Dead in Long Beach, California

One of NPR's 2024 Books We Love. Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. “Told by machines from the future, Blackburn’s idiosyncratic grief novel is as freshly devastating as they come.” —The New York Times Book Review “You can try bracing yourself for the ride this story takes you on, but it’s best to just surrender. Your wig is going to fall off no matter what you do.” —Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives Coral is the first person to discover the body of her brother, Jay, in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes