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Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Pub date: June 1, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-63988-847-4

Price: $20.00 trade paperback

Page Count: 474

Genre: Fiction

Audience: Adult

Author interview

Gould grafts a character-based twisty mystery onto a plot of college life, past secrets, and individual intrigue. It was in 1985 when James Castle, an aspiring writer, applied to Edsen College but didn’t get in. Six years later, the success of James’s debut novel Wit’s End puts him on the literary map, resulting in James securing Edsen’s year-long writer-in-residence position. When a mysterious stranger enters James’s life, threatening to expose his secret past, including the real story behind Wit’s End’s origin, James is horrified. With his literary reputation at stake, James knows he must do everything in his power to stop the stranger. Gould’s prose is crisp and textured: his depictions of the 90’s pop culture and the modern-day American college life are as compelling as his headlong dive into the characters’ emotions. The storyline is intriguing, and the whole thing is laced with melancholy, nostalgia, and subtle warmth, remarkably, considering the sinister conspiracy at the heart of the novel. The mystery unfolds at a deliciously escalating pace, filled with believable red herrings and shocking twists, but the real power here is in how Gould handles the utterly intricate structure of the plot, which includes James’s tangled backstory and several other characters’ compelling story arcs. Taut, tense, and winding; a definite page-turner.

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