S. A. Cosby is an American author known for his Southern noir crime fiction. He was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1973, and his works often explore themes of race, class, and violence. Cosby’s debut novel, My Darkest Prayer (2018), is a thriller that follows Nathan Waymaker, a former Marine and sheriff’s deputy, as he delves into his small town’s corrupt underbelly to uncover the secrets behind a beloved local minister’s death. Like King of Ashes, My Darkest Prayer features elements of mystery and crime as well as a large cast of characters that includes gang members, crime lords, and unscrupulous police officers.

In 2020, Cosby published Blacktop Wasteland, a Southern noir thriller about Beauregard “Bug” Montage, a former getaway driver and father of three. Although Bug tries to put his criminal past behind him, he sets a series of perils and tragedies in motion when he participates in one last robbery. Similar to Roman, Bug is a morally ambiguous character who commits ethically dubious deeds to help his family but finds himself increasingly enmeshed in crime and corruption. The novel won numerous awards, including the Anthony Award, the Macavity Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Novel.

In his third crime novel, Razorblade Tears (2021), Cosby explores racism, antigay bias, and the fear of otherness. Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee Williams, two men with violent pasts, take justice into their own hands when their sons, who were a married couple, are murdered. Razorblade Tears received critical acclaim, earning the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, the Macavity Award, the Hammett Prize, and the Barry Award among other honors.

Cosby published his fourth crime novel, All the Sinners Bleed, in 2023. The book’s protagonist, Titus Crown, seeks to improve the criminal justice system as the first Black sheriff in his hometown of Charon County, Virginia. He must confront a serial killer, institutionalized racism, and his own haunting past. Titus’s story compares to Roman’s in that both men join corrupt organizations to change them from the inside, but both must be wary of how these systems threaten to change them. A Netflix series based on All the Sinners Bleed is in development with Joe Robert Cole as the writer and Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, as the executive producer.

With King of Ashes, S. A. Cosby ventures into a new subgenre of crime fiction for his writing: the crime epic. The author drew inspiration from classic examples of the subgenre, especially Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, but he also set out to portray his protagonist’s transformation into a crime lord with a humanity and complexity often absent from mob boss narratives; as Cosby says, “When you are attempting to illustrate the tragic hero and their fall from grace, you have to establish the good parts, the sympathetic parts of their character” (Kolakowski, Nick. “S.A. Cosby on ‘King of Ashes,’ Crime Epics, and the Softer Side of Monsters.” Crime Reads, 10 June 2025). The novel was an instant New York Times bestseller and received a starred review from Kirkus, reflecting the success of his complex characterizations and probing of social issues that push the conventions of the crime epic genre.