Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, My Monticello, tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
Archives
Dear Miss Metropolitan
Introducing an extraordinary and original writer whose first novel explores the intersections of grief and rage, personal strength and healing—and what we owe one another. Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwen finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens. On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance. Among them is lifetime resident Miss Metropolitan, advice columnist for the local weekly, but how could anyone who fancies herself a “newspaperwoman” have missed a horror story unfolding right across the street? And why is it that only two of the three girls—now women—were found? The mystery haunts the two remaining victim girls, who are subjected to the further trauma of becoming symbols as they continuously adapt to their present and their unrelenting past. Like Emma Donoghue’s Room, Ferrell’s Dear Miss Metropolitan gives voice to characters surviving unimaginable tragedy. Inspired by real events, the story is inventively revealed before, during, and after the ordeal in this singular and urgent novel.
Before the Ruins
A gripping, multilayered debut in the tradition of Paula Hawkins and Tana French about four friends, an abandoned manor, and one fateful night that will follow them for the rest of their lives.
That summer, there were four of them, all on the cusp of adulthood: Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em, whiling away the hours in a deserted manor house with a rich, sordid history. Sorely without the ambition and opportunities that her friends have always counted on, Andy finds herself terrified of a future that will take them all down very different paths. Her newfound fears make her reckless, resulting in increasingly destructive behavior. Then David shows up. Magnetic, worldly, and on the run from the police, David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter, pitting the two lifelong friends against each other for the first time. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen fifty years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game—half treasure hunt, half friendly deception—begins. But the Game becomes much bigger than the necklace, growing to encompass years of secrets, lies, and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal.
Decades later, Andy and Peter struggle to maintain their friendship, meeting only to drink to the past and trying not to talk about what happened at the manor. But when Peter goes missing, Andy is thrust back to that summer–with all of its frantic energy, yearning, and loss—and the mysteries that still haven’t been solved.
The Book of V
For readers of The Hours and Fates and Furies, a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power, and desire finally converge in the present day.
The Last Book Party
A propulsive tale of ambition and romance, set in the publishing world of 1980’s New York and the timeless beaches of Cape Cod.
In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen is an aspiring writer languishing in a low-level assistant job, unable to shake the shadow of growing up with her brilliant brother. With her professional ambitions floundering, Eve jumps at the chance to attend an early summer gathering at the Cape Cod home of famed New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie. Dazzled by the guests and her burgeoning crush on the hosts’ artistic son, Eve lands a new job as Henry Grey’s research assistant and an invitation to Henry and Tillie’s exclusive and famed “Book Party”— where attendees dress as literary characters. But by the night of the party, Eve discovers uncomfortable truths about her summer entanglements and understands that the literary world she so desperately wanted to be a part of is not at all what it seems.
Invisible
The bestselling author delves into his past and retrieves the inspiring story of his grandmother’s extraordinary life.
Motherhood
From the author of How Should a Person Be? and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.
Happiness
Happiness is an indelible, singular true story that begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant. Brian is sure he loves her—’If I wanted to have kids with anyone, it would be with you’—only he doesn’t want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by a tribe of family and friends. Shortly after Gracie’s arrival, Heather’s new-mom bliss is interrupted by a nurse who appears bedside at dawn: Get up, get dressed, your baby is in trouble. The whiplash journey that ensues reunites Heather and Brian, who engage in the hard, thrilling work of repairing a true love that’s been tested. Together they have to decide how much they are willing to risk to ensure their girl sees adulthood.
Profoundly moving and subtly written, Happiness radiates out in multiple directions—new, romantic love; the passion a parent has for a child; deep and abiding friendship; and gratitude for a beautiful, inscrutable world. Ultimately, it’s a story about love and happiness in all their crooked forms, and a celebration of the many unlikely ways a family can be built through the story of this one-of-a-kind family’s formation and resilience.
Goodbye, Vitamin
A young woman returns home to care for her failing father in this funny and inescapably touching debut, from a wonderfully original new literary voice.
One morning, the citizens of a small L.A. suburb awake to find pairs of a man’s pants hanging from the trees. The pants belong to Howard Young, a prominent history professor, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Howard’s wife, Annie, summons their daughter, Ruth. Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job and arrives home to find the situation worse than she’d realized. Her father is erratically lucid, her mother lucidly erratic. But as Howard’s condition intensifies, the comedy in Ruth’s situation takes hold, gently transforming her grief.
Told in captivating glimpses and drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, and unexpected tenderness, Goodbye, Vitamin pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing in this life.
I Will Send Rain
A luminous, tenderly rendered novel of a woman fighting for her family’s survival in the early years of the Dust Bowl; from the acclaimed and award-winning Rae Meadows.
In this novel, set in the Dust Bowl, each member of the Bell family is pulled in different directions—toward a strong temptation, toward a first love, toward a strange calling, and toward an inner voice—as they brave the early years of a grueling drought that tests their will, their strength as a family, and will profoundly change them all.