SA Cosby Books in Order

If you want his signature Southern noir: Blacktop Wasteland → Razorblade Tears → All the Sinners Bleed.
If you prefer small town crime and lawmen: All the Sinners Bleed → King of Ashes.
If you like PI style investigations: My Darkest Prayer.
If you are curious about his early fantasy roots: Brotherhood of the Blade.
If you are picking books for younger readers: The Rhythm of Time → Time for a Change.

S. A. Cosby was born Shawn Andre Cosby in Newport News, Virginia, in 1973 and grew up in nearby Mathews County. A lifelong Virginian, he has spent most of his life within a short drive of the York River and the small Southern towns that anchor his fiction.

As a kid he devoured fantasy and science fiction paperbacks, then started scribbling his own stories in high school and while studying English at Christopher Newport University. He eventually left college without a degree, but the habit of telling stories stayed with him.

Before his novels found a wide audience, Cosby held a string of day jobs. He worked as a construction laborer, a nightclub bouncer, a retail manager, and even a fast food mascot sweating inside a heavy costume. For years he also served as a mortuary assistant at a small funeral home in rural Virginia, a role that kept him close to grief and ritual.

Those experiences, and his own upbringing in a poor rural county, became raw material for his fiction. Cosby has said he loves the South but feels bound to write about its history of racism, poverty, and violence, using crime stories to show how ordinary people try to build decent lives inside that pressure.

His first published novel, the urban fantasy Brotherhood of the Blade, appeared in 2014 and introduced a secret order of sword wielding guardians protecting humanity while a reluctant teenage heir longs for an ordinary life. A few years later he turned fully to crime fiction with My Darkest Prayer, a Southern noir about Nathan Waymaker, a former Marine and sheriff's deputy who investigates the suspicious death of a preacher in rural Virginia.

Cosby's breakout came with Blacktop Wasteland in 2020, a high octane heist novel about Beauregard 'Bug' Montage, a mechanic and former getaway driver pushed back into crime to save his family and struggling auto shop. The book drew wide critical praise, won multiple major crime writing awards, and introduced many readers to his mix of propulsive plotting, working class detail, and moral tension.

He followed it with Razorblade Tears in 2021, the story of two aging ex cons, one Black and one white, who team up to avenge their murdered sons and are forced to confront their own bigotry along the way. The novel became a bestseller, piled up award nominations and wins, and was optioned for a feature film, cementing his reputation with both critics and crime fans.

In 2023 he returned to a small Virginia county with All the Sinners Bleed, which follows Titus Crown, the first Black sheriff of a fictional rural community facing a serial killer and a town's tangled history. His 2025 novel King of Ashes widens the canvas into a family crime saga, as a successful wealth manager returns home to a failing crematorium business, a drug debt, and a town drowning in violence.

Alongside the novels, Cosby has built an impressive body of short fiction. His story Slant-Six was highlighted in a major mystery anthology, while 'The Grass Beneath My Feet' won the 2019 Anthony Award for best short story, and 'Not My Cross to Bear' later earned the same honor.

More recently he has also collaborated on middle grade time travel adventures in the Rhythm of Time series, created with musician Questlove, bringing his interest in history and consequence to younger readers. Through all of this he has remained rooted in southeastern Virginia, where he hikes, plays chess, and keeps writing about people trying to survive in the place he still calls home.