Tara Isabella Burton

"Part THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, part Bret Easton Ellis's THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, about a small-town girl trying to survive in New York and become part of the city's literati, who forms an intense friendship with a troubled socialite, leading to extreme consequences"--

A Novel

Social Creature

The Girls meets Fight Club in this coming-of-age novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the devoted members of a cultic chapel choir in a prestigious Maine boarding school—and the obsessively ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them. When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the members of the choir. Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.

The World Cannot Give

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As the once dominant totems of civic connection and civil discourse--traditional churches--continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're making our own personal faiths - theistic or not - mixing and matching our spiritual, ritualistic, personal, and political practices in order to create our own bespoke religious selves. We're not just building new religions in 2019, we're buying them, from Gwyneth Paltrow's gospel of Goop, to the brilliantly cultish SoulCycle, to those who believe in their special destiny on Mars. In so doing, we're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism). Our era is not the dawn of American secularism, but rather a brand-bolstered resurgence of American pluralism, revved into overdrive by commerce and personalized algorithms, all to the tune of "Hallellujah"--America's most popular and spectacularly misunderstood wedding song.

New Religions for a Godless World

Strange Rites

The author of Social Creature and The World Cannot Give returns with a New York City fairy tale about two sisters that fall under the spell of an underworld cabaret troupe that might be a dangerous cult—but one that makes the capitalist world left in its wake feel like a sinister cult itself. Rose has come a long way. Raised—and often neglected—by a wayward mother in New York City’s chaotic bohemia, Rose has finally built the life she’s always wanted: a good job at a self-help startup, a clean apartment, an engagement to a stable if self-satisfied tech CEO who shares her faith in human potential, hard work, and the sacrifice of childish dreams. Rose’s sister Cecilia, on the other hand, never grew up. Irresponsible and impetuous, prone to jetting off to a European monastery one month and a falcon rescue the next, Cecilia has spent her life in pursuit of fairy-tale narratives of transcendence and true love—grand ideas Rose knows never work out in the real world. When Cecilia declares she’s come home to New York for good, following the ending of a whirlwind marriage, Rose hopes Cecilia might finally be ready to face adulthood: compromises and all. But then Cecilia gets involved with the Avalon: a cultish-sounding cabaret troupe—one that appears only at night, on a mysterious red boat that travels New York’s waterways—and soon vanishes: one of a growing number of suspicious disappearances among the city’s lost and loneliest souls. The only way Rose can find Cecilia is by tracking down the Avalon herself. But as Rose gets closer to solving the mystery of what happened to her sister, the Avalon works its magic on her, too. And the deeper she goes into the Avalon’s underworld, she more she begins to question everything she knows about her own life, and whether she’s willing to leave the real world behind.

Here in Avalon

'We're all now self-makers, whether we like it or not - and this witty, sceptical book is the thought-provoking story of how we got here' GUARDIAN 'This funny, startling, insightful story of the selfie, from Dürer to the Kardashians, is a must read if you want to understand how we reinvent ourselves every time we reveal ourselves' PETER POMERANTSEV Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike. Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world. As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be. From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational übermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash. 'Both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society' FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians

Self-Made

In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body's limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, THE DESTROYER asks how far we'll go to secure our own legacies -- and how far we'll run to escape them. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.Com Original

The Destroyer

Caighlan Smith

David Nickle

Aliette de Bodard

N. K. Jemisin

Alix E. Harrow

Rebecca Campbell

Indrapramit Das

Nina Allan

Melissa Marr

Charlie Jane Anders

Alyssa Wong

Laurie Penny

Liu Cixin

Lavie Tidhar

Daniel Polansky

P. Djèlí Clark

Margaret Killjoy

Carrie Vaughn

Genevieve Valentine

Monica Byrne

Angela Slatter

Delia Sherman

Lettie Prell

Rajnar Vajra

A collection of some of the best original science fiction and fantasy short fiction published on Tor.com in 2016. Includes stories by Charlie Jane Anders, Nina Allan, Tara Isabella Burton, Monica Byrne, Rebecca Campbell, P. Djèlí Clark, Indrapramit Das, Alix E. Harrow, N. K. Jemisin, Margaret Killjoy, Cixin Liu, Melissa Marr, David Nickle, Laurie Penny, Daniel Polansky, Lettie Prell, Delia Sherman, Angela Slatter, Caighlan Smith, Lavie Tidhar, Rajnar Vajra, Genevieve Valentine, Carrie Vaughn, and Alyssa Wong. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.com Original

Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

An exploration into the curation of the self in Western civilization from Da Vinci to Kim Kardashian. In a technologically-saturated era where nearly everything can be effortlessly and digitally reproduced, we're all hungry to carve out our own unique personalities, our own bespoke personae, to stand out and be seen. As the forces of social media and capitalism collide, and individualism becomes more important than ever across a wide array of industries, "branding ourselves" or actively defining our selves for others has become the norm. Yet, this phenomenon is not new. In Self-Made, Tara Isabella Burton shows us how we arrived at this moment of fervent personal-branding. As attitudes towards religion, politics and society evolved, our sense of self did as well, moving from a collective to individual mindset. Through a series of chronological biographical essays on famous (and infamous) "self-creators" in the modern Western world, from the Renassiance to the Enlightenment to modern capitalism and finally to our present moment of mass media, Burton examines the theories and forces behind our never-ending need to curate ourselves. Through a vivid cast of characters and an engaging mix of cultural and historical commentary, we learn how the personal brand has come to be.

“The Secret History meets The Price of Salt” (Vogue) in this “equal parts dangerous and delicious” (Entertainment Weekly) novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding school—and the ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them. When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the member of the choir. Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. The World Cannot Give is a “hypnotic and intense” (Shondaland) meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.

Auch in einer Stadt, in der scheinbar alles möglich ist, muss man sich sein Glück leisten können: Louise ist Ende zwanzig und versucht, sich in New York durchzuschlagen. Eigentlich wollte sie Schriftstellerin werden – jetzt lebt sie in Brooklyn, hat mehrere miserabel bezahlte Jobs und wird von Selbstzweifeln geplagt. Eines Tages begegnet sie Lavinia. Und die hat wirklich alles: Sie wohnt auf der Upper East Side, ist wild, frei und wunderschön. Doch vor allem ist sie reich. Ihr glamouröses Leben teilt sie gern – auf sämtlichen sozialen Netzwerken, aber auch mit Louise. Die beiden ungleichen Frauen werden Freundinnen. Louise wird auf Partys herumgereicht, lässt sich von Lavinia einkleiden, zieht bei ihr ein – sie verfällt Lavinia und ihrer Welt. Auch wenn sie nicht das Geld hat, um in ihr zu bestehen. Irgendwann beginnt sie, die Freundin zu bestehlen. Und um sich aus ihrer Ohnmacht zu befreien, wird sie noch viel weiter gehen. Muss Lavinia sterben, damit Louise leben kann? Tara Isabella Burton erzählt von einer toxischen Freundschaft und von der Macht sozialer Abgründe: ein so intensiver wie spannender Roman über eine Welt der Eitel- und Oberflächlichkeiten, schnell, klug und unverwechselbar. Der Titel erscheint am 24.05.2019 auch als Hörbuch bei DAV (ungekürzte Lesung mit Britta Steffenhagen).

Roman

So schöne Lügen

'a Ripleyesque Exploration of Female Insecurity Set among the Socialites of Manhattan'

The priests were faithless, the damned were blessed, the ironies were many, and the comforts were few. The brides were reluctant, the rejected were loved, the idols were demons, and the pitied were strong. - Father Luigi's Chameleon Tara Burton's remarkable first novel, Father Luigi's Chameleon, follows six characters as they face internal struggles during one fateful summer in Italy. The novel, in which this extraordinary eleven-year-old writer explores questions of ethics, values and the nature of love, as well as her unique view of God and the afterlife, was inspired by the often-conflicting philosophies of life she observed growing up in Rome, Paris and New York. Although written by a child, it is not a children's book! Father Luigi s Chameleon is the story of six friends, all living in Rome in the summer of 2002, who retreat to a small island off the coast of Naples in order to come to terms with their own personal demons that are preventing them from achieving happiness. At the root of this, watching over them, is Father Luigi's pet chameleon, Monsieur Amore, who turns out to be more than just a simple reptile in this captivating and thought-provoking modern parable.

Father Luigi's Chameleon

Vald till en av årets bästa böcker i New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, People, Vulture, Popsugar och New York Post. Louise har ingenting, Lavinia har allt. Efter ett slumpmässigt möte utvecklar de två en intensiv och alltmer uppslukande vänskap. Lavinia tar med Louise på fester, lånar ut sina kläder och visar Louise den värld som hon så länge har suktat efter att tillhöra. Men när Lavinia ber Louise flytta in i hennes lyxiga lägenhet blir skillnaderna mellan dem allt tydligare. Och Louise vill inte länge bara ha allt som Lavinia har hon vill helt enkelt vara Lavinia. TARA ISABELLA BURTON är en amerikansk författare och skribent, född i New York. Hon har studerat religion och litteratur och doktorerade nyligen inom teologi på Trinity College i Oxord, England. Hon skriver om religion och kultur i bland annar National Geographic, The Atlantic och BBC. Besatt är hennes första roman. »En sensationell och provokativ thriller, en förödande undersökning av kvinnlig osäkerhet och svidande uppgörelse med samhällets besatthet av sociala medier.« Kirkus "En vild, mardrömslik resa. Jag sträckläste med andan i halsen ." Emma Flint, författare till De döda små "En Talented Mr. Ripley för sociala-medier-åldern." New York Post "Vass som en spegelskärva." New York Times Book Review

Tara Isabella Burton

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