Most Popular Books by Richard Price

Crack-dealers known as "Clockers" are at the bottom of the drug-dealing ladder, and they must commit murder to rise higher.

Ray Mitchell, a former TV writer who has left Hollywood under a cloud, returns to urban Dempsy, New Jersey, hoping to make a difference in the lives of his struggling neighbors. Instead, his very public and emotionally suspect generosity gets him beaten nearly to death. Ray refuses to name his assailant, which makes him intensely interesting to Detective Nerese Ammons, a friend from childhood, who now sets out to unlock the secret of his reticence. Set against the intensely realized backdrop of urban America, the cat and mouse game that unfolds is both morally complex and utterly gripping.

So, what do you do?" Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter . . . But now he''s thirty-five years old and he''s still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn''t say tending bar. He was going places—until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that''s Eric''s version. In Lush Life, Richard Price tears the shiny veneer off the "new" New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour. Lush Life is an Xray of the street in the age of no broken windows and "quality of life" squads, from a writer whose "tough, gritty brand of social realism . . . reads like a movie in prose" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

In 1998, Richard Price returned to the gritty urban landscape of his national bestseller Clockers to produce Freedomland, a searing and unforgettable novel about a hijacked car, a missing child, and an embattled neighborhood polarized by racism, distrust, and accusation. Freedomland hit bestseller lists from coast to coast, including those of the Boston Globe, USA Today and Los Angeles Times; garnered universally rave reviews; and was selected as the Grand Prize Winner of the Imus American Book Award and as a New York Times Notable Book. On May 11, this highly lauded bestseller is available in paperback for the first time. A white woman, her hands gashed and bloody, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man. But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat, and he has now disappeared into the night. So begins Richard Price''s electrifying new novel, a tale set on the same turf--Dempsey, New Jersey--as Clockers. Assigned to investigate the case of Brenda Martin''s missing child is detective Lorenzo Council, a local son of the very housing project targeted as the scene of the crime. Under a white-hot media glare, Lorenzo launches an all-out search for the abducted boy, even as he quietly explores a different possibility: Does Brenda Martin know a lot more about her son''s disappearance than she''s admitting? Right behind Lorenzo is Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter from the city''s evening paper. Almost immediately, Jesse suspects Brenda of hiding something. Relentlessly, she works her way into the distraught mother''s fragile world, befriending her even as she looks for the chance to break the biggest story of her career. As the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, so does the simmering racial tension between Dempsey and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon. And when the Gannon police arrest a black man from Dempsey and declare him a suspect, the animosity between the two cities threatens to boil over into violence. With the media swarming and the mood turning increasingly ugly, Lorenzo must take desperate measures to get to the bottom of Brenda Martin''s story. At once a suspenseful mystery and a brilliant portrait of two cities locked in a death-grip of explosive rage, Freedomland reveals the heart of the urban American experience--dislocated, furious, yearning--as never before. Richard Price has created a vibrant, gut-wrenching masterpiece whose images will remain long after the final, devastating pages.

The recent success of Freedomland and Clockers has established Richard Price as one of America''s most accomplished novelists. Critics have praised both his uncanny ear for the cadences and pitch of dialogue and his insight into the deeper recesses of the American soul. Perhaps more than any novelist today, Price has captured the undercurrents of our culture and society. Bringing these talents to the art of screenplays, Price has also emerged as one of the foremost talents in screenwriting. Now, with this collection of his three best-known screenplays, readers can see for themselves why many movie critics have come to consider Richard Price today''s most preeminent screenwriter. Introduced with a revealing interview of Price by the critic Neal Gabler, this volume includes Price''s screenplays for The Color of Money (1986), which starred Paul Newman and Tom Cruise and won an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay; Sea of Love (1989), which starred Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin and became a major critical and commercial success; and Night and the City (1992), which starred Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange and again attracted rave reviews for Price''s screenwriting.

In the early 18th century, the Dutch colony of Suriname was the envy of all others in the Americas. There, seven hundred Europeans lived off the labor of over four thousand enslaved Africans. Owned by men hell-bent for quick prosperity, the rich plantations on the Suriname river became known for their heights of planter comfort and opulence--and for their depths of slave misery. Slaves who tried to escape were hunted by the planter militia. If found they were publicly tortured. Gradually slaves began to form outlaw communities until nearly one out of every ten Africans in Suriname was helping to build rebel villages in the jungle. This book relates the history of a nation founded by escaped slaves deep in the Latin American rain forest. It tells of their battles for independence, their uneasy truce with the colonial government, and the attempt of their leader, Alabi, to reconcile his people with white law and a white God.

Price traces the shape of historical thought among peoples who had previously been denied any history at all. Each page of the book presents a transcript of oral histories told by living Saramakas about their 18th century ancestors, with additional commentary.

The "extraordinary" novel of a teenage gang in the 1960s Bronx, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Clockers and The Whites ( Newsweek). The basis for the feature film, The Wanderers tells the story of teenagers on the streets of New York City, coming of age and drifting apart. Tormented by cold-hearted girls and cold-blooded ten-year-olds, maniacal rivals and murderous parents, they are caught between juveniles and adults in a gritty novel filled with "switchblade prose" and "dialogue [that] has the immediacy of overheard subway conversation"—from an award-winning author renowned for his writing on HBO''s The Wire and The Night Of, as well as such modern-day classics as Lush Life and Bloodbrothers ( Newsweek). "A kind of teenage Godfather with its own tight structure of morality, loyalty, survival, and reprisal." — Los Angeles Free Press "The flip side of American Graffiti . . . an amalgam of sex, violence, and humor, glued together with superb dialogue and unsentimental sensitivity." — Rolling Stone "A superbly written book . . . insights that allow us—at times force us—to feel closer to other human beings whether we like and approve of them or not." — The New York Times Book Review

In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of Clockers and a writer on The Wire, gives us razor-sharp anatomy of an ever-changing Harlem. East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price, one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America, creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster. Anthony Carter—whose miraculous survival, after being buried for days beneath tons of brick and stone, transforms him into a man with a message and a passionate sense of mission. Felix Pearl—a young transplant to the city, whose photography and film work that day provokes in this previously unformed soul a sharp sense of personal destiny. Royal Davis—owner of a failing Harlem funeral home, whose desperate trolling of the scene for potential “customers” triggers a quest to find another path in life. And Mary Roe—a veteran city detective who, driven in part by her own family’s brutal history, becomes obsessed with finding Christopher Diaz, one of the building’s missing. Price, the bestselling author of Lush Life and, most recently, The Whites, has created a bravura portrait of a community on the edge of disintegration. Rich with indelible characters and high drama, Lazarus Man is a riveting work of suspense and social vision by one of our major writers.

This brilliant early work from one of America''s finest writers is a soulful and often profane story of working-class life in the Bronx, and one young man''s bruising initiation into adulthood.

Thirty-five years into his research among the descendants of rebel slaves living in the South American rain forest, anthropologist Richard Price encountered Tooy, a priest, philosopher, and healer living in a rough shantytown on the outskirts of Cayenne, French Guiana. Tooy is a time traveler who crosses boundaries between centuries, continents, the worlds of the living and the dead, and the visible and invisible. With an innovative blend of storytelling and scholarship, Travels with Tooy recounts the mutually enlightening and mind-expanding journeys of these two intellectuals. Included on the itinerary for this hallucinatory expedition: forays into the eighteenth century to talk with slaves newly arrived from Africa; leaps into the midst of battles against colonial armies; close encounters with double agents and femme fatale forest spirits; and trips underwater to speak to the comely sea gods who control the world’s money supply. This enchanting book draws on Price’s long-term ethnographic and archival research, but above all on Tooy’s teachings, songs, stories, and secret languages to explore how Africans in the Americas have created marvelous new worlds of the imagination.

This third volume in the series completes the known extant correspondence of Richard Price (1732-1791). The letters cover a range of topics including religion, theology, politics, education, liberty, finance, demography and insurance.

In "Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the Debts and Finances of the Kingdom," Richard Price delves into the intricate relationship between political liberty and economic realities during a pivotal moment in British history. Written in a compelling treatise format, Price''s work critically examines the philosophical underpinnings of civil liberties against the backdrop of the American War of Independence and the fiscal crises that ensued. His eloquent yet rigorous style captures the urgency of the era, invoking Enlightenment principles that challenge the status quo and advocate for personal freedoms and financial responsibility. Richard Price, an influential moral philosopher and dissenting minister, was deeply engaged with the political climate of 18th century Britain. His experiences as a promoter of reform and social justice, coupled with his advocacy for the American colonies'' right to self-governance, inform his passionate arguments. Price''s close examination of economic disparities and political injustices reflects his belief in the viability of progressive reform and the moral imperative of liberty. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the historical discourse surrounding civil rights and economic policy. Price''s articulate arguments resonate with contemporary struggles for liberty and justice, making this work relevant not only as a historical document but also as a source of inspiration for modern discussions on freedom and governance. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works'' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work''s strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author''s overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection''s central themes.

Richard Price was a loyal, although dissenting, subject of Great Britain who thought the British treatment of their colonies as wrong, not only prudentially, financially, economically, militarily, and politically, but, above all, morally wrong. He expressed these views in his first pamphlet early in 1776. It concluded with a plea for the cessation of hostilities by Great Britain and reconciliation. Its analyses, arguments, and conclusions, however, along with its admiration for the colonists, their moral position and qualities, could hardly fail to contribute to their reluctant recognition that there was no real alternative to independence. Price found some of his views not only misunderstood but vilified by negative critics in the ensuing controversy. So he wrote a second pamphlet which was published in early 1777. He expanded his analysis of liberty, extended its application to the war with America, and greatly expanded his discussion of the economic impact upon Great Britain. After the war, in 1784, he published a third pamphlet on the importance of the American Revolution and the means of making it a benefit to the world, appending an extensive letter from the Frenchman, Turgot. Implicitly the letter regards Price as a perceptive theorist of the revolution; explicitly it identifies the problems facing the prospective new nation and expresses a wish that it will fulfill its role s the hope of the world. Selections in the appendices present a part of the pamphlet controversy and the selection of correspondence shows how seriously Price was regarded by Revolutionary leaders.