Cool Machine: by the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad (The Harlem Trilogy) - Hardcover

Whitehead, Colson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0349727678 ISBN 13: 9780349727677

Publisher: Fleet, 2026

Synopsis

'Rejoice: the final instalment of the Harlem Trilogy is here' Telegraph

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 Freddie's death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie's son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he's spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to Sugar Hill, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead's vivid characters, it's what's below the surface that reveals the truth.

'It's about Harlem in the '80s. Colson Whitehead wrote three books about Harlem, one in the '60s, one in the '70s, and this is the last one. You do not need to have read the other two. Colson Whitehead is the best there is, period' Ann Patchett, Good Housekeeping

About this title

About the Author

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also won the National Book Award. A recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

'If greatness is excellence sustained over time, then without question, Whitehead is one of the greatest of his generation' TIME

[EXTRACT] The city that year was true to its personality, as malformed across the centuries - a monstrous entity powered by innate miseries, operated by brute will, and held together by pluck, fury, and rebar. It had been flat broke, and now clambered from the crater of debt one mucky handhold at a time.

PRAISE FOR HARLEM SHUFFLE

'Gloriously entertaining' Evening Standard
'A rich, wild book' New York Times
'Dazzling' Guardian

PRAISE FOR CROOK MANIFESTO
'The compelling energy of a crime thriller and the sharp wit of social satire' Guardian
'Whitehead's crime series is one of the most enjoyable streaks in recent fiction' Telegraph
'Sly plotting, vibrant characterisation, astute social history - this novel has it all' Mail on Sunday

[thumbnails of the covers of HARLEM SHUFFLE and CROOK MANIFESTO]

From the Inside Flap

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 Freddie's death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie's son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he's spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to Sugar Hill, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead's vivid characters, it's what's below the surface that reveals the truth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fleet
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0349727678
• ISBN 13: 9780349727677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368