Resolving to leave the pornography industry after her husband is found electrocuted in a hot tub with another woman, adult film star Debbie Dare endures a reckoning involving her late husband's debts, her estranged family, and the child she had to give up. - (Baker & Taylor)

Resolving to leave the pornography industry after her husband is found electrocuted in a hot tub with another woman, an adult film star endures a reckoning involving her late husband's debts, her estranged family and the child she had to give up. By the award-winning author of the Easy Rawlins series. 40,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry after her tomcatting husband dies in a hot tub. Electrocuted. With another woman in there with him. Debbie decides she just isn't going to "do it anymore." But executing her exit strategy from the porn world is a wrenching and far from simple process.

Millions of men (and no doubt many women) have watched famed black porn queen Debbie Dare—she of the blond wig and blue contacts-"do it" on television and computer screens every which way with every combination of partners the mind of man can imagine. But one day an unexpected and thunderous on-set orgasm catches Debbie unawares, and when she returns to the mansion she shares with her husband, insatiable former porn star and "film producer" Theon Pinkney, she discovers that he's died in a case of hot tub electrocution, "auditioning" an aspiring "starlet." Burdened with massive debts that her husband incurred, and which various L.A. heavies want to collect on, Debbie must reckon with a life spent in the peculiar subculture of the pornography industry and her estrangement from her family and the child she had to give up. She's done with porn, but her options for what might come next include the possibility of suicide.Debbie . . . is a portrait of a ransacked but resilient soul in search of salvation and a cure for grief. - (Random House, Inc.)

WALTER MOSLEY is the author of forty-two books, most notably eleven Easy Rawlins mysteries, the first of which,Devil in a Blue Dress, was made into an acclaimed film starring Denzel Washington.Always Outnumbered was an HBO film starring Laurence Fishburne, adapted from his first Socrates Fortlow novel. A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of Goddard College, he holds an MFA from CCNY and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy Award, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award. - (Random House, Inc.)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Sandra Peel is having a rough week. Her husband has died, accidentally electrocuted in the bathtub (while in the company of another woman); she discovers she's broke (Theon, her husband, was seriously in debt, and apparently she now owes a lot of money to some guy who might just kill her if she can't pay up); and she's decided to quit her job, reunite with her young son, and change her life. That's a lot of good material to work with, but, maybe just to give himself an extra challenge, Mosley makes Sandra, better known as Debbie Dare, a porn star—and, yes, there is some graphic language and imagery in the book because Mosley's not the kind of writer who hides the truth behind a sanitized curtain. If this novel were a movie, and we were living in the early 1970s, Sandra would be played by Pam Grier: a beautiful, tough, smart woman who won't take crap from anybody. This could be the best thing Mosley has written in years, a deeply affecting story of a woman whose determination to pull herself out of one life and into another is tested almost to its limits by things she can't control—until she finds a way to control them. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mosley's work in noncrime genres has proved uneven over the last several years, but he's back to the top of his game here. Expect plenty of attention for this daring and compelling novel. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Winner of PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award and famous for his best-selling historical mysteries starring hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, Mosley returns with an ambitious and intriguing novel about how we act in challenging situations. Black porn star Debbie Dare, who typically wears a blonde wig and blue contacts, arrives home to find the electrocuted body of husband Theon in the hot tub with an underage girl who is just a little older than Debbie was when she met him. In the following days, she takes care of her husband's affairs, connects with his mother, and chooses a different profession. The premise is jarring, yet Mosley is able to paint a picture of ordinary people. He shows the humanity of the characters despite their flaws: "I loved Theon in my sleep that night," says Debbie. "He was an ideal husband, a man who took care of so many people and things that he didn't have time for children—or even a proper job." VERDICT Like Eric Jerome Dickey's Genevieve, this book will appeal to readers who like their erotic fiction with a little depth. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/13.]—Ashanti White, Yelm, WA