The Ballad of Black Tom

One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

"LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do."
— Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

"[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction."
— Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days

“LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft’s Dagon… [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending.” – Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction

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Published Feb 16, 2016

160 pages

Average rating: 7.44

61 RATINGS

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hershyv

Feb 17, 2026

7/10 stars

I'll start with the book before the background I've since discovered. This book is split into two intriguing, darkly enigmatic parts. The first introduces a young Black man hustling as a street musician to support himself and his father, running small cons on the side. One errand - delivering an occult book to a strange woman in a very white neighborhood- pulls him into the orbit of a corrupt detective, a sensitive cop, and a wealthy white old man, and the latter hires him to sign at a mysterious party. From there, things escalate fast and scary, changing lives, realities, and fortunes of everyone involved. So, after some digging, and from what I understood from the Author's foreword, LaValle grew up reading HP Lovecraft's books, and then he found out about his racist views. So, the story is his interpretation of one of Lovecraft's notoriously xenophobic tales, The Horror at Red Hook. Even without that context, the book works as eerie, angry cosmic horror with considerable emotional weight. I don't say this for many books - it's usually the opposite - this should have been a longer book than it is. I was a bit disappointed with a lot that's left unexplained, unexplored mythology, and the consequences it hints at, given how well LaValle's world-building was for what's in the book. LaValle does a great job showing how ordinary survival can slide into something monstrous when the world keeps pushing back.

Gias_BookHaven

Dec 30, 2025

6/10 stars

I have several notes on this. Not all of them are clear or ledge-able at the moment....full review to come soon.

siemelle900

Nov 28, 2025

8/10 stars

I wasn’t expecting all that!

Gabriel Crisp

Jun 23, 2025

6/10 stars

I would like to preface that while this book was good for a novella, I am not a huge fan of novellas. A story following a young man in Harlem during the 1920's, it delves into the fall from everyday life into the endless depths of cosmic horror. While the book had great pace, I wished that it would only be longer.

Jessica Phillips

Oct 30, 2023

8/10 stars

I really thought I wouldn't like this book. The first couple of chapters took a bit to get going and made me question if I would continue. I am so glad I continued listening to the book.

Being an avid World of Warcraft player I probably took this book a bit different then most. All I could picture was the raid battles against Yogg Saron and N'zoth & the sanity mechanics that went with it. Also, I haven't read any of Lovecraft's books.

Despite it being all male characters it made sense that is was. My grandma was bornin 1920 and the stories she would tell - the book was pretty much accurate on that count. Would I have loved to see all the characters female? Kind of. It would have just been another trope thrown on if there where only females - which would more then likely bog the story down. I was happy to see racism tackled in this book. I think knowing Lovecraft was a racist is one reason I subconsciously stay away from his books.

Black Tom grew on me as well. Loosing his parents, dealing with racism (and classism?), and trying to keep yourself sane with what he saw & knew - does it surprise anyone he just had enough?