The Ballad of Black Tom

Charles Thomas Tester, called Tommy, is a young Black hustler in 1920s Harlem. He passes himself off as a musician and patches together a living so he can care for his sick father.

Then the wealthy, reclusive Robert Suydam offers him work playing at a party. The job pulls Tommy out of his own neighbourhood and over to Brooklyn, to the tenements of Red Hook. There Suydam's occult interests connect to something far older and stranger than any scheme Tommy has run.

Pressure builds from two sides. A police detective, whose prejudices shape the way he treats the neighbourhood, is closing in. A private investigator is also asking questions about Suydam.

This novella answers H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 story The Horror at Red Hook, a landmark of cosmic horror that is also steeped in racism. It keeps the Lovecraftian dread but turns its attention to the people the original treated as a threat. The question it presses is who the real monsters are when a Black man's life counts for so little in the city.

Tor.com published it in February 2016. It took the Shirley Jackson Award and the British Fantasy Award in the best novella category, and the Hugo and Nebula Awards both named it a finalist.