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.
From legendary creator Frank Miller comes a dark, modern-day fairy tale about a teenage girl searching for a perfect world. But all is not what it seems…
Eve, the daughter of a renowned, tempestuous writer, is isolated in early motherhood when she runs into an enigmatic childhood friend she calls Demeter. Demeter’s daughter is unable to tolerate sunlight, and no doctors believe that the girl’s illness, which comes to be known as Emily Syndrome, is real. But Eve believes, and even suspects that it is the fact that Demeter is a struggling, under-educated single mother that the medical system shrugs off her daughter’s unusual symptoms. Their captivating, reborn relationship revives Eve, then pulls her into a crisis that engulfs her town and even threatens her own family. Determined to help everyone she loves, Eve learns that when disaster hits, we might not all be heroes, but our own flawed selves can be everything we need. 
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