Anderson’s Bookshops Presents Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson

Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson

Join Anderson’s Bookshops for a virtual event with authors Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson to celebrate the release of their new book, You Feel it Just Below the Ribs! The authors will be in conversation with fellow author Jaya Saxena.

A haunting, provocative novel, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a fictional autobiography in an alternate twentieth century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save.

More about the book:

Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great Reckoning, a sprawling, decades-long war that nearly decimates humanity and strips her of friends and family. Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends, and The New Society arises.

To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, endangering her own life.

But is her “confession” honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to conceal the truth?

A jarring and uncanny tale of loss, trauma, and the power of human connection and deception, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a portrait of a disturbing alternate world eerily within reach, and an examination of the difficult choices we must make to survive in it.

About the Author:

Jeffrey Cranor is the co-author with Joseph Fink of the New York Times bestselling novels Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours!, and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. With Fink, he is the cowriter and producer of the Welcome to Night Vale Podcast, with over 300 million downloads in its 9-year run, and the lead podcast in the Night Vale Presents podcast network: http://www.nightvalepresents.com/. He also creates theater and dance pieces with his wife, the choreographer Jillian Sweeney. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. His Twitter and Instagram handles are @happierman & @nightvaleradio.

Janina Matthewson is the author of the acclaimed novel Of Things Gone Astray and the novella The Understanding of Women. She has written audio drama for the BBC and Radiotopia, with credits including Murmurs, The Cipher, and Passenger List. Originally from New Zealand, she now lives in London. Her Twitter and Instagram handles are @J9andIf. For more on Janina, visit: http://myrednotebook.com/. The two of them cowrite and produce the Within the Wires podcast which has been downloaded nearly 6.5 million times. Cranor and Matthewson’s joint Twitter and Instagram handles are @withinthewires.

Jaya Saxena (she/her) is a writer living in Queens. She is currently a Staff Writer at Eater.com, and her latest book is Crystal Clear.