House of Cotton

FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award • NPR BEST BOOK OF 2023 • An enchanting Black Southern gothic debut, perfect for readers of Mexican Gothic... "Fresh, haunting...In her roller-coaster ride of a gothic debut novel, Monica Brashears upends expectations at every turn." —The New York Times “Every page, every scene, every sentence of Monica Brashears’s debut novel House of Cotton dazzles and surprises. An intense, enthralling, and deeply satisfying read!” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies "A new, dazzling, and essential American voice." —George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home—where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones.