A Guide to Victor LaValle Books

When Apollo’s father disappeared, he left his son a box of books and strange recurring dreams. Now Apollo is a father himself — and as he and his wife, Emma, settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo’s old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd, and then vanishes. Thus begins Apollo’s quest that takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

Horse and Ahab share the kind of contempt and love for one another that only true friends can. Months after graduating high school, Horse is getting married to his longtime girlfriend, Melissa, and moving into her apartment in Manhattan, and Ahab has enlisted in the Marines. They’ve found ways to escape the neighborhood, just not together.

Pepper is the surprised inmate of a mental institution. In the darkness of his room, on his first night, a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?

A fast-paced and fantastical novella about a young girl’s journey into a dark netherworld to find her missing best friend. Lucretia and the Kroons is a dazzlingly imaginative adventure story and a moving exploration of the power of friendship and the terror of loss.

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. He scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God. Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.

Anthony James is possibly schizophrenic, and he’s just been kicked out of college. He’s rescued by his mother, sister, and grandmother, but they may not be altogether sane themselves. When his invincible 13-year-old sister enters yet another beauty pageant — this one for virgins — the combustible Jameses pile into their car and head South for the competition. Will Anthony’s family stick together or explode? With electrifying prose, LaValle ushers us into four troubled but very funny lives.

Twelve original and interconnected stories offer harrowing glimpses at the vulnerable lives of young people who struggle not only to come of age, but to survive the city streets.

Knowing that imagining a brighter tomorrow has always been an act of resistance, editors Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams invited an extraordinarily talented group of writers to share stories that explore new forms of freedom, love, and justice. The result is this spectacular collection of 25 tales that blend the dark and the light, the dystopian and the utopian. It is a gift for anyone who believes in our power to dream of a just world.

Sabretooth takes his destiny into his own clawed hands! The powers that be condemned Victor Creed to the Pit for breaking the rules of Krakoa. But now he’s free and ready to show the world that you can’t keep a bad man down, even as his fellow Exiles from Krakoa speed along in hot pursuit! But will they find common ground with Sabretooth? Or will their next encounter be their last?

The most violent Wolverine story ever told! Get ready for the showdown to end all showdowns: Wolverine vs. Sabretooth! It’s been years since these heavy hitters have crossed paths in the Marvel Universe. But as Krakoa falls, so rises Sabretooth — and he’s out for revenge! Freed from the Pit and backed by an army of Sabreteeth, Victor Creed will prove once and for all why he’s Logan’s ultimate nemesis!