When a husband asks his wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both—sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible.
CRUSH
by Ada Calhoun
Viking/PRH, February 2025
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency)
She’s happy and settled and productive and content in her full life—a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of “husband” and “wife” force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose.
Using the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes. Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, CRUSH is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it’s possible to love—friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world’s good books, and most of all one’s own deep sense of purpose.
“Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling—the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week.” — Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
“The word ‘crush’ often conjures the innocence of adolescence—a time when your life story isn’t yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun’s Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reading into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession.” — Molly Ringwald
Ada Calhoun is the author of Also a Poet, named one of the best books of 2022 by the New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and featured on the Today show and PBS NewsHour. Her other books include St. Marks Is Dead and the New York Times bestsellers Why We Can’t Sleep.
New York City, 1911. Edith Wharton, almost equally famed for her novels and her sharp tongue, is bone-tired of Manhattan. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, she makes the decision to leave America, her publisher, and her loveless marriage.
Worlds turn. Particles spin. Love endures.
When Kate Summerlin was eleven years old, she climbed out her bedroom window on a spring night, looking for a taste of freedom in the small college town where she was living with her parents. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her—the killer’s voice—saying: “Don’t turn around.”
A tsunami of modern sleep training methods promise “easy” and “quick” results and for many parents and children, these methods work as intended. However, there is a large, exhausted group of parents whose children have sleep problems that are not responsive to those crying-based methods. These children tend to be more reactive, persistent, and perceptive than their peers. And when it comes to sleep, little ones with this kind of temperament put up a much, much bigger fight. They need a different approach. That’s where Why Won’t You Sleep? comes in. Based on extensive research and proven methods used with thousands of families just like yours, this guide gives you strategies tailored to your child’s unique temperament. Readers will learn: