Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.

S.A. Cosby just keeps delivering hit after hit. Seriously. I’ve not read one book by this author that was less than stellar. Cosby has a knack for writing characters who are a glorious mess of contradictions. They are often loyal, raw and wounded, sometimes violent, and, above all, real. Nobody in his stories gets to be purely good or entirely bad which is what I love most about them.

This book focuses on Roman and Dante, two brothers who are both fascinating in different ways. Roman is calculated, precise, and knows how to move money and people. When his father is in a serious accident and he goes home to visit him in the hospital, things take a turn. The accident may not have been so accidental, and the family may be being targeted by a local gang. Roman was always the one who could handle high pressure, but this is above anything he’s had to deal with and things quickly spiral out of control. I lot of the family’s current troubles stem from a bad decision made by well-intentioned, youngest son Dante, who is impulsive, heart-driven, and honestly kind of a lovable idiot (I say that with affection). Some of his decisions had me sweating and shaking my head, but I still found myself rooting for him.

Rounding out the family is older sister Neveah—the glue holding this disaster-prone family together. Her side of the story, digging into the mystery of their mother’s disappearance (a side plot that had a shocking reveal of its own), grounds the narrative with some serious emotional weight.

I could gush about this one all day, but I’ll just say this: from the jump, this book had me. Two or three chapters in, I knew I was hooked, and that I wasn’t getting much sleep that night. The author’s writing is as gritty as ever. He doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t waste a single word. The pacing is relentless in the best way, and Cosby’s signature mix of tension, family trauma, and moral complexity is on full display. This is high-octane, emotionally charged storytelling.

This book crackles with intensity, but there’s also heart underneath all the tension and violence. If you like crime fiction that doesn’t just entertain but hurts in the best possible way, Cosby’s your guy. King of Ashes is a total page-turner with sharp teeth and a beating heart. His other books are just as good.

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