The Plot

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

This is not at all how I imagined authors — don’t they all sip red wine, trade barbs, and reminisce about the last time they saw William Styron? Apparently not, I read The Plot. It’s a deliciously creepy novel that makes you feel the floor shift long before the fall. Jean Hanff Korelitz crafts a tale of a struggling writer who steals a brilliant story idea, only to discover that the fiction he publishes may not be fiction at all. What begins as a meditation on creative ownership spirals into psychological suspense while it toys with your assumptions, prods your ethics, and leaves you eyeing your own bookshelf with fresh suspicion.