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But the novel is also a powerful tale of a man's love for his family and the neighborhood where he lives. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.A heist with a cast of zany characters, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, questionable criminal skills, and of course, a bumbling, incompetent thief or two are undoubtedly part of the charm of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?Harlem Shuffle is driven by an ingeniously intricate plot that plays out in a beautifully recreated Harlem of the early 1960s.

As Ray navigates this double life, he starts to see the truth about who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Now Ray has to cater to a new clientele, one made up of shady cops on the take, vicious minions of the local crime lord and numerous other Harlem lowlifes.Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. The heist doesn't go as planned they rarely do, after all. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plans to rob the Hotel Theresa-the "Waldorf of Harlem"-and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. He knows a discreet jeweller downtown who also doesn't ask questions. See, cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace at the furniture store, Ray doesn't see the need to ask where it comes from.

Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST FOR FICTION * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST FOR FICTION * NAACP IMAGE AWARD FINALIST FOR OUTSTANDING LITERARY WORK-FICTIONFrom two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s."Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked."To his customers and neighbours on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family.