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    Famous Men

    A Novel

    Author Julie Buntin
    Hardcover
    $30.00 US
    | $41.99 CAN
    Random House Group | Random House
    On sale Jul 14, 2026 | 400 Pages | 9780593229958
    Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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    From the acclaimed author of the “wild, gorgeous” (San Francisco Chronicle) Marlena comes a novel about a young woman looking for a father and finding herself—a vivid, uncompromising exploration of sex, money, power, and art.

    The right book at the right time can change your life.

    Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?

    Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything. 

    A gripping novel about ambition, parents, and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.
    “Haunting and knife-bright, Famous Men renders womanhood with unsettling clarity and reckons with the absolute ache of becoming.”—Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age

    “This audacious novel offers a fresh interrogation of a familiar scenario—a young woman in thrall to a powerful man. The true pleasure of Famous Men is that Buntin understands the complexity of morality, declining easy answers to difficult questions about art and ethics as well as sex and desire. I tore through it.”—Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind

    “Famous Men is a masterful portrayal—of a girl grasping for power and significance, of the slow creep of an older man testing boundaries, of a young woman realizing the scope of what’s been done. Yes, this is a story of complicity and harm, but it takes risks where other narratives would not dare. By aiming beyond buzzwords, Buntin delivers an immersive page-turner that has guts and heart and an honesty that is a privilege to read. This is a beautiful, generous, unsparing novel. Buntin is one of our best.”—Kate Elizabeth Russell, New York Times bestselling author of My Dark Vanessa

    “Compassionate, bracing, and wise, this is an unforgettable portrait of one of those radiant chapters in a young person’s life that leave a mark forever.”—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

    “Famous Men reveals the art monster in all of us and affirms Julie Buntin’s place among the essential writers of her generation.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

    “Famous Men is the story of a young woman who wants to remake herself in the mold of her idol—a story of sex, art, ambition, and compromise that is both deeply discomfiting and unbelievably compelling. Even as it holds a magnifying mirror up to our flaws, we cannot—we do not want to—look away.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth

    “[Buntin’s] language is superb; for all Will’s self-assuredness, the precarity of her situation, tied so inextricably to Nathaniel, is rendered in such exacting and heartrending detail as to make the reader’s teeth ache. . . . A searing, brilliant novel about power, and stories, and who gets to tell them.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

    “Buntin intimately captures a young woman’s leap into adulthood and its concurrent, commonplace cruelties. Her gutsy, nuanced, and bravura take on the #MeToo novel remarkably portrays the queasy churn of our modern reckonings within one woman and the world at large, online and in life. As Will harnesses her own narrative, readers grasp along with her the audacity inherent in every story women tell about women, beginning with the idea they’re worth telling at all. Hers is a thrill to read and think about.”—Booklist, starred review
    © Sylvie Rosokoff
    Julie Buntin's debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. View titles by Julie Buntin

    About

    From the acclaimed author of the “wild, gorgeous” (San Francisco Chronicle) Marlena comes a novel about a young woman looking for a father and finding herself—a vivid, uncompromising exploration of sex, money, power, and art.

    The right book at the right time can change your life.

    Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?

    Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything. 

    A gripping novel about ambition, parents, and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.

    Reviews

    “Haunting and knife-bright, Famous Men renders womanhood with unsettling clarity and reckons with the absolute ache of becoming.”—Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age

    “This audacious novel offers a fresh interrogation of a familiar scenario—a young woman in thrall to a powerful man. The true pleasure of Famous Men is that Buntin understands the complexity of morality, declining easy answers to difficult questions about art and ethics as well as sex and desire. I tore through it.”—Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind

    “Famous Men is a masterful portrayal—of a girl grasping for power and significance, of the slow creep of an older man testing boundaries, of a young woman realizing the scope of what’s been done. Yes, this is a story of complicity and harm, but it takes risks where other narratives would not dare. By aiming beyond buzzwords, Buntin delivers an immersive page-turner that has guts and heart and an honesty that is a privilege to read. This is a beautiful, generous, unsparing novel. Buntin is one of our best.”—Kate Elizabeth Russell, New York Times bestselling author of My Dark Vanessa

    “Compassionate, bracing, and wise, this is an unforgettable portrait of one of those radiant chapters in a young person’s life that leave a mark forever.”—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

    “Famous Men reveals the art monster in all of us and affirms Julie Buntin’s place among the essential writers of her generation.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

    “Famous Men is the story of a young woman who wants to remake herself in the mold of her idol—a story of sex, art, ambition, and compromise that is both deeply discomfiting and unbelievably compelling. Even as it holds a magnifying mirror up to our flaws, we cannot—we do not want to—look away.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth

    “[Buntin’s] language is superb; for all Will’s self-assuredness, the precarity of her situation, tied so inextricably to Nathaniel, is rendered in such exacting and heartrending detail as to make the reader’s teeth ache. . . . A searing, brilliant novel about power, and stories, and who gets to tell them.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

    “Buntin intimately captures a young woman’s leap into adulthood and its concurrent, commonplace cruelties. Her gutsy, nuanced, and bravura take on the #MeToo novel remarkably portrays the queasy churn of our modern reckonings within one woman and the world at large, online and in life. As Will harnesses her own narrative, readers grasp along with her the audacity inherent in every story women tell about women, beginning with the idea they’re worth telling at all. Hers is a thrill to read and think about.”—Booklist, starred review

    Author

    © Sylvie Rosokoff
    Julie Buntin's debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. View titles by Julie Buntin

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