show. At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, like a lot of black Americans, comedian Jackie Mann wanted to be somebody. And for him there was only one way to achieve that: to make it big. Make it, no matter the cost: friends, family, ones own self esteem and self respect. This is the story of a young mans journey from Harlem to stardom, a story of Hollywood royalty, New York glitterati, Vegas Mafiosi, Northern bigotry, and Southern racism. This is a story of love, honor, betrayal, and redemption; of fame bought and paid for by any means necessary. It is the story of one mans desire and an entire races demands, and the incredible moment when the two came together as one. This is the story of Jackie Mann.

The Drift

He was Charles Harmon, a black man living white and living well beautiful wife, German car, big house in an upper upper middle class suburb of Los Angeles. He is Brain Nig*ger Charlie, a train tramp eking out a ragged existence on the railroads, leaning on drugs to keep him from thinking about everything he had, everything his creeping dementia has forced him to run from. Charlie’s been asked a desperate favor: find the seventeen year old niece of the man who taught him how to survive the rails a girl lost somewhere on the High Line, the corridors of racist hate along the tracks of the Pacific Northwest. Charlie has little hope of finding her alive, but the request is an obligation he can t refuse. The search is a twisted trail that leads from Iowa to Washington State, mixing lies and deceit, hate and hopelessness, and brutal, stubbornly unsolved murders. All of which Charlie is prepared to meet in kind. What he isn t prepared for is a path that will eventually lead him back to what he thought no longer existed his own humanity though the toll may turn out to be his life. At once stunningly visceral and psychologically complex, furiously paced and deeply empathic, The Drift is John Ridley s most ambitious, most galvanizing novel yet.

The Authority: Human On the Inside

From acclaimed novelist and screenwriter John Ridley Three Kings, Everybody Smokes in Hell and hot new artist Ben Oliver Puncture comes the WildStorm event of the year! The Authority, Earths last defense, have performed godlike acts in defense of the planet, whether defeating ancient gods or fending off interdimensional invasion forces. But these brave acts havent always endeared them to many in power…
particularly in the United States. The President, tired of being embarrassed by what he views as a bunch of costumed freaks, sets a plan in motion that could very well destroy the Authority from the insidea plan so cunning itll shake the Authority to their very core. With an unexpected threat from the future on Earths doorstep, it could very well mean global extinction!

The American Way

Critically acclaimed novelist and screenwriter John Ridley Three Kings offers a unique vision of U.S. history in the thrilling graphic novel The American Way!

The 1960s were a decade of incredible change for America. It was a time of innocence. It was a time of optimism. It was a time of heroes.

In the early ’40s, the United States government hatched a plan to create the Civil Defense Corps: a group of ‘super heroes’ who could fight alien invasions, evil super powered beings and communism, all in front of an adoring public, courtesy of television. But that dream was far from reality by the 60s, as new C.D.C. Marketing Director Wesley Catham is about to discover. How far will America go to protect its dream of a better tomorrow?

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