Why did I love this book?
There’s a scene in Spike Lee’s 1989 movie Do the Right Thing where a Korean clerk pleads to the African-American mob about to destroy his store, “Me no white. Me Black.” The tension is more than palpable, and this is exactly the nervy road Steph navigates throughout her remarkable novel Your House Will Pay. Based on the real-life 1991 Los Angeles murder of a Black woman by a Korean convenience store owner, the twin narratives switch between the two families boiling over in this cauldron of racial violence. This brave, unflinching book offers no easy answers, which is exactly how it should be.
4 authors picked Your House Will Pay as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Two families. One desperate to remember, the other to forget.
Winner of the LA Times Book Prize, Best Mystery/Thriller
Winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Fiction
Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
Shortlisted for the Macavity Awards, Best Mystery Novel
Shortlisted for the Anthony Awards, Best Novel
Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
'Masterful.' Ruth Ware
'A searing examination of racial and family politics that is also an immaculately constructed whodunit.' Daily Telegraph, Summer Reads
'Writing a page-turner about racial politics in the U.S. is a delicate enterprise fraught with pitfalls, but Cha…