Sign-In
Cart
The Fact Checker
Hardcover
HumorGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $27.00
ISBN13: 9780802164100
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: Apr 15 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.85
Height: 1.10 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Mirthful, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly philosophical, The Fact Checker is a brilliant debut novel featuring a missing woman who might be perfectly fine, and a single-minded investigator yearning for meaning, morality, and accuracy in an increasingly post-truth world.
It's just a puff piece about a farmer's market, I said to myself. It's not going to kill anyone.
It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, Mandeville/Green, didn't raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week--it being 2004 New York City and all.
Mandeville/Green was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer's hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to nefarious business at the farmer's market. People sell everything here, she's alleged to have said. It ain't all green.
When Sylvia abruptly disappears the morning after an unexpectedly long night with the Fact Checker, he becomes obsessed with finding her. Did Sylvia discover something unsavory about New Egypt or its messianic owner? Is it possible she had some reason to fear for her safety? Or was it simply something the Fact Checker said?
Striking the perfect balance of humor, wonder, sadness, and poignancy, Austin Kelley's debut novel takes readers on a quixotic quest from one hidden corner of New York City to another--from an underground supper club in the Financial District to an abandoned-boat-turned-anarchist-community-space on the Gowanus Canal. As the story develops, the Fact Checker begins to question his perception of what's real and what's not. Facts can be deceiving, after all, and if you aren't careful, you might miss the truth right in front of your eyes.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Kelley, Austin
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback