Sylvan Street

Read Deborah Schupack's posts on the Penguin Blog.

Nine neighbors; two ominous outsiders; one suitcase containing a million dollars

Deborah Schupack tells a provocative and suspenseful tale about what happens when cold, hard cash moves in next door. With page-turning storytelling, graceful prose and deep, true emotion, Sylvan Street explores the ultimate power- and limitations-of money. What these friendly suburban residents do with their newfound money, and what the money does with them, builds toward a revelatory conclusion: how the tensions between benevolence and greed, duty and desire, inform our every action and interaction. Readers of thrillers and character- driven dramas alike will find a sweet payoff in these pages.

Nine neighbors; two ominous outsiders; one suitcase containing a million dollars

Deborah Schupack tells a provocative and suspenseful tale about what happens when cold, hard cash moves in next door. With page-turning storytelling, graceful prose and deep, true emotion, Sylvan Street explores the ultimate power-and limitations-of money. What these friendly suburban residents do with their newfound money, and what the money does with them, builds toward a revelatory conclusion: how the tensions between benevolence and greed, duty and desire, inform our every action and interaction. Readers of thrillers and character- driven dramas alike will find a sweet payoff in these pages.

Publishers Weekly

Schupack (The Boy on the Bus) cleverly plays out in her latest what happens when you mix five sets of suburban New York neighbors with a suitcase full of cold cash. The large cast, while initially overwhelming, provides Schupack with bountiful opportunities for plots, counterplots, and all manner of nefarious doings as the neighbors decide what to do after finding a briefcase packed with $1 million in the new neighbors’ back yard during a pool party. The page-turning pace never flags among the “reproductively challenged” wealthy couple, the bachelor artist, the overburdened family of seven, the retired schoolteachers, and the seemingly happy new neighbors. Schupack also provides a startling peek into the lives of the immigrants who inhabit an entirely different part of New York than domestic Sylvan Street. Teeming with plot twists and social unrest, Schupack shows with poignant prose and commendable plotting the good, the bad, and the ugly that money brings out in people. (May)

Deborah Schupack is the author of The Boy on the Bus. She has taught writing and literature at Vermont College, The New School, and Yale University. She lives in Westchester County, New York.