Books by Craig Nova
The Good Son: A Novel
by Michael Gruber, Jacquelyn Mitchard, You-Jeong Jeong, Craig Nova
“Ingeniously twisted.” —Entertainment Weekly, “Must List”
“Will leave even the most seasoned crime fiction readers guessing.” —CrimeReads
"[Jeong] maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist's fate until the bitter end.” —The Wall Street Journal
Finalist for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’s “Summer Reads” Book Club
The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bad Seed in this breathless, chilling psychological thriller by the #1 bestselling novelist known as “Korea's Stephen King”
Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself?
Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home – he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?
Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency.
Named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Bustle, CrimeReads, Lit Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and Brit + Co
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The Good Son: A Novel
by Michael Gruber, Jacquelyn Mitchard, You-Jeong Jeong, Craig Nova
“The Good Son is the work of an artist in full command, and those of you entering it for the first time can only be envied.” —From the foreword by Jonathan Yardley
Chip Mackinnon returns from World War II a changed man. After being shot down over the desert and imprisoned by the enemy, the world of privilege to which he belongs seems shallow. But in the shadow of his older brother’s death, the full weight of his father’s expectations falls on Chip. Pop Mackinnon—whose money is new but just as good as anyone else’s—has designs on the upper echelons of society. The polo ponies and expensive education he bought for his son weren’t gifts; they were an investment in the family’s future. Now it’s time for Chip to pay him back by marrying a girl who can finally bring the Mackinnons into society’s inner circle.
A shrewd and cunning man, Pop is used to getting his way—until the arrival of Jean Cooper, that is. This Midwestern beauty awakens Chip’s passions, and the two embark on an affair that threatens to destroy Pop’s social-climbing plans. A battle of wills between father and son ensues, one that tests the boundaries of their relationship and strays into the place where love turns irrevocably to hate.
Originally published in 1982 to wide acclaim, The Good Son remains Craig Nova’s undisputed masterpiece. This classic of contemporary American literature artfully explores the complicated web of emotions that exists between fathers and sons—ambition, jealousy, loyalty, love—in a tale that compels with its simple, searing honesty.
Also Available as an eBook.
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The Good Son: A Novel
by Michael Gruber, Jacquelyn Mitchard, You-Jeong Jeong, Craig Nova
New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" (The Denver Post), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense
Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group. While her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims, Sonia tries to keep them all alive by working her way into the kidnappers' psyches and interpreting their dreams. With her knowledge of their language, her familiarity with their religion, and her Jungian training, Sonia confounds her captors with her insights and beliefs. Meanwhile, when the kidnappers decide to kill their captives, one by one, in retaliation for perceived crimes against their country, Theo races against the clock to try and save their lives.
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The Good Son: A Novel
by Michael Gruber, Jacquelyn Mitchard, You-Jeong Jeong, Craig Nova
“Rich and complex, The Good Son is a compelling novel about the aftermath of a crime in a small, close-knit community.”—Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard comes the gripping, emotionally charged novel of a mother who must help her son after he is convicted of a devastating crime.
What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognizable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonizing: you keep loving him somehow.
Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fueled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanizes the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbors, employers, even some members of Thea's own family turn away.
Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover—especially about the night Belinda died?
Copies
No copies available.
The Good Son: A Novel
by Michael Gruber, Jacquelyn Mitchard, You-Jeong Jeong, Craig Nova
New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" (The Denver Post), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense
Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group. While her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims, Sonia tries to keep them all alive by working her way into the kidnappers' psyches and interpreting their dreams. With her knowledge of their language, her familiarity with their religion, and her Jungian training, Sonia confounds her captors with her insights and beliefs. Meanwhile, when the kidnappers decide to kill their captives, one by one, in retaliation for perceived crimes against their country, Theo races against the clock to try and save their lives.
Copies
No copies available.
Wetware: A Novel
by Craig Nova
In 2026 in an unnamed city that is darkly familiar and vividly possible, Hal Briggs is a biotech engineer. His specialty: encoding biology into digital form. In other words, manufacturing life.
Already he’d created small animals that chirped cheerfully about a product, a beaver that sang a ditty about toothpaste. He’d designed extreme-sport survival games that transported players into fantasy dimensions.
And now, the job keeping him up at all hours of the night has become his obsession—developing a coding system to produce the human body. People. Gray-skinned and brutish, designed to do the dangerous and dull jobs no one else wants. At corporate giant Galapagos Wetware, business is booming. Buyers want creatures with more finesse. They want workers who are good with handguns and who have the ability to deceive. Workers who are cunning, who thrive on terror, who are indifferent to a plea for mercy. They want workers who look more human.
The prototypes are emerging slowly in the ice-cold lab. Briggs’s code is like poetry, like perfectly structured haiku. He begins to add forbidden details—a sense of humor, mathematical brilliance, an instinct for music, a profound longing. With each detail Briggs adds, the more infatuated he becomes, until he adds the most dangerous detail of all—the ability to reproduce.
In the bowels of Galapagos Wetware, in a room filled with blue-tinted snow, Hal Briggs watches as his latest creation—he has named her Kay—blows him a kiss, while Jack, the male next to her, mouths, “Don’t worry.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Craig Nova, a master of the modern American novel, creates a thrilling tale of the ethics of desire, the metaphysics of technology, and the dangerous mystery of manufactured beauty in a future becoming more real with every passing day.
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Cruisers: A Novel
by Craig Nova
As a child Frank Kohler learned of his mother’s brutal murder. Now, years later, he yearns for some affirmation that remains elusive. As a state trooper on the night shift, Russell Boyd cruises the highways of Vermont constantly reminded of the true depths of human misery. The lives of these two men will intersect only tangentially, until fate catches up with them.
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Cruisers: A Novel
by Craig Nova
Frank Kohler is ready to snap. He is capable of love, but he knows time is running out. His mother was brutally murdered, and he never knew his father. With each passing day he perceives his anger with an almost religious sense of beauty. In an attempt to save himself, he decides to marry a mail-order bride from Russia.
Russell Boyd is a state trooper who resists those acts that damage life forever. He has seen about as much of them as he can take. And yet, he has met the woman who makes him feel whole. She is the center of his life.
Frank Kohler’s and Russell Boyd’s paths will cross three times. And the third time will change everything. It is the moment when the line between good and evil is made dramatically clear.
As with such modern classics as Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River and Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, Craig Nova gives us an illuminating story of characters who struggle against the collisions of fate, and who are motivated by the touching need to be human.
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All the Dead Yale Men: A Novel
by Craig Nova
Originally published in 1982 to wide acclaim, The Good Son remains Craig Nova’s undisputed masterpiece. This classic explored the complicated entanglements of fathers and sons expressed in the story of nouvue-riche father Pop Mackinnon, who used his wealth to manipulate his son Chip into the right’ kind of marriage upon the young man’s return from World War II.
Chip eventually gave up the love of his life and married to secure his future and what were the consequences of that decision? All the Dead Yale Men answers that question in telling the story of Frank Mackinnon, son of Chip, a prosecutor in Boston with a happy marriage and a daughter set to follow his footsteps into law school. Chip’s death throws Frank into his family’s legacy, where he must contend with the inheritance of the Mackinnon’s beloved land and a bevy of secrets that dates back three generations. And when Frank’s daughter Pia falls under the sway of local bad boy Aurlon Miller, his grief over his father’s death triggers the family legacy of social standing and manipulation to begin anew, leading Frank to the darkest edges of what a father will do to protect the ones he loves.
All the Dead Yale Men examines the end of an era, how privilege and inheritance often crumble in the face of the modern world, a story enriched by the setting and mythology of Boston and its surroundings. The novel not only moves the Mackinnon’s story forward but will recast historical elements of the classic novel as well, heralding the arrival of a new American classic.
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The Constant Heart
by Craig Nova
What does it mean to be a decent man? To love well, with fidelity and constancy? These are the lessons that Jake’s father, a wildlife biologist, tries to impart to his son, often on fishing trips to their beloved Furnace Creek. Bound up in the laws of Einstein’s theories, these lessons will ultimately influence Jake’s own career as an astronomer. Out on the creek, both father and son conquer their greatest challenges: marital infidelity, professional setbacks, and Jake’s long term, passionate obsession with his childhood crush.
The Constant Heart is a potent, and moving book that utilizes the laws of nature and science to illuminate what it means to be a man today. It is an inspiring book that most immediately celebrates the bonds of father and son while exploring the beauty and intensity of love and the profound attachments between human beings, even in the face of great disease and danger.
Copies
No copies available.
The Constant Heart
by Craig Nova
What does it mean to be a decent man? To love well, with fidelity and constancy? These are the lessons that Jake’s father, a wildlife biologist, tries to impart to his son, often on fishing trips to their beloved Furnace Creek. Bound up in the laws of Einstein’s theories, these lessons will ultimately influence Jake’s own career as an astronomer. Out on the creek, both father and son conquer their greatest challenges: marital infidelity, professional setbacks, and Jake’s long term, passionate obsession with his childhood crush.
The Constant Heart is a potent, and moving book that utilizes the laws of nature and science to illuminate what it means to be a man today. It is an inspiring book that most immediately celebrates the bonds of father and son while exploring the beauty and intensity of love and the profound attachments between human beings, even in the face of great disease and danger.
Copies
No copies available.