Новинки Джеймса Макбрайда

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

В сентябре 1969 года неуклюжий, капризный, старый церковный дьякон по прозвищу Спортивный Пиджак, вваливается во двор жилого комплекса в Южном Бруклине, вытаскивает из кармана пистолет 38-го калибра и на глазах у всех стреляет в упор в местного наркоторговца Динса Клеменса. Когда-то Клеменс был подающим надежды питчером в бейсбольной команде, которую тренировал Пиджак. Все гадают, почему Пиджак подстрелил наркоторговца.

Распутывая историю, автор рассказывает обо всех, кто имеет к ней отношение: Клеменсе, свидетелях афроамериканцах и латиноамериканцах, белых соседях, местных полицейских, членах баптистской церкви, где Пиджак был дьяконом, итальянских гангстерах и самом Пиджаке. По мере того как повествование углубляется, становится ясно, что жизни персонажей, оказавшихся в бурном водовороте Нью-Йорка 1960-х годов, пересекаются неожиданным образом. Когда правда все же всплывает, Макбрайд показывает нам, что не все секреты нужно скрывать, что лучший способ вырасти — это встретить перемены без страха, и что семена любви лежат в надежде и сострадании.

Входит в десятку лучших романов 2020 года по версиям New York Times, Goodreads, Entertainment Weekly и TIME Magazine, номинант премии «Киркус» 2020 года. Одна из любимых книг года Барака Обамы и рекомендация книжного клуба Опры Уинфри.

Компания Sister Pictures, стоящая за производством «Чернобыля», приступает к разработке нового сериала — телеадаптации романа «Deacon King Kong». Сценарий к проекту напишет автор оригинального произведения, лауреат премии National Book Awards Джеймс МакБрайд.

В сентябре 1969 года неуклюжий, капризный, старый церковный дьякон по прозвищу Спортивный Пиджак, вваливается во двор жилого комплекса в Южном Бруклине, вытаскивает из кармана пистолет 38-го калибра и на глазах у всех стреляет в упор в местного наркоторговца Динса Клеменса. Когда-то Клеменс был подающим надежды питчером в бейсбольной команде, которую тренировал Пиджак. Все гадают, почему Пиджак подстрелил наркоторговца.

Распутывая историю, автор рассказывает обо всех, кто имеет к ней отношение: Клеменсе, свидетелях афроамериканцах и латиноамериканцах, белых соседях, местных полицейских, членах баптистской церкви, где Пиджак был дьяконом, итальянских гангстерах и самом Пиджаке. По мере того как повествование углубляется, становится ясно, что жизни персонажей, оказавшихся в бурном водовороте Нью-Йорка 1960-х годов, пересекаются неожиданным образом. Когда правда все же всплывает, Макбрайд показывает нам, что не все секреты нужно скрывать, что лучший способ вырасти — это встретить перемены без страха, и что семена любви лежат в надежде и сострадании.

Входит в десятку лучших романов 2020 года по версиям New York Times, Goodreads, Entertainment Weekly и TIME Magazine, номинант премии «Киркус» 2020 года. Одна из любимых книг года Барака Обамы и рекомендация книжного клуба Опры Уинфри.

Компания Sister Pictures, стоящая за производством «Чернобыля», приступает к разработке нового сериала — телеадаптации романа «Deacon King Kong». Сценарий к проекту напишет автор оригинального произведения, лауреат премии National Book Awards Джеймс МакБрайд.

The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportscoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church’s baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportscoat’s best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church.
DEACON KING KONG is a book about a community under threat, about the ways people pull together in an age when the old rules are being rewritten. It is very funny in places, and heartbreaking in others. From a prize-winning storyteller, this New York Times bestseller shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, and that the communities we build are fragile but vital.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.

In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters--caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York--overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion

National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the “real” James Brown after receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth. His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown’s legacy.

Kill ’Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown’s rough-and-tumble life, through McBride’s lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Brown’s most influential nonmusical creation, his “adopted son,” the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown’s first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.

James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBride’s own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill ’Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Brown’s great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today.

From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl. Over the ensuing months, Henry—whom Brown nicknames Little Onion—conceals his true identity as he…

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction.

In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with “the Code,” a fiercely guarded cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run. Liz’s flight and her dreams of tomorrow will thrust all those near her toward a mysterious, redemptive fate.

Filled with rich, true details—much of the story is drawn from historical events—and told in McBride’s signature lyrical style, Song Yet Sung is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a James Brown biography. The incredible modern classic that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation and launched James McBride’s literary career. Over two years on The New York Times bestseller list Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and…

Touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.

The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion--and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain.

In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned.

At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college--and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University.

Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self-realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.