Agnes Lives! - by Hallie Elizabeth Newton (Hardcover)

About the Book

A day-in-the-life debut novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class.

Book Synopsis

A day-in-the-life debut novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class.

New York City, 2014. Agnes Maurer is seeking the appropriate killer. Candidates include: an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; a Craigslist gun dealer; and Agnes' toxic novelist boyfriend. In her hunt, she stumbles into unexpected detours: cleansing crystals, must-have handbags, a Tesla ride where someone else dies, naked housekeeping, and an encounter with deep, dark water.

Through a murderously attuned kaleidoscope stained with image, money, and sex, Agnes' dwindling hours of icon-filled privilege become a breathless search for self. Asking for It is a killer exhibition, an obsessive rendering of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Newton's prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, shattering. A crafted study of mid-aughts values that have brought us to where we are now. The ping-pong pacing crashes into a worthy, intense denouement.

About the Author

Hallie Elizabeth Newton was born in Mississippi. She received her first screenplay credit for At Any Price, released by Sony Picture Classics. In 2016, she received the Goldwater Fellowship to earn her master's in creative writing from NYU. Her short story "Man Made" won first prize for fiction in Columbia Journal's 2020 Winter Contest. Her work is forthcoming from American Chordata. She lives between New York and the Deep South.