Fish Tales

THE DAZZLING LOST CLASSIC*A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025**A Cosmopolitan Best Book for April 2025**A New York Times Book Review Most-Anticipated Book of the Spring**A Time Best Book of the Month**A The Week Best Book of 2025*Acquired by Toni Morrison, championed by Gayl Jones, and almost forgotten for forty years, FISH TALES is a fierce, fearless modern classic for our own fragmented times.***'Candid, fast and alive' RAVEN LEILANI'Fast, fearless, so full of life it practically vibrates in your hands' JUSTIN TORRES'Wondrous and outrageous, real and incandescent and alive' BRYAN WASHINGTONLewis Jones is a party girl on the edge. Bankrolled by her husband Woody and accompanied by her fellow hedonist Kitty Kat, a hustler who knows all the best spots, Lewis bounces between the demimonde of 70s New York and affluent Black Detroit in a fractured haze of lovers, cocaine parties and champagne baths. But her wild pursuit of freedom is upended when she meets the handsome, erudite, cruel Brook - the only man who won't allow her to take control.A kaleidoscopic swirl of sex and exploitation, selfhood and self-destruction, this lost classic is an unnervingly contemporary depiction of the collision between identity, freedom and female desire - perfect for fans of In the Cut, Oreo, Luster and I'm a Fan.'Fish Tales will certainly dazzle you, and it might even scandalize you, but it never tells a lie' ANGELA FLOURNOY'A novel of desire, pleasure, drugs and sex . . . We'll all be better for it having been rediscovered' LITERARY HUB'Nettie Jones's voice is astonishing. It leaps off the page like a panther . . . Unlike anything I've ever read' New York Times Book Review'A cult classic . . . [A] sharp, fast-paced look at the highs and lows of the human heart' The Atlantic'A burst of authentic energy, a rush of life from start to finish' Chicago Review of Books'An unsparing portrait of sexual hedonism . . . a meditation on female sexuality and the cost of pursuing freedom without self-preservation' TLS