The Nickel Boys: the new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad

The boy had one usable volume of Fisher’s Universal Encyclopedia, so he used it, what else could he do? Better than nothing. Skipping around, wearing it down, revisiting his favorite parts as if it were one of his adventure tales. As a story, the encyclopedia was disjointed and incomplete, but still exciting in its own right.

He possessed a fervent belief in the miracle of a human specimen in top shape and often watched the boys shower to monitor the progress of their physical education.

Each time they returned to Nickel, he wrote down the particulars in a composition book. The date. The name of the individual and the establishment. Some names took a while to fill in, but Elwood had always been the patient type, and thorough.

He opened one cardboard chess set. There were only three pieces inside—a rook and two pawns.

Horror comics, he’d noticed, delivered two kinds of punishment—completely undeserved, and sinister justice for the wicked. He placed his current misfortune in the former category and waited to turn the page.

Pete had a smile that looked as if it had been hacked into his jaw with a knife.

Then Mr. Hill handed out black markers and told his students that the first order of business was to strike out all the bad words in the textbooks.

“I ain’t faking—that soap powder is awful,” Turner said. “But it’s me choosing, not anyone else.”

In the car over, Corey made an incantation, “I’m-a hold on and be still, I’m-a hold on and be still,” so maybe it was true.