The Crime Lady, V.2, #4: Publication Day For THE REAL LOLITA
Today is the day. The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized The World is published in the US (by Ecco), Canada (by Knopf) and the UK (by Weidenfeld & Nicolson). The pre-publication runup is finished, the book is out in the world, and I am so proud to publish this, my first book.
Here is a Twitter thread that goes into greater detail about how The Real Lolita came to be, from magazine article idea to book, and everything in between. I urge you, too, to watch the film clip linked in the last tweet, the only surviving footage of Sally Horner. The first time I watched her move and interact it took my breath away. Hundreds of views later, I still have the same reaction.
Tonight at 7:30 PM I will be at Books Are Magic in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, in conversation with David Grann. And tomorrow morning, I leave for DC, the start of two solid months of book tour travel.
The Real Lolita has already garnered a ton of pre-publication press and reviews, most notably:
a book excerpt published by The Cut; and a shorter one in the Toronto Star
Maris Kreizman’s Vulture profile, in which we day-tripped to Atlantic City looking for a pivotal location in the book; Shelby Vittek’s New Jersey Monthly profile, featuring comments from Sally Horner’s niece
More profiles in CrimeReads (by Daneet Steffens), Quill & Quire (by Steven Beattie) and a Q&A with the Library of America, which was lovely of them to do post-Women Crime Writers
I was on CBC Sunday Edition last weekend talking about the book with Michael Enright, whom I grew up listening to as a kid and so this happening impressed my mother more than anything
Maureen Corrigan’s utterly stunning review in the Washington Post andLiz Hand’s equally laudatory review in the Los Angeles Times; Entertainment Weekly also gave the book a B+, while Priscilla Frank calls it a “revelation” for the Huffington Post and Bustle deems it a “fascinating literary mystery and a pulsating true crime story.”
Essays by Rachel Monroe at BookForum and Myra Bloom at the Literary Review of Canada really engaged with the book and got what I was trying to do
Further coverage in the NY Daily News, the Weekly Standard, the Times (London), the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Salon, Bustle, and more
Needless to say, this is only the beginning. So much more is to come. And if you are reading this newsletter, you were part of The Real Lolita’s journey in ways large or small, and my gratitude is endless. Thank you so much, and see you on tour!
I remain, as ever,
The Crime Lady