Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa ask each other endless questions. As their relationships unfold, in person and online, they discuss sex and friendship, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, one another.
Twenty-one-year-old Frances is at the heart of it all, bringing us this tale of a complex menage-a-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man.
You can read Conversations with Friends as a romantic comedy, or you can read it as a feminist text.
You can read it as a book about infidelity, about the pleasures and difficulties of intimacy, or about how our minds think about our bodies.
However you choose to read it, it is an unforgettable novel about the possibility of love.
Described by the New York Times as a ‘new kind of adultery novel’, Conversations with Friends is also sharp, bitingly funny fiction that digs deep into identity and communication; slicing into the divide between who we are, and who we present ourselves to be. Hooking a reader from the first page, this modern love story about growing up and the infinite complexities of intimacy is a masterful debut from a major new talent.
Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise - and all goes dark.
Ranger Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little blackmail to press her advantage. An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town.
With Texas already suffering a new wave of racial violence in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, a black man is a suspect in the possible murder of a missing white boy: the son of an Aryan Brotherhood captain. In deep country where the rule of law only goes so far, Darren has to battle centuries-old prejudices as he races to save not only Levi King, but himself.
22 years ago Quincy Miller was sentenced to life without parole. He was accused of killing Keith Russo, a lawyer in a small Florida town. But there were no reliable witnesses and little motive. Just the fact that Russo had botched Quincy's divorce case, that Quincy was black in a largely all-white town and that a blood-splattered torch was found in the boot of Quincy's car. A torch he swore was planted. A torch that was conveniently destroyed in a fire just before his trial.
The lack of evidence made no difference to judge or jury. In the eyes of the law Quincy was guilty and, no matter how often he protested his innocence, his punishment was life in prison.
Finally, after 22 years, comes Quincy's one and only chance of freedom. An innocence lawyer and minister, Cullen Post, takes on his case. Post has exonerated eight men in the last ten years. He intends to make Quincy the next.
But there were powerful and ruthless people behind Russo's murder. They prefer that an innocent man dies in jail rather than one of them. There's one way to guarantee that. They killed one lawyer 22 years ago, and they'll kill another without a second thought.