About the Book
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.
He thought he’d left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can’t-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver’s seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland…or die trying.
Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.
Extract
Shepherd’s Corner, VA
2012
Beauregard thought the night sky looked like a painting.
Laughter filled the air only to be drowned out by a cacophony of revving engines as the moon slid from behind the clouds. The bass from the sound system in a nearby Chevelle was hitting him in his chest so hard, it felt like someone was performing CPR on him. There were about a dozen other late-model cars parked haphazardly in front of the old convenience store. In addition to the Chevelle, there was a Maverick, two Impalas, a few Camaros and five or six more examples of the heyday of American muscle. The air was cool and filled with the scent of gas and oil. The rich, acrid smell of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber. A choir of crickets and whippoorwills tried in vain to be heard. Beauregard closed his eyes and strained his ears. He could hear them but just barely. They were screaming for love. He thought a lot of people spent a large part of their life doing the same thing.
About the Author
S..A. Cosby is an Anthony award winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines His story “Slant-Six” was selected as a Distinguished Story in Best American MysteryStories for 2016.. His short story “The Grass Beneath My Feet” won the Anthony award for best short story in 2019
His writing has been called ” gritty and heartbreaking ” and ” dark, thrilling and tragic “. His style and tone is influenced by his varied life experiences which includes but are not limited to being a bouncer, construction worker, retail manager and for six hours a mascot for a major fast food chain inside the world’s hottest costume. When he isn’t crafting tales of murder and mayhem he assists the dedicated staff at J.K.Redmind Funeral home as a mortician’s assistant. He is also known as one hell of a chess player…
Actually its checkers, he’s good at checkers.
Praise for Blacktop Wasteland
“Blacktop Wasteland is an urgent, timely, pitch-perfect jolt of American noir. S. A. Cosby is a welcome, refreshing new voice in crime literature.”
—Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of Since We Fell
“Diamonds and fast cars, trailer park dreams and late night illegal street racing, S. A. Cosby reinvents the American crime novel. Black and white with bills unpaid and no exit in sight, his characters feel the pull of family and swagger with the melancholy ache of wanting to be someone. Blacktop Wasteland thrums and races—it’s an intoxicating thrill of a ride.” —Walter Mosley, bestselling author of Trouble Is What I Do
“Every once in a while a writer comes along with an incredible voice. Think Elmore Leonard, or Chester Himes. With Blacktop Wasteland, add S. A. Cosby to that list.”
—Steve Cavanagh, bestselling author of Thirteen
Thanks so much for reading...
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
betweenthelinesbookblog.com 