James Ellroy

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels — The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz — have won numerous awards and were international bestsellers. Likewise, the novels of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy — American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover. The Quartet and Trilogy are now available in Everyman’s Library editions.

2023 is Demon Dog Ellroy’s Triple Crown year. On April 21 he will be honored with the L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime excellence in writing about the American West. Late this summer, the twenty-hour podcast of “James Ellroy’s American Tabloid” will drop on Audible. It will be unexpurgated, uncensored, and unabridged. Ellroy himself reads all narrative passages; noted actors read the dialogue. Boffo sound effects and jazzy period music accompany the spoken text. “James Ellroy’s American Tabloid” is a revolutionary advance for the podcast form.

Ellroy’s new novel, The Enchanters, will be published on September 12. The book is set in the summer of 1962. It turns the Second L.A. Quartet into the L.A. Quintet. The first two volumes — Perfidia and This Storm — are set in the early days of World War II. The Enchanters and the concluding two volumes will form a micro-history of L.A. ’62.

Ellroy now lives in Denver, Colorado.