S.A. Cosby has beautiful writing but the books I have read from him so far have had dry plots. I was not invested in anything that was happening, when the story started I thought we were going to have a school shooting story which I was initially really interested in, as the story went on we followed the 'why' the school shooting happened but it consisted of a lot of stuff that I just wasn't interest in.

That being said, S.A. Cosby has potential and I can see how others would enjoy this story.

This was such a well written and compelling crime drama and I thoroughly enjoyed it. S. A. Cosby did a fantastic job at showing the underlying tensions within the community of a small southern town and there was a real sense of menace throughout, which I appreciated. Titus was a fascinating protagonist, with complex emotions and thought processes tied up with grief, guilt and a need to save everyone. I loved the relationship between him and his father and the respect his colleagues had for him made an impact. The writing was excellent, with numerous sentences that just smack you in the face and the pacing was well done. My only criticism was the way in which the whodunnit element of the novel wrapped up - I just didn't find it completely satisfying. Overall though, I really enjoyed this and will definitely pick up more books by this author.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The story sucked me in immediately, but then started dragging so much, I almost lost interest. Would recommend to someone who enjoys slower paced novels.

Another stunning read from the pen of Shawn Cosby.

He is fast becoming a favourite writer of mine.

Excellent book! A definite go to author now for me. The writing style encapsulated me into this Southern town. The Sheriff Titus Crown is a great character, and as the novel progresses you learn more and more of his back story and why he is back in his hometown as the layers are peeled away. Early in the novel Titus realises they have a serial killer on their hands, a horrific case of horrific child abuse, not for the faint hearted. The book keeps you guessing until the end, a must read, and I cannot wait to read more from S A Cosby.

Ah, this author just gets better and better. This is a rapid-fire, engaging thriller about a sheriff tracking a brutal killer in a small city saturated in bigotry. Titus Crown is a welcome addition to heroic law men of crime fiction and I hope we get to see him again (and again). Cosby takes Titus to the brink here as he faces demons and old and new while investigating the murders of seven Black children. It's a hard read at times, a horrible reminder of the worst of humanity. But it's well-constructed and smartly written. Cosby is certainly earning his place in the pantheon alongside Walter Mosley and Dennis Lehane. Superb.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC! I enjoyed Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby so wanted to check this one out.

This is a thriller/mystery following Titus Crown, the first black sheriff in Charon County. When a school shooting ends in a beloved schoolteacher and the young perpetrator being killed more shocking crimes are brought to light and Charon County is torn apart. Now Titus is chasing down a serial killer while battling his own inner demons and the prejudice he faces from many people in the town.

This is incredibly dark and gritty and is true to the tone of the authors other books. Cosby is excellent at writing characters you truly care about and root for. I was so invested in this story simply because I wanted this guy to be caught and brought to justice. There is a lot of gore and very sensitive subject matter in this one so please check trigger warnings before diving in. All the Sinners Bleed is not as action packed as Cosby’s other novels but I felt that the slower pace suited the story because as a reader I could feel Titus’s frustration at not getting pieces to click together and I felt that I was finding things out alongside him.

While being a brilliant mystery/thriller the book also discusses poignant themes such as racism, religion, grief and morality. Cosby’s books always have excellent commentary and they always leave you with a lot to think about. This one was no different.

The only thing I didn’t like about this book is kind of superficial but this is a review so I have to mention it. There were so many names that either didn’t relate to the story or would come up a lot later. I’m normally really good with keeping track of a lot of characters but I found myself having to flip back to remember who some of these people were and the random townspeople’s names who didn’t even take part in the story didn’t help this. Like I said, a small thing but it definitely impacted my enjoyment at times.

If you can handle the darker and more gritty stuff then I one hundred percent recommend this. The pace is slower but I feel that it’s definitely worth it to see how everything pans out. This was released on 6th June so you can read it now!

I'm very quickly becoming a BIG SA Cosby fan. This is the second book I've read so far and by far my favourite.
Titus is the sheriff of a small town in Virginia when he gets the call to say there's a shooter at the local school. He takes everyone in the station to the crime scene to discover the teenage boy is coming out of the doors, apparently only there for one person. Some final words before turning the gun on himself was "check his phone" and then this story line shifted very quickly from one direction to another.
I adored Titus and his family and the fast pace of this story left me wanting more from him. I'm hoping for a spin off!
Honestly, I went in to the story blind, I had no idea the direction that it took (and it went pretty dark) and I'm kind of glad about it so therefore I won't spoil anything except it's a dark, dark crime thriller. There's religion, race, grief and family thrown in for good measure - in a good way. As I said Titus Crown was a really likeable main character with flaws of his own.
Loved it!

All the Sinners Bleed by S A Cosby is an excellent crime thriller set in Southern America.
In short, Titus Crown, the first black sheriff of Charon County, Virginia and ex FBI agent, gets his first investigation, a fatal shooting of a school teacher killed by a former student. As he delves deeper into the investigation he unearths terrible crimes and secrets, with a serial killer, ‘the last wolf’, hiding in plain sight.
This book is a powerful, dark crime thriller, steeped in Southern American tradition, superbly plotted with a strong, compelling protagonist at is heart. It’s a mighty story touching on racism, reckoning with the past and exposing awfulness embedded in the places you least expect it. Titus’s determination and commitment to impose some order on the world and his life oozes from the pages and to a satisfying end. All the Sinners Bleed had me turning pages long into the night.
Big thanks to S A Cosby, Headline and NetGalley for this eARC which I chose to read in return for my honest review.

There are no two ways about it – this book’s central theme is a dark one, and not just because of the murder. That in itself is dark enough and symptomatic of one of the key issues plaguing America right now – gun crime and, in particular, high school shootings. But whilst we are used to seeing the headline speaking of mass shootings and mass casualties, this particular incident has a very clear and direct target and a motivation which, whilst in no sense forgivable, is sadly understandable, and the crux of the heinous and disturbing case that Titus Crown finds himself, and his team of Deputies, caught in the middle of.

This is a complex book that leads readers through the very twisted and checkered past of Titus’s home town of Charon, Virginia. It is a town that wears its history with pride, the good and the bad, and the heightened racial divisions that have plagued it for decades are as razor sharp today as they have ever been. As the town’s first Black Sheriff, and having replaced a man who was as corrupt as you could imagine, Titus is constantly battling against people from both sides of the racial divide whose trust of him is eroded and governed by the colour of his skin. Too Black to hold the respect of the white community, and ‘too blue’ to be fully embraced by the Black community either, he also has to contend with the various religious factions who, in their own ways, own and direct the thoughts and sentiments of large swathes of the town. Titus has very personal reasons for not trusting in any religion, ones which strike a very emotional chord at times, but there is no doubting his roots and his understanding of religion belies his denial of a higher power.

I really love S.A Cosby’s writing. There is no doubting the power of his words and his ability to transport readers to the heart of the Virginia communities that he knows so well. His writing retains a poetic, almost lyrical tone, one which can be both brutal and whisper soft, capturing the nuances and complexities of the communities he is creating. He shows us how challenging it is to live in the American south, a land that fights fiercely for its right to protect its heritage and where racism and prejudice are part of the everyday. He can cause us to laugh one moment, be tight with anger the next, or overwhelm us with emotions that you feel to your core, all within the space of a few pages. I won’t lie – with this particular novel my overriding emotion was largely anger, and the core subject matter makes it hard to feel anything else, but the characters the author creates add such texture to the book, it is easy enough to look beyond the darkness and keep reading.

There is a great deal of tension within this book, driven largely by the series of previously unknown murders that are uncovered, but also the rising animosity from all sides that comes from the impending celebration of the Confederacy – always guaranteed to create a catastrophic division. Add in the mystery surrounding the missing link in the murder investigation, and a sense that someone within the Sheriff’s department may well be working against Titus in his bid to clean up the town, and the scene is set for some spectacular showdowns. With the number of murders increasing, and the execution of some of them becoming more and more grotesque, SA Cosby walks the fine line perfectly between delivering gratuitous detail and giving us just enough information to feed the story but still capture the horror of what comes to pass.

Characters are so varied, so nuanced, that there is a strong sense of authenticity in the authors words. I really liked Titus, right from the start, was happy to spend time in his company. The author has that knack of creating relatable characters, even when they are not always acting in a way which might be deemed appropriate – and we can include Titus here too. But he always works in the interest of the wider team and in justice. It is that overriding need to do right by the victims, regardless of who they are, that make him such a compelling character. And his interactions with those around him, from his understanding girlfriend, to his colleagues serve to help us understand him far more than watching him investigate this case. In fact, it is in his interactions with his father and, to a degree, his brother, which give us a real insight into the man and made me like him even more. He’s someone I would be happy to see again, something not beyond the realms of possibility given how the story ended.

And speaking of endings, there is not more fitting ending that this. It’s the kind that will make readers smile if not laugh. Well … most of us anyway. It was certainly the perfect, and perhaps only, way to end this particular book. A kind of just deserts moment in a tale that was seldom destined to sway to the lighter side of life. Most definitely recommended.

Dark, explosive and hard-hitting.

Thanks Netgalley, Headline for the ARC!

Synopsis -

Charon county, a small town in Virginia is like a mini volcano of secrets, ready to erupt at any time. Titus Crown, the county’s first Black sheriff is faced with an enormous challenge when there is a shooting at the school, a former student killing a teacher and then the student shot down by Titus’ deputies. His investigation leads him to discover ghastly crimes of the past, heinous murders and a serial killer who might be linked to the church.

Review -

S A Cosby is one of the best crime fiction authors of our times and this book is just another glorious feather to his cap. His writing has a certain ‘gravitas’, the prose is evocative with a heavy, ominous feeling. It has the power to grab your attention and not let it waver one bit.

With Titus’ narrative, we get the background of Charon county, the general mindset of the townsfolk, a candid portrayal of Titus’ character, his backstory - how he is only human but has to get to the bottom on one of the most inhumane crimes with inadequate resources and man power. I loved Titus for his integrity, organization, honesty and single minded focus.

As Titus begins to dig deeper into the shooting – the truths that begin to emerge are not for the faint hearted. Bodies in the past, that have been brutally brought to an end and buried under the earth, and bodies again in the present - fresh killings right under the nose of the police.

A lot of elements are at play – small town politics and people dynamics, dark history, corruption and white supremacy that runs deep. Cosby also bring in a unique religious angle and it was shocking to see how the church gets interlinked in all this mayhem.

The suspense behind the killer’s identity is built up slowly but steadily and it all explodes like a bomb at the end, concluding with an action packed, heart racing climax.

This is not an easy read by any means. It involves violence that is deeply disturbing, brutal and gory. But if you are up for it, this is one of the best crime fiction thrillers out there.

Definitely recommend!

S. A. Cosby has been setting the crime noir scene ablaze recently with his multi-award-winning thrillers, and his latest, All The Sinners Bleed, amply demonstrates his repute.

Titus Crown is the first Black Sheriff of Charon County, Virginia, a place yet to step into the twenty-first century in many senses, one among which is the prevalent prejudice against people of colour. The second year of the sheriff’s term begins ominously when a black youngster, the son of one of Titus’s best friends, shoots down the county’s most loved white teacher inside his classroom, and a couple of the sheriff’s white deputies shoot the shooter down. The kid’s anguished shouts before he is shot set Titus off on an investigation that reveals things nobody in the county can even begin to imagine – buried bodies of brutalised children, shocking facts about people whom everyone thought they knew well, and an exceedingly clever predator who has been hiding in plain sight and butchering the defenceless since long.

Now that his existence has come to light, the predator goes on a rampage, slaughtering people who could reveal his identity – even unknowingly – and Titus, constantly disparaged by the prejudiced county management, begins to feel inadequate against the mounting casualties. But he can trust nobody from outside of his department and county to find justice for the butchered children – all of whom are coloured – and throws himself and the inadequate resources he has into the investigation. Meanwhile, Titus’s focus on finding the monster diverts him from keeping the law in the county where drug running, corruption, and the efforts of a few white supremacists to disrupt the peace in the county clamour for his attention. Fighting on multiple fronts, both externally and internally, Titus, whose promising FBI career was cut short by a catastrophe before he came home and ran for sheriff, must race against time to stop the fiend before someone he loves gets hurt.

All The Sinners Bleed is my first exposure to the compelling prose of S.A. Cosby, and it certainly will not be the last. Cosby’s characters and the fictional county they inhabit are rendered with lifelike precision. Titus Crown, upright to a fault but unafraid to do the dirty deed when needed, is an impactful character that will be remembered for a long time. His father, brother, and colleagues are solid, engaging characters and their interactions are skilfully portrayed. The nasty people Titus encounters, including the super-scary killer and the snobbish chairman of the county board, are well-made, too. The plot is taut and perfectly paced, without a dull moment, winding up towards a pulse-pounding, highly satisfactory climax. Cosby masterfully balances the tender moments of Titus’s family life with graphic imageries of the demonic killer’s cruelty. While I am too far away to understand what black people endure even today, Cosby paints a stark, seemingly realistic picture of the prejudices running deep in the state. I found nothing to fault about this superb thriller except, probably, Titus’s girlfriend, whom I could not bring myself to like.

With appropriate amounts of crime, police procedure, family drama, action, mystery, and social commentary, All The Sinners Bleed will appeal to thriller fans of all ilk. I read somewhere that two of Cosby’s previous novels are being made into films, and I am sure All The Sinners Bleed would be great on the screen, too!

I wish to thank Headline and NetGalley for the Digital Review Copy of All The Sinners Bleed in exchange for my unbiased review.

This was a well written and thought provoking book. Unfortunately I just felt it dragged on a bit too much in the middle with so many random characters mentioned I found it hard to keep track. I will however be looking out for more of his books in the future as it hasn't put me off, I just didn't find it up to the standard of his previous books.

Superb thriller by the author of blacktop wasteland and razorblade tears. Sheriff Titus Crown is the first black man to hold the elected role in Charon county. It is a town with its problems already but then a well loved schoolteacher is shot in his classroom and the student who did it is killed by the police. The problems will become more pressing when the bodies of seven black children are discovered and it is clear there is a serial killer loose and it is all connected.
Wonderful scene building highlighting the pressures and strain in small town America. Superb characters and a real pacy drive make this a super read - highly recommended.

The audiobook of Razorblade Tears was how i got to know S.A. Cosby. All Sinners Bleed is a book that got me hooked since the beginning, punched me in a way that i loved and didn't want to stop being punched, a left me with a terrible book hangover.
It's twisty, dark, a sort of southern gothic noir that deals with racism, prejudice and doesn't sugarcoat or hide any issues or nastiness that can be found in a small town.
Titus, the sheriff, is a clever man who believe in what is doing but must also face the fact that someone is still nostalgic of the lazy and white previous sheriff.
It's not a cozy or light read, there's dark humour and there's a master storyteller that keeps you turning pages.
I loved it and It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to Headline for this digital copy, all opinons are mine

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC!

This was my first experience with S.A.Cosby's work, as although I do have Razorblade Tears on my kindle, I have not got around to reading it yet. But after reading All The Sinners Bleed, it has been bumped right to the top of my TBR!! This book was so so good, so dark and chilling, really well told and gripped me completely.

This novel tells the engrossing tale of Titus Crowne, the first Black Sheriff of Charon County in Virginia, who comes up against a major law enforcement challenge on the first anniversary of his election.

In a small, rural, Southern town, Titus is already up against elements in the black community who see him as "more blue than black", and white people who hark back to Civil War times. So he has limited room for manoeuvre.

Hence, when a young black man breaks into the local school and shoots the teacher, everyone is up in arms, metaphorically speaking. But as Titus's investigation progresses, he realises that there is much more to the story. And that the tragedy is not limited to the day of the shooting itself...

Cosby's book does not skimp on dramatic storytelling, but it is nevertheless laden with nuance. The story is gripping, and contains a number of triggering elements. Overall, well worth a read.

Titus Crown is sheriff of Charon County, the first black sheriff in the history of this small Virginia town.
A year into the job and he gets a call to say a teacher has been shot by a former student, then things go from bad to worse when one of his deputies shoots the shooter and all hell breaks loose.
An investigation into the shootings uncovers a story so sordid that ever Titus can’t come to terms with it.
It seems the two victims are linked to a ruthless serial killer who has been committing crimes and hiding in plain sight.
Titus has to find out the truth whilst dealing racial tensions before the town explodes in violence.
S A Cosby has come onto the crime writing scene and is a breath of fresh air.
This book is so powerful in its story and the author’s writing I challenge anyone to put it down.
Simply put. I’m not sure you will read a better book this year. Just incredible.

All the Sinners Bleed

This was such a dark and tough to read book, but I was hooked in right from the start. The writing is beautiful, and the sensitive topics I felt were handled really well. This was a slow burn, but one that had me just wanting to keep on reading. Would definitely recommend it, but please check trigger warnings ⚠️ if you need to.


Thank you to Netgalley, Headline, and S A Cosby for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Welcome to Charon County. Meet Titus Crown, Sheriff Titus Crown, the first black sheriff in the county. One year to the day since he took office Titus takes a call at home. Someone is shooting at Jefferson Davis High. This book really grabbed my attention very quickly. I picked the book up mid morning and went to bed when I finished it, it was that gripping. The main topic is an upsetting one, child abuse and paedophilia, so please be aware, but whilst there are some gruesome moments it is not overly graphic, your imagination will do that. Titus is a brilliant character, smart, caring, honest and real, he has his issues but he doesn’t let them affect his work.

Briefly, troubled Latrell MacDonald has shot and killed popular teacher Mr Spearman. It soon becomes clear that Spearman is an abuser and murderer and that Latrell was involved with his terrible crimes. But there is another person involved and Titus is determined to unmask them.

There are a lot of topics, as well as those already mentioned, that the author covers in the book - racism, family relationships and religion, amongst others. All dealt with well. It’s dreadful that racism is still such an issue. I loved this book and have just bought the authors previous novel. A police procedural that is so much more than that and I really hope the author is going to write about Titus again. Fabulous.