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November Road by Lou Berney

Thriller

November Road

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This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.

by Lou Berney

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Quick take

A New Orleans mobster who knows too much, a young mother on the run, and the daring escape that might get them both killed.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Action_packed

    Action-packed

  • Illustrated icon, Rugged

    Rugged

Synopsis

A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, Frank Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it’s his turn—he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas to see an old associate—a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish.

When Guidry sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte—on the run from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a kindly husband who’s a hopeless drunk—reach her destination.

But fugitives shouldn’t fall in love, because a road isn’t just a road—it’s a trail, and Guidry’s ruthless and relentless hunters are closing in on him. But now Guidry doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Lou Berney's November Road.

November Road

1963

I

Behold! The Big Easy in all its wicked splendor!

Frank Guidry paused at the corner of Toulouse to bask in the neon furnace glow. He’d lived in New Orleans the better part of his thirty-seven years on earth, but the dirty glitter and sizzle of the French Quarter still hit his bloodstream like a drug. Yokels and locals, muggers and hustlers, fire-eaters and magicians. A go-go girl was draped over the wrought-iron rail of a second-floor balcony, one boob sprung free from her sequined negligee and swaying like a metronome to the beat of the jazz trio inside. Bass, drums, piano, tearing through “Night and Day.” But that was New Orleans for you. Even the worst band in the crummiest clip joint in the city could swing, man, swing.

A guy came whipping up the street, screaming bloody murder. Hot on his heels—a woman waving a butcher knife, screaming, too.

Guidry soft-shoed out of their way. The beat cop on the corner yawned. The juggler outside the 500 Club didn’t drop a ball. Just another Wednesday night on Bourbon Street.

“Come on, fellas!” The go-go girl on the balcony wagged her boob at a pair of drunken sailors. They stood swaying on the curb, watching their pal puke into the gutter. “Be a gent and buy a lady a drink!”

The sailors leered up at her. “How much?”

“How much you got?”

Guidry smiled. And so the world spins round. The go-go girl had black velvet kitten ears pinned to her bouffant and false eyelashes so long that Guidry didn’t know how she could see through them. Maybe that was the point.

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Why I love it

Plot, setting, and character. It’s a simple three-ingredient recipe—you might call it Satisfying Novel Surprise—yet many (even most!) authors tend to skimp on one or another … or all three. Few works of fiction, in my experience, spin a gripping story and drench it in atmosphere and people it with a relatable, three-dimensional cast. Fewer still do so in perfect proportion.

But Lou Berney’s November Road is no ordinary work of fiction. November, 1963: The country is roiling in the wake of JFK’s murder, and one mob lieutenant suspects he may have unwittingly participated in the crime. He makes a run for the West Coast, inadvertently picking up a runaway housewife and her two daughters along the way. As they light out for coastal California, these four fugitives bond in ways as unexpected (yet credible) as they are poignant (yet exciting).

This altogether wondrous novel resists categorization. It’s a thriller; it’s a period piece; it’s a character study. Above all, though, November Road is an experience—so vivid, so indelible, that it feels as much our story as it does our heroes’. I’m delighted to present to Book of the Month readers a new American classic.

Member ratings (4,647)

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Thriller
View all
First Lie Wins
No One Can Know
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
One Perfect Couple
Darling Girls
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
Only if You’re Lucky
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Collective
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
The Last Flight
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Wife Upstairs
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
Invisible Girl
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Winter Sister
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless