Exhilarating, addictive, and superbly accomplished, this modern addition to the genre of suburban fiction portrays a world that epitomizes everything wrong with the American Dream.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Literature & Fiction

Brown, Janelle

Genre Fiction

Hutchinson

Arrow Books

This Is Where We Live tells the story of Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple (she’s an aspiring filmmaker, he’s an indie musician) who are on the verge of making it. Her first film was a sensation at Sundance and is about to have its theatrical release, he’s assembled a new band and is a few songs shy of an album. They’ve recently purchased their first home—an adorable mid-century bungalow with a breathtaking view of the city of Los Angeles—with the magical assistance of an adjustable-rate mortgage. But a series of seismic events—the tanking of Claudia’s film, the return of Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend, and the staggering adjustment of their monthly mortgage payments—deal a crushing blow to their dreams of the bohemian life and their professional aspirations and make them question their values and their shared vision of the future. This Is Where We Live is a novel about the crucible of this economic moment—the way these times play with our hopes, compel us to reckon with our ambition, test our capacity for reinvention, and ask us to question the very things we love.

This Is Where We Live: A Novel

United States

Random House Audio |

A smart, comic page-turner about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer. When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for — until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune. Meanwhile, four hundred miles south in Los Angeles, the Millers’ older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her newly famous actor boyfriend and left in the lurch by an investor who promised to revive her fledgling post-feminist magazine, Snatch. Sliding toward bankruptcy and dogged by creditors, she flees for home where her younger sister Lizzie, 14, is struggling with problems of her own. Formerly chubby, Lizzie has been enjoying her newfound popularity until some bathroom graffiti alerts her to the fact that she’s become the school slut. The three Miller women retreat behind the walls of their Georgian colonial to wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, mean girls, country club ladies, evangelical neighbors, their own demons, and each other, and in the process they become achingly sympathetic characters we can’t help but root for, even as the world they live in epitomizes everything wrong with the American Dream. Exhilarating, addictive, and superbly accomplished, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything crackles with energy and intelligence and marks the debut of a knowing and very funny novelist, wise beyond her years.

Spiegel & Grau

On the day Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, he informs his wife, Janice, that their marriage is over and that the new fortune is his alone. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the Miller’s older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her hot actor boyfriend and is failing at her job, kind of spectacularly. Sliding toward bankruptcy, Margaret bails and heads for home, where her confused and lonesome teenage sister, Lizzie, is struggling with problems of her own: She’s become the school slut. From behind the walls of their Georgian colonial bunker, the Miller women wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, evangelical neighbors, and country club ladies–and in the process all illusions and artifice fall away, forcing them to reckon with something far scarier and more consequential: their true selves.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel

Literary

Random House]

A novel about subprime mortgages, ruthless Hollywood economics, and the unraveling of a young marriage. This Is Where We Live tells the story of Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple (she’s an aspiring filmmaker, he’s an indie musician) who are on the verge of making it. Her first film was a sensation at Sundance and is about to have its theatrical release, he’s assembled a new band and is a few songs shy of an album. They’ve recently purchased their first home—an adorable mid-century bungalow with a breathtaking view of the city of Los Angeles—with the magical assistance of an adjustable-rate mortgage. But a series of seismic events—the tanking of Claudia’s film, the return of Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend (a manipulative, self-destructive, fabulously successful artist), and the staggering adjustment of their monthly mortgage payments—deal a crushing blow to their dreams of the bohemian life and their professional aspirations and make them question their values and their shared vision of the future. As she did so insightfully in her first novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, Janelle Brown once again proves herself a trenchant social commentator and a keen and compassionate chronicler of the emotional turmoil, moral conflicts, and knowing compromises of her characters. This Is Where We Live is a novel about the crucible of this economic moment—the way these times play with our hopes, compel us to reckon with our ambition, test our capacity for reinvention, and ask us to question the very things we love.

Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple (she’s an aspiring filmmaker, he’s an indie musician), are on the verge of making it. Her first film was a sensation at Sundance and is about to have its theatrical release; he’s assembled a new band and is a few songs shy of an album. They’ve recently purchased their first home—a mid-century bungalow with a breathtaking view of Los Angeles—with the magical assistance of an adjustable-rate mortgage. But a series of seismic events—the tanking of Claudia’s film, the return of Jeremy’s manipulative ex-girlfriend, and the staggering adjustment of their monthly mortgage payments—deal a crushing blow to their dreams of the bohemian life and their professional aspirations and make them question their values and their shared vision of the future.

This Is Where We Live: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

Pretty Things: A Novel

Two wildly different women—one a grifter, the other an heiress—are brought together by the scam of a lifetime in a page-turner from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear. “Pretty Things is awesome. Simple as that. I loved every page. Janelle Brown is your new must-read author.”—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Run Away Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet. Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina. Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge. This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Who’s really following you on social media? The scam of a lifetime brings together two wildly different women in this page-turning thriller about greed, legacy, and betrayal from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear.\nAn ID Book Club Selection • “It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith.”—The Washington Post\nNina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.\nVanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.\nNina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.\nThis dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.\nAmazon.com Review\nIt’s hard to tell the marks from the con artists in 
Pretty Things. Everyone has an angle, and everyone has a façade behind which they hide the wounds of their past. Nina’s mother Lily hustled Nina’s entire childhood to get her an education, so she wouldn’t have to turn to crime as Lily had done. Yet here’s Nina and her shady boyfriend Lachlan fleeing L.A. just one step ahead of the law, who are onto the scams Nina has pulled in order to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments. When Lachlan suggests they hide out in Lake Tahoe, Nina agrees. Her next mark, and former foe, heiress and Instagram influencer Vanessa Liebling, is in residence at her family’s Tahoe estate, Stonehaven, and Nina sees an opportunity to settle an old score. 
Pretty Things packs a lot of story into what should be a straightforward revenge tale. Dual narrators—Vanessa and Nina—have the same effect on the many twists and reveals as a funhouse mirror, warping the reader’s ability to know who to root for, because both woman are likable. But both come from families that make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch, so you know it’s going to be last man standing as class warfare, social media, money, and old history square off in this complex and riveting thriller. 
—Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review

Random House Trade Paperbacks

I'll Be You: A Novel

Two identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart--until one disappears, and the other is forced to confront the secrets they've kept from each other in this twisty suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things. "You be me, and I'll be you," I whispered.&nbsp; As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn't even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other's breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role.&nbsp; But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years.&nbsp; Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli's life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she's stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly&nbsp;joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli's baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.&nbsp; I'll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives--and could just as easily destroy them.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brown, Janelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Brown, Janelle

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brown, Janelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

This Is Where We Live: A Novel

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel

This Is Where We Live: A Novel

This Is Where We Live: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

Pretty Things: A Novel

Pretty Things: A Novel

I'll Be You: A Novel