Luna, Phoenix, Queen.jpg
Luna, Phoenix, Queen.jpg

Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer

from $12.80
Hardcover:

KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST • A spellbinding tour de force from the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge—a novel about varieties of infidelity, the provenance of a literary masterpiece, and the power of storytelling to shape identity and destiny.

"Luna, Phoenix, Queen reimagined what I thought a novel could do. My favorite kind of novel." —Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear

Dava and Barr Pennington are professors at a Midwestern university, and both are keeping secrets. When early-onset Alzheimer's begins to take Dava's memory, her husband discovers the hidden manuscript of the novel she has been writing, rewrites it, and publishes it as his own to wide acclaim.

Luna, Phoenix, Queen unfolds through a chorus of voices over four decades, among them Barr, Dava's colleague Svetlana, the couple's sons, and a research assistant who saw Dava's final days at home.

Barr's growing fixation on Luna, a badly injured dog at a local shelter, runs through the story, and the novel she writes concerns two women who run a domestic violence shelter on the coast of Maine.

The book weighs infidelity, plagiarism, and the loss of memory against the power of storytelling to shape identity, and it was named a Kirkus Prize finalist.

It suits readers of literary fiction who like a layered, multi-voiced structure and a mystery rooted in family and authorship.

KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST • A spellbinding tour de force from the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge—a novel about varieties of infidelity, the provenance of a literary masterpiece, and the power of storytelling to shape identity and destiny.

"Luna, Phoenix, Queen reimagined what I thought a novel could do. My favorite kind of novel." —Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear

Dava and Barr Pennington are professors at a Midwestern university, and both are keeping secrets. When early-onset Alzheimer's begins to take Dava's memory, her husband discovers the hidden manuscript of the novel she has been writing, rewrites it, and publishes it as his own to wide acclaim.

Luna, Phoenix, Queen unfolds through a chorus of voices over four decades, among them Barr, Dava's colleague Svetlana, the couple's sons, and a research assistant who saw Dava's final days at home.

Barr's growing fixation on Luna, a badly injured dog at a local shelter, runs through the story, and the novel she writes concerns two women who run a domestic violence shelter on the coast of Maine.

The book weighs infidelity, plagiarism, and the loss of memory against the power of storytelling to shape identity, and it was named a Kirkus Prize finalist.

It suits readers of literary fiction who like a layered, multi-voiced structure and a mystery rooted in family and authorship.

  • Publisher: Knopf

    Title: Luna, Phoenix, Queen: A Novel

    Author: Julie Orringer

    On Sale Date: October 13, 2026

    ISBN 13: 979-8-217-20788-6

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $32.00

    Page Count: 288

    Dimensions: 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

  • Julie Orringer is the author of the novel The Invisible Bridge and the award-winning short story collection How to Breathe Underwater, a New York Times Notable Book. She is the winner of The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for Fiction and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it gripping, heartbreaking, and redemptive:

    • Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, called it heart-stoppingly good.

    • BookPage, also in a starred review, described an exceptional, intricately layered work.

    • Andrew Sean Greer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less, called it gripping, heartbreaking, and redemptive, and a joy to read.

    • Katie Kitamura called Luna, Phoenix, Queen a miracle of a book.

This book is for you if

  • You enjoy multi-voiced literary novels that move across several decades and perspectives.

  • You're drawn to stories about marital betrayal, secret love, and the ways families absorb them.

  • You're interested in a novel that treats authorship, plagiarism, and who owns a story as a real mystery.

  • You want fiction that confronts early-onset Alzheimer's and the fear of losing your mind and memory.

  • You loved Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge or How to Breathe Underwater and want her next novel.

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