Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times-bestselling author of three short story collections and seven novels, including The Jane Austen Book Club. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014, won the PEN/Faulkner Prize and has sold over a million copies.

Now she joins us in Bath this March to celebrate the launch of Booth, an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family: charmers, liars, drinkers and dreamers, they will change history forever.

Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise – but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.

“Booth is a triumph! No one writes like Karen Joy Fowler. With wit, heart, and revelatory insight, she teases ghosts from their shadows, transforming the way we see the past, shedding new light on our troubled present.” – Ruth Ozeki

“Accomplished, immersive, and profoundly satisfying. BOOTH is both highly relevant to modern life and a fully realised piece of fiction. I loved learning about the Booth family and all their eccentricities, set against the backdrop of American history. I can’t praise it highly enough, what a range Karen Joy Fowler has.” – Cathy Rentzenbrink