Touched
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

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Average Rating
Contributors
Published
Grove Atlantic , 2023.
Status
Available from Libby/OverDrive

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Libby/OverDrive
Titles may be read via Libby/OverDrive. Libby/OverDrive is a free app that allows users to borrow and read digital media from their local library, including ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines. Users can access Libby/OverDrive through the Libby/OverDrive app or online. The app is available for Android and iOS devices.
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Titles may be read using Kindle devices or with the Kindle app.

Description

Intergalactic visions, deadly threats, and explosive standoffs between mostly good and completely evil converge in a dystopian fantasy that could only be conceived by the inimitable Walter Mosley, one of the country’s most beloved and acclaimed writers

Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And he is the Cure.

Martin begins slipping into an alternate consciousness, with new physical strengths, to violently defend his family—the only Black family in their neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles— against pure evil. Think Octavia Butler meets Jeff VanderMeer meets Jordan Peele.

Expansive and innovative, sexy and satirical, Touched brilliantly imagines the ways in which human life and technological innovation threaten existence itself.

More Details

Format
eBook, Kindle
Street Date
10/10/2023
Language
English
ISBN
9780802161857

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Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These books have the appeal factors bleak, violent, and own voices, and they have the genre "african american fiction"; the subjects "african american men," "families," and "african americans"; and include the identity "black."
These books have the appeal factors bleak, violent, and own voices, and they have the genre "african american fiction"; the subjects "african american men," "african american families," and "african americans"; and include the identity "black."
Silence - Crown, Zaire
These books have the appeal factors bleak, violent, and gritty, and they have the genre "african american fiction"; the subjects "african american men," "african american families," and "african americans"; and include the identity "black."
These books have the appeal factors bleak, violent, and own voices, and they have the genre "african american fiction"; the subjects "african american men," "african americans," and "racism"; and include the identity "black."
Black protagonists on a quest to rescue America (Hush Harbor) or all of existence (Touched) from self-destruction contend with racism and dystopian woes in these thought-provoking reads. -- Basia Wilson
It's a supernatural fight between good and evil as a White pastor (Christian suspense This Present Darkness) and Black ex-con (dystopian Touched) figure out how to save the world from evil forces. Both novels are fast-paced with violent scenarios. -- Andrienne Cruz
These books have the appeal factors thought-provoking, and they have the genres "dystopian fiction" and "african american fiction"; the subjects "families," "african americans," and "racism"; and include the identity "black."
Animal - K'wan
These books have the appeal factors bleak, violent, and own voices, and they have the genre "african american fiction"; the subjects "african american men," "african american families," and "african americans"; and include the identity "black."
These books have the appeal factors bleak and violent, and they have the genre "science fiction thrillers"; and the subjects "gangs," "supernatural," and "violence."
In these thought-provoking speculative fiction novels, Black characters uncover startling secrets about the fate of humanity (Touched) or the existence of monsters (No Gods, No Monsters). -- CJ Connor
These books have the appeal factors violent, action-packed, and own voices, and they have the genres "dystopian fiction" and "african american fiction"; the subjects "african americans," "criminal justice system," and "racism"; and include the identity "black."
Blending dystopian fiction with the atmosphere of hard-boiled crime fiction, these speculative novels also question the criminal justice system's penchant for racism (Touched) and surveillance (Golden State). -- Michael Shumate

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Readers looking for hardboiled fiction that captures the feel of post-World War II Los Angeles might try James Ellroy. Ellroy writes police procedurals, but his main characters, like many of Walter Mosley's heroes, are outsiders in their departments and operate at various levels of society. Ellroy's works can be violent. -- Katherine Johnson
Gar Anthony Haywood captures the feel of late 20th century Los Angeles through his Black investigator who deals with many of the problems of contemporary urban life -- drugs, gangs, racism, and poverty -- and who brings a strong conscience to his task. Haywood, like Mosley, creates well-drawn secondary characters. -- Krista Biggs
These authors' gritty noir crime fiction not only tells a suspenseful, fast-paced story but also offers an eye-opening exploration of racial politics at various times in American history. Both authors also write an occasional nonfiction book focusing on race, and many of Mat Johnson's works are graphic novels. -- Melissa Gray
While Jewell Parker Rhodes includes voodoo in her work and Walter Mosley favors street smarts, both authors write character-driven African-American mysteries imbued with a vivid sense of place and a gritty feel. Parker's strong women and Mosley's world-weary men are complex protagonists who struggle with evil within and without. -- Mike Nilsson
Though Sara Gran writes about a moody streetwise young woman and Walter Mosley features a world-weary man, both of their series lead private detectives who offer intriguing commentary on their milieux and social conditions as they solve mysteries. These authors also write compelling non-series novels. -- Katherine Johnson
Both authors write gritty, atmospheric hardboiled mysteries about private detectives operating in morally complex settings during the twentieth century. -- CJ Connor
Nelscott's Smokey Dalton is a Black private eye, who, like Easy Rawlins, must make difficult choices, shaped by his commitment to truth, while negotiating both white and Black society. Like Mosley, Nelscott does a fine job of portraying all sides of urban life in the late 1960s. -- Katherine Johnson
Readers looking for more exploration of the intersection between white and Black worlds may enjoy Walter Hambly's Benjamin January mysteries, set in New Orleans in the 1830s. As a free man, January can operate in both the white and black worlds, but like Walter Mosley's characters, he doesn't quite fit in either. -- Krista Biggs
In their culturally diverse novels, African American authors Attica Locke and Walter Mosley create well-developed characters, complex mysteries, and convincing period detail. Populated with cops, private detectives, and lawyers, their tales are often gritty and atmospheric, offering clever plotting and thought-provoking scenarios. -- Mike Nilsson
These authors' works have the genre "afrofuturism"; and the subjects "african american men," "gods and goddesses, african," and "escapes."
These authors' works have the subjects "race relations," "fifteen-year-old girls," and "freedom seekers."
These authors' works have the subjects "race relations," "african american teenagers," and "thirteen-year-old boys."

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Martin Just awakens one Saturday morning from what feels like a years-long sleep with the knowledge that he is one of 107 people destined to stop humanity from destroying all life in existence. He goes out on his balcony, naked, to contemplate while his wife sleeps and is promptly arrested for indecent exposure. While in jail, he kills his white-supremacist cell mate, though he doesn't remember doing it. Returning home, where his is the only Black family in a white neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills, an alternate consciousness named Temple takes over, making love to his wife and defending his family against the dead cell mate's dangerous friends. But enemies become allies against an even more dangerous foe who wants to raise an army of the undead to destroy the world. Mosley's latest (after Every Man a King, 2023) is a weird, philosophical book that packs a lot into fewer than 200 pages, exploring racial inequality, an unjust justice system, family relationships, and expansive ideas about the nature of humanity. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new book from Edgar-winning Mosley is always big news, even when he ventures beyond crime fiction.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Library Journal Review

In Mosley's (Every Man a King) dystopian sci-fi novella, Martin Just wakes up and realizes that he has an alternate good consciousness, Temple, that has awoken after a centuries-long sleep and is the Cure for Humanity. Martin's search for understanding of his predicament starts a snowball effect that will see him hauled before the racist criminal-justice system and thrown into a prison cell, all suffered in order to come face to face with Death: Tor Waxman. Death seeks to destroy Humanity, and Martin must convince his family and a group of racist thugs to stand and fight. In this ongoing battle between good and evil, what sacrifices will need to be made to obtain victory? This dizzyingly alternative reality, combining quotidian evil banalities with intergalactic ones, is sometimes difficult going--not only because readers, like Martin, must figure out what is going on, but also for the systemic racism that serves as a catalyst and a backdrop for the ongoing feud. VERDICT A hard-hitting, topical story that fans of Mosley will enjoy.--Laura Hiatt

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

An unsuspecting host finds himself at the center of a supernatural plot to eradicate life from the planet. Rattled awake from a disorienting slumber--and apparently unaware of his own nudity and physical arousal--mild-mannered Black family man Marty Just wanders onto his balcony, the elaborate details of an intergalactic plan to end life on Earth seared into his mind. "Mama, look!" a neighbor child cries, and from that moment, Marty's week only gets weirder: He's arrested for public indecency; kills his vile, racist cellmate in a fugue state of self-defense; posts bail and returns home, only to encounter Aryan gang members ready to avenge their murdered leader. Until this point, the question of whether Marty has suffered a psychotic break or schizophrenic episode is unresolved, but then something inside Marty--an entity called Temple--takes over, attacking the racist thugs with his teeth, biting and tearing the life out of them in a marvelously frenzied action sequence. As it turns out, not only can Temple summon inhuman strength, he can resurrect the dead (!), and he recruits the formerly lifeless racists to help him prevent the encroaching genocide, personified by Tor Waxman, the Angel of Death. Equal parts body horror and necromancy, the book has cinematic fast cuts and an explosive pace that make it read like a Black Mirror episode set against the Hollywood Hills. While a subplot about Marty's pending legal woes adds little to the excitement (it wouldn't be Mosley without sharp-tongued lawyers and pushy cops), the novel is complicated in compelling ways by the racial dynamics and overt gestures toward a pandemic, as Tor Waxman spreads feverish death via unseen contagion to nearly 5,000 souls. Fast-moving action and jaw-dropping twists move this slim volume along at a dizzying rate. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

Martin Just awakens one Saturday morning from what feels like a years-long sleep with the knowledge that he is one of 107 people destined to stop humanity from destroying all life in existence. He goes out on his balcony, naked, to contemplate while his wife sleeps and is promptly arrested for indecent exposure. While in jail, he kills his white-supremacist cell mate, though he doesn't remember doing it. Returning home, where his is the only Black family in a white neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills, an alternate consciousness named Temple takes over, making love to his wife and defending his family against the dead cell mate's dangerous friends. But enemies become allies against an even more dangerous foe who wants to raise an army of the undead to destroy the world. Mosley's latest (after Every Man a King, 2023) is a weird, philosophical book that packs a lot into fewer than 200 pages, exploring racial inequality, an unjust justice system, family relationships, and expansive ideas about the nature of humanity. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new book from Edgar-winning Mosley is always big news, even when he ventures beyond crime fiction. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

Awakening from a deep sleep that might have lasted for centuries, Martin Just realizes that humanity is a deadly virus and that he is the Cure. He lives with his wife and children in the Hollywood hills, the only Black family on their block, and to defend them sometimes finds himself blessed with outsized strength and entering an alternate consciousness as he battles a relentless stalker, a pale-faced embodiment of death. The masterly Mosley in sf mode. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal Copyright 2023 Library Journal.
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Library Journal Reviews

In Mosley's (Every Man a King) dystopian sci-fi novella, Martin Just wakes up and realizes that he has an alternate good consciousness, Temple, that has awoken after a centuries-long sleep and is the Cure for Humanity. Martin's search for understanding of his predicament starts a snowball effect that will see him hauled before the racist criminal-justice system and thrown into a prison cell, all suffered in order to come face to face with Death: Tor Waxman. Death seeks to destroy Humanity, and Martin must convince his family and a group of racist thugs to stand and fight. In this ongoing battle between good and evil, what sacrifices will need to be made to obtain victory? This dizzyingly alternative reality, combining quotidian evil banalities with intergalactic ones, is sometimes difficult going—not only because readers, like Martin, must figure out what is going on, but also for the systemic racism that serves as a catalyst and a backdrop for the ongoing feud. VERDICT A hard-hitting, topical story that fans of Mosley will enjoy.—Laura Hiatt

Copyright 2023 Library Journal.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal.
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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Mosley, W. (2023). Touched . Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Mosley, Walter. 2023. Touched. Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Mosley, Walter. Touched Grove Atlantic, 2023.

Harvard Citation (style guide)

Mosley, W. (2023). Touched. Grove Atlantic.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Mosley, Walter. Touched Grove Atlantic, 2023.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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