A darkly exhilarating new novel about an American family and its inheritance - the safety and wealth that they fought for, and the precarity of their survival that is their legacy.

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream.

But nearly forty years later, when Carl's mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers' lives all this time surfaces at last. It becomes apparent that Carl has been quietly pursuing closure to the kidnapping for all these years, and his wife and children must face that the money that they believed bought them safety was actually never capable of doing any such thing.

Long Island Compromise spans generations, winding through decades of history all the way through to the wild present, dealing along the way with all the mainstays of American Jewish life and the timeless questions about wealth, trauma, and the American soul.

'Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching' DAVID NICHOLLS 'It is a Great Novel . . . It has depth, wit, nuance and life. Heartbreaking and funny' NIGELLA LAWSON 'This is the novel of the summer . . . There is no one that this book isn't for. I can't believe it's a first novel. Pure brilliance' INDIA KNIGHT, THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I've never felt so seen' GRACE DENT, GUARDIAN 'This book is a work of utter perfection' ELIZABETH GILBERT THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, JUNE 2019 Finally free from his nightmare marriage, Toby Fleishman is ready for a life of online dating and weekend-only parental duties. But as he optimistically looks to a future that is wildly different from the one he imagined, his life turns upside-down as his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears. While Toby tries to find out what happened - juggling work, kids and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity - his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. But if he ever wants to really understand where Rachel went and what really happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen it all that clearly in the first place . . . WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE: 'So sharp' GUARDIAN 'The most astonishingly brilliant Trojan horse of a novel' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Wonderful. Utterly blistering . . . A wildly entertaining, moving story' MARIAN KEYES 'Brimming with wisdom and utterly of this moment . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut is that rare and delicious treat: a page turner with heft' MARIA SEMPLE LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL SHORTLISTED FOR THE FICTION: DEBUT BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS RUNNER-UP FOR THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE 2020 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE/JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK

From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble comes Long Island Compromise, a darkly exhilarating novel about an American family and its inheritance - the safety and wealth that they fought for, and the precarity of their survival that is their legacy. In 1982, wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Carl, his wife and his three kids all try to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream. But nearly forty years later, when Carl's mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers' lives all this time surfaces at last. Finally, Carl allows himself to acknowledge what happened to him all those years ago, and face the question that's been idling in his mind for a quarter of a century: where did the ransom go? And if he were ever to find the money, would it finally give him and his family the closure they've been yearning for? Long Island Compromise spans generations, winding through decades of history all the way through to the wild present, dealing along the way with all the mainstays of American Jewish life. And through it all, it addresses timeless questions about wealth, trauma, and the American soul. PRAISE FOR FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE: 'This is the novel of the summer . . . There is no one that this book isn't for. I can't believe it's a first novel. Pure brilliance' INDIA KNIGHT, THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I've never felt so seen' GRACE DENT, GUARDIAN 'Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching' DAVID NICHOLLS 'This book is a work of utter perfection' ELIZABETH GILBERT