All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel (CD-Audio)
Staff Reviews
For once, Cosby’s hero is neither a current nor reformed outlaw, but a sheriff. Not just a sheriff, but the first Black sheriff of Charon County, an area where the troubled past is still simmering. Concerned that his biggest problem is a march by Christian Nationalists, Sheriff Titus Crown is blindsided by a school shooting, where the victim is a beloved teacher, and in addition, the shooter, killed by a trigger-fingered officer. This does nothing to ingratiate Crown with the formerly supportive Black community, led by an activist minister. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg; before this story is fully told, there will be plenty of secrets revealed and, as promised in the title, shed blood. Edge of your seat thrills, masterful storytelling, and what a voice – another winner from SA Cosby!
— Daniel Goldin
The South is haunted, and so is Titus Crown. A former FBI agent turned first Black sheriff of his hometown of Charon County, Titus's days are filled with white supremacists, holier-than-thou church leaders, and bureaucratic blowhards, but it's the memories that keep him up at night. And then a school shooting uncovers a serial killer in their midst, and nobody in Charon County will be the same. For most people, the prospect of a tightly-plotted narrative with a truly horrifying killer is enough. But the real staying power comes from SA Cosby's voice and the undeniable truth of life in a small Southern town. If you assumed everyone in a small town knows each other, All the Sinners Bleed is here to disabuse you of that notion.
— Rachel Copeland
Phew! Crime fiction kingpin SA Cosby grabs the police procedural by the throat and dunks it into the murkiest depths of the Chesapeake Bay. This book is very seriously not playing around and gets about as dark as a moonshine blackout. Cosby and his hero (the first black sheriff in a rural, Eastern Virginia county) stare straight into the heart of the South’s (let’s be honest, America’s) worst bugaboos - race, religion, good ol’ boy politics, fanaticism, and violence - the blackest parts of broken men’s hearts. Yet what makes this one special are the sparks of kindness between characters that Cosby clings too – both calloused-hand country tough love and the tender care that passes between father and son – it’s a reminder of what grace can be. Oh, and that voice! Cosby bends language to his will and coins more than a couple delightful new Southernisms along the way. As long as the creek don’t rise and the good Lord’s willing, I’ll keep reading Cosby’s excellent books.
— Chris LeeJune 2023 Indie Next List
“This is an early favorite for the best crime fiction novel of the year. From the perspective of a town’s first Black sheriff and his descent into the mind of a serial killer, it’s riveting and explores issues of race, policing, and religion.”
— Jason Hafer, Reads & Company, Phoenixville, PA
Description
"Lazarre-White masterfully portrays people of multiple races, old and young. He also delivers Cosby's reflections on family, grief, and faith with genuine introspection and without distracting from the tense plotlines...This is a gripping, timely tale—beautifully told." —AudioFile (Earphones Award winner)
The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction.” —The Washington Post.
A Black sheriff. A serial killer.
A small town ready to combust.
Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.
Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon.
With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.
Charon is Titus’s home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning.
Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction” (The Washington Post).
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
About the Author
S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player.
