Every year when Tax Day comes around, I check to see if there are enough novels centered around work to fill out a column. Frequently, there aren’t. Of course, there are plenty of detectives and private eyes doing their fictional jobs—not to mention all the bakers and bookstore owners populating cozy mysteries and romances—but there aren’t many novels set in places of work, showing people coordinating with their colleagues, grumbling about their bosses, getting things done. Considering how much time people spend on the job, it always surprises me how little fictional attention is paid to the mechanics of the workplace. Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted (2024), which digs into the operations of a big-box store, is one notable exception to the rule; here are some more recent ones.
Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown, 2025): Ning manages a nail salon in an unnamed North American city, and her sharply detailed narrative brings us deep into the minutiae of her day there: why the nail techs’ badges all read “Susan,” why they shouldn’t wear nail polish themselves, how they set up their stations, how they get along with one other and their clients. “Ning’s keen observations [are]…her way of ensuring she doesn’t succumb to the numb hypnosis of her repetitive and undercompensated work,” according to our starred review. “This exceptional novel…contains great wit and quick turns, up to the last sentence.”
American Fantasy by Emma Straub (Riverhead, April 7): A recently divorced woman takes a cruise headlined by the members of a 1990s boy band. That doesn’t sound like a novel about work, but interspersed with the bonding and healing of the vacationers is the story of Sarah, the cruise director, and Keith, one of the band members, who have jobs to do, and it’s fascinating to watch them work while everyone around them is having the time of their lives.
Work To Do by Jules Wernersbach (Univ. of Iowa, April 7): Wernersbach is the founder of Hive Mind Books in Brooklyn and a veteran of many other independent bookstores. They bring that experience to this debut novel, set in a grocery co-op in Austin, Texas, on the eve of a hurricane. The power goes off, the staff wants to unionize, the founder hasn’t told anyone about her cancer diagnosis, and the manager tries to keep everything together—while readers learn all the details of keeping the food on the shelves. Our review says this is “a workplace novel crossed with a soap opera, offering plenty of food for thought. (Organic and locally sourced, of course.)”
Murders and Acquisitions by Thomas Dunne (Blackstone, April 28): The author had a long career in publishing, notably running his namesake imprint at St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, and the family-held business at the center of his new novel has a publishing arm alongside banking and financial concerns. As the book opens, 95-year-old Werther Maybach Meyer, Omnium’s most powerful American stakeholder, has died, setting off a global chain of events with a rising body count, giving us peeks into offices around the world. Our review calls it “a blackly humorous feast.”
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
