Cooler Heads - by Julian Tepper (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city--New York--that would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.

Julian Tepper's fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest.

Review Quotes

"Offering a pitiless dissection of a modern relationship, Tepper shows himself an expert at orchestrating scenes of domestic carnage. This plays out like a hipster Brooklyn version of Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road."

-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Julian Tepper's fifth novel, Getting Even/Letting Go (Rare Bird), will be published in the fall of 2026. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Playboy, Brooklyn Rail, Zyzzyva, Daily Beast, Bomb, Tablet Magazine, The New York Review of Architecture, and elsewhere. His essay, "Locking Down with the Family You've Just Eviscerated in a Novel" was a "Notable Essay of 2022" in Best American Essays 2022. He was born and raised in New York City.