Bright and Tender Dark

Joanna Pearson,Joanna Pearson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
March 17 2026
EAN: 9781639737062
ISBN: 1639737065
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Synopsis:

"Pearson bursts onto the scene with a gripping murder mystery fueled by the craziness of the internet." -Debutiful

Days after the dawn of the new millennium, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, her freshman-year roommate Joy, mid-divorce and desperate for a new beginning, stumbles on an old letter from Karlie and becomes convinced the man in prison for her murder didn't kill her. It was someone else.

Moving between the doomsaying of 90s evangelical culture and the dark world of internet conspiracies, Bright and Tender Dark is a compulsively readable, twisty, and prismatic debut that brilliantly mines the mythology of a murder and the urge to exploit what we love but can't have.

"Smart, assured, and absorbing." -Booklist (starred review)