A compulsively readable and incisive look at a violent incident among a group of teenage boys that brings three very different sets of parents together: it’s about class, race, education and privilege, and the conflict when all of those slam together.
THE BOYS
by Sameer Pandya
Ballantine, Winter 2024
(via The Gernert Company)
Reveling in the triumph of a high school football win, a group of newly-friended boys find themselves at a party and—as sometimes happens—might or might not have beaten the crap out the kid that has annoyed them all their lives. These all-stars are suspended for the season, but instead of dwelling tight on the boys, Sameer wraps the narrative around their troubled parents and how they react and interact and judge and confront this family crisis. THE BOYS is about class, and race, and education and the privilege of passing and the lack of privilege if you don’t, and the conflict we find when all of those slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent, and the games the world makes each of us play.
Sameer Pandya is the author of Members Only and the story collection The Blind Writer, which was long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. He is also the recipient of the PEN/Civitella Fellowship. His fiction, commentary, and cultural criticism has appeared in a range of publications, including the Atlantic, Salon, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and Narrative Magazine. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his release date approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she’s been kidnapped―or worse. Is Maddison’s disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? And why was she visiting him in the first place?
When criminal barrister, Justine Stone, is handed the lead on her first murder case, she could never have imagined she’d find Jake Reynolds staring back at her. Jake Reynolds – the boyfriend who disappeared from her life twelve years ago and the same man now facing a double homicide charge. Since Jake left without a trace, Justine hasn’t returned to the rural Essex town, Maldon, where they grew up together. But, if she’s going to send Jake to prison for murder, this time she needs to know the truth – not just the story she’ll spin the jury.
Living in a ski resort town in the middle of the Colorado Rockies should be paradise, but deputy David Wolf is stretched thin hunting a missing person and dealing with his ex-wife coming back into the picture. All that trouble drops to the wayside, however, when he gets word his brother has died half a world away while traveling in northern Italy.